Daniel J. Levitin's "This is Your Brain on Music"

This is a pretty comprehensive view of music from a cognitive neuroscientist. There's bits about what is music, how music is made, who we process music, and even the evolutionary psychology of music (he comes down with Darwin arguing that it developed from sexual selection as a way to signal fitness and catch the fancy of women).

While I felt the book was a bit leaden (the problem with scientists is that they don't have the narrative verve of fiction writers), the comprehensiveness and depth of content made up for it. Lots of things to learn in this book. It isn't an academic tome, but it is a fulsome review of what science understands about music.

It is interesting that he shows no prejudices. He covers all music genres. His experience as a recording engineer working with rock musicians comes out. His enjoyment of jazz is documented by his many comments and examples from this field of music. He makes many references to the classical repertoire. And, finally, he mentions numerous scientific studies and discusses enough of their results to help you feel at home in this area of science.

One bit that piqued my interest was his look at Williams syndrome as evidence of a brain disease that over-expressed sociality, language, and music while autism spectrum disorders are evidence of a brain disease the under-express sociality, language, and music.

If you have an interest in music, do read the book.