Others say...

"Considering the part music plays in the recovery of extremely mentality disabled patients"
Considering the part music plays in the recovery of extremely mentality disabled patients, which is not a new phenomenon, it has recently been explored once again by Oliver Sacks, physician and author, in his new book Musicophilia Tales of Music and the Brain.

There are remarkable examples of patients who were considered feeble, unable to care for themselves, unable to walk or do anything other than sit, and yet these same people when exposed to music were able to astonish those who cared for them either by family or professionals. Sacks explored many different methods of treatment, but in his unique style of writing has been able annotate the case histories of many types of patients who had been virtually given a hopeless life sentence of being institutionalized.

Parkinson sufferers have been given L-Dopa as a medication to relieve the stutter problems they encounter when making movements. The introduction of music as therapy for these diseased people has given back to them smooth movement which the drug could not accomplish.

Oliver Sacks tells of a music therapist who played piano at a hospital who created musical treatment for a patient singing Old Man River using only three words. This man had not spoken for long time and was considered a lost cause. She heard him sing and realized playing songs he knew, she could communicate with him. Dr. Sacks was greatly encouraged by patients progress and then expanded the use of music to other patients.

Also, there are cases described showing the relationship between color and music. Many who have lost their sight after years of seeing describe they can see different colors when they hear specific notes. Even though they are blind, the colors become vivid in their minds. For example Middle C is green.

The general audience will find this textbook style of writing to be somewhat awkward to understand. However, if you are searching for solutions to conditions which afflict members of your family or close friends you will find them described in Musicophilia!

Clark Isaacs
Reviewer


"Symphonic!"
Is this guy saying there are people who want to bone innocent music? That'd be pretty hard; e.g., no friction.

"Very informative"
As a musician and a teacher, I found this book to be a fascinating read. It's accessible without a lot of twenty-five dollar words found in some medical texts.

"Disturbances"
Ulysses Grant knew two songs: one was the Yankee Doodle, the other was not. That's my kind of pun. I keep telling my Chinese friends that I do not believe in their tones. Tones are just a trick to fool dumb foreigners like me into thinking that the language is unlearnable.
Nabokov, one of my main heroes, tells us in his memoirs that music, for him, was just an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds.
In other words, I am not left alone with my amusia.
I am happy that my affliction is not quite as bad as Nabokov's (whose son became an opera singer, by the way). I do enjoy listening to music and I love concerts. I just don't hear tones and I was the worse singer in living memory in my high school. Only the Bundeswehr appreciated my talent for marching songs. Reading Sacks shows me that it could have been much worse.
The multitude of possible problems is huge. Sacks gives us dozens of case studies, some studied intensively, some just based on correspondence. Music can be the cause or at least trigger of problems, like in some epileptic attacks, or the consequence of problems, like in some hallucinations. Music can be a problem when it disappears or when it intrudes. Music is used as a therapy for many problems.
The book is a veritable phenomenology of musical problems of the brain.
Which leads me to my mild criticism: after some of the stories, the telling of case after case wears you out. There seems to be no handle for explanations yet. Science seems to have a lot of pieces for the puzzle, but is still quite far away from a comprehensive understanding of our brain and mind.
One chapter with special fascination is the one on synesthesia. Nabokov had it as a child, though not in a version involving music. Sacks tells us, that Nab's mother had it too, which is mentioned in Speak, Memory, and that his wife and son had it as well. Transcending the brain, but still short of explanations.
A case that Sacks is not mentioning, that I 'encountered' in my literary excursions, is Kenzaburo Oe's son, who was born with a brain damage, who grew up as a handicapped child in a loving family, and who developed artistic talents as a composer. (Oe's Rise Up O Young Men recommended as an extended case study.)
Disturbances: Wilhelm Busch, a popular German writer/comedian/cartoonist (Max & Moritz) of the late 19th century had this to say about music: it is often considered disturbing because it is always coming along with noise.

"Complex Treatment of a Complex Phenomenon"
It's hard to rate this book, because it aims for both a scientific and a popular auidience. So, it depends into which audience you fall. I fall into the latter, so I found the book lacking. The book really is written for a more scientific audience and the casual reader soon finds himself bogged down in medical terminology, endless footnotes, etc. Reading the whole book was an arduous task for me. Like his other books, Sacks here describes individuals with various pathologies regarding the way their minds respond to music. But the case studies were less interesting than those in his other books. But, I guess there was no other way to write a book like this. So, in many ways, it was educational. In many other ways, boring.