Bicknell, Why Music Moves Us, Chapters 5 & 6

• What are the reductive strategies, as Bicknell terms them, that are used to explain strong emotional responses to music?

• Why does Bicknell find these explanations inadequate?

• What did Descartes mean when he said that music stimulates our “animal spirits”?

• What is the role of cognition in musical experience?

• What does it mean to “hear backwards”?

• Why, according to Bicknell, is it significant that music is fundamentally a social experience?

• Do you agree that there is no “private” musical experience?  Why or why not?

• What are the implications of Bicknell’s claim that “systems of musical meaning are conventional” (90)?

• How does Bicknell defend her characterization of music as social from the objection that music is an escape from the social?

• How does music contribute to social bonding?

• What are the effects of music on the brain and why does Bicknell find these effects significant?

• Can encounters with music be intimate?

• How our relationships with music similar to friendships with people?

• How does music facilitate intimacy with ourselves?