ANALOG vs DIGITAL - Ultra High Fidelity Magazine

Case number one: a man in
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The Musical Imperative
Berlin, identified only by his
initials, “PM,” has suffered
from an encephalitis which
has destroyed the medial temporal
lobes of his brain, which play a major
role in memory. The result is that
he has no memory at all, long term
or short term. He lives only for the
present instant, with no knowledge
of who he is or anything that
has ever happened to him. In
computer terms, his personal
memory bank is at 0 KB.
Oh, except for one thing.
If you play him a piece of music
composed before his illness, he
will recognize it. Indeed, he can
play it on the cello, though he
doesn’t remember that he was once
a classical cellist.
Case number two: in Saskatchewan,
in the early 1960’s, a severely retarded
young man fascinates psychologists.
Though standard intelligence
tests cannot be administered
to one so handicapped, his
IQ is estimated to be about
35, and he cannot perform
such simple tasks as tying
his shoelaces.
But there is a reason
he becomes an object of fascination. If he
hears a piece of music, he can play it by
ear on the piano. Indeed, he plays quite
well, though for obvious reason he has
never had a piano lesson.
Case number three: Dr. Tony Cicoria
is an orthopedic surgeon in upstate New
York. One day in 1994 he is using a pay
phone, when it is struck by lightning.
A bystander, who is a nurse, performs
CPR and saves his life. He refuses hospitalization,
and suffers only temporary
memory impairment. Life goes on as
before, except for one thing.
Dr. Cicoria has a sudden craving
for piano music. Though he had piano
lessons as a boy, he has not touched the
keyboard since, and he has been listening
mainly to rock music, but now he is
strongly attracted to the piano. He buys
classical piano recordings and even sheet
24 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine
by Gerard Rejskind
music, and becomes enamored of Vladimir
Ashkenazy’s recordings of Chopin.
More than that, he has the urge to play
himself.
And then he begins to hear music in
his head, and he has a dream in which
he is in a tux in a concert hall. He learns
music notation and writes down his compositions.
He takes lessons and learns to
Only the Taliban
have ever
rejected music.
Is your brain
programmed
to love it?
play. Tony Cicoria debuts his first piano
composition in Westport, Connecticut,
on October 12, 2007, just 13 years
after his literal bolt from the blue.
By 2007 he is good enough to
give recitals at the Sonata Adult
Piano Camp, in Bennington,
Vermont, where he plays the Military
Polonaise and other Chopin
pieces, as well as the Lightning
Sonata, his own composition.
The following year he debuts
at the Goodrich Theater in
Oneonta, New York, presented
by the Catskill Conservatory
in association with
the State University of New York
at Oneonta. The performance
is assisted by a grant from the
New York State Council on the
Arts. The recital is recorded live by
Granada Media, UK, BBC One, and
German National Television. He is
working on other piano pieces, as
well as a symphony and a concerto.
A CD of his first three
works is available.
What happened?
The story of Dr. Cicoria
is chronicled in the
book Musicophilia by
Oliver Sacks. Sacks
was the model for the doctor in the
movie Awakenings (where he is played
by Robert de Niro), concerning the
temporary awakening of patients who
had been living statues since contracting
sleeping sickness in their youth.
Sacks has written other books about
the marvellous strangeness of the mind
in such books as The Man Who Mistook
His Wife for a Hat. But Sacks doesn’t
have the answer. He thinks Dr. Cicoria
went into cardiac arrest at the time of the
lightning strike, but there was no sign
that he had had a stroke. Nor was there
any sign of epilepsy. Sacks believes his
brain had undergone a profound change,
but Cicoria refuses newer and possibly
more revealing brain tests, preferring to
let things be. He considers his “musicophilia”
to be a blessing and a grace, not
to be questioned.