At the recent annual Chamber Music America conference, where musicians, composers, managers, presenters and others involved in the field gather each year, I had the opportunity to hear Oliver Sacks (author of, among other works, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat) talk about his most recent book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain.
He told stories of patients he’s treated – people with Parkinson’s disease who respond to rhythmic music (but not to Wagner's!) and a patient with Alzheimer’s who couldn’t remember things like what he had for breakfast but did remember every baritone line he’d ever sung and still participated in an a cappella singing group. He talked about amusia – the “inability to recognize musical tones” – can you imagine?! One of his patients with amusia told him that, to her, music sounds like pots and pans being thrown against a wall.
Other amazing and interesting items were that one in two congenitally blind people have perfect pitch (a high percentage of piano tuners are blind) and that musicians’ brains, when scanned, look visibly different. An interesting book to curl up with during these cold months…
Posted in
