Hemispherics (Cont.)

 

Everyone is capable of being a savant, but reasoning gets in the way. They also found that music somehow rewires the brain. The brain can be “rearranged” in lots of different ways. Music is different in that it has a transcendental quality (if you let it) which goes back to the problem in paradox of reason: music can develop the capability to reason, but in the process can make music too analytical. The best composers were able to work around this paradox.

7/30/2004

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7/30/2024

20 years later I’m even more convinced of the connection between the tactility of musical instruments (as opposed to computer keyboards and touchscreens) and the quality of our experiences. Savants are probably more right-brained in the sense that what they’re doing isn’t analytical, and isn’t interfering with motor movements. But when something needs to be analytical, savants don’t perform well because of their narrow focus of only playing. But in the long term, it appears that those with an intimate connection with rhythm can use it to calm the mind. 

Renee Fleming’s recent book, Mind And Music includes an essay by percussionist Zakir Hussain on the transcendent nature of rhythm:  

“Joints often ache at age seventy—but my father was playing at eighty, and there was never a complaint at all about his fingers aching or his wrist not working. Ravi Shankar played concerts when he was ninety years old, pulling on the sitar strings—no issues with pain at all. And I have been tired and totally broken down after a twenty-two-hour journey to arrive at a concert. But when I get on the stage and start playing, just five to eight minutes into the performance, I have an injection of rejuvenation. This is the power and energy of the vibration of frequencies, which emerge from the musical instruments, and emerge from within.” 

This is probably a right-hemisphere experience, when the analytical mind is off. Rhythms allow us to temporarily  get into “savant” mode. Savants never leave that mode. Similarly, people can’t turn off the left hemisphere, both in the sense that they’ve lost control, but also they need it to be in control. I find that writing music and music production, as opposed to playing music, are two different worlds. But the analytical side is only temporary. Once the writing is done the performance part can begin, which includes re-arrangement and re-interpretation.