None of this rigidity and tradition of fault-finding comes from the music itself. Rather, it’s the harsh teaching methods and soulless motivations behind classical training that often trip people up.

While the roles of dopamine and natural opioids remain “very much under debate,” said Zatorre, he believes dopamine may be responsible for our mental or aesthetic enjoyment of music, while opioids enhance physical pleasure in music.

Nevertheless, the entire harmonic system of Western European music developed through the Church, step by step. After Gregorian chant, only gradually did the Church allow harmony (different notes sung together) to trickle back in. First came the octave along with fourths and fifths, followed later by thirds and sixths. Church composers avoided disso

our brains process words differently when they are spoken versus sung.

Hearing, unlike sight, is fully developed at birth. Talking to babies helps them feel safe, but singing comforts them more. In

The inability to enjoy music of any kind is so rare that brain specialists consider it a neurological condition: “Musical anhedonia” affects roughly 3 to 5 percent of us. People with this abnormality have glitches in the auditory-processing and reward systems of the brain.

Here, too, music can dial us down. A Dutch review of 104 clinical trials described music’s “moderate tranquilising” effects as “very significant” for preventing and treating symptoms of stress. It didn’t matter whether people worked with a music therapist, heard live music in a group, or listened to recorded music alone. Based on results in a total

Brain scanning has confirmed that contrary to Pinker’s “cheesecake” theory, we don’t need our language system to process music.

When foreign aid workers offered talk therapy after the genocide, Rwandans found these efforts either offensive or ludicrous. In The Guardian, Solomon recalled a Rwandan man telling him the aid workers were “re-traumatising people by dragging them back through their stories.” He quoted the man as saying, “There was no music or drumming to get your