Music Ophelia

I recently read, or I should say listened to, the audiobook Musicophilia by the late neurologist, Dr. Oliver Sacks. As with all of Dr. Sacks’ works, it was deep and very interesting. But for me, it was also somewhat disturbing. The book documents cases of neurological phenomena related to music.

It discusses those with relative and absolute pitch. Relative pitch is the ability of a person to discern the interval between two musical notes. Absolute or perfect pitch is the ability of one to identify where on the scale notes are, without having a reference pitch with which to compare it. It is estimated that only one in 10,000 people have absolute pitch.

I suspected that I have some version of absolute pitch from experiential evidence. When listening to a song certain notes ‘jump out at me’. I have realized that these are tones that are in my phone ringtone, my doorbell, or something else that is common for me to hear. The timbre (quality of the sound, distinct from its pitch or intensity) is different than that which makes it ‘jump out’, but the pitch is the same.

Dr. Sacks also discusses tinnitus (ringing in the ears) as a precursor to auditory hallucinations. I will come back to auditory hallucinations later. I have had tinnitus for as long as I can remember. I always thought that it came from being around loud sounds in the work environment. After reading Musicophilia, I noticed my tinnitus more acutely than I had early. It began to bother me mildly, so I began researching cures or ways to mitigate the effects of tinnitus.

I found a smartphone app that claimed to cure the problem. I promptly downloaded it. As a part of process of setting up the app, it asks the user to listen to an escalating tone sequence, and tap a button when the tone disappears. That point, I was informed, coincides with the frequency (pitch) of the ringing in one’s ears.

Before doing so, I decided to see if I could identify the pitch of the ringing that I hear. To do so, I started at what I perceived to be middle C, and I ‘counted up’ until I got to the tone of the ringing. It was between E and F, two octaves above middle C. When I did the setup for the tinnitus app, the tone disappeared at 1358 Hz, or almost exactly midway between E and F, two octaves above middle C. I was shocked.

I could not have named the note without first having ‘counted up’ from my brain-generated middle C. So, I don’t know where that puts me on the absolute pitch spectrum, but I am somewhere in there.

Musicophilia also discusses musical dreams. These range from dreams that have a component of familiar music, to those containing original music. I have always had musical dreams, and they have become more intense of late. I wake up almost every morning with a song, or portion of one, in my head that lingers for hours, if not all day. Many times, the dream contains a song that I have not heard in decades. I wake from these dreams and wonder what brought that tune into my dreaming conscience. Other, less frequent times, the dream contains completely original music. I have tried, with mixed results, to reproduce these tunes on my keyboard after waking. If I had a keyboard at my beside, I am sure that the results would be better, but my marriage would suffer.

The disturbing part of Musicophilia for me is the noted correlation between musical dreams and the occurrence of escalating musical hallucinations, leading to madness. Dr. Sacks documents people for whom musical hallucinations become so overwhelming that they become debilitating. He sites people who get to the point at which the music playing in their head becomes so intrusive that it pervades their consciousness.

I can only hope that the musical component of my psyche is a positive, and does not escalate into psychosis. I will elaborate on this topic on a later blog.