Music and the Mind. Anthony Storr

conch-shells, and the savages of Guiana began their advance with a screech of horns and trumpets.⁴¹

      Such sounds are also used to frighten away evil spirits.

      Music can sometimes symbolize rebellion. It may be permissible to express anti-government attitudes in songs, the words of which would invite arrest if they appeared in a newspaper article. Under some regimes, night-club satirists are given a licence denied to the ordinary citizen. The song ‘Lilliburlero’ became an epitome of anti-Catholic sentiments, and is said to have contributed to the revolution of 1688 and to the subsequent defeat of James II at the Battle of the Boyne.

      Continuity and stability are served by tunes which everybody knows; but music can also create new patterns of joint experience. Blacking gives examples of African drum patterns which when combined and performed by several players can create new cultural products.

      Through musical interaction, two people create forms that are greater than the sum of their parts, and make for themselves experiences of empathy that would be unlikely to occur in ordinary social intercourse.⁴²

      The mnemonic power of music is still evident in modern culture. Many of us remember the words of songs and poems more accurately than we can remember prose. That music facilitates memory has been objectively confirmed by the study of mentally retarded children who can recall more material after it is given to them in a song than after it is read to them as a story.⁴³

      Some people who are primarily interested in classical music are disturbed to find that they recall the words and lyrics of popular songs more easily than they remember the music which means most to them. I think this is because popular songs are simple, endlessly repeated and difficult to avoid. This also accounts for their nostalgic quality. Anniversary ‘evenings out’ are seldom accompanied by the ‘Eroica’. Repetition can make any type of music memorable. Professional musicians, especially conductors and instrumental soloists, are required to remember huge quantities of classical music, and can usually do so without too much difficulty because they have studied it and played it repeatedly.

      In Western societies the importance of music as a means of defining and identifying a culture has declined, but it has not disappeared. Particular pieces of music continue to be associated with particular societies, and come to represent them in the same way as a national flag. ‘They are playing our tune’ is a phrase which can have a much wider significance than our habitual reference of it to the courtship memories of a mated couple. In Britain we never refer to ‘God Save the Queen’ as ‘our tune’; nevertheless it symbolizes the structure of our society and the allegiance which is still expected of us. It is ironic but not inexplicable that in the USA the same tune is used for ‘My Country, ‘tis of Thee’. To play the hymn ‘Abide With Me’ at football matches is in dubious taste; but those who join in singing it feel an enhanced sense of joint participation, even if they do not believe the words which they are singing, or subscribe to the Christian beliefs which the hymn expresses.

      It is not surprising that Church leaders have doubted whether the feelings which music arouses are genuinely religious. Music’s power to fan the flame of piety may be more apparent than real; more concerned with enhancing group feeling within the congregation than with promoting the individual’s relation with God. St Augustine reveals that he was so entranced by the pleasures of sound that he feared that his intellect was sometimes paralysed by the gratification of his senses. On the other hand, the beauty of music could also aid the recovery of faith.

      So I waver between the danger that lies in gratifying the sense and the benefits which, as I know, can accrue from singing. Without committing myself to an irrevocable opinion, I am inclined to approve of the custom of singing in church, in order that by indulging the ears weaker spirits may be inspired with feelings of devotion. Yet when I find the singing itself more moving than the truth which it conveys. I confess that this is a grievous sin, and at those times I would prefer not to hear the singer.⁴⁴

      It will never be possible to establish the origins of human music with any certainty; however, it seems probable that music developed from the prosodic exchanges between mother and infant which foster the bond between them. From this, it became a form of communication between adult human beings. As the capacity for speech and conceptual thought developed, music became less important as a way of conveying information, but retained its significance as a way of communicating feelings and cementing bonds between individuals, especially in group situations. Today, we are so accustomed to considering the response of the individual to music that we are liable to forget that, for most of its history, music has been predominantly a group activity. Music began by serving communal purposes, of which religious ritual and warfare are two examples. It has continued to be used as an accompaniment to collective activities; as an adjunct to social ceremonies and public occasions. We share these functions of music with pre-literate cultures. In our society, one cannot imagine a Coronation or a State funeral taking place in the absence of music. We know less than we would like about what musical activities went on in the past in private houses; but it is important to recall that the modern concert, in which instrumental music is performed in a public concert hall as a separate entity unaccompanied by voices and in the absence of any ceremony, was not a prominent feature of musical life in England until the late seventeenth century. Since then, music as a distinct form in its own right has continued to grow in importance. During the same period, the performer has become more sharply differentiated from the listener. The individual listener’s response to music is a principal theme of this book.

      

      

      *For example, Haydn’s The Creation, Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony, Delius’s On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, Strauss’s Sinfonia Domestica.

      

      

      *Pole makes passing reference to this in one footnote, but makes no acknowledgement to Spencer.

      

      

      *All these examples are taken directly from Vico’s Sanza Nova.

CHAPTER II MUSIC, BRAIN AND BODY

      Human attitudes and specifically human ways of thinking about the world are the results of dance and song.

      JOHN BLACKING¹

      Music brings about similar physical responses in different people at the same time. This is why it is able to draw groups together and create a sense of unity. It does not matter that a dirge or funeral march may be appreciated in a different way by a musician and by an unsophisticated listener. They will certainly be sharing some aspects of the same physical experience at the same moment, as well as sharing the emotions aroused by the funeral itself. Music has the effect of intensifying or underlining the emotion which a particular event calls forth, by simultaneously co-ordinating the emotions of a group of people.

      It must be emphasized that making music is an activity which is rooted in the body. Blacking believes that ‘feeling with the body’ is as close as anyone can get to resonating with another person.

      Many, if not all, of music’s essential processes can be found in the constitution of the human body and in patterns of interaction of bodies in society … When I lived with the Venda, I began to understand how music can become an intricate part of the development of mind, body, and harmonious social relationships.²

      It is generally agreed that music causes increased arousal in those who are interested in it and who therefore listen to it with some degree of concentration. By arousal, I mean a condition of heightened alertness, awareness, interest, and excitement: a generally enhanced state of being. This is at its minimum in sleep and at its maximum when human beings are experiencing powerful emotions like intense grief, rage, or sexual excitement. Extreme states of arousal are usually felt as painful or unpleasant; but milder degrees of arousal are eagerly sought as life-enhancing. We all crave some degree of excitement in our lives; and if stimuli from the environment are lacking, we seek them out if we are free