Musicophilia: Tales Of Music And The Brain (2007) - Plot & Excerpts
Have you ever experienced an “ear worm” – i.e., a melody “stuck” in your head? Have you ever found yourself humming or whistling a tune for no reason, then thought back to the lyrics or theme of that song and realized it had something to do with what’s on your mind? Have you ever tried to remember what letter comes after another in the alphabet and found yourself singing that “ABC” song from childhood?Check, check and check.All of these are explored in Musicophilia, a fascinating series of essays by Dr. Oliver Sacks (Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat). His writing is clear, civilized and genial, if occasionally repetitive and dryly scientific. (A more ruthless editor might have helped.)Drawing from more than half a century of clinical work as a neurologist, Sacks recounts tales of patients whose conditions have something to do with music. Among his subjects are people who:• have musical hallucinations (they constantly hear songs, often Christmas carols or marching tunes)• associate certain notes or musical intervals with colours or pictures• suddenly discover, after an accident or some other incident, that they have an aptitude for music or, conversely, lose their musical abilitiesThere are some absorbing case studies, such as Martin, who was born “normal” but contracted meningitis at three and succumbed to seizures, limiting his intelligence and physical abilities. As an adult, he had a low IQ but remembered 2,000 operas and all of Bach’s cantatas, including melodies and what each instrument and voice played.I was also intrigued by the woman who can remember pages of text, but only when they’re associated with a melody. (Her professor, recognizing his own lecture notes written verbatim on an exam, thought she was cheating until he discovered her gift.)And there are eye-opening tales about composers like Ravel, whose famous Bolero, with its relentless repetition, might have been influenced by his frontotemporal dementia, and Shostakovitch, who refused to have a piece of shrapnel removed from his head because it mysteriously provided him with music which he then incorporated into his compositions.Also included is the incredibly moving story of concert pianist and teacher Leon Fleisher, whose loss of the use of his right hand for three decades transformed his life and approach to art. Sacks’s description of Fleisher playing a transcription of Bach’s “Sheep May Safely Graze” (the pianist regained use of his hand later in life through Botox treatments) for him alone will bring tears to your eyes.And what about those people who hate or feel indifferent towards music? One of them was the great writer Vladimir Nabokov, who wrote: “Music... affects me merely as an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds… The concert piano and all wind instruments bore me in small doses and flay me in larger ones.”Before reading this book I didn’t realize that music crops up rarely in the works of Sigmund Freud, or the two James brothers, philosopher William and novelist Henry, although all three were sensitive to other varieties of human experience and expression.In a work filled with jaw-dropping stories, one of the most incredible happened to Sacks himself. One day he woke up from a musical dream, which followed him throughout the day. I found something deeply disturbing and unpleasant about the music, and longed for it to stop. I had a shower, a cup of coffee, went for a walk, shook my head, played a mazurka on the piano – to no avail. The hateful hallucinatory music continued unabated. Finally I phoned a friend, Orlan Fox, and said that I was hearing songs that I could not stop, songs that seemed to me full of melancholy and a sort of horror. The worst thing, I added, was that the songs were in German, a language I did not know. Orlan asked me to sing or hum some of the songs. I did so, and there was a long pause. “Have you abandoned some of your young patients?” he asked. “Or destroyed some of your literary children?”“Both,” I answered. “Yesterday, I resigned from the children’s unit at the hospital where I have been working, and I burned a book of essays I had written…. How did you guess?”“Your mind is playing Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder,” he said, “his songs of mourning for the death of children.” I was amazed by this, for I rather dislike Mahler’s music and would normally find it quite difficult to remember in detail, let alone sing, any of his Kindertotenlieder. But here my dreaming mind, with infallible precision, had come up with an appropriate symbol of the previous day’s events. And in the moment that Orlan interpreted the dream, the music disappeared; it has never recurred in the thirty years since.Amazing.Near the end, Sacks provides an illuminating and moving chapter on the connection between grief and music. How come some compositions provide consolation and catharsis? And there’s a touching chapter on patients with Williams Syndrome, people who tend to have IQs less than 60 but who have universally friendly personalities and extraordinary musical ability.There’s no overarching thesis or direction to Musicophilia – how could there be, really? – but there are plenty of studies and stories that will make you think twice next time you find yourself turning on your iPod.**Fun fact: I noticed Sacks cites a study by a Simon Baron-Cohen. I Googled and, sure enough, the scientist is Borat’s (Sacha Baron Cohen) first cousin!
I'm a musical person. Doesn't mean I'm working on concert piano pieces or mastering the jazz trumpet, but music is a part of everyday life. I usually plug into music during work - this depending on what work I'm doing can be either a distraction or the complete opposite and totally shut out everything except my work - or when reading, or working out, or traveling on the bus (a game of mine is to match the beat of the song with hitting a pothole or speed bump, yes so much fun, OK back to the review now) and this is of course not unique to me. Feet tapping, finger snapping, humming, pretend dancing ... the works ... most of us do these when listening to music. Put on a favorite song of yours and you'll know everything about it as if the song were walking out of your brain: The exact moment when the drums roll in, the crazy guitar solo note-for-note, of course the lyrics ... we can do this for hundreds of songs, but we don't really memorize them bit by bit. The song just gets in and stays there.For many of us it is harder to do this 'recreation' if the song is not playing along side, unless the song has burrowed into your brain and you can 'hear' it every waking second, exactly the way it sounds coming out of the music player. Now, I also fiddle around on my guitar a bit - it is near impossible for me to translate the notes I'm hearing quite clearly in my head onto the correct sound on the guitar. If instead I'm hearing the song, from a music player and my ears are involved, the same task is quite simple.There are hundreds of such oddities I can think about my own musical experience, some big while some almost too small to be noticed. After having read Musicophilia I can also safely say that as puzzled as I am by the outcome of my small experiments, the manner in which music profoundly affects lives is at the very least humbling in so many ways that are so difficult to comprehend. The savants who can't tell you the time of the day but can recreate note-for-note any complex classical song, retrograde amnesiacs whose lives have been transformed in a small but important way by remembrance through music, discovering the lost ability of meaningful speech through song lyrics ... there are hundreds of such heart-warming stories throughout the book. People whose lives have been enriched by music, or in some cases completely torn apart by it.The book of course isn't about the stories alone. Oliver Sachs does equal justice to his neurologist self along side his musical one, delving into the medical research on nearly all of these cases, their causes, effects, symptoms and more. Sachs draws from his personal experience, experiences of his colleagues, patients that he has seen and even case histories from around the world in his field.Fantastic book. Loved it all through.
What do You think about Musicophilia: Tales Of Music And The Brain (2007)?
The worst part of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air was watching the all too frequent clip shows. I hated those.This book read like a clip show to me. It seemed like most of the stories told were told elsewhere first. A quick count of the number of times he retells stories from other books:Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: 5Anthropologist on Mars: 8Awakenings: 4Seeing Voices: 1Island of the Colorblind: 2This is your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin: 8In addition to recycling material from other sources, the stories told have a simple structure:anecdote, anecdote, anecdote, wee-little bit of science, anecdote anecdote.I was expecting more science and less "Mrs. P wrote me a letter. It said . . . I first told her story in my book X. Mrs. P wrote another letter to me saying . . ."
—Mathew
Summary: Renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks chronicles the neuroscience of music–the various ways music affects the brain, and the unusual effects of various neurological conditions on our perception, performance, and experience of music.Oliver Sacks died on August 30 of this year. A few months earlier, my son gave me this book, and it seemed especially appropriate to pull it off the “to be read” pile and acquaint myself with the work of this neuroscientist and physician. Before opening the book, I had one of those heart-stopping moments as I found myself staring at the cover picture of Sacks and thought I was looking at a doppelganger! I guess balding men with graying beards, glasses and a certain shape of head can look a bit like each other.What Sacks does is chronicle the fascinating ways music and the brain interact and some of the unusual conditions that involve unusual responses to music. In the course of this book he explores a range of phenomena beginning with a sudden onset of musical interest following a lightening strike, the ways music might evoke seizures or suppress the tics of Tourettes or the shaking of Parkinson’s. He wonders whether the advent of iPods will result in more brainworms–those tunes we can’t get out of our heads.He describes musical hallucinations, where one hears music in one’s head even when none is playing.He explores musicality from tone deafness to perfect pitch (which occurs more in musical families and where musical training begins early) and synesthesia, where music is associated with color. He explores the connections between music, memory and movement. He describes Clive, who because of brain infection that affected his temporal lobes lives in a perpetual present with no memory of past moments. Yet somehow he remembers music he knew in the past.Perhaps a highlight of the book was his description of a camp for people with Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects the development of the brain resulting in low IQs and yet incredible verbal and musical skills. He describes the delight these people had in talking and making music with one another.In one of the concluding chapters he describes the work done with Alzheimer’s patients and how, for them as well, music is a connection to memories of the past, and an anchor to their no-longer remembered lives that is profound. He talks about “the loss of self” and how music helps Alzheimer’s patients connect to some sense of “self” when the other memories are gone.The book left me in wonder at the intricacies of the human brain and how the neural circuitry related to our perception, memory of, and making of music interact with speech, thought, emotion, and other memories. And it reminded me of the power of music–a power to evoke emotions, memories, and even to address troubling neurological conditions. It reminds me of how when I am learning, singing and performing a piece of music, I find myself tapping into a different aspect of who I am from when I am simply speaking or writing or reading. And I found myself thankful for the life of Oliver Sacks, who cared for people with troubling conditions and brought together his love for his patients, his skills in research, and his own musicality and life history into this fascinating narrative of music and the human brain.
—Bob
Or Mad Men or Big Love! I'm not a fan of Pulp Fiction or The Big Lebowski. They're okay. I haven't seen The Wire, either.Yes, an actual ear worm is gross! In middle school we had a mean teacher whose daughter's face was "off." We somehow all thought that something crawled in her ear and ate part of her brain and that's why she was that way. I have no idea where that story originated, but it was far from the truth which was that she was born mentally impaired. Oops.
—Malbadeen
