Seduction and Indifference.- a chapter from Oliver Sacks book Musicophilia


It came as a wonderful surprise, when I received this book as a gift on my birthday in the year 2017 from Tamaghna, my son. His concern for me is often expressed by his keeping a track of my books wish list. Other than the books it self, the memories of moment often generates happy emotions and gives greater reason to revisit the book after several year. 
MUSICOPHILIA is a comparatively voluminous book written by Dr Sacks and published in 1988 with a beautiful blue cover and an attractive picture of a saxaphone with an unusual convoluted pipe. 
It appears to have greater discription and detailed elaboration of the subject matter. I chose to re-read 4 chapters and decided to write on this particular chapter 24 titled ' Seduction and indifference'.

Music as a tool to reach out to the deeper corridors of our mind always appeared to me as obvious, though , I did not realise how deep, till I read this enlightening book. Philosophy seperates the mind and it's intellectual operations from our mundane operations and emotions. This chapter introduces the reader to the idea of the robust emotions of music in humans through examples of those who are unable to feel the same inspite of significant non-musical emotional engagement.
As for those of us who enjoy or express ourselves through music, there may be a great many variation in the choice and the sensitivity to the kind of music. A master who examines a piece of music maybe meticulous with regard to the minutiae of the performance but once the technical part is assessed and perfection evaluated ...' emotions must return, or one maybe left with nothing beyond an arid vituosity'. 
The ability to appreciate music, understood or not, is a gift. That is the impression which I always carried. I came to know from this read that there is a significant percentage of the population who cannot express their happiness in or through music. I know of colleagues who would be disgusted by the idea of music all together, better defined by musicophobia. This points to the spectrum of musicality.
Myself, not being a musically talanted person, manage to enjoy music and often sink into a good sleep. It brings back memories of the past and related events at times vividly imagery and intensely nostalgic. Dr Sacks elabortes examples from his own records and historical accounts of people who have an unusual response to music, from amusia, Aspergers syndrome to Tolstoy and Darwin. It is evident from such records that the landscape of musical affinity is wide and varied. What comes to mind is the question of evolutionary cause of music as a faculty of our mind. Ofcourse, we are aware that there were sounds to begin with and an evolving neural structure helped us acquire language in the form of organised sounds. 'How and where did the musical language drift away?'  is a relevant question. 
The evolution of language as our primary means of communication is a complex topic and several reasons have been suggested to explain why music may not have taken the role of our dominant com system. Precision and clarity is possibly the most important of all causes why conventional language scores over music. We do communicate through music many matters but the conventions are intensely coloured with emotions and may convey differently to different individuals. This decreases efficiency and effectivity of conveying thought. At the sametime, cartoons like ' Tom & Jerry' bring unspoken content in the form of fantastic music which is unforgettable. In the absence of music, the same is hardly conveyed nor enjoyed.
Sharing of knowledge and saving time appears to be somewhat clumsy in the musical process. Under the burden of emotion, matters of logic maybe under conveyed or mis communicated. One should be able to understand the underlying emotions that are deep seated in our subconscious. Such communication are demonstrated in prayer or war music. The Vedic chant convey a sense of auspiciousness inspite of our differential cognition of the meaning of Slokas.
Thus, though music is a powerful and expressive form of communication, it is limited in efficiency, precision and clarity. In addition , musical appreciation changes with time and state of mind. Music also requires greater cultivation before reasonable sense came be made, in other words , it demands a difficult and longer learning curve. This maybe the reason for evolution to preserve the ability of music appreciation as an accessory capability rather than the mainstream means of communication.

Pratyush Chaudhuri 


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