Music and the Nerves, 1700-1900

The relationship between music and the nervous system is now the subject of intense interest for scientists and people in the humanities, but this is by no means a new phenomenon. Particularly since the seventeenth century, natural philosophers and music theorists have often prefigured much of the contemporary debate about music and the nervous system. Crucially, music came to be seen less as a microcosm of cosmic order and more as a question of the sensual stimulation of the nervous system. Musical aesthetics has at times rebelled against this materialist approach and asserted a transcendental view of music's effects, but even here the influence of 'neuromusic' can be seen. This volume sets out the history of the relationship between neurology and music, putting the advances of our era into context.

James Kennaway is a research associate at Newcastle University, UK. He is a historian of medicine who has worked at Oxford, Stanford and Durham. His research has focused on music and medicine, notably with his monograph Bad Vibrations: The History of the Idea of Music as a Cause of Disease (2012).