 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Cass Tech
Date: 2008-01-10 14:40
Am re-reading Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat while waiting for his new book on music and neurology to come out in paperback (the hardcover version is $26). It's an amazing and deeply moving book about the range of human experience and a physician/healer's compassionate understanding of it. And it contains the following curious passage about a freak of nature that was turned into musical creativity:
"...The secret of Shostakovich, it was suggested - by a Chinese neurologist, Dr. Ajue Wang - was the presence of a metallic splinter, a mobile shell-fragment, in his brain, in the temporal horn of the left ventricle. Shostakovich was very reluctant, apparently, to have this removed:
Since the fragment had been there, he said, each time he leaned his head to one side he could hear music. His head was filled with melodies - different each time - which he then made use of when composing.
X-rays allegedly showed the fragment moving around when Shostakovich moved his head, pressing against the 'musical' temporal lobe, when he tilted, producing an infinity of melodies which his genius could use..."
Cass Tech (aka leatherlip)
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Author: Dan Oberlin ★2017
Date: 2008-01-10 21:44
David Oppenheim, for whom Bernstein wrote his clarinet sonata and whose
recent death was noted here, is mentioned on pp. 74 and 75 of Sacks's new
book.
D.O.
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2008-01-11 12:55
Oliver Sacks's new book referenced above is "Musicophilia," New York/Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. The mention of Oppenheim is in the chapter, "Musical Hallucinations." That chapter holds special interest for me, because I experienced extremely vivid musical hallucinations ten years ago, when I spent 45 days in the hospital over a two-month period (pancreatitis). There were times when the non-existent music turned itself up so loudly that I had trouble hearing what real people standing right next to the bed said to me. Out of fear of getting locked up in a looneybin, I concealed what was going on and never said a word about those auditory hallucinations to anybody, until after I read Sacks's "Musicophilia" a few weeks ago.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
Post Edited (2008-01-11 12:58)
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2008-01-11 13:10
NPR just had a story about a woman in a nursing home who had a similar experience with what turned out to be the voice of her mother singing Irish folk songs to her as an infant. There is a medical term for this which escapes me, but in this woman's case, it was brought on by a mild stroke. As the area of the brain responsible for the music began to recover, the music slowly faded.
...............Paul Aviles
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