Musicophilia

Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia Oliver Sacks's book Musicophilia is a treasure trove of anecdotes and insights into the diverse ailments that affect the perception and appreciation of music.

A neurologist and psychiatrist, but also an honorary member of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function, which he helped found, Sacks had many musicians among his patients and found himself treating many relatively uncommon and decidedly complex cases of perceptual distortion, some of which are described in this book.

Thus, between a case of musicogenic epilepsy (music-induced seizures that strike a critic: a fitting nemesis :mrgreen: ), one of cochlear amusia (a deviation in the perception of pitch that afflicts a composer: ditto), and the surprising chapter dedicated to a doctor who, after being struck by lightning, develops an insatiable desire to listen to piano music, play, and even Composing, you spend pleasant hours reflecting on the complexity of that perceptual system whose functioning is largely determined by bilateral communication between the ears and the brain, which ultimately gives rise to the musical phenomenon.

This phenomenon, moreover, is still little researched and understood, especially when compared with what we know about visual perception. It is a phenomenon that has always been underestimated, starting with Darwin himself, who was clearly disconcerted by it, so much so that he wrote in The Descent of Man that

Since neither the pleasure associated with the production of musical notes nor the ability [to produce them] are faculties that have the slightest direct benefit for man, they must be placed among the most mysterious with which he is endowed.

This is an old story about the uselessness of listening to music, supported by the fact that among many "primitive" tribes Even though they dedicate several hours a day to music, the concept of music doesn't even exist (if you ask one of them what they're doing, you'll get a response like "I'm beating the drum to encourage the hunt").
A story so widespread that it even infected a writer and scientist like Arthur Clarke, given that even the aliens who came to save us from ourselves, the Overlords of The Singing Neanderthals, are completely insensitive to the production of sounds unrelated to a function.
A belief that, fortunately, is slowly being demolished by studies like those of Steven Mithen, who, in his The Singing Neanderthal (The Singing Neanderthal, which we've already discussed), hypothesizes that music and language have a common origin and that a characteristic of the Neanderthal mind was precisely a combination of proto-music and proto-language (Mithen calls this sort of sung language made of meanings, but without single words as we understand them, HMMMM which stands for holistic-mimetical-musical-multi-modal).

And yet, while it's difficult to explain its origins, there's nothing strange about the thought of producing something for pure aesthetic and/or intellectual pleasure, an activity that, moreover, is not the exclusive preserve of technologically advanced civilizations. It's often rightly said that art can only be created when primary needs (primarily the need for food) are satisfied, implying that only an advanced civilization can afford it.
However, we forget that many so-called primitive societies, if left undisturbed, are well integrated into their environment and far from beset by vital problems. I remember reading a study on Aboriginal people (unfortunately, I can't find the details now), which calculated that each adult member of the village worked (hunting, gathering, food preparation, various maintenance, etc.) between 12 and 18 hours a week (the same as a teacher's hours). The rest of the time is spent on leisure activities that also include singing together, which they describe as "telling stories" 😎 .

Back