A tap of the foot, a rush of emotion, the urge to hum a tune; without instruction or training we all respond intuitively to music. How is it that patterns of sound that might not appear to mean anything can, in fact, be so meaningful? Taking a tour of major 20th century musical theories, Adam Ockelford arrives at his own psychologically grounded theory of how music works. From pitch and rhythm to dynamics and timbre, he shows how all the elements of music cohere through the principle of imitation to create an abstract narrative in sound that we instinctively grasp, whether listening to Bach or the Beatles.