Simply Music

From Gordon Harvey

Just recently I had the pleasure of attending a concert of the Australian Art Orchestra featuring Paul Kelly and his songs, arranged by Paul Grabowsky.  Australian readers might know enough to see the exciting possibilities of that combination – others will just have to hope they release a CD.  I can truly say that every note was a joy, but beyond that there were many ‘magic moments’, where everything came together to create an experience of the sublime. 
That word ‘sublime’ is used like a motif throughout this book, and it’s a wonderful term to use to describe music’s unique ability to affect us deeply.  Music, at the right moment, has the ability to lift our heart, mind and body towards something beyond the everyday, and sublime is one of the best words I know to describe that effect.  Interestingly, a word like ‘sublime’ would not always have been thought of as applicable to music.  Bicknell points out that music hasn’t always had the same role in our lives, and changes in our culture through history have given us more ways to respond emotionally to music and explore the myriad levels on which it can affect us.
One of the valuable insights this book offers is about some of the assumptions we make, and it’s interesting to know that they weren’t always made.  For example, Bicknell points out that composers were once considered craftsmen more than artists, and that the first composer to be called a genius was Handel.  Initially, music was mostly seen as a vehicle for communicating words.  It’s strange to think that until someone suggested it, music itself wasn’t considered something that could “express truth that language could not”.

Bicknell highlights some of the functions of music that are universal across virtually all cultures, including in child-rearing, courtship and social occasions and rituals, and its ability to reinforce our sense of connection to a group, whether it be our football team, our religion or our country.  She also outlines recent research on music and the brain, finding that, although there’s a lot we still don’t know, it seems that music affects a very broad range of brain regions, and  that emotional and intellectual responses are processed in different places.  It’s also fascinating to read of research that identifies particular musical events that commonly stimulate particular physical responses.  So a melodic appoggiatura (a kind of musical ornament) is often associated with tears, and a sudden harmonic change is associated with chills.
Bicknell is a philosopher and I would understand if you found her analytical perspective a little dry, but the book is very illuminating when you read of individuals’ personal experiences while listening to music.  You start to appreciate that there are experiences of the sublime that are common across cultures.  Those moments can be found in classical and pop, jazz and world music, even musics that the listener barely knows.
Maybe some of music’s power lies in its mystery, and perhaps some of that power would be lost when the mystery is explained.  And in the end, do we really need to have these questions answered?  Of course not.  One of the things that makes music such a great contributor is its accessibility – we don’t need to understand it intellectually or be able to explain it for us to love it, although most musicians will at least say that knowing a bit about how it works enhances their appreciation of it.  Personally, I don’t mind that the question isn’t answered – the investigation itself is fascinating enough.

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In the Key of Genius: The Extraordinary Life of Derek Paravicini – Adam Ockelford

Derek Paravicini is one of those individuals who open our minds to the world of what’s possible, just by being naturally himself. He was born very premature, and as a result grew up with an array of disabilities, including blindness, learning difficulties and autism. But, miraculously, he discovered very early an affinity for music. He would spend hours attacking his small keyboard with fingers, arms and elbows, pounding out his own complex versions of tunes he had heard a little as once.

At around 3 1/2 years old, he visited a school for the blind. Hearing a piano lesson going on, he broke free from his parents, shoved student and teacher out of the way, and launched into a typical playing frenzy. The teacher was Adam Ockelford, who was so astonished by Derek’s unique gift that he took him on as a student, and went on to become Derek’s long-time mentor and life coach. He also went on to write this book, which, as well as being Derek’s biography, is also the story of their shared struggle to mould Derek’s amazing talent into something manageable and of value beyond his own inner domain.

It also talks about the role of music in Derek’s life, and the way it replaces those communication skills that most of us take for granted, but which elude Derek. In one very moving passage Ockelford describes helping Derek express a state of frustration by duetting with him, guiding him through a journey in which they took “Ain’t Misbehavin’” to dark and dissonant places, through a slow and sustained phase, before finally arriving at a happier version of both the song and Derek.

Ockelford writes in the first person and brings the personal experience of his time sharing Derek’s unique world to life. He has worked tirelessly over many years to have Derek present himself to the world, not as a novelty, but as a true musician with something unique and genuine to offer. Yet we can barely imagine how the world must occur for Derek – music is a very different place for him, where, as Ockelford explains, each note has a distinct personality, blazing in technicolor. It’s as though every expressive experience the world offers that he can’t access is directed toward music, making it come to life with sights and sounds that the rest of us can barely conceive of. He is still incapable of looking after himself, struggling even with telling left from right, yet music allows him to, as we say, go forth into the world and be wonderful.

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Derek Paravicini Website

Oliver Sacks is a neurologist and author known for his books exploring the strange and remarkable world of people with brain damage. In the 1960’s he published Awakenings, a study of his work with post-encephalitic patients who, after decades of immobility and non-communication, could be suddenly and temporarily ‘awakened’ into lucidity by the drug L-dopa. The book was later made into a famous film. Another of Sacks’ works, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, was also made into a fascinating film, an opera adapted from the real story of a patient who was incapable of recognising anything or organising the simplest task until he discovered he could sing perfectly well, and could go about his daily tasks if he sang them.

Musicophilia is all about music and its relation to brain function, and is full of amazing stories of music’s ability to transform the lives of people with serious psychiatric illness, such as Clive, an amnesiac with a memory for any experience of literally a few seconds, and yet who can play, read, conduct, improvise and remember enormous amounts of music. How is this possible? Sacks speculates that musical memory is different to other forms of memory, because experiencing music happens entirely in the present. For many people like Clive, music is a cornerstone of life and the only way they can feel fully alive.

Sacks, a musician and music lover himself, draws a distinction between music and other forms of communication, and notes music’s ability to touch parts of the brain (and the heart) in ways nothing else can. Even language, while very closely related to music, appears to originate from a different part of the brain, although the brain is a wonderfully flexible thing, and when parts used for one skill are damaged, others can adapt and begin to take over their role. Interestingly, though, Sacks points out that although it’s crucial that basic language skills are learned from infancy, musical skills can be learned at almost any age.

Sacks points out that music is something unique to humans, and something that plays a unique role in people’s lives. We can recreate musical memories and experiences spontaneously in our heads that are almost as rich as actually listening and playing, and can reappear decades after the original experience, long after other memories have gone. Somehow something about music has a more direct connection with the brain. Perhaps, like dreams, music, with its more abstract way of addressing emotions, is a safe way of experiencing feelings. He reminds us that music, while causing us to feel emotions like grief more deeply, provides solace at the same time. There are stories in the book of people who are for various reasons unable to express emotion of any kind, until they sing and are, like the L-dopa patients, awakened into full self-expression. It’s only during those times that they and the rest of the world can connect with each other.

The endlessly inspiring stories in this book cover the extremes of musical experience, from musical seizures, synaesthesia and hypermusicality to the wonderful contribution of music therapy. Although in the end the book probably tells us more about the brain than about music, I ended it clearer than ever that to be human is to be profoundly musical, and that a life without music is a life that isn’t fully self-expressed.

Musicophilia is published in by Alfred A Knopf (USA) and Picador (Australia)