Sacks's Musicophilia

Oliver Sacks is a neurologist who writes popular books and articles on the brain. His latest book Musicophilia is on music and the brain. The title of the book is inspired by this story of Tony Cicoria (Abstract of the first chapter). Tony after being struck by lightning suddenly developed a strong attraction for making music. At the age of forty he began playing the piano. This sudden love for music was beyond mere passion. Something had got structurally altered in his brain that made him play and appreciate music beyond the level of an amateur after having no training or practice for most of his adult life.

As far as we know, no animal has been trained to tap to an external auditory beat. True, animals make beautiful music, but not for pleasure; music does not drive them into ecstasy. Yet, there are many among us who can't hold a note, or manage to follow a strict rhythm. Yet, humans are unique in the facility to hear and enjoy music. Apart from the few who unluckily have amusia and others whom music drives them mad, the rest of us relate to music. Isn't it just structured noise?

My envy is directed to the one in 10,000 people who have perfect pitch, the ability to tell which note is being played or key without any external reference. For such people, each note or key has distinct flavor or 'color'. And, if you play a transposed (shift the key) version of the song, they can immediately tell that it does not feel right. In a manner we can tell that something is wrong if tomatoes suddenly appeared to be green or cabbages yellow in a grocery store. Apparently, Mozart had this ability and once told his colleague that since the last time they played together his colleague's violin was a semitone flatter.

Who is to blame? Language. Apparently, all of us have an innate ability to acquire perfect pitch. Learning of language between the ages of four and six interferes with tonality and we all lose this facility except for a few lucky ones. What attaches credence to theory is that musicians who are native Mandarin Chinese speakers are six times more likely to have perfect pitch than than musical American counterparts. Why? Because Chinese is a tonal language which may preserve this sensitivity to tonality that the rest of us lose.

Music is special to us. It has a precise mathematical structure and at the same time a lot of emotional content. Sacks talks about people who seems to have one, but not the other. Bathroom-only singers seems make up for lack of talent by volume and brio. A truly great artist is a master of both - technique and feeling.