I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine
“He began to sing. In a beautiful, sonorous baritone voice that caused the guard to freeze in his tracks.”
As an accomplished musician and composer, Daniel Levitin takes the reader on a journey through the raptures and mysteries of the musical mind. With clear prose and illustrations, his own experiences and storytelling prowess, he demonstrates the healing power of music. With a detective bent, he starts with the Paleolithic Era to today’s newest research on music’s ability to help relieve symptoms of neurological diseases and mental health issues.
He answers the puzzle to how our brain is able to elicit joy, sadness and even fear when we listen to a piece of music and its power to be great medicine for our souls. “Science seeks to find truth in the natural world; art seeks to find truth in the emotional world.” In his earlier book, This Is Your Brain on Music, Levitin ponders the relationship between science and the arts. “Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.” Today, it is known that both science and art contribute to the ways how the brain processes music.
Each chapter’s title contains the words of a popular song. For example, “If I only had a Brain,” the neuroanatomy of music, and “Oh, the Shark Bites,” musical memory. “Music affects the biology of the brain through the activation of specialized neural pathways, its synchronization of the firing patterns of neural assemblies, and its modulation of key neurotransmitters and hormones . . . When we play an instrument (including singing), we are engaging motor systems . . . sensory feedback, coordination, emotions and auditory processing. Loving music requires that we be receptive to it . . . evoking some of the deepest memories and deepest feelings of our lives, and in the process, help us through almost anything.”
In childhood and even as adults, people tend to feel mournful or happy when singing sad or happy songs. “Our musical memories begin before we are even born. In utero, the developing fetus hears sounds through the amniotic fluid and uterine walls . . . And, even after a year, babies show a preference for music they’ve heard in the womb.” These songs are able to open a floodgate of memories of how one felt at 16, places where one visited and with whom. “This is an important cornerstone of how we can use music in cases of severe memory loss, cognitive decline, or dementia.”
Patients with aphasia have “forgotten the rhythms and inflections of speech.” But with music therapy, they are able to sing the lyrics. “Their speech is now accessible through the flow of song.” —Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia
Researchers of musical memory were puzzled that singers can change the notes, melody, or key of a familiar song, people will still recognize it as the same song. A researcher proposed that a song is an “auditory object . . . their brains . . . searched their memory banks for the closest match and retrieve the memory associated with it.” Attention can be voluntary or voluntary. People hear what is important. But involuntary attention is an interruption from the task at hand. “Scientists are still trying to work out the functional networks that serve these different kinds of attention.”
It was discovered that some people are daydreamers. “In the absence of attention to something, our brain switches—or defaults—to internally guided thoughts . . . also, our brains at rest while awake can induce a state of daydreaming with unguided thoughts. Music can then help to serve as a unifying source, a glue that connects our different modes of awareness with our internal narrative, our sense of self . . . and, perhaps most important, where we want to go.”
“Interlude.” This is the chapter on how music therapy can be applied to various neurological problems. In a musical composition, an interlude is a musical pause or break in between the verses and the chorus. If the verses are played are loud and vigorous, such as jazz, the interlude may be more meditative. Applied to listening to a musical interlude, one is able think about solving problems that couldn’t otherwise be solved. “Music treatment begins as an invitation to start exploring new music, and feeling the joy of discovery.”
Movement disorders are due to genetics, injury, and even toxins in the environment. Levitin shows that recent research indicates that certain types of music therapy can relieve those symptoms. For example, a famous musician stuttered but not during singing. Stutterers, and those have Tourette syndrome, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s sing when these symptoms disappear. “The sheer quantity of people affected by it . . . the proven use of music in its treatment is a story unto itself.”
“Every event we experience, positive or negative, traumatic or uplifting, changes the neurobiology of the brain, for better or worse . . .” However, the stress one feels after a severe psychological or physical trauma, can be relieved by the brain changing the levels of certain chemicals in the brain when listening to soothing music.
The words of songwriters express their longings, fears, pain and traumatic events embedded in their words. Music therapy helps these are affected, such as stroke and schizophrenia. A songwriter writes: “It pushed the schizophrenia away, if only for awhile. Even if no one hears the song but me . . . it reminds me that we are, all of us, creative beings. Levitin states that we all have a secret chord inside and when we find it, we will find joy in music.
When a person listens to music, especially his own music, the brain’s reward pathways are activated. This results in lowering stress, enhance mood. and promotes relaxation. Even with innocent prisoners who are incarcerated, singing reduces their pain. Bryan Stevenson in his book Just Mercy, writes about his interview with Henry, an innocent man who was waiting for death row. “He began to sing. In a beautiful, sonorous baritone voice that caused the guard to freeze in his tracks.”
“The journey through music is a never-ending one, guiding us through moments of joy and sorrow, discovery and nostalgia, a faithful friend that is always there to lift up or lift us up. . . . As long as we keep listening, we move forward, one note at a time.” As Leonard Cohen heard a secret chord in his song “Hallelujah,” may this book inspire its readers to hear their own secret chords.