This is the only non-fiction book on music I have ever read, and I found it both fascinating and thought provoking. Living in a musical household, where everyone plays an instrument except me, I was already somewhat aware of the powerful hold music has on our lives, but this book heightened that awareness in many rather unexpected ways. Not only that, but I found it to be a clichéd ‘good read’ in itself. It is clear that one doesn’t need to be a musician to be musical – that just comes as part of the package of being alive – and likewise one doesn’t need to be a musician to enjoy and profit from reading Musicophilia.

I am not a musician. There, I’ve got that out of the way. Sure, I did the usual primary school stint on the recorder, a brief flirtation with a guitar, and sang for many of my school years in choirs – I even had a ‘minor principal’ role in Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘The Gondoliers’ in my last year of high school. But that’s it. Beyond driving a CD player, my musical talent is, shall we say kindly, ‘limited’.

So why do I like music? Why do I not know anyone who doesn’t like music? Think about it – there is no doubt that we can all readily identify many, many friends and acquaintances who don’t share our personal taste in music, but they all like something. Why?

These remarkable phenomena are the subject of the book Musicophilia, by Dr Oliver Sacks. I knew vaguely of Dr Sacks’ work from viewing the film Awakenings, and had an ‘awakening’ of my own from reading this book. For example, Dr Sacks notes that with the development of brain imaging in the 1990s, it became possible to actually visualize the brains of musicians and to compare them with those of nonmusicians. Researchers made careful comparisons of the sizes of various brain structures and in 1995 published a paper showing that the connection between the two hemispheres of the brain is enlarged in professional musicians, and that a part of the auditory cortex has an ‘asymmetric enlargement’ in musicians with absolute pitch. The researchers further showed that there were increased volumes of gray matter in motor, auditory, and visuospatial areas of the cortex, as well as in the cerebellum. To quote Dr Sacks – “Anatomists today would be hard put to identify the brain of a visual artist, a writer or a mathematician – but they could recognise the brain of a professional musician without a moment’s hesitation.” (Musicophilia, p94)

I am a mechanical engineer by initial training, and an IT specialist by later post-graduate career development. I must confess to being slightly miffed with the thought that my brain is actually less developed in certain key areas when compared to the average musician!

Regarding musicality, Dr Sacks says that while there is a huge range of talent, there is “…innate musicality in virtually everyone…” and notes this has been clearly shown by the use of the Suzuki method to train young children, entirely by ear and by imitation. He comments that not only do almost all children who can hear respond to such training, but apparently even deaf people also often not only love music but are very responsive to rhythm . He points out that the acclaimed percussionist Evelyn Glennie has been profoundly deaf since the age of twelve. And it doesn’t take much time to develop musicality, with evidence of “…striking changes in the left hemisphere of children who have had only a single year of violin training, compared to children with no training” (Musicophilia, p95).

There’s hope for me yet – that year on recorder wasn’t wasted after all…

And on my initial question, Dr Sack’s comments in his Preface to Musicophilia that “…humans are a musical species no less than a linguistic one”. Apparently we can all perceive “…music, tones, timbre, pitch intervals, melodic contours, harmony, and (perhaps most elementally) rhythm”. We then combine all these elements to “construct” music in our minds using many different parts of the brain. And “…to this largely unconscious structural appreciation of music is added an often intense and profound emotional reaction to music. (Musicophilia, p xi)

This is the only non-fiction book on music I have ever read, and I found it both fascinating and thought provoking.Living in a musical household, where everyone plays an instrument except me, I was already somewhat aware of the powerful hold music has on our lives, but this book heightened that awareness in many rather unexpected ways. Not only that, but I found it to be a clichéd ‘good read’ in itself. It is clear that one doesn’t need to be a musician to be musical – that just comes as part of the package of being alive – and likewise one doesn’t need to be a musician to enjoy and profit from reading Musicophilia.

Now, where did I put that old recorder?

(More information on Dr Sacks and Musicophilia can be found on the website www.oliversacks.com)

Maurice O’Brien worked for many years as a mechanical engineer before moving into IT and general management. His work life balance comes from running marathons, hiking over mountains, building boats, riding motorcycles, and being a co-Director of the Auckland Charity Hospital Trust. Musically, his eclectic tastes range from opera to heavy metal, plus he is active as sub-Editor and Business Manager of Flute Focus.