Music and the Mind. Anthony Storr

sonata!’ she screamed, ‘I don’t want to be made to cry until I get a cold in the head, and neuralgia all down my face, like last time. Thanks very much, I don’t intend to repeat that performance. You’re all so very kind and considerate, it’s easy to see that none of you will have to stay in bed for a week.’⁸

      Every concert-goer is familiar with the histrionic member of the audience who demonstrates his or her intense sensibilities by sighing, groaning, or clapping ecstatically; and who then looks around with rolling eyes to make sure that these antics have been noticed.

      This is not to deny that music can provoke intense, genuine emotional arousal, from ecstatic happiness to floods of tears. This does not happen with everyone. The unmusical person, as one would expect, is less physiologically aroused than the musical person. Even in people to whom music means a great deal, responses vary with their mood. One would not expect a depressed person to respond to music as vigorously as an elated person; although music has been known to break through the carapace of melancholy and enable the depressed person to regain access to the feelings from which he had been alienated.

      There is another aspect of arousal which is relevant to music. There is some measure of agreement about the nature of certain well-known musical works, whether they are jolly, uplifting, humorous, martial, impressive, and so on. No one calls Rossini’s overture to The Barber of Seville tragic; no one thinks of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as merely pretty. Roger Brown, one of the world’s experts on the development of language in children, has also studied reactions to music. His research has demonstrated that there is widespread consensus between listeners about the emotional content of different pieces of music even when these pieces are unknown to, or not identified by, the different listeners. That is, whether a piece of music is considered poignant, wistful, elegiac, boisterous, rustic and so on, does not depend upon previous knowledge of the piece in question, or upon identifying the context in which it was composed.⁹

      But it is simplistic and inaccurate to suppose that the emotions expressed in the music – sadness, joy, or whatever other emotion seems displayed – are necessarily those aroused in the listener. Peter Kivy, author of an influential, award-winning book on music, The Corded Shell, repeatedly affirms:

      We must separate entirely the claim that music can arouse emotion in us from the claim that music is sometimes sad or angry or fearful … a piece of music might move us (in part) because it is expressive of sadness, but it does not move us by making us sad.¹⁰

      Othello’s suicide is profoundly moving; but it does not make us feel suicidal. What moves us is the way in which Shakespeare (and Verdi) made sense out of tragedy by making it part of an artistic whole. As Nietzsche realized, even tragedy is an affirmation of life.

      In spite of Roger Brown’s demonstration that the general emotional tone of a piece of music will probably be similarly perceived by different listeners, there will always be disputes about specific details when criticism is carried further. This does not imply that one listener is more or less perceptive than the other. Both may have experienced arousal; and both will therefore agree that the music has had a powerful effect upon them. It is natural enough, given the varying backgrounds from which listeners come, and the very different life-experiences to which they have been exposed, that what they read or project into any given piece of music may also be rather different. What is interesting is that there is as much consensus as there appears to be.

      The idea that music causes a general state of arousal rather than specific emotions partly explains why it has been used to accompany such a wide variety of human activities, including marching, serenading, worship, marriages, funerals, and manual work. Music structures time. By imposing order, music ensures that the emotions aroused by a particular event peak at the same moment. It does not matter that the kind of emotions excited in different individuals may vary. What matters is the general state of arousal and its simultaneity. Because of its capacity to intensify crowd feeling, music has a power akin to that of the orator.

      Ellen Dissanayake, in the paper from which I quoted in the last chapter, believes that the importance of physical movement as a constituent of musical behaviour has been underestimated. She points out that children up to the age of four or five find it difficult to sing without moving their hands and feet. The close relationship between music and bodily movement is not confined to pre-literate societies. The composers Roger Sessions and Stravinsky have both stressed the connection with the body; and Stravinsky not only composed superb music for ballet, but also insisted that instrumentalists be visually perceived whilst playing. This may be one reason why so many musicians dislike recorded performance. They want to see the players’ movements as well as hear the sounds they make.

      Stravinsky, in old age, asked:

      What is the ‘human measure’ in music? … My ‘human measure’ is not only possible, but also exact. It is, first of all, absolutely physical, and it is immediate. I am made bodily ill, for example, by sounds electronically spayed for overtone removal. To me they are a castration threat.¹¹

      There can be no doubt that seeing the movements which musicians make during live performance is, for many people, an important reason for going to concerts as opposed to listening to music at home on radio or disc. Some of the greatest conductors, like Richard Strauss and Pierre Monteux, kept their physical movements to a minimum; others are more flamboyant. But some listeners confess that their appreciation of a particular work is increased by observing the gestures of a conductor.

      There is pleasure to be gained from seeing the co-ordinated bowing of the various string sections, just as there is from seeing other examples of group co-ordination, like gymnastic displays. Virtuoso instrumentalists not only play music which is technically inaccessible to the amateur, but also give people the same sort of pleasure which they gain from seeing a great athlete or juggler in action. This may not be directly connected with the appreciation of music itself; but it does underline the physicality of musical performance.

      Debussy wrote:

      The attraction of the virtuoso for the public is very like that of the circus for the crowd. There is always a hope that something dangerous may happen.¹²

      This view was shared by the violinist Jascha Heifetz who claimed that every critic was eagerly awaiting an occasion on which his impeccable technique would let him down.

      Because music affects people physically and also structures time, it is sometimes used when a group of people are performing repetitive physical actions. Some songs are working songs which alleviate boredom and co-ordinate the actions of threshing, pounding, reaping, and the like. It has been suggested that music originated because rhythmically organized work was discovered to be more efficient; but this sounds like a notion derived from a Protestant, capitalist ethic transposed backward in time. Even if Vico was wrong in supposing that dancing preceded walking, dancing probably antedated organized work; and the rhythmic movements of the dance are usually linked with music.

      Our modern equivalent to the use of music in co-ordinating agricultural labour is the provision of music in factories. Opinion is divided as to its effects. Judging from its use in agriculture, one might expect that music would improve performance of the routine operations which are common in factory work. Repetitive movements are less tedious when synchronized with musical rhythms. The provision of music is certainly popular amongst factory workers. However, the heightening of morale is not necessarily accompanied by increase in output. Whilst music probably enhances the performance of routine tasks, especially those in which repetitive physical actions prevail, it tends to interfere with the performance of non-repetitive actions which need thinking about. For example, there is evidence suggesting that music increases the number of errors in typing.¹³

      The order which music brings to our experience is rhythmic, melodic and also harmonic. As the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin puts it:

      Music creates order out of chaos; for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent; melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous.¹⁴

      The effect which music has upon repetitive physical actions is predominantly rhythmic. Rhythm is rooted in the body in a way which does not