Music and the Mind. Anthony Storr

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СКАЧАТЬ in old age, asked:

      What is the ‘human measure’ in music? … My ‘human measure’ is not only possible, but also exact. It is, first of all, absolutely physical, and it is immediate. I am made bodily ill, for example, by sounds electronically spayed for overtone removal. To me they are a castration threat.¹¹

      There can be no doubt that seeing the movements which musicians make during live performance is, for many people, an important reason for going to concerts as opposed to listening to music at home on radio or disc. Some of the greatest conductors, like Richard Strauss and Pierre Monteux, kept their physical movements to a minimum; others are more flamboyant. But some listeners confess that their appreciation of a particular work is increased by observing the gestures of a conductor.

      There is pleasure to be gained from seeing the co-ordinated bowing of the various string sections, just as there is from seeing other examples of group co-ordination, like gymnastic displays. Virtuoso instrumentalists not only play music which is technically inaccessible to the amateur, but also give people the same sort of pleasure which they gain from seeing a great athlete or juggler in action. This may not be directly connected with the appreciation of music itself; but it does underline the physicality of musical performance.

      Debussy wrote:

      The attraction of the virtuoso for the public is very like that of the circus for the crowd. There is always a hope that something dangerous may happen.¹²

      This view was shared by the violinist Jascha Heifetz who claimed that every critic was eagerly awaiting an occasion on which his impeccable technique would let him down.

      Because music affects people physically and also structures time, it is sometimes used when a group of people are performing repetitive physical actions. Some songs are working songs which alleviate boredom and co-ordinate the actions of threshing, pounding, reaping, and the like. It has been suggested that music originated because rhythmically organized work was discovered to be more efficient; but this sounds like a notion derived from a Protestant, capitalist ethic transposed backward in time. Even if Vico was wrong in supposing that dancing preceded walking, dancing probably antedated organized work; and the rhythmic movements of the dance are usually linked with music.

      Our modern equivalent to the use of music in co-ordinating agricultural labour is the provision of music in factories. Opinion is divided as to its effects. Judging from its use in agriculture, one might expect that music would improve performance of the routine operations which are common in factory work. Repetitive movements are less tedious when synchronized with musical rhythms. The provision of music is certainly popular amongst factory workers. However, the heightening of morale is not necessarily accompanied by increase in output. Whilst music probably enhances the performance of routine tasks, especially those in which repetitive physical actions prevail, it tends to interfere with the performance of non-repetitive actions which need thinking about. For example, there is evidence suggesting that music increases the number of errors in typing.¹³

      The order which music brings to our experience is rhythmic, melodic and also harmonic. As the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin puts it:

      Music creates order out of chaos; for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent; melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous.¹⁴

      The effect which music has upon repetitive physical actions is predominantly rhythmic. Rhythm is rooted in the body in a way which does not apply so strikingly to melody and harmony. Breathing, walking, the heartbeat, and sexual intercourse are all rhythmical aspects of our physical being. In some pre-literate cultures rhythm is so highly developed that Western musicians cannot reproduce its complexities. Grosvenor Cooper and Leonard Meyer, who were both professors of Music at the University of Chicago, begin their book The Rhythmic Structure of Music by writing:

      To study rhythm is to study all of music. Rhythm both organizes, and is itself organized by, all the elements which create and shape musical processes.¹⁵

      We take for granted the fact that rhythm imposed from outside has an effect upon our own capacity for organizing our own movements. For instance, a military band playing a march orders our strides and also reduces fatigue.

      David, a six-year-old autistic boy, suffered from chronic anxiety and poor visual-motor co-ordination. For nine months, efforts had been made to teach him to tie his shoe-laces without avail. However, it was discovered that his audio-motor co-ordination was excellent. He could beat quite complex rhythms on a drum, and was clearly musically gifted. When a student therapist put the process of tying his shoe-laces into a song, David succeeded at the second attempt.

      A song is a form in time. David had a special relationship to this element and could comprehend the shoe-tying process when it was organized in time through a song.¹⁶

      The effects of music upon patients with neurological diseases causing movement disorders are sometimes astonishing. Some patients can make voluntary movements to the sound of music which they cannot accomplish without it. The disease known as paralysis agitans, or Parkinsonism, causes an inability to co-ordinate and control voluntary movement. In his famous book on sufferers from post-encephalitic Parkinsonism, Awakenings, the neurologist Oliver Sacks describes a patient who suffered from recurrent ‘crises’ characterized by intense excitement, uncontrollable movements, forced repetition of words and phrases, and other symptoms. Dr Sacks writes:

      By far the best treatment of her crises was music, the effects of which were almost uncanny. One minute would see Miss D. compressed, clenched and blocked, or jerking, ticcing and jabbering – like a sort of human bomb; the next, with the sound of music from a wireless or a gramophone, the complete disappearance of all these obstructive-explosive phenomena and their replacement by a blissful ease and flow of movement as Miss D., suddenly freed of her automatisms, smilingly ‘conducted’ the music, or rose and danced to it.¹⁷

      Dr Sacks later writes of these terrible cases: ‘The therapeutic power of music is very remarkable, and may allow an ease of movement otherwise impossible.’¹⁸ One of Dr Sacks’s patients who had taught music described herself as ‘unmusicked’. When frozen into immobility by the disease, she would remain helplessly unable to move until she was able to recall tunes she had known in her youth. These would suddenly release her ability to move again.

      Fortunately, the epidemic disease of encephalitis lethargica which caused this type of Parkinsonism has disappeared; and only sporadic cases are now recorded. But Parkinsonism is common in the elderly, and is said to occur in 1 in 200 people over the age of fifty. It is due to loss of cells in the substantia nigra; the part of the brain which produces dopamine. This is a chemical neurotransmitter which is involved in the passage of impulses from the brain to the voluntary muscles.

      Happily, most of us who listen to music do not do so because we need it as treatment for neurological disease; but the physical effects of music are undoubted, and, as we have seen, can be measured in people who are perfectly normal.

      Occasionally, music’s effect upon the brain can be the opposite of therapeutic. In rare cases, music can provoke an epileptic fit. The neurologist Macdonald Critchley described one patient whose epileptic attacks were exclusively brought on by music. Playing a record of Tchaikovsky’s Valse des Fleurs caused emotional distress followed by a typical grand mal; that is, a major epileptic seizure with convulsive movements, frothing at the lips, and cyanosis.¹⁹ Such attacks are without doubt ‘organic’; that is, the result of music as a physical stimulus acting directly on the brain, not secondary to the emotional effects of music. This can be shown by provoking a fit whilst the electro-encephalogram records the electrical activity of СКАЧАТЬ