doi:10.1093/brain/awt033
Brain 2013: 136; 1671–1675
BRAIN
A JOURNAL OF NEUROLOGY
BOOK REVIEW
Music is a higher revelation. . .
‘. . . than all wisdom and philosophy. Who is opened up by music, must
become free of all the misery which is dragging other people’ (Ludwig
van Beethoven)
Western music begins with a contest. The flute playing satyr
Marsyas engaged in a musical contest with the God Apollo,
famous for his musical performances with the lyre which he had
rendered more perfect by adding four strings to the three-stringed
instrument his half-brother Hermes had invented, and thereby
creating unprecedented harmonious sounds. The first long flute
was made by Athena, goddess of wisdom and invention, from
the bones of deer, or by piercing boxwood, with holes placed
wide apart. Proud of her invention, Athena came to the banquet
of the Gods to play. However, Aphrodite and Hera, seeing
Athena’s cheeks puffed out, mocked her playing and called her
ugly. Athena went to a spring on Mount Ida in order to view
herself in the water where she understood why she was
mocked, and threw away the flute, vowing that whomsoever
picked it up would be severely punished:
‘The sound was pleasing; but in the water that reflected my face I saw
my virgin cheeks puffed up. I value not the art so high; farewell my
flute!’ (Ovid, Fasti 6.697).
Marsyas was an accomplished flute-player for some time before
he found the flute that Athena had discarded. He had learned by
art and practice to produce ever sweeter sounds. Then he happened to meet Apollo and his lyre. So he challenged the God to a
musical contest at which the muses were designated as judges.
They agreed that the victor should determine whatever fate he
wished for the one defeated. Initially Marsyas emerged as victor
but then Apollo, turning his lyre upside down, played the same
tune—a prowess not possible for Marsyas with his di-aulos on
which the two tubes pointed too far apart. Apollo (also known
as Apollon) added his voice to the sound of the lyre—sometimes
Gods must use tricks to overcome accomplishments of semi-Gods
or mere humans. Marsyas protested, arguing that skill with the
instrument was to be contested, not song. However, after again
comparing their skills, Marsyas was defeated. Having now won
the contest, Apollo flayed Marsyas alive while the unfortunate
musician hanged upside-down on a tall pine-tree. And when his
BAD VIBRATIONS. THE
HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF
MUSIC AS A CAUSE OF
DISEASE
By James Kennaway 2012.
Farnham: Ashgate
ISBN: 978-1-4094-5621-6
Price: £65.00
BRAIN & MUSIC
By Stefan Koelsch 2012.
Chichester: Wiley Blackwell
ISBN: 978-0-470-68340-8
Price: £70.00
MUSICAL IMAGINATIONS.
MULTIDISCIPLINARY
PERSPECTIVES ON
CREATIVITY,
PERFORMANCE, AND
PERCEPTION
By David Hargreaves,
Dorothy Miell and Raymond
Macdonald (Eds.) 2011.
Oxford: Oxford University
Press
ISBN: 978-0-19-956808-6
Price: £39.99
Received January 18, 2013. Accepted January 18, 2013
ß The Author (2013). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved.
For Permissions, please email: [email protected]
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| Brain 2013: 136; 1671–1675
HELMHOLTZ MUSICUS. DIE
OBJEKTIVIERUNG DER
MUSIK IM 19.
JAHRHUNDERT DURCH
HELMHOLTZ‘ LEHRE VON
DEN TONEMPFINDUNGEN
By Matthias Rieger 2006.
Darmstadt University Press
ISBN: 978-3534192007
Price: E59.90
skin was stripped from the surface of his body, and with no other
wound, Marsyas declared:
‘Why do you tear me from myself? Oh, I repent! Oh, a flute is not
worth such a price!’ (Marsyas. Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.385).
Now there was confusion. Apollo quickly himself repented, and
being distressed at his horrible deed, broke the four strings of the
lyre that he had fashioned. The river Marsyas in Asia Minor, which
empties into the Meander, named after the defeated musician,
was sourced by the tears of those who grieved the fallen hero—
satyrs, nymphs, country people and many others—and stained red
by Marsyas’ blood (attributed in modern terms to the presence of
Ferrum-dioxide). Marsyas composed the ‘Song of the mother’, an
air for the flute, by which, many years later, invading Barbarians
were repelled. He may be seen as role model for the creator and
composer of music. Conversely, by the presentation of sounds,
Appollon’s son Orpheus is the one who orders and rules everything musical. Composition is not for him; rather, he interprets and
sings. He is the vessel out of which music flows. And even
Odysseus listens for the Sirens, allowing himself to be bound by
his companions to the mast of the ship; and with only their ears
blocked with wax. Odysseus wants to know and report the experience. But what does he hear? Is it his own voice? Is it everything possible that can be heard? Perhaps by insisting on listening,
he is confronted by a muse originating in himself, which vibrates
(this being an interpretation of the mythology offered by the composer Wolfgang Rihm).
Marsyas and Apollon’s legend draws our attention metaphorically to two different kinds of human nature that can also be
applied to music; sometimes, following Friedrich Nietzsche’s dissertation, Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik,
designated the birth of tragedy out of the spirit of music—the
Dionysian and the Apollonian. Apollon is logical and reasonable,
stands for the wish to create order, beauty and clarity through the
formation of boundaries and preservation of individuality,
self-control, perfection and the exhaustion of all possibilities.
Conversely, Dionysus is the representative of chaos and intoxication; celebrating nature, instinct, intuition pleasure, individuality,
passion and no restriction on boundaries or excess.
In Bad vibrations: the history of the idea of music as a cause of
disease, James Kennaway describes in meticulous detail and drawing on a vast amount of literature how the idea meanders through
Book Review
history that music is a pathogen: a genuine threat to the health of
musicians and their listeners, and both a challenge and a threat to
any society trying to uphold order. From Plato to Christian thinkers
of puritanical bent, the darker understanding of music may be
played out in a longer historical context. Music is seen as a
threat to manhood, morality and political order; feminine musical
sirens luring men to their dooms. The physicality of music, its
sensual elements and power to overexcite, seduce, hypnotize or
brainwash listeners, acting as a physical contact between people at
a distance creates powerful group dynamics that challenge societal
values of self control and physical restraint. In many parts of
European cultural history there are traces to be found of a rejection of the physical, Dionysian, aspects of music in favour of its
more abstract, Apollonian, qualities. Plato advocated banning all
musical modes except for the Dorian and Phrygian, fearing that by
other modes listeners might be challenged not to observe orders.
A moral ambivalence towards musical innovation and its pleasures
continued through the Middle Ages, e.g. when the English cleric
John of Salisbury expressed horror at the polyphony of his days,
arguing that ‘Music sullies the Divine Service . . . indeed, when such
practices go too far they can more easily occasion titillation between the legs than a sense of devotion in the brain’.
Disenchantment with music may replace its magic, altering
music from a partial model of divine harmony to one where
music threatens a powerful and potentially pathogenic form of
nerve stimulation. Kennaway discusses the symbolic relationship
of music to order, sensuality and gender in relation to its sheer
loudness (volume); how music is emotionally active (shivers, direct
physical power, and induction to move); how it relates to medical
conditions (e.g. sudden arrhythmia death syndrome, musicogenic
epilepsy and musical hallucinations); what may be its psychological
impact (musico-mania, nerve fatigue and neurasthenia, irrational
sensuality leading to immorality, effeminacy); and how it may
undermine, quasi-hypnotically, individual willpower. Striking examples are provided: at a première of Händel’s oratorio ‘Esther’
at Westminster Abbey, a celebrated chorus singer became violently agitated to such an extent that he died, after declaring
that the ‘wonderful effect of music is to blame’; and a sick
music lover is described who ‘finally when his excitement had
reached the highest degree and tension . . . died from playing the
triangle . . . ’ (p. 37). Out of the conviction that music can
overstimulate a vulnerable nervous system, leading to illness
(both physical and mental), immorality, and even death, a powerful dichotomy has been constructed (by male authors) between
nervous, feminine, pathological music and transcendental, masculine, serious music. Nerves, serving as strings of musical instruments, bring soul and body into harmony and align the human
microcosm with a social and cosmic macrocosm. The author
admits, however, that ‘debates on pathological music generally
say much more about the societies from which they emerge
than the music they denounce’ (p. 9). Puritanical hostility to pleasure led to the conviction that ‘melting tones of music’ were
amongst the most significant causes of the sickly countenances
and nervous habits of English young ladies. Since women were
considered closer to nature than men, and more driven by passion,
empfindsame Musik was suggested as a subtle form of physical
coercion for women, a technology of restraint which both
Book Review
articulated and inculcated genteel values. By attacking the threat
of sensual music, medicine and biopolitics played an increasingly
influential role in controlling sexuality. The Glasharmonika invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1760 was considered an especially
dangerous instrument (p. 44). Apart from the division between
serious (masculine) music, relating to the transcendental subject
and supposedly sensual (feminine) music that merely stimulates
the nerves (p. 51), another dichotomy has been constructed between privileged serious German instrumental music and supposedly superficial sickly Italian opera. ‘Pathological music’ was
never more widespread in serious scientific and cultural discourse
than during the period between the mid-19th century and World
War I. Debate on the threat posed by music to health became
increasingly entangled in a political critique of the social, cultural
and medical problems blamed on modern city life with its technology, urban vice and supposedly uncontrolled sexuality (p. 63).
The focus was on eroticism attributed to specific modern kinds of
music becoming part of a cultural pessimism that later strongly
influenced Nazi politics on ‘degenerated music’. Wagner, with
his radical harmonies and lush timbres threatening self-control
and the wearing out of vulnerable nerves, became the symbolic
threat for respectable old high culture not dissimilar to modern
drug vices and the like. Wagner himself was aware of the nervous
strain his work was causing when he wrote in 1859 about ‘Tristan
and Isolde’ to Malwida von Meysenbug (not: ‘Meysenburg’):
‘Child! this Tristan is turning into something terrible! . . . I fear the
opera will be banned—unless the whole thing parodied in a bad
performance—only mediocre performances can save me! Perfectly
good ones will drive people mad’ (p. 65); and indeed the first
singer of Tristan died in a delirium with his last words: ‘Farewell,
Siegfried, console me, Richard!’, Wagner confessing in a letter that
he ‘drove the singer to the abyss’. Notable psychiatrists concluded:
‘A large number of mentally ill are passionate lovers of Wagnerian
music’; and it was argued that Wagner’s ‘pathological lack of
rhythm . . . his disappointed rhythm meant that the gathered
energy has to dissipate itself by other channels which involves a
certain amount of conflict and waste, leading to fatigue’. There
were times (ours, alas, no exception) when simple statements such
as ‘Disease is unrhythmical, health is rhythmical’ could appear in
respectable journals. Wagner’s music was a byword for eroticism –
adultery in Tristan, and incest in Walküre etc; and it was related to
the perils of engendering unconsummated sexual feelings among
young unmarried women. Gynaecologists were particularly outspoken about the dangers of music on their patients, comparing
the effects of piano playing on women with that of alcohol on
men. It was claimed that music could lead to premature menstruation and that excessive music would lead to early awakening of
the sex-drive and to ‘passions, despair, suicide, vice, crime, madness, melancholy, hysteria’ (p. 79). There is an interesting relationship between music and hypnosis that was often considered
towards the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century: it was known that sound could effectively enhance hypnotic
effects (especially on women), loosening control of the mind over
the body and threatening social discipline—free being considered
an agent that inhibits discipline and therefore needing treatment in
order to be overcome and abandoned. Again, with his manipulative techniques for mesmerizing an audience and single listeners,
Brain 2013: 136; 1671–1675
| 1673
Wagner was seen as a master of hypnosis; and, for Leo Tolstoy (in
his Kreutzer Sonata), music was a possession. A growing profound
cultural pessimism developed—a ‘modern anti-modernism aimed
at defending (organic, German, healthy manly) Kultur against
mere (artificial, foreign, sickly and effeminate) Zivilisation’—and
seeing ‘war as a cure for the crisis of modern nervousness . . . ’, a
grotesque fantasy based on the assumption of ‘weakness of will as
the sickness of the century’ (p. 106).
Since action (behaviour) and sensation (perception) are thought
in modern times to be organized by the brain, it is understandable
that authors try to demonstrate relationships between cultural
achievements such as music and certain brain functions detected
by a variety of surrogate measures. In Brain and Music Stefan
Koelsch writes diligently, displaying in a very systematic manner
and with discussion supported by many references (no small part
listing his own impressive researches), on the ‘state of knowledge’.
There is this mysterious way of music reaching the ear as rhythmically compressed air, transmitting energy onto the tympanon,
from where it is transformed mechanically via the small bones—
hammer, incus and stapes—of the ear. The latter knocks gently on
the oval window that then translates the energy to the fluid of
the cochlear spiral. Then, these fluid waves waggle the fine hairs
on the cellular layers of the basal membrane, which are transformed into electric impulses that sound the brain via well
known neural pathways. This anatomy and physiology are nicely
described in much detail. But wherein lies the perception and execution of music? Is it really the auditory cortex with its tonotopic
structure? It is said (p. 13) that the primary auditory cortex (PAC)
is ‘thought to be involved in several auditory processes . . . e.g.
analysis of acoustic features, auditory sensory memory, extraction
of inter-sound relationships, stream segregation, automatic change
detection and the transformation of acoustic features into auditory
percepts’. The core diagram of the book, around which the text
evolves (Fig. 8.1, p. 90) is a neurocognitive model of music perception proposed and elaborated by Stefan Koelsch. There is
‘meaning’ described by N400 and N5 over 250–550 ms, localized
to Brodmann area 22 p, 21/47; ‘feature extraction I’ [periodicity
and timbre (including roughness), intensity and location] described
by auditory brainstem responses in brainstem and thalamus; ‘feature extraction II’ (pitch height and chroma, and loudness) revealed more by mid-latency components and localized to
Brodmann areas 41, 42, 52; ‘Gestalt formation’ (melodic and
rhythmic grouping) and ‘structure building’ (harmony, metre,
rhythm, timbre) characterized by negativities; ‘vitalization’ in autonomic, endocrine, multimodal association cortices; and, finally,
‘premotor action’ localized to Brodmann area 6, the supplementary motor area and the rostral cingular zone. A wealth of publications tabulated and discussed in detail with considerable
knowledge of neurophysiology, support these analyses leading to
a synopsis (Table 12.1, p. 208) of social functions engaged by
music in relation to music perception, syntactic processing, and
the dimensions of musical meaning. Adding ‘principles underlying
the evocation of emotions with music’, we find this table further
elaborated with an additional row on ‘evaluation, contagion,
memory, expectancy, imagination, understanding and aesthetics’.
But where in all of this can the ‘person’ be found with a history
and environment that perceives and executes music? Our
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| Brain 2013: 136; 1671–1675
languages have retained a wonderful and soundful expression of
where we might look: per sonare, sounding through—that is what
‘person’ means in this context. The October 2006 issue of Brain
contained several valuable articles on music and the brain, including a very personal account by a former Editor, the late Ian
McDonald on his personal experience of musical alexia with recovery. Such first-person perspectives add enormously to the
understanding of such a complex phenomenon as music perception and execution. No attempt should be made to link these to
particular brain areas. The French mathematician, physicist and
philosopher Henri Poincaré has provided a valuable metaphor for
localizing functions based on the absence that occurs with a particular lesion which exposes the nonsense of localizing function.
When we use both eyes we see in three dimensions. If we cover
one eye, the faculty of 3D vision is lost and therefore one might
be tempted to infer that the lost function had been localized in
that one eye which is now lost, whereas, of course, this one structure is a necessary component of a much larger network. I am not
convinced that music can or should be reduced to single potentials, however cleverly they are registered; nor should music be
assigned to circumscribed areas in the brain as they appear on
scans, however technically sophisticated they may be—treated
thus, music thereby loses its sound.
A deeper understanding of the present is possible only by contrast with past world-views. In the twilight times of transition to
modern neuroscience, the great German physicist and amateur
musician, Hermann Helmholtz produced (among many others) a
monumental pioneering work (not quoted by Koelsch in his 31
pages of references) on sound waves, acoustics, and musical
theory Über Tonempfindungen als physiologische Grundlage für
die Theorie der Musik [On the Sensations of Tone as a
Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music (Rieger, 2006)].
Helmholtz claims that the basics of music are not aesthetic or
music-theoretical in nature, but based on the physiology of the
ear and the physics of sound. It is not sound that makes the
music, but its physiological consequences. To analyse the ‘rapid
alternations’ of everyday noises into their component vibrations,
he constructed the ‘Helmholtz resonator’; and by performing experiments, Helmholtz was able to distinguish the prime tones of
various membranes ‘determined by its own composition and by
the sympathetic vibrations of the ear’. With the help of instrumental objectification with Phon autographs, tuning forks and resonators, Helmholtz offered for the first time a scientific explanation
for the phenomenon that the perception and interpretation of
music are based not on metaphysical speculation, but on scientific
and objective measurement. The history of scientific objectification
of music in the 19th century includes, however, not only acoustic
apparatus and institutions, but also music-loving mothers, piano
playing wives and bibliophile fathers. In the life story of Helmholtz
both worlds were always closely interwoven: that of the physiological laboratory and scientific accuracy on the one hand, and
that of music performance on the other. He was not only a
gifted scientist but also a skilled pianist and educated music
lover. He did not intend to discard previous research of aesthetics
or theory, but wanted to complement these by acoustic research:
‘this book is trying to unite the border areas of the sciences which,
although referring to each other by many natural relationships,
Book Review
stand so far quite separately, namely on the one hand the
border regions of physical and physiological acoustics and on the
other hand musicology and aesthetics’ (Reiger, 2006). Helmholtz
tried to complement the exploration of sound by investigations on
sensory perception, and to formulate a doctrine of the sensations
of sound, intended to provide a key to music aesthetics and solutions to the music-theoretical problem. His book marks a change
in spiritual life when the loss of proportionality as a guiding principle must give way to a scientific and objective understanding of
music; and it serves as an exemplary illustration for the development of a history of measuring that dominates our own times.
Some of this same vein of pleasure to measure can be found in
the book Musical imaginations: multidisciplinary perspectives on
creativity, performance, and perception edited by David
Hargreaves, Dorothy Miell and Raymond Macdonald. Confirming
that ‘musical imagination and creativity are amongst the most
abstract and complex aspects of musical behaviour’, there follows
the conviction that ‘psychology and some allied disciplines have
now developed, both theoretically and methodologically, to the
point where these topics are now firmly within our grasp’. Is it
so difficult to speak (and write) about musical creativity and imaginations because the same areas of the brain are active and
occupied when performing music as while speaking? To do both
at the same time is hard if not impossible even for the most gifted
musicians; when actively performing music hardly anyone is able
to lead a real conversation. Some commands may be shouted, but
only single words or well prepared phrases can be uttered while
playing. Focusing on aspects of creativity in the under-researched
area of ‘listening’ leads to the concept of ‘imaginations’ to which
more than 40 eminent authors contribute ‘perspectives’ (interesting that even in the auditory realm metaphors of the visual world
prevail). Perspectives come from musicology and sociology, and
from cognitive, social and developmental psychology. The rather
complicated Chapter 3 describes a blind musical savant’s way of
learning a newly composed Chromatic Blues and leads into ever
more complicated tables and plates, which require readers more
expert than me to be understood. I imagine the good-natured
blind pianist with his ‘dazzling (if idiosyncratic) pianistique technique’ listening to explanations such as (p. 49): ‘ . . . zygonic theory
holds that a necessary condition for music to make sense is that
every feature of each perceived sonic event should be related to
another or others, such that each is felt to derive from or generate
at least one other through imitation . . . ’. Chapter 5 follows the
composer Paul Hindemith’s creativity as a reflexive process
trying to identify ‘links between creativity and social agency’ leading to an understanding of creativity as ‘a means of social situation
and a resource for action to produce, reproduce and potentially
change one’s social reality’ (p.83). ‘A psychological investigation
on what inspires composers’ (Chapter 7) follows the Stage theory
(preparation, incubation, illumination and verification) in interviews with 24 creative ‘new music’ composers. ‘There is now general consensus that the creation of a substantial new work or idea
involves problem-solving and reworking over time as opposed to
one “Aha!” moment during which the entire piece is suddenly
formulated’ (p. 108). Even though in this modern book it may
be disregarded ‘as a legacy of the Romantic era’ (p. 108), we
may also listen with advantage to composers whose works have
Book Review
endured over time, e.g. Johannes Brahms: ‘Straight-away the ideas
flow in upon me, directly from God, and not only do I see distinct
themes in my mind’s eye, but they are clothed in the right forms,
harmonies, and orchestration’. Another enduring great, Ludwig
van Beethoven, describes a little bit of the process: ‘I change
many things, discard others, and try again and again until I am
satisfied. Then, in my head, I begin to elaborate the work in its
breadth, its narrowness, its height, its depth. . . I hear and see the
image in front of me from every angle, as if it had been cast, and
only the labour of writing it down remains’. Mozart is quoted in a
similar fashion (p.132) in one chapter that describes the theory
of spreading activation, i.e. the (not really so surprising) necessity
of activating broader networks as a requirement for creativity
(p.128). In an inspiring, clearly written and well illustrated
Chapter 17, Colvin Trevarthen follows the human impulse to
create and share music: ‘the organisms can create their own environment. For this purpose the single organism is almost helpless.
The adequate forces require societies of cooperative organisms’.
A.N. Whitehead is quoted (p. 260) and then the importance of
music for social cooperation described: innate vocal rhythms, the
voice of emotion in song and speech, an analysis of proto-musical
dialogues with infants and rituals of musical celebrations leading
good guidance on music education. The following chapters lead to
valuable suggestions for using music in therapy e.g. ‘recreating
speech through singing for stroke patients’ (Chapter 19), or for
patients with schizophrenia (Chapter 25). Chapter 28, the last, by
summarizing parts of the preceding texts emphasizes that ‘creativity is a fundamental attribute of humanity and . . . its interactive
and collective nature generating social and aesthetic meaning’
Brain 2013: 136; 1671–1675
| 1675
(p. 451). It strikes a note of caution towards the general
assumption ‘that creativity (and music) are inherently good despite
its (their) obvious potential for being used to evil ends’ but attributes music to the faculties ‘enabling synchronization of purposes
and pleasures in creative social participation, giving rise to techniques and arts of cultural evolution’ (p. 453).
Probably Friedrich Nietzsche has it just about right when saying
(in Götzen-Dämmerung. Twilight of the Idols): ‘Without music,
life would be a mistake’. This neatly condenses what the person
who inspired him, Arthur Schopenhauer elaborates at greater
length in The world as will and representation (1819):
‘The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating
than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the
shadow, but music of the essence. In it we do not recognize the
copy, the repetition, of any Idea of the inner nature of the world. Yet
it is such a great and exceedingly fine art, its effect on man’s innermost
nature is so powerful, and it is so completely and profoundly understood
by him in his innermost being as an entirely universal language, whose
distinctness surpasses even that of the world of perception itself, that in
it we certainly have to look for more than that exercitium arithmeticae
occultum nescientis se numerare animi [exercise in arithmetic in which
the mind does not know it is counting] which Leibniz took it to be’.
Jürg Kesselring
Head of the Department of Neurology and Neurorehabilitation
Rehabilitation Centre, Valens CH-7317, Switzerland
E-mail: [email protected]
Advance Access publication March 5, 2013