Music is not simply something we hear. We experience it and love it; it is a primal human need. If, as the pianist Alfred Brendel put it, that we are able to "take music at its word," we confront questions that also moved the author since his adolescent years: What takes hold of me when I experience music? What reality touches me when music is playing? What happens physiologically in the human body when we experience and make music? The author approaches these questions from three perspectives: first, from his personal experience and active love of music; second, from the physiological...