Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain Read Online Free PDF Page A

seizures, I know they seem quite familiar to me— so familiar, in fact, that I am sometimes uncertain whether or not these songs are on a nearby stereo or in my brain. Once I become aware of that strange yet familiar confusion and realize it is in fact a seizure, I seem to try not to figure out what the music may be— indeed, if I could study it closely like a poem or piece of music, I would…but perhaps subconsciously I am afraid that if I pay too much attention to it, I may not be able to escape the song— like quicksand, or hypnosis.
    Though Eric (unlike Jon S.) is quite musical, with an excellent musical memory and a highly trained ear, and though he has had more than a dozen such seizures, he is (like Mr. S.) completely unable to recognize his aural music.
    In the “strange yet familiar confusion” which is an integral part of his seizure experience, Eric finds it difficult to think straight. His wife or friends, if they are present, may notice a “strange look” on his face. If he has a seizure while at work, he is usually able to “wing it” somehow, without his students realizing that anything is amiss.
    There is a fundamental difference, Eric brings out, between his normal musical imagery and that of his seizures: “As a songwriter, I’m familiar with how melody and words seem to arrive out of nowhere…this is intentional, though— I sit with my guitar in the attic and work on completion of the song. My seizures, though, are beyond all this.”
    He went on to say that his epileptic music— seemingly contextless and meaningless, though hauntingly familiar— seemed to exert a frightening and almost dangerous spell on him, so that he was drawn deeper and deeper into it. And yet, he has also been so creatively stimulated by these musical auras that he has composed music inspired by them, trying to embody, or at least suggest, their mysterious and ineffable strange-but-familiar quality.

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    Fear of Music: Musicogenic Epilepsy
    I n 1937 Macdonald Critchley, a superb observer of unusual neurological syndromes, described eleven patients he had seen with epileptic seizures induced by music, as well as extending his survey to cases reported by others. He entitled his pioneer article “Musicogenic Epilepsy” (though he indicated that he preferred the shorter and sweeter term “musicolepsia”).
    Some of Critchley’s patients were musical, some were not. The type of music that could provoke their seizures varied a good deal from patient to patient. One specified classical music, another “old-time” or “reminiscent” melodies, while a third patient found that “a well-punctuated rhythm was for her the most dangerous feature in music.” One of my own correspondents had seizures only in response to “modern, dissonant music,” never in response to classical or romantic music (her husband, unfortunately, was partial to modern, dissonant music). Critchley observed how some patients responded only to particular instruments or noises. (One such patient reacted only to “deep notes from a brass wind instrument” this man was a radio operator on a large ocean liner but, continually convulsed by the sounds of its orchestra, had to transfer to a smaller ship with no orchestra.) Some patients responded only to particular melodies or songs.
    The most striking case of all was that of an eminent nineteenth-century music critic, Nikonov, who had his first seizure at a performance of Meyerbeer’s opera The Prophet. Thereafter, he became more and more sensitive to music, until finally almost any music, however soft, would send him into convulsions. (“The most noxious of all,” remarked Critchley, “was the so-called ‘musical’ background of Wagner, which afforded an unrelieved and inescapable sound-procession.”) Finally Nikonov, though so knowledgeable and passionate about music, had to relinquish his profession and avoid all contact with music. If he heard a brass band in the street, he would stop his