Review: Musicophilia

September 17, 2015September 14, 2015 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks. New York: Vintage Books, 2008.

Summary: Renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks chronicles the neuroscience of music–the various ways music affects the brain, and the unusual effects of various neurological conditions on our perception, performance, and experience of music.

Oliver Sacks died on August 30 of this year. A few months earlier, my son gave me this book, and it seemed especially appropriate to pull it off the “to be read” pile and acquaint myself with the work of this neuroscientist and physician. Before opening the book, I had one of those heart-stopping moments as I found myself staring at the cover picture of Sacks and thought I was looking at a doppelganger! I guess balding men with graying beards, glasses and a certain shape of head can look a bit like each other.

What Sacks does is chronicle the fascinating ways music and the brain interact and some of the unusual conditions that involve unusual responses to music. In the course of this book he explores a range of phenomena beginning with a sudden onset of musical interest following a lightening strike, the ways music might evoke seizures or suppress the tics of Tourettes or the shaking of Parkinson’s. He wonders whether the advent of iPods will result in more brainworms–those tunes we can’t get out of our heads.He describes musical hallucinations, where one hears music in one’s head even when none is playing.

He explores musicality from tone deafness to perfect pitch (which occurs more in musical families and where musical training begins early) and synesthesia, where music is associated with color. He explores the connections between music, memory and movement. He describes Clive, who because of brain infection that affected his temporal lobes lives in a perpetual present with no memory of past moments. Yet somehow he remembers music he knew in the past.

Perhaps a highlight of the book was his description of a camp for people with Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects the development of the brain resulting in low IQs and yet incredible verbal and musical skills. He describes the delight these people had in talking and making music with one another.

In one of the concluding chapters he describes the work done with Alzheimer’s patients and how, for them as well, music is a connection to memories of the past, and an anchor to their no-longer remembered lives that is profound. He talks about “the loss of self” and how music helps Alzheimer’s patients connect to some sense of “self” when the other memories are gone.

The book left me in wonder at the intricacies of the human brain and how the neural circuitry related to our perception, memory of, and making of music interact with speech, thought, emotion, and other memories. And it reminded me of the power of music–a power to evoke emotions, memories, and even to address troubling neurological conditions. It reminds me of how when I am learning, singing and performing a piece of music, I find myself tapping into a different aspect of who I am from when I am simply speaking or writing or reading. And I found myself thankful for the life of Oliver Sacks, who cared for people with troubling conditions and brought together his love for his patients, his skills in research, and his own musicality and life history into this fascinating narrative of music and the human brain.

A War on Public Education?

November 13, 2014August 26, 2025 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

Yesterday, I came across an article in our local paper that I found alarming. It seems that our State (of Ohio) Board of Education is seeking to relax a rule that requires all of our state schools to provide 5 of 8 of the following services in our schools: elementary art, music or physical education teachers, school counselors, library media specialists, school nurses, social workers and “visiting teachers.”

What was deeply concerning to me is that this represents both a narrowing of our idea of “education” to what is tested on proficiency tests, and seems to eliminate some of the activities that make an education experience rich for our children. It also strikes me that some of the services like counselors and librarians play an important part in helping kids, especially from low income backgrounds stay in school and get into college.

State board of education members by district

What was also unsettling to me was how unrepresentative our State Board of Education is of the population they are serving. From what I can tell, only one of the nineteen members is a person of color. At most, only three come from the large urban school districts in our state, yet I suspect these rule changes could have the greatest effect on these districts and the economically disadvantaged students in these districts. Richer districts that can support these programs with property taxes would seem more likely to continue them.

A couple of my posts this week have dealt with the continuing challenge of overcoming the class and racial divides in our society. I am deeply concerned that these rule changes reflect at best a lack of grasp of how these changes will deepen the divides of race and class in our state.

I am also saddened that art, music, and physical education are considered “dispensable”. In an era where obesity and diabetes are childhood diseases, physical education seems more important than ever. Fit minds without fit bodies just doesn’t make sense. Also, it seems that artistic intelligence is key to many technological innovations as well as enriching our lives. One of the things Steve Jobs taught us is that the aesthetics of our technology matter as much as their function.

At-large members of State Board of Education

Do I think public education is the best it can be? Hardly! Do I think people should have the right to home school or send children to private schools? Yes. But both I and my son were publicly educated and the services that could be cut played important parts in our lives and success. I’m concerned that changes in rules like this will gut the the existing quality of our public schools. I don’t want to see public schools gutted and education farmed out to for-profit schools. This has been highly ineffective at the university level and of questionable effectiveness at primary and secondary levels. All of us try to get our kids into the best schools possible. That won’t stop. The question is whether we will continue to support quality public education for those who can’t afford private options or don’t have the time to home school because of needing to work.

I sincerely hope the representatives of our State Board of Education will remember that they serve ALL the citizens of Ohio. I sincerely hope they will pursue policies that bridge the real divides between classes and races that still exist in our state rather than accentuate them. This, too, I think, would have been part of Dr. King’s dream.

Singing Bernstein and Beethoven

March 23, 2014March 23, 2014 / rtrube54 / 2 Comments

I’ve had the privilege to spend the weekend singing Bernstein and Beethoven with Capriccio! Columbus and the Central Ohio Symphony. We sang Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, which are portions of several Psalms sung in Hebrew! Then comes the choral part of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the “Ode to Joy”, sung in German (who says I’m not multi-lingual, at least with a score in front of me!).

The Bernstein piece was relatively new to me and there is a very challenging part for the men in the second movement. The women sing Psalm 23 and it is beautiful, peaceful music that includes a child or counter-tenor solo. Then we come in singing Psalm 2 where David writes, “Why do the nations rage” and indeed, we are speaking with rage and derision. But the women (and the Shepherd Lord of Psalm 23) have the last word.

Then there is Beethoven. I’ve listened to this piece since I was young and dreamed of singing it. It is an incredible experience to be in the midst of a large choir behind a live orchestra. As exhilarating as the fourth movement is, the opening violin part had me at the first bars and to sit and watch the orchestra converse back and forth, to wax and wane in intensity and build up to the final movement–wow! And then comes the moment when you stand along with the soloists and after a baritone solo, sing those title words, “freude, freude” (joy, joy) at the top of your lungs–and off you go!

For someone who never did more than sing in a few church choirs until six years ago, this is joy indeed!

Reading as Art?

November 1, 2013 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

I’ve sung from the time I was a kid. Most of us do, even if only in the shower or in the car when our favorite song comes on. In Buckeye town, we sing “Carmen Ohio” and “Hang on Sloopy” at games. Likewise, I’ve read since I was young. As I thought further about my post on “Reading Musically” it caused me to wonder if reading can be on one level something most of us do, even if it is only ads and road signs, and on another level, something we do artfully?

What are some marks of artful reading? Here are a few starting thoughts:

1. As I’ve remarked elsewhere, it is attentive reading–reading where we give our full attention to the page. When I am engaged in choral singing, I have no bandwidth for anything else than the work–and maybe not even enough sometimes!

2. Artful reading grows in our capacity to observe the writer’s art in all its varieties of use of language, argument and rhetoric, plot development, etc.

3. Good reading grows in awareness of the conversations and conventions that make up a work. Just as there are particular rhythms and thematic elements in various forms of music, the more we read, the more we recognize how writers interact with each other.

4. Reading as an art creates something out of what is read. If nothing else, it creates richer mental furniture in our lives. Perhaps it inspires or even changes our thinking and behavior. For me, the experience of singing Brahm’s Requiem was transformative, particularly Brahms’ passages about the resurrection. Likewise, books like Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country have been part of a journey for me in learning to love my own land and to pursue healing in our own troubled racial history.

5. Artful reading, like other forms of art shares its fruit, in book discussions, in reviews, in passing along a good book to a friend. When I have rehearsed a piece that I love, I want people to come hear us.

Just a few thoughts on this. I wonder what you think. Are these just the crazy reflections of a bibliophile? Or is there something to this, perhaps even something in danger of becoming a lost art?