Does music come from your head?

[Enrique]

In this post Michael says:

I think Beethoven's later music is ideally suited for headphones because it gives me the impression that the music is inside my head - and not coming from an outside source - which is how B heard it.

Reading these words, I immediately thought, well, not only Beethoven but also we can hear the music from within our heads and not an external source, not even our mouth. I think most of us, musically educated people, have the power to evoke music, the music we have stored in our brain from previous listening experiences, without the need to move one muscle of the phonation organs. Perhaps we are alone, or in the middle of a crowd if you like, and you are remembering some fragment of a composition that comes to your mind, and the whole thing is a purely intellectual process, the brain being "decoupled" from the organs of phonation at that moment. And you can let the music flow, up to where you can remember that music, or until your are urged by the external world.

Or may be you do it deliberately because you are boring yourself, and you decide to put your self some music. I remember I had a system to keep time when waiting for some event, which consisted in evoking the first movement of the symphony in G minor. I was used to a particular version whose duration I knew, and that explains the trick. And by the way I amused myself.

So my thesis is that all human beings can make the music sound in their heads, even though some of them are more used to it than others. And of course, having the instruments playing in front of you, or a good pair of headphones, is preferable from the point of view of fidelity. But given that I am in a tribune were all voices are heard, I'd like too know if I am wrong, in which case some of you could come to the forefront and let hear his/her opinion. I mean it.

[Michael]

I can "hear" in my head all the music I know well - which includes almost a huge amount of Beethoven. Don't get me wrong here - I can't evoke it like a composer or a musician - but I can get through a full symphony in a "top-line" way - rather like a piano reduction for the most part.
As I've said, I can't read a score so for the full experience I have to rely on my speakers.

I think I may have mentioned this before but a famous conductor - and I can't remember who it was - remarked that he might wake up in the morning with, say,a Brahms symphony starting up in his mind. After a few minutes, he would forget about it and get on with his morning chores such as breakfast, or driving somewhere.

Maybe half an hour later or so, the same piece would come back into his head but it always seemed to return at the point the music would have reached if he had kept on mentally listening to it.
He could only assume that the music was continuing at its own pace in his subconscious mind.

This has happened to me once or twice - in a much more primitive way. I have put on a CD of very familiar music and have had to leave the room for some reason or other and put myself entirely out of earshot of the music for a short period. When I made my way back to the room, I've found myself mentally "humming" themes from the work before I actually heard it again - and have found myself in roughly the correct section of the piece.

This may be totally off the point of Enrique's question but I hope it makes sense.

[Enrique]

This has happened to me once or twice - in a much more primitive way. I have put on a CD of very familiar music and have had to leave the room for some reason or other and put myself entirely out of earshot of the music for a short period. When I made my way back to the room, I've found myself mentally "humming" themes from the work before I actually heard it again - and have found myself in roughly the correct section of the piece.

Wonderful! I cannot remember it ever happened to me, except by doing it on purpose. You are indeed a musically gifted person, Michael. Have you ever dreamed music, either known or unknown? I have discovered I have some gifts for composition, given that when waking I remember the music and see that I do not know it. Where did it come from? It's undoubtly "manufactured" the same way dreams themselves are, as a mix of tunes heard the days before, I guess.

I'm happy to see how the species repeats once more in me as an individual. Many times we ask, how do other people feel, do this? Or think about that? And one can find the answer just by examining oneself, all we being so simmilar after all. That kind of discovery (the one made by reading your post) makes you feel more human, more proud to begin to that linneage. Of course, talking about very basic things, like the one in question. But there's the problem. How do we know it's basic. Sometimes you have to ask.

You Michael can not know to read music, but have an ease of expression when talking about music, that makes one guess it must come after intense commerce with it. I particularly liked your "but I can get through a full symphony in a "top-line" way". Our ability to mentally hear music in several voices is very limited, I mean us, mere mortals, and I always wondered what could be a Beethoven's capacity in that sense. You could also design exercises to extend that ability, its easy to imagine.

But the music we listen goes to the whatever that area of the cortex is in charge of storing it, one day we evoke it, and we for the most part find that, in the act of evocation, the brain selects parts from the voices such as to build one single voice. Most of the time it will simply be the top voice, as Michael says. But consider the 4th movement in the Ninth, where one hears bot themes, the main one and the Seid umschlungen, one on top of the other, interwoven in glorious counterpoint.

What does your mind do when evoking it? It must proceed according to musical instinct. For those with more practice, I think at least some bars are heard in a reduction to two voices, and most of the time, the brain will generate only one. But watch out. A great deal of information is there in the brain. I mean it keeps the harmonic clime to begin with, and many more things. In the process of evocation only a few will come out to the surface, I suspect, a truth verifiable by seeing how the amount of "rescued" information depends upon the moment.

Well, I'm beginning to sound boring or boring myself. Now, believe me Michael, and you could well be my senior and would be ridiculous for me to give you advise, but you do not need to read music, only to follow the score while listening to the music, a thing very easily done with just a little practice and a tiny amount of theory, of the type of the note values. And you would see how your music memory augments enormously. For more important than auditive memory is visual memory. Thats a given. And it gives you a sense of closer community with music. I beg you to excuse this little cathedra. It's a place I love to climb. (The cathedra in latin countries is something a university professor is in charge of, we can speak of the cathedra, cátedra in Spanish, of Greek in the University of Salamanca. At the same time, it seems once the professor sat at the cathedra when giving his lessons. Hence "climb the cathedra", is to put oneself in the position of a professor)

[Michael]

Thanks for the compliment, Enrique, but I am certainly not "musically gifted". It takes me a long time to become familiar with a new piece of music and it is only through constant listening that I have come to appreciate more complex music.

I can't read the dots but I understand what is going on. Long before the internet, I pieced things together by constantly listening. I bought some books on Beethoven and they explained a lot to me - I could even follow some of the musical examples because of my familiarity with the music.

I believe that the great works of most composers are self-explanatory. Just listen to the opening of, say, Mozart's Jupiter symphony about a dozen times and anyone can grasp the fact that it's in sonata form. The listener might not have heard of sonata form but he will realise that there is a beautiful shape to this piece which goes beyond the beauty of the individual themes. The same goes for the other symphonic forms such as theme and variations, etc.

But - and I sound like I'm preaching now! - you just have to listen. As George Martin called his autobiography:"All You Need is Ears".



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[Enrique]

I can't read the dots but I understand what is going on. Long before the internet, I pieced things together by constantly listening. I bought some books on Beethoven and they explained a lot to me - I could even follow some of the musical examples because of my familiarity with the music.
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You see what I said before? I forgot to mention that IF you are familiar with the music the score will be easy to follow.

I insist, Michael, you are an exceptional type. Not everyone could do what you've done. And it's more easy by taking the shortcut, which is after all, plain terrain.

And about listening, that's a thing the music takes care of making you to do. After all, she's a woman.

[Enrique]

I'd like to add that, notwithstanding what you, Michael and I have said, singing and whistling the music is a good thing because it forces you to fix the right notes. By it self it educates your ear. This is what I remember a clarinet teacher having said, only that he restricted himself to state it was good. I gave sort of an explanation. When you do not have irrestricted command of a musical instrument, you find yourself, especially when a child, using that means of expression.

[Michael]

In[url=http://gyrix.com/forums/showpost.php?p=58719&postcount=9]

I remember I had a system to keep time when waiting for some event, which consisted in evoking the first movement of the symphony in G minor. I was used to a particular version whose duration I knew, and that explains the trick. And by the way I amused myself.

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This reminds me of a true story I read somewhere - a letter written by a lady whose husband had no interest in classical music. However, lately he had been playing the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth early in the morning but he always stopped just before the exposition repeat.

She asked him about his new interest in this music and why he always stopped at the same place. His reply was that the section he played was exactly right for the time it took to boil his egg!

[Enrique]

Michael, your sense of humour is in the best English style.

[Michael]

Michael, I know you're Irish, or so you've said, but your sense of humour, is in the best English style.

Well, my grandfather was English!

[Enrique]

I have always heard people speak about that famous sense, but had not experienced it until I joined BRS. I can remember some jokes and illustrations from Punch and The Humorist, contained in a famous old book of English for foreign students. And I now can remember all that thanks to the forum you are in.

[Sorrano]

This reminds me of a true story I read somewhere - a letter written by a lady whose husband had no interest in classical music. However, lately he had been playing the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth early in the morning but he always stopped just before the exposition repeat.

She asked him about his new interest in this music and why he always stopped at the same place. His reply was that the section he played was exactly right for the time it took to boil his egg!

Are you sure this man was not related to Beethoven? It reminds me of the exact number of coffee beans.

[Michael]

Are you sure this man was not related to Beethoven? It reminds me of the exact number of coffee beans.

That's right. It had to be an exact number - I can't remember what it was.
Maybe Beethoven had OCD. This has been seriously put forward as a theory somewhere. Espcially with regard to his "da-da-da-da" which runs through his whole output.

[Peter]

So my thesis is that all human beings can make the music sound in their heads, even though some of them are more used to it than others. And of course, having the instruments playing in front of you, or a good pair of headphones, is preferable from the point of view of fidelity. But given that I am in a tribune were all voices are heard, I'd like too know if I am wrong, in which case some of you could come to the forefront and let hear his/her opinion. I mean it.

Very interesting topic Enrique - the ability to think through an entire composition in your head is something that can be developed, but say for an hour long symphony it takes an enormous amount of concentration and memory skills! Most of us will find our minds wandering after a few minutes.

I've also had the experience you describe of dreaming music and felt quite frustrated at forgetting it on waking and being unable to write it down - I suggest that with great composers a similar process is happening but they don't have to be asleep for this, rather they enter an altered state of consciousness that they can tap into?

[Enrique]

I've also had the experience you describe of dreaming music and felt quite frustrated at forgetting it on waking and being unable to write it down - I suggest that with great composers a similar process is happening but they don't have to be asleep for this, rather they enter an altered state of consciousness that they can tap into?

What I would not give to know what happens in their heads when they're working on their ideas! For example, what was Beethoven's ability to listen, innerly, to several voices at once, as when he wrote some fugatto or even a fugue. In the missa in D there are counterpointistic passages. Could he clear and distinctively here three or four voices in his head? To answer the question we would not have to go as far as Beethoven. Some intelligent reporter or interviewer could have made this question to Britten, let's say. Of course, the general public has to know what the composer is speaking about. That's one of the drawbacks interviews have. But someone in our era must have made the question to say Stravinsky or Prokofiev. And it must have been registered in a so well historically documented time as ours is.

About altered states of consciousness, that belongs to a higher plane. In any case, it's the human brain at work and we must feel ourselves proud as a species it can perform at such high levels or execute such special functions.

Very interesting topic Enrique - the ability to think through an entire composition in your head is something that can be developed, but say for an hour long symphony it takes an enormous amount of concentration and memory skills! Most of us will find our minds wandering after a few minutes.

I ask you, Peter, to make a experiment. Take the score of the famous G minor symphony, put a recording of it on the gramophone or CD player, and begin following the music with the score. As long as it does not usually demand any extraordinary effort to listen to the symphony without the score, and you say you are used to concentrate exclusively in the music when listening to it, you'll be able to reach the score final bars. Of course, when not reading --the usual experience, your attention can here and there drop a bit and miss some detail. With the score in one's hand, this is equivalent to counting bars, as instrumentists do at the orchestra.

Now, repeat the experiment, this time with no external source of music. As you know this symphony by heart --very easy to guess that, you'll have to do only a little amount of work this time. Plus, you can now make a long caesura between two bars, you can slow down the tempo at will, in short your attention is not being exacted, urged so much as in the first experiment because you are now in command. Again you'll be able to go up to the score final page with no great effort.

In the third phase of our experiment, we dispense with the score too. If you have good visual memory, then it's very like the second part of the experiment. No. Lets forget about things visual now, although in a case like yours, the visual will always be interwoven with the auditive. Remember you have the symphony perfectly stored in your memory. Then, what can possibly be the difference with the second experiment?

In the first one, you had to be alert not to miss notes (a whole bar) coming from the external source. Though the penalty was only to resynchronize. In the second, you no longer had this strain to your attention, because you gave the tempo at all times. And I repeat, the difference between the 2nd and the 3rd experiment is more nominal than other thing. In such a way, I hope to have demonstrated that, in your post, you were just being modest!

At least, you'll give me it's perfectly feasible, for a person with conservatory training, to keep internal track of the music for only one movement, when you know it well enough. And of course, the movement will be more quickly stored in your head when you have read the score several times, either with the external music or without it. But this is a separate matter, and one which would take us to speak of visual memory as opposed to auditive memory.