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Before humans could write, we made music. Music theory came shortly after. As early as Mesopotamia (1500 BCE) written terms for music appear. By 235 BCE, Chinese scholars used numbers to think about music. Music changes, evolves, and reinvents itself and so does music theory.
Dr. Lawrence Zbikowski from the University of Chicago has spent nearly 50 years making music. Today, he studies how our understanding of music drives our emotional responses to it.
Larry has been fascinated with the idea of music as a language, one that shares ideas in ways beyond words. Working with the ideas of cognitive linguistics, he has applied structures of grammar to our understanding of how music works. In 2017 he pulled these ideas together in his new book “Foundations of Musical Grammar." From classical music to tango, Larry explores how humans are wonderful meaning-making machines seeing emotions and structure in music.
And he plays the guitar! Though he mostly plays classical guitar, he has also played lighter fair with a group called the South Side Swedes.
