This is Your Brain on Music: Under­stand­ing a Human Obses­sion
Daniel Levitin
Atlantic Books

There have been many inter­est­ing art­icles and books writ­ten on the effects of music on the human mind and body, such as the highly enlight­en­ing Oliver Sacks Musi­co­philia. Remem­ber the excite­ment gen­er­ated in the USA of the infam­ous Moz­art Effect, where every new­born in one trial state was delivered a CD of Moz­art record­ings with the sadly now unsup­por­ted idea, due to the dubi­ous exper­i­mental con­di­tions, that ‘music makes you smarter’?

Daniel Levitin adds to the devel­op­ing sub­ject of music neur­o­logy a refresh­ing insight into the human mind and its age-old rela­tion­ship with the lan­guage of music.

Ini­tially a ses­sion musi­cian him­self, Levitin moved from one side of the glass to the other to become a sound engin­eer and record pro­du­cer. Since leav­ing the stu­dio to fur­ther his career in the field of neur­os­cience, he has become the Chair in Psy­cho­logy at McGill Uni­ver­sity where he runs the Labor­at­ory for Musical Per­cep­tion, Cog­ni­tion and Expertise.

Much of his 1970’s musical back­ground and train­ing is reflec­ted in this work, not only from the absence of ‘aca­demese’ but also on the musical examples he draws upon to explain the basics of music, such as works by mod­ern musi­cians and bands like Sting and Queen while not for­get­ting the European clas­sical com­posers. He also keeps the book access­ible to a greater audi­ence than pro­fes­sional musi­cians by describ­ing in great detail tone, timbre, pitch and so on, sug­gest­ing to edu­cated read­ers to skip cer­tain sec­tions. How­ever, by read­ing these defin­i­tions the music teacher can gain other ideas of explain­ing these basic ideas to students.

Once ‘out-of-the-woods’ the reader’s atten­tion is main­tained by researched inform­a­tion cov­er­ing a broad range from the detailed events of the brain when listen­ing to music, expand­ing bey­ond the left–right brain the­ory, to ‘what makes a musi­cian’. Touch­ing lightly on chil­dren with learn­ing dis­orders such as Wil­li­ams Syn­drome and under­stand­ing why we reject cer­tain styles of music on mass while accept­ing oth­ers imme­di­ately adds to the chapters of fas­cin­at­ing perceptions.

Buy at Amazon

Levitin’s work is reveal­ing without spoil­ing the enchant­ment of music through dis­sec­tion. His writ­ing style is relaxed, some­times to the point of being informal. The author uses appendixes to provide fur­ther explan­a­tion on some top­ics, but a greater use of dia­grams would have made some of the con­cepts easier to digest. Regard­less his explan­a­tions of com­plex con­cepts remain uncom­plic­ated through­out. This is an ideal read for any­one with ter­tiary study in music. Music ther­ap­ists would find this book a great addi­tion to their psy­cho­logy col­lec­tion while the layper­son may gain inspir­a­tion and dis­cover that every­one is music­ally cap­able in some form.

This art­icle ori­gin­ally appeared in the June 2008 issue of the Aus­tralian Cla­ri­net and Sax­o­phone Magazine.

Musi­co­philia: Tales of Music and the Brain
Oliver Sacks
Picador

Oliver Sacks is a phys­i­cian and author of nine books. He lives in New York City where he is Pro­fessor of Clin­ical Neur­o­logy at Columbia Uni­ver­sity. Some may know his books The man who mis­took his wife for a hat or Awaken­ings, which inspired the fea­ture film. Where his past writ­ings at times went bey­ond the read­ers’ scope of med­ical know­ledge, in Musi­co­philia Sacks writes more simply. Hav­ing said that, the book would be more enjoy­able for those with an interest in neur­o­logy or musicology.

Sacks explores the human response to music, as well as the need and ubi­quit­ous pres­ence of music in all cul­tures since the dawn of time. In addi­tion, he spec­u­lates on the import­ance and future of music con­sid­er­ing the pop­ular­ity of iPods, mp3s and other per­sonal enter­tain­ment devices. The book is divided into four sec­tions that identify dif­fer­ent facets of music. The first, ‘Haunted by music’, delves into ‘brain­worms, musical seizures and musical hal­lu­cin­a­tions’. Sacks provides read­ers with inter­est­ing case stud­ies drawn from his exper­i­ence with patients, and presents them in a relaxed, clin­ic­ally detached fash­ion. He reveals the abil­ity of the human mind to com­pensate for loss of senses, par­tic­u­larly hear­ing, although I am not con­vinced (as would be the patients con­cerned) that the com­pens­a­tion would be wel­come. Tales of tunes rat­tling around the brain as if a ste­reo has been turned on, music that cre­ates life-threatening seizures, and for­got­ten tunes from child­hood that resur­face incess­antly are top­ics that are, frankly, hor­ri­fy­ing to a musician.

After read­ing Musi­co­philia, not only had I learnt more about the influ­ence of music as well as acquir­ing a renewed respect for music ther­ap­ists, but also began to view my musical abil­ity (even just the abil­ity to hear and appre­ci­ate music) with less indif­fer­ence. Delving into memory, move­ment and music; emo­tion, iden­tity and music; and the range of music­al­ity (or lack thereof right through to syn­es­thesia), Musi­co­philia is an easy while edu­ca­tional read. The top­ics Oliver Sacks chooses to present not so much dis­sect music as identify human poten­tial. The ‘mys­tery’ of music there­fore retains its charm and if any­thing shows the ‘dark side’ of the power of music.

Buy at Amazon

Diana Tol­mie