Music- is there anything it can't do...?

 

     Music has the ability to calm our brains, our hearts, our nerves.  We tend to like music that reminds us of something we've heard before, but not too much.  We like music that strikes the sweet spot between novelty and familiarity, simplicity and complexity, and between predictability and surprise.  The job of the composer, and of the musicians who interpret the composition, is to hit these in just the right balance.  The trick of it is that the sweet spot is not the same for all of us, and often not even the same from day-to-day.  Loving music requires that we be receptive to it, that we make the mental space and time to allow ourselves to give into it, to be won over by it.  If our defenses are up—as they can be in clinical, therapeutic environments—it may simply not work.  Or it can catch us by surprise, evoking some of the deepest memories and deepest feelings of our lives, and in the progress, help us through almost anything.

-Daniel J. Levitin, I Heard There Was A Secret Chord:  Music as Medicine