There follows several chapters discussing the phenomena of absolute pitch, as well as its opposite, and oddities like musical savants, or synesthesia and music, a condition in which the hearer perceives music as sound plus color (as in "G-Flat is GREEN").
Part Three, "Memory, Movement and Music" touches on matters like music’s connection to amnesia, aphasia, Tourette’s Syndrome, Rhythm and Movement, Music Therapy, and problems like Musician’s Dystonia ("Athletes of the Small Muscles").
And the final part, titled "Emotion, Identity and Music," is, perhaps, the most relevant of all for senior readers. It covers not only the illusive connections and evocations that music can bring to minds consumed by melancholia, dementia, or senility, but also the healing powers that music can have as the mind deals with loss and sorrow.
Sacks quotes a letter from a woman whose father was nearly a hundred years old, and had begun to lose his grip on reality. She provided him with a portable CD player, and when his mind began to wander, she would "put in a beloved piece of classical music, press the 'play' button and watch the transformation".
"My father’s world became logical and it became clear. He could follow every note... There was no confusion here, no missteps, no getting lost, and, most amazing, no forgetting... This was home, more than all the homes he had ever lived in ...
"Sometimes my father would respond to the beauty of the music by simply weeping. How did this music thrill when all other thrills had been forgotten — my mother, young with a lovely face, my sister and I as children ... the days of work, of food, of travel, of family?
"What did this music touch? Where was this landscape where there is no forgetting? How did it free another kind of memory, a memory of the heart not tethered to time or place or events or even loved ones?"
As Dr. Sacks then says: "Once one has seen such responses, one knows there is still a self to be called upon, even if music, and only music, can do the calling."
©2007 Julia Sneden for SeniorWomen.com
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