something I found very
remarkable uh and not easy to imagine
because I was brought up in a sort of
Fairly musical world and music is an
essential part of my world was to meet
someone a delightful intelligent lady
who lives in New York who cannot
perceive music as such cannot recognize
music this was apparent when she was a a
little girl when she uh um uh when she
couldn't recognize any music and when
she was asked to sing she really didn't
know what was meant and people were
puzzled because she wasn't deaf she
could uh speak perfectly well and hear
their speech and hear ambient noises but
she seemed to have no idea of what music
was about and when was tested at one
point she really couldn't say whether
one note was higher or lower than than
another note and she um she she tried to
get interested in music she would go
along with boyfriends and her husband to
concerts and she found the experience
somewhere between unintelligible and
excruciating and um but she uh it was a
great relief to her you know people
often suffer from the feeling that
they're
unique and uh she saw an article some
years ago saying that yes there's a
thing called congenital
amusia and some researchers in Canada
were working on this and she got in
touch with with the people in Canada and
they came and visited her and they
tested her and they were very reassuring
they told her first she's not the only
person in the world like this there some
others and they'd be happy to introduce
her to some fellow amusics they said
second this was not just bad motivation
or or Neurosis as her family had said
this was a real neurological condition
and a little part of her brain was not
that well developed and they also said
to her um you don't have to go to
concerts anymore you if your husband
wants you to go to a concert you say
know you go I'll go to a to a film or
something um and um but uh this lady um
you know can't um hear tones or
semitones she really she can't hear the
intervals which compose a scale she has
no idea about music and uh so I I I
spent a lot of time with her she has a
good ear for for poetry and for language
but no ear for music and so I I for some
reason that sticks in my mind as is very
very fascinating I I think in general
what has especially what has especially
startled me is to have to people talk
about musical
hallucinations and uh you know a uh a
Hallucination is not at all like like a
mental image it's very startling you
know people look around they listen uh
they um uh I I first heard of this in
the
1970s uh it was an old lady and a nurse
ing home and she described to me how
she'd been woken One Night by hearing
songs Irish songs sung very very loudly
and her immediate thought was of course
someone had the radio on loudly and she
was amazed and F outraged that someone
would have a radio on that loud in the
middle of the night when everyone was
asleep although she was rather surprised
to find that people were still asleep
and she went looking for the radio and
she couldn't find it and and then she
she had heard that a filling on a tooth
could sometimes pick up radio waves um
and then she thought about it
more and everyone uh and she these were
only songs that she knew and they kept
being repeated again and again and
sometimes just fragments of songs and
there was no commentary and then she
started to realized that the as she put
it the radio was in her head and that
she was
hallucinating and and um uh when people
um hallucinate they it's very
bewildering and rather terrifying but um
I um uh and what she was describing in
her hallucinations were really very
early memories and early musical
memories which were now being somehow
regurgitated in in her mind and I've in
fact spoken now to hundreds of people
with musical
hallucinations and and each time it it
startles me as as it startles them most
of us have never had a hallucination you
have to have had a hallucination to to
know how startling it is and how you
mistake it for an external perception
how you will look around for the source
of it and then you have to realize that
some part of your brain and your mind is
on automatic and is producing these
perceptions and um uh in general I think
sort of speaking with people with
musical hallucinations which can
sometimes be be very beautiful and very
moving sometimes rather frightening one
of my patients for example started to
hallucinate Nazi marching songs which he
had heard as a boy growing up in Germany
in in the 1930s as a Jewish boy he was
terrified of the Hitler yugant and there
and their songs and fortunately for him
the Nazi marching songs werein were
placed by by some
chaikovsky but it's it's really um I've
been amazed continually by these people
because it shows in a way that
everything one has heard even if one
didn't consciously listen to it is
recorded pretty pretty indelibly in the
brain and it can be reproduced and so it
it shows something very remarkable about
the brain and also about people's
ability to learn to live with
hallucinations