B U L L S E S S I O NI N T H E R O C K I E SSCENE 1.WHY .docx

B U L L S E S S I O N
I N T H E R O C K I E S
SCENE 1.WHY BEETHOVENP
(Somewhere in New Mexico. Three of us are motoring at ridic‑
ulousspeed to a destination, asyet unknown, in the Mad Moun‑
tains, Picasso Pass, or what you will. r o m a n BROTHER,
sixteen, a
licensedpilot and the world’sauthority onnuclear physics, is at
thewheel, intent onovertaking every car onthe road.e r c POE’I‘,
on my left, is taut with terror and, I feel, is praying
continuously
for an immediate arrival, anywhere. He must live at least long
enough to finish hiscurrent volume. LP. is a poet’spoet from
Bri~
tain and one of those incrediblepeople who are constantly soin‑
volved in politics, love, music and working ideals that, despite
their established success, they often find themselves
embarrassed
in the presenceof alaundry bill.When L P . speaks, heis
oracular;
whenheissilent,heisevenmoreso.)
LOP.
(Withacertainfrozenevenness): My dearY.B.,I suspect youhave
forgotten the fact that our tyreburst yesterday was caused by
just
suchdrivingasyou are nowguiltyof.
Y.B.
Don’tendyour sentencewithapreposition.

(ButY.B. is impressedenoughto reducespeedconsider‑
ably‐ though gradually enough to preclude the suspi‑
cionthat hehas yieldedapoint. Few can impresshard‑
boiled Y.B.; but even he is not immune to the oracle.
21
22 LEONARD BERNSTEIN
Someminutespassin relievedsilence;and,with the ten‑
sion gone, L.P. may now revert to the basic matter of
antrip«talk: thescenery.)
L.P.
ThesehillsarepureBeethoven.
(There is an uneventful lapse of five minutes, during
which L.P. meditates blissfully on his happy metaphor;
Y.B. smarts under the speed restriction,and I brood on
the literary mind which is habitually forced to attach
music to hills, the sea, or will-o’-the-wisps.)
L.P.
PureBeethoven.
LB.
(Ceasing to brood): I had every intention of letting your remark
passfor innocent,but since you insist on it, I haveabarbedques‑
tion to put.Withsomany thousands of hills in the world‐ at least
a hundred per famous composer‐why does every hill remind
everywriter of Ludwigvan Beethoven?
L.P.
Fancythat‐ andI thought I was flattering you by makingamusi‑

cal metaphor. Besides, I happen to find it true. These mountains
have a quality of majesty and craggy exaltation that suggest
Beethovento me.
L.B.
Whichsymphony?
L.P.
Very funny indeed. You mean to say that you see norelation be‑
tweenthis landscapeandBeethoven'smusic?
L.B.
Certainly‐and Bach's,and Stravinsky's, and Sibelius', and Wag‑
ner’s-andRad's.Sowhy Beethoven?
L.P.
AsthecaterpillarsaidtoAlice,“Whynot?”
The Joy of Music 23
L B .
I’mbeing serious, L. P., and you're not. Ever since I can recall,
the
first association that springs to anyone’s mind when serious
music
is mentioned is “Beethoven.” When I must give a concert to
open
a season an all-Beethoven program is usually requested. When
you walk into a concert hall bearing the names of the greats in‑
scribed around it on a frieze, there he sits, front and center, the
first, the largest, the most immediately visible, and usually
gold‑
plated. When a festival of orchestral music is contemplated the
bets are ten to one it will t u r n out to be a Beethoven festival.

What
is the latest chic among young neo-classic composers? Neo-Bee‑
thovenl What is the meat-and-potatoes of every piano recital? A
Beethoven sonata. Or of every quartet program? Opus one hun‑
dred et cetera. What did we play in our symphony concerts
when
we wanted to honor the fallen in war? The Eroica. What did we
play on V Day? The Fifth. What is every United Nations
concert?
The Ninth. What is every Ph. D. oral exam in music schools?
Play
all the themes you can from the nine symphonies of Beethoven!
Beethovenl Ludwig v‑
L P .
What's the matter, don't you like him?
L.B.
Like him? I'm all for him! In fact, I’m rather a n u t on the
subject,
which is probably why I caught up your remark so violently. I
adore Beethoven. But I want to understand this unwritten pro‑
scription of everyone else from the top r o w. I'm n o t
complaining.
I’d just like to know why n o t Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn,
Schu‑
' m a n n ‐
Y B .
Anybody want apiece of gum?
L.P.
Well, I suppose it’s because Beethoven‐or rather there must be a
certain t r a ‐ That is, if one thinks through the whole‑

L.B.
That’s just what I mean: there’s no answer.
L.P.
Well, dammit, man, it’s because he’s the best, that’s all! Let’s
just
say it out, unashamed: Beethoven is the greatest composer who
ever lived!
L.B.
(Who agrees, but has a Talmudic background): Dank: dir dds?
May I challenge you to a blow-by-blow substantiation of this
bravestatement?
L.P.
Withpleasure.How?
LOB.
Let’s take the elements of music one by one‐melody, harmony,
rhythm, counterpoint, orchestration‐ and see how our friend
measures up on each count. Do you think it an unfair method?
LIP.
Not at all. Let’s see, melody . . . Melody!Lord,what melody!
The
slow movement of the Seventh!Singing its heart out ‑
L.B.
Its monotone heart, you mean. The main argument of this
“tune,”
if you will recall, isgluedhelplesslyto E-natural.

L.P.
Well, but that is intentional‐meant to produce a certain static,
somber,marchlike‑
L B .
Granted. Then it is not particularly distinguished for melody.
L.P.
I was fatedtopickapoor example.Howabout the first movement?
LOB.
Just try whistlingit.
L.P.makesavaliant attempt. Stops. Pause.
L.B.
(Brightly):Shallwemoveontoharmony?
TheJoy of Music 25
L P.
deamnut,l’llseetlfisthroughyetlThe...the. ..I’vegotitl
The slow movement of the A-nu’nor quartet! The holiness of it,
the thankfulness of the convalescent, the purity of incredibly
sus‑
tainedslowmotion,the‑
L 3 .
Themelody?
L.P.
Oh, the melody, the melody! What is melody, anyway? Does it
haveto be a beer-halltune to deserve that name? Any succession
of notes‐Y.B., you’re speeding again!‐ is amelody, isn’t it?

L B .
Technically,yes. Butweare speakingof the relativemeritsof one
melodyversus another.Andin thecaseofBeethoven‑
L.P.
(Somewhat desperately): There’s always that glorious tune in
the
finaleoftheNinth:Dee-da-da‑
L B .
Now even you must admit that one is beer hall par excellence,
don’tyouthink?
L.P.
(With a sigh): Cedunt Heloetii. We move on to harmony. Of
course you must understandthat I'mnot amusician,sodon’t pull
out the technicalstops onme.
L.B.
Notatall,LyricOne.I needonlymakereferencetothethreeorfour
most common chords in Western music. I am sure you are famil‑
iarwiththem.
L.P.
Youmean(sings)
“Nowthedayis o-ver,
Nightisdrawingnigh;
Shadowsoftheeeee-v’ning‐"
L.B.
Exactly.Nowwhat can you find in Beethoventhat isharmonically

muchmoreadventurousthan what youhavejust sung?
L.P.
You’re not serious, L.B.You couldn’t mean that! Why,
Beethoven
the radical,thearch-revolutionary,Napoleon,allthat‑
L.B.
And yet the pages of the FifthSymphony stream on with the old
three chords chasing each other about until you wonder what
more he can possibly wring from them. Tonic, dominant, tonic,
subdominant,dominant‑
L.P.
Butwhat apunchthey pack!
L.B.
That’s another matter. We were speaking of harmonic interest,
weren’t we?
L.P.
I admit I wouldn’t advance harmony asBeethoven’s strong
point.
But we were coming to rhythm. Now there you certainly can’t
deny the vigor, the intensity,the pulsation,the drive‑
L B .
You back down too easily on his harmony. The man had a fas‑
cinating way with a chord, to say the least: the weird spacings,
the violently sudden modulations, the unexpected turn of har‑
monic events, the unheard-ofdissonances‑
L.P.
Whose side are you on, anyway? I thought you had said the har‑
monywas dull?

L‘B.
Never dull‐only limited,and therefore less interesting than har‑
mony which followed his period. And asto rhythm‐certame he
was a rhythmic composer; so is Stravinsky. So were Bizet and
Joy of Music 27
‘u I repeat‐why Beethoven? Are his rhythms more intri‑
; than the others? Did heintroduce any new ones? Doesn’t
Aget stuck on a pattern for pages, like Schubert, hammering it
your insides?Again I ask,why does his name, 10, leadall the? .
, L P.
3 m afraidyou’rebeggingthe question. Nobodyhas proposedthat
_ w .. en leads all the rest solely because of his rhythm, or his
r_..y, orhisharmony.It’sthecombination‑
L B .
5The combination of undistinguished elements? That hardly
adds
gQ to the gold-platedbustweworship in theconservatory concert
h l l lAndthecounterpoint‑
‘ Y.B‑
Gum,anyone?
LB.
‐ is generally of the schoolboy variety. He spent his whole life
trying to write a really good fugue. And the orchestration is at
times downright bad, especially in the later period when he was
deaf. Unimportant trumpet parts stickingout of the orchestra
like
sore thumbs, horns bumbling along on endlessly repeated notes,

drowned-outwoodwinds,murderouslycruelwritingfor thehuman
voice.Andthere youhaveit.
LIP.
(Indespair): Y.B., I wish I didn’t haveto constantly keep
remind‑
ingyou aboutdrivingsanelyl
YB.
Youhavejust splitaninfinitive.(Butheslowsdown)
L.P.
(Almost in a rage‐a lyrical one, of course): Somehow or other I
feelI ought to makeaspeech. My idolhasbeendesecratedbefore
my eyes.And by one whose tools arenotes,while mine are words
‐ words! There he lies,abedraggled,deaf syphilitic; besmirched
by the vain tongue of pseudocriticism; no attention paid to his
obvious genius, his miraculous outpourings, his pure revelation,
hisvisionof glory,brotherhood,divinity!There helies,amediocre
melodist,ahomely harmonist,aniterant riveter of arhythmist,an
ordinary orchestrator, acommonplace contrapuntistl This from a
musician,one who professesto liftback thehidefrom the anatom‑
icalsecrets of these mightyworks‐ one whose life isadevotion to
themusicalmystery!It isallimpossible,utterly,utterly impossible!
(There is a pause, partly self~indulgent, partly a silence
befitting
theclimaxofaheart-giventribute.)
L.B.
You are right, L.P. It is truly impossible. But it is only through
this kind of analysis that we can arrive at the truth. You see, I

have agreed with you from the beginning,but I have beenthink‑
ingaloudwith you. I amnodifferent from the others who worship
that name, those sonatas and quartets, that gold bust. But I sud‑
denly sensedthe blindnessof that worship when you brought it to
bear onthese hills.And in challenging you, I was challenging
my‑
self to produce Exhibit A‐ the evidence. And now, if you’re re‑
covered, I am sure you can name the musical element we have
omittedin our blow-by-blow survey.
L.P.
(Sobernow,butwithaslight hangover):Melody,harm‐of course.
Form. How stupid of meto let you omit it from the list. Form‑
the very essence of Beethoven, the life of those magnificent
open‑
ingallegros,those perfectscherzos, those cumulative‑
L.B.
Careful.You’re ignitingagain. No,that’s not quite what I meanby
form. Let me put it this way. Many, many composers have been
able to write heavenly tunes and respectable fugues. Some com‑
posers can orchestrate the C-major scale so that it sounds like
a masterpiece, or fool with notes so that a harmonic novelty is
achieved. But this is all mere dust‐ nothing compared to the
magic ingredient sought by them all: the inexplicable ability to
hyofMusic 29
,. . what the next note hasto be. Beethoven had this gift in a
, -- that leaves them all panting in the rear guard. When he
I didi t ‐asin the FuneralMarchof the Eroica‐heproduced
entity that always seems to meto havebeenpreviously written
I Heaven, and then merely dictated to him. Not that the dicta‑

, ~. was easily achieved. We know withwhat agonies hepaidfor
‘f ‘- . ' .g to the divine orders. But the reward is great. There is
a
I ' space carved out in the cosmos into which this movement
»- fits,predeterminedandperfect.
L P.
~you’reigniting.
, L.B.
l" ,.. to everything but his own voice): Form is only an empty
word, a shell, without this gift of inevitability; a composer can
write astringofperfectlymoldedsonata-allege movements,with
everyruleobeyed,andstillsufferfrombadform.Beethovenbroke
I the rules, and turned out pieces of breath-taking rightness.
Bightness‐that’s the word! When you get the feeling that what‑
' ever note succeeds the last is the only possible note that can
rightly happen at that instant, in that context, then chances are
Lyou’re listening to Beethoven. Melodies, fugues,
rhythms‐leave
. them to the Chaikovskys and Hindemiths and Ravels. Our boy
has the realgoods, the stuff from Heaven,the power to make you
feel at the finish: Somethingis right in the world. There is some‑
thingthatchecksthroughout,thatfollowsitsownlawconsistently:
somethingwecantrust, that willnever letusdown.
L.P.
(Quietly).Butthat isalmostadefinitionofGod.
L.B.
I meant it to be.

SCENE 11.WHAT DO YOU MEAN, MEANING?
(Later that day. The evening has begunto take holdof the “Bee‑
thooenesque” hills,mollifying them, planing them down to
some‑
thing more Chopinesque. Dusky rose-violet numbsthe senses:
we
begin to hear the call of the tourist cabin, over the hum of the
motor, to respond to the lure of the motel mattress. One yawn
begetsanother,and there is presently a three-part moaning.)
L.P.
(Singingthrough hisyawns):
“Now theday isover,
Night isdrawingnigh;
Shadows of the eev-ning. . .”
Y.B.
(Wipingaway atear): Anybody want apieceofgum?
L.B.
You know, I think I will, thanks. I talked myself dry in our last
conversation. Cum,L.P.?
L.P.
Thank y0u, no. I don’t chew. Besides, I didn’t get the
opportunity
to talk myselfdry.
(The efiect of this blow is mitigated by the appearance on the
roadside of the sign: “Transients,” standing gray and
inhospitable
in thetwilight.)

L.P.
Darewe investigate this twinkling hostel? Surround the groaning
meadboard?Baskin the glow of agenialhost?
LIB.
You are getting tired. Maybe we’d better. Y.B., the honor falls
to
you. Descendandsee if it isn’t too haunted.
Y.B.
(Bitterly):Glad you trust my judgment. (Stopsthe car and goes)
qf Music 31
L B .
: I feel asif I’dreally done afull day's work.
L.P.
did labor valiantly. That was a nasty piece of dissembling.
melodist,indeedl
LB.
t I’mnotmuchondialectics;butstrongfeelings haveaway
facing the mind into curious channels. As a matter of fact, I
't quite finished with you yet. Your innocent remark was
adouble-edgedsword,youknow.
L.P.
Lord,what was it I said,anyway?
LOB.
[Stretching it out cruelly): “These-hills-are-pure-Beethoven.”

Re‑
'Ilember?
L P.
All too well. But I had thought, nay hoped, that we had kicked
tthat one around until lost. What juice do you find left in this
deathlessphrase?
L.B.
Only this. It always seems strange to amusicianwhen the literary
mind begins associating music with all kinds of extra-musical
. phenomena, like hills and sprites and silver turnips. Funny, I
haven't worried about these things since schooldays, when we
battled out the singleness of artistic media in the aesthetics
class‑
room;butyourwordshaverevivedsomeoldghosts.
L P.
Youmeantheghostsofrepresentationalism,abstraction,andsoon?
LB.
The same. Back at HarvardI had aremarkable roommate named
Eisnerwho was wellonhisway to becomingasuper-Hemingway.
He had an unusual love for music, promiscuous and passionate,
and I had a similarly constituted love for words. This led to a
constructive relationship, as you can imagine, which taught us
botha lot of half-truths. He died of cancer, dammit, shortly after
graduation.
L.P.

I’mawfully sorry, but what does all this have to do with hills?
L.B.
Patience. Eisner and I used to have bull sessions almost nightly‑
thundering arguments that raged till dawn andmadememiss my '
counterpoint class. Like all bull sessions, these never ended in
resolution; but your remark today made merealize how deeply I
hadabsorbed‑
Y.B.
(Returningto car): Wow!
L.P.
Youmean . . .
Y.B.
Very haunted. (He starts up the motor) Are you two at it again?
(Lurch)Youknow it's very hardto see the roadatthis time of day
(second gear), entre chien et loup, asthey say at my high school
(third), and your chatter doeSn’t help my concentration at all.
(Roaringspeed)
(Thereisastrickensilence,duringwhich one canalmost hearYB.
repentingin hissoul. The tension grows,andbursts)
Y.B.
(Scowling): What were you talking about, anyway?
L.P.
Damned if I know. Your dear brother was approaching some
monumental height, as yet unnamed. He was telling of having
absorbedsomethingor other‑
LOB.
(Diving in): Bull sessions! Thanks for the cue to re-enter. Well,
naturally Eisner and I talked mostly sex and literature. But we

ofMusic 33
» always arrived sooner or later at the altar of music, and I
A- »'. t e d by his approach to i t . Being a musician, and never
._thought of being anything else, I had my own relation to
» quite unconsciously an abstract o n e‐ and I was amazed
- that another kind of relation could exist.
YB.
, sophomore.
- L B .
_ wait until you’re one. But it was through Eisner that I first
‘ , . - . . how different and foreign a writer’s approach to music
> be. You see, it would never occur to me to think of hills and
' .. . en in the same breath. Music, of all the arts, stands in a
region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without
H u g .
. Y B .
' r: I would challenge that sophomorisml
L J ’ .
-- chauffeur! Of all the idiocies‑
L.B.
, : nout any meaning, that is, except its own, a meaning in
'_»' v: terms, not in terms of words, which inhabit an altogether
a l t mental climate.
LDP.

we embarking on a study of the meaning of meaning?
_,_' YB‑
I sure hope not.
L . P.
:Maybe we are. Let’s see: what does a group of words mean,
after
‘7all? For example, “She tilted her head and offered him her
lips in
- ‘ . . u d e r. . . ”
. Y 3 .
A noble phrase.
L.P.
A knockout. But what does it mean? It means an action, a real
action. And it entails a reaction, a very real one. Something in
your actual physical being responds to these dozen delicious
words. And something in your physicalbeingresponds to a musi‑
calphraseaswell‐ let's say the welling‐up phrases in the Liebes‑
tod. Now what responds to one is the same element that
responds
to the other, isn’t it? Ergo, the meanings‐of both‐ insofar as
meaning is what you, the perceiver, have after you perceive‐ the
meaningsofbothare identical!Q.E.D.
L.B.
Bravo,BishopBerkeley!Just like old academic times. I feel
almost
youngagain. Only I must object to your collegiate sophistry. In
the
first place, your logic is askew; you are confusing meaning with

physical reaction which produces afalse syllogism.
L.P.
Oh,come off it.
L.B.
No,really, I mean it. If I react similarly to two different stimuli,
then my two reactions are the same; but that doesn’t mean that
both stimuli possess the same meaning. .If a person catches cold
1)from rainy weather and 2)from cats, those facts certainly
don’t
establishanysimilarityofmeaningbetweenrainandcats,dothey?
L.P.
No, if we can head off a joke from Y.B. about raining cats and
dogs. But this isn'ta question of logic at all. Emotionsdon’t
follow
mathematicalpatterns.
LOB.
I’msorry,butweren’t you the first to cry Q.E.D.?
L.P.
Very well, forgive me. But let's talk more simply. You will
admit
that there is adefinite relation between the meanings of a sunset
and of aChopinprelude,betweenthe Mona Lisa and the Book of
Ruth,between‑
Joy of Music 35
L B .
..'. . yes, in acomprehensive criticalsense. But that is not to

7 that they meanthe samething.
. L.P. .
V course it is to say fast that! Take the sunset and the prelude,
example. We can break their meanings down into certain ab‑
terms, like wlm, spaciousness, sostenuto, gentle motion,
, ,, imperceptible changes of color, and soon. All these terms
toboth,don't they?
LIB.
j .. the preludedoesn’t meancalm,color andthe rest. It suggests
:rA. perhaps.What it meansispurelymusical.
,; L.P.
’. . - whatdoesthatmean?
LB.
,If it couldbetold in words, thenwhy would Chopinhavefoundit
, ”cessary to tell i t through notes in the first place? Of course, I
._' owldtry to articulate themusicalmeaningof apreludein words,
,‘llut what a bore it would be! Let me show you, if you have the
‘ strength: a prolonged upbeat in the middle register (like the A‑
: string of the cello), yearning upwards in an octave stretch, its
meaningsuddenly clarifiedby the entrance of the accompaniment
, which is a series of repeated insistent E‐minor triads that pulse
_ under the sustainedchromatic longingof the melodic
line(which
- vacillates tearquy between B and C), while a tenor voice in the
I accompaniment adds to the general sense of languishing dolor
throughsuspensionandappogiatura‑
L.P.
‘Thanks,they cry, ’tisthrilling!
Take,0 takethis shilling!
Letushavenomore!”

L.B.
See? I toldyouit wouldbeabore.Andthat may giveyouperhaps
a fraction of the meaning of some three bars. That, asI said, is
36 LEONARD nmsrem
just the point about music. It stands in a special lonely region,
unlit‑
Y.B.
Hey,look!KozyKabins!
(The scene changes to the stoop of Kozy Kabin No. 8. It has be‑
come surprisingly cool,andweare sittingwith blanketsaroundas,
three phony Indians, having that interminable last cigarette. We
are on our fourth, at least; and the discussion of the meaning of
meaningisraging.)
L.P.
‐- or else why do so many composers give their pieces titles? If
you are right,thenit is impossiblefor apieceof music to have any
significance of a non-musical kind. Well and good. But then we
will have to cut out of the history of music Berlioz, Strauss,
Schoenberg,Hindemith‑
L B .
Mahler,Copland,Monteverdi‑
L.P.
(Triumphantly):And Bemsteinl
LOB.

Ouch! Now just give me a minute to dig back into my semester
of aesthetics.
L.P.
I ampositivelyglowing.Wearewaitingpatiently.HaveaChester
field.
L.B.
_ - for time): AsI see it, you want to know how I canfollow
, an abstract line in my theoretical view of music, and yet
W. pieces with names and philosophical implications and the
. Isthat it? '
L.P.
fairly well put. It’s not that you are soall-fired abstract‑
youflatter yourself! It just seems suspicious that you insist on
. -»amentalpurity about music,but don’t give ahoot for purity
‘ you write it. Intellectual snobbery, I call it. Of the lowest
Y.B.
LUPI
~~now I will give you alectureabout music. And maybe I can
‘ what you may have wanted to say, but in intelligible prose,
' t- without varsity veneer.
L.B.
L.P.
, 'ell,then. I think you want to get across that notes are opaque,
,' v. words are transparent, isn’t that it? In other words, that
when

:3~. readanewspaperyouarenotawareof the actualwordsthem‑
‘ r esasan artistic medium; that the headline “Maniac Slays Six
' was” conveys a concept,butdoes not linger in the
consciousness
-anyparticularvalue,amI right?
L B .
Yes,sir.
L.P.
_'- But that when these same words are in the hands of an artist,
a
~poet, they can acquire a value of their own, over and above the
5 mental image they convey; that words like “star,” “would”
and
. “steadfast” in thehandsofKeatsbecomememorablefor their own
' sake aswell asfor the sake of the ideathey represent, andthat in
so becoming they become less transparent, more opaque, more
likenotes,whichexist basically for their own sake andnot for any
representational idea behindthem. Are you with me?
L.B.
Yes, sir.
L.P.
That carried to the extreme, words thus handled can become al‑
most completely abstract, as in the hands of a Certmde Stein.
Whether this extreme has any literaryvalue isbesidethe point;
the
relevant fact is that words have their original function in

represen‑
tation, and are transparent; and notes have their original
function
in abstraction,andare opaque. And that, further, just aswords
can
move in from that original function toward a middle ground of
quasi-abstraction, asin Joyce, somusical notes can move in from
their native habitat to the middle ground of conceptual meaning,
asin program music, musical drama, background music, and the
like.Doyoufollow?
L.B.
Yes, sir,but‐‑
L.P.
Letmefinishat leastthis one sally.Sothere is,after all,acommon
meeting ground for the writer and the musician, and neither one
has cause or the right to glue himself fanatically to a snobbish
purity-notion. And if we add to all this the Cod-given human
capacity for association, there is no reasonto carp at the
spectacle
of asimple Lyric Poet indulging himself alittle sentimentally in
ametaphorof hillsandBeethoven.I grant you that the peroration
of Sibelius’ FifthSymphony, in the most scientific sense, is only
a
particular succession of chords, scored in acertain sonorous
way,
producingthe effect of a‐ well, of a peroration. But I have every
right in the world to see amagnificent sunriSe asI listen to these
trumpets lighting up the sky with their orange streams of sound,
and sowould you if you would relax for a minute and forget
your
bookishnotions.Dixi.

. ofMusic 39
- L.B.
_' bly agree with everything you say, andwould gladly call it
I_ut, and a cold one at that, except that I would like to make
' suggestion. Perhaps our differences arise from the fact that
'lnusician hears so much more in the music that he finds it
_ unnecessary to bring associations into the picture at all.
and I, in our artistic disguises, do, asyou say, come from op‑
‘ t - sides of the tracks, and can approach each other, meeting,
... speak, at thetracks themselves. But we always carry with us
'_heavy atavism of our origins, sothat there is always the track
separating us. We can never think identically about either
- . or music. These things are sosubtle anyway that they can
I. u»:blybemadeinfinitelyclearer in onehappylineof poetry or
' incommunicable flash of insight than in hours of shivering in
»desert air. But I amgratefulfor your lecture.
L.P.
.., ,you are aconsiderably chastenedyoungman,andalongway
_. m.thehecklerof two hoursago. I congratulateyou.
' LOB.
1ndI you. I can’tfindasinglechink in your disquisition.Although
llnething tells methat if it weren't sopolite, and I weren’t so
cold‑
'- YB.
_(Grindywakingup):To bed,tobed;there's aknockingatmyhead.
. L.P.
3 I'll stay out a while longer with these incredible stars. Look at
f them, look at them! Aren’t they pure Buxtehudel
(SUMMER 1948)

Music on the Brain:
ImageryandImagination
Heardmelodies are sweet, but those unheardare sweeter.
‐ I O H N KEATS, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
usic forms a significant and, on the whole, pleasant
part of life for most of u s ‐ n o t only external music,
music we hear with our ears, but internal music,
music that plays in our heads. When Galton wrote on ”mental
imagery” in the 1880s, he concerned himself only with Visual
imagery and n o t at all with musical imagery. But a tally of
one’s
friends will suffice to show that musical imagery has arange no
less varied than the Visual. There are some people who can
scarcely hold a tune in their heads and others who can hear
entire symphonies in their minds with a detail and Vividness
little short of actualperception.
I became aware of this huge variation early in life, for my
parents stood at opposite ends of the spectrum. My mother had
30
Music on the Brain:ImageryandImagination 31
difficulty voluntarily calling any tune to mind, but my father
seemed to have an entire orchestra in his head, ready to do his
bidding. He always had two or three miniature orchestral scores
stuffedin hispockets,andbetweenseeingpatients hemightpull
out a score and have alittle internal concert. Hedid not needto

put arecordon the gramophone, for he couldplay ascore almost
asvividly in his mind,perhaps with different moods or interpre‑
tations, and sometimesimprovisations of his own. His favorite
bedtime reading was a dictionary of musical themes,- he would
t u r n over afew pages, almost at random, savoringthis andthat ‑
and then, stimulated by the opening line of something, settle
down to a favorite symphony 0r concerto, his ownklei'neNacht‑
musik, ashecalledit.
My own powers of musical imagery, and of musical percep‑
tion, are muchmore limited. I cannot hear an entire orchestra in
my head, at least under normal circumstances. What I do have,
to some degree, is a pianist’s imagery. With music I know well,
such asChopin’s mazurkas,which I learnedby heart sixty years
ago and have continued to love ever since, I have only to glance
at a score or think of aparticular mazurka (an opus number will
set me off) and the mazurka will start to play in my mind. I not
only I’hear” the music, but I “see” my hands on the keyboard
before me, and ”feel” them playing the piece‐a virtual perfor‑
mance which, once started, seems to unfold or proceedby itself.
Indeed, when I was learning the mazurkas, I found that I could
practice them in my mind,andI often “heard” particularphrases
or themes from the mazurkasplayingby themselves. Evenif it is
involuntary and unconscious, going over passages mentally in
this way is acrucial tool for all performers, and the imagination
of playingcan bealmost asefficacious asthe physicalactuality.
Since the mid‐I990s,studies carried out byRobertZatorre and
his colleagues, using increasingly sophisticated brain-imaging
3 2 M U S I C O P H I L I A
techniques, have shown that imagining music can indeed acti‑
vate the auditory cortex almost as strongly as listening to it.

Imagining music also stimulates the motor cortex, and con‑
versely, imagining the action of playing music stimulates the
auditory cortex. This, Zatorre andHalpernnotedin a2 0 05paper,
”corresponds to reports from musicians that they can ’hear’
their
instrument duringmentalpractice.”
As Alvaro Pascual‐Leone has observed, studies of regional
cerebralbloodflow
[suggest that] mental simulation of movements activates
some of the same central neural structures required for
the performance of the actual movements. In so doing,
mentalpractice alone seems to besufficient to promote the
modulation of neural circuits involvedin the early stages of
motor skill learning. This modulation not only results in
marked improvement in performance, but also seems to
place the subjects at an advantage for further skill learning
with minimalphysicalpractice. The combination of mental
and physical practice [he adds] leads to greater perfor‑
mance improvement than does physical practice alone, a
phenomenon for which our findings provide aphysiological
explanation.
Expectation and suggestion can greatly enhance musical
imagery, even producing a quasi‐perceptual experience. Ierome
Bruner, avery musicalfriend, described to me how once, having
put a favorite Mozart record on his turntable, he listened to it
with great pleasure, and then went to t u r n it over to play the
other side‐only to find that hehad never played it in the first
place. Perhaps this is an extreme example of something we all
experience occasionally with familiar music: thinking we hear

music faintly when the radio has been turned off or a piece has
come to an end, we wonder whether the music is still playing
softly or we are simply imaginingit.
Some inconclusive experiments were performedin the 19603
on what the researchers called ”the ’White Christmas’ effect."
When the then universally known Bing Crosby version of the
song was played, some subjects ”heard” it when the volume was
turned down to near zero, or even when the experimenters
announced they would play the song but never turned it on.
Physiological confirmation of such ”filling i n ” by involuntary
musical imagery has recently been obtained by William Kelley
and his colleagues at Dartmouth, who used functional MRI
to scan the auditory cortex while their subjects listenedto famil‑
iar and unfamiliar songs in which short segments had been
replacedby gaps of silence. The silent gaps embeddedin familiar
songs were not consciously noticed by their subjects, but the
researchers observed that these gaps “induced greater activation
in the auditory association areas than did silent gaps embedded
in unknownsongs; this was true for gaps in songs with lyricsand
without lyrics.”I
Deliberate,conscious, voluntary mental imagery involves not
only auditory and motor cortex, but regions of the frontal cortex
involved in choosing and planning. Such deliberate mental
imagery is clearly crucial to professionalmusicians‐ it savedthe
creative life and sanity of Beethoven after he had gone deaf and
couldno longerhear any music other thanthat in hismind.2 (It is
possible, indeed, that his musical imagery was even intensified
by deafness, for with the removal of normal auditory input, the
auditory cortex may become hypersensitive, with heightened
I. See DavidI. M. Kraemer et al., 2005.
2. Indeed,for any professionalmusician,voluntary imagery may
dominate muchof con‑

scious and even subconscious life, Basically, any artist is
always at work, even when he
powers of musical imagery.) The rest of us frequently call upon
our musicalimagery, too. Nevertheless,it seems to methat most
of our musical imagery is not voluntarily commanded or sum‑
monedbut comes to us apparently spontaneously. Sometimes it
just pops into the mind; at other times it may play there quietly
for a while without our even noticing it. And though voluntary
musical imagery may not be easily available to the relatively
unmusical, virtually everyone has involuntary musical imagery.
One sort of involuntary musical imagery is related to intense
and repeated exposure to a particular piece or sort of music. I
tend to fall in love with a certain composer or artist and to play
their music over and over, almost exclusively, for weeks or
months, until it is replaced with something else. In the past siX
months, I have had three such fixations, one after another. The
first was on Ianacek’s opera Icnufa, after I had gone to hear a
beautiful performance of this directed by Jonathan Miller;
themes from [enufa kept going through my mind, even entering
my dreams, for t w o months, reinforced by my getting CDs of
the opera and playing them constantly. Then I switched to a
profoundly different experience after meeting Woody Geist, a
patient who sang for me some of the music he performed with
his a cappella jazz group, the Grunyons. This intrigued me,
though I had never before been interestedin this type of music;
once again, I playedhis CD constantly, and[enufa vanishedfrom
my mental concert hall, replaced by the Grunyons singing
”Shooby Doin’.” Mostrecently,I haveturnedto constant playing
of recordings by Leon Fleisher, and his renditions of Beethoven,
Chopin, Bach,Mozart,andBrahmshave swept the Grunyons out

appears n o t to be. This is well brought out by NedRorem,in
Facingthe Night: “I ’m never
not working. Even asI sit here chatting of Kafka or cranberries,
sodomy or softball, my
mind is simultaneously glued to the piece I’m currently
creating; the physical act of
insertingthe notes on astaff is merely anecessary afterthought.”
of my head. If I ask what [enufa, ”Shooby Doin’,” and Bach’s
Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue have in common, I would have to
say nothing musically and probably nothing emotionally (be‑
yond the pleasure they have all given me at different times).
What they doshare is the fact that I havebombardedmy ears and
brain with them, and the musical “circuits” or networks in my
brainhavebeensupersaturated, overcharged, with them. In such
asupersaturated state, the brain seems ready to replay the music
with no apparent external stimulus. Such replayings, curiously,
seem to bealmost assatisfying aslistening to the actual music,
andthese involuntary concerts are rarely intrusive oruncontrol‑
lable (althoughthey havethe potential to beso).
In asense, this type of musicalimagery, triggeredby overexpo‑
sure, is the leastpersonal, the least significant form of ”music
on
the mind.” We are on much richer, much more mysterious ter‑
rain when we consider tunes or musical fragments we have per‑
hapsn o t heardor thought of in decades, that suddenlyplayin the
mind for no apparent reason. No recent exposure, no repetition
can explain such tunes, andit is almost impossible to avoidask‑
ingoneself, ”Why this tune at this particular moment? What put
it into my mind?” Sometimes the reason or association is obvi‑

ous, or seems so.
As I write, in New York in mid-December, the city is full of
Christmas trees and menorahs. I would beinclined to say, asan
old Iewish atheist, that these things mean nothing to me, but
Hanukkah songs are evokedin my mindwhenever animage of a
menorah impinges on my retina, even when I am n o t con‑
sciously aware of it. There must be more emotion, more mean‑
ing here than I allow, even if it is of a mostly sentimental and
nostalgic kind.
But this December is also markedby adarker melody, or train
of melodies,which forms an almost constant background to my
thoughts. Evenwhen I am hardly conscious of this, it produces a
feeling of painandgrief. My brother is gravely ill,andthis music,
plucked out from ten thousand tunes by my unconscious, is
Bach’s Capriccio on the Departure of a Most BelovedBrother.
As I was dressing this morning after aswim, I was reminded,
n o w I was onlandagain, ofmypainful,arthritic oldknees‐andI
thought too about my friend Nick, who would be visiting that
day. With this there suddenly popped into my head an old nurs‑
ery rhyme that was popular in my childhoodbut that I hadprob‑
ably n o t heard (or thought about) for two‐thirds of a century:
“This Old Man,” and, in particular, its refrain: “Knick-knack,
paddy whack, give a dog a bone; / This old m a n came rolling
home.” Now I myself was an old m a n with painful knees who
wanted to be rolled home‐and Nick (punned asknick-knack)
hadenteredinto it too.
Many of our musicalassociations are verbal, sometimes to the

point of absurdity. Eatingsome smokedWhitefish (whichI adore)
earlier in this Christmas season, I heard in my mind “O Come
Let Us Adore Him.” Now the hymnhasbecome associatedwith
Whitefishfor me.
Often such verbal associations are subconscious and only
become explicit after the fact. One correspondent wrote to me
about her husband, who, though well able to remember tunes,
was unable to recall the words which went with them‑
nevertheless, like many people, he might make unconscious
verbal associations to the lyrics. ”For example,” she related,
”we
could have been saying something like, 'Gee, it’s getting dark
really early these days,’ and, a half-minute later, he would start
whistling ’The OldLamplighter’‐afairly obscure song which he
hasheardjust afew times in his life. . . . Obviously, the lyrics are
storedin hisbrainandlinkedto the music,but are somehow only
IIIretrievable through the music without the words
I recently spent several hours with a composer, grilling him
about his musical imagery. He finally excusedhimself and went
to the 100. On emerging, he told me that he had hearda song in
his head‐a song that had been popular forty years earlier but
that, at first, hecouldnot identify. Hethenrecalledthat the first
lineof the songwas “Only five minutes more . . .” I acceptedthis
asahint from his unconscious, and made sure to keep him only
five minutes more.
Sometimes there are deeper associations which I cannot
fathom bymyself‐the deepest of these I seem to keep, asif by a
sort of agreement with my unconscious, for sessions with my

analyst, who is encyclopedically musical,and often able to iden‑
tify the fragmentary and off-key sounds that are sometimes as
muchasI can reproduce.
And, of course, the greatest literary analysis of a musicalasso‑
ciation is that given by Proust, in his deciphering of ”the little
phrase” of Vinteuil’s that runs through the entire structure of
Remembranceof Things Past.
But why this incessant searchfor meaningor interpretation? It
is n o t clear that any art cries out for this and, of all the arts,
music surely the least‐forwhile it isthe most closely tiedtothe
emotions, music is wholly abstract; it has no formal power of
representationwhatever. We may goto aplay to learnabout jeal‑
ousy, betrayal, vengeance, love‐but music,instrumentalmusic,
can tell usnothing about these. Music can have wonderful, for‑
mal, quasi‐mathematical perfection, andit can have heartbreak‑
ing tenderness, poignancy, and beauty (Bach, of course, was a
master at combining these). But it does not have to have any
”meaning” whatever. One may recall music, give it the life of
imagination (or evenhallucination)simplybecause one likesi t ‑
this is reason enough. Or perhaps there may be no reason at all,
asRodolfoLlinaspoints out.
Llinas, a neuroscientist at New York University, is
especially interested in the interactions of the cortex and the
thalamus‐which he postulates to underlie consciousness or
“self”‐and their interaction with the motor nuclei beneath the
cortex, especially the basal ganglia, which he sees ascrucial to
the production of ”action-patterns” (for walking, shaving, play‑
ing the violin, and so on). He calls the neural embodiments of
these action‐patterns l’motor tapes.” Llinasconceives of allmen‑

tal activities‐perceiving, remembering, and imagining no less
than doing‐as “motor.” In his book I of the Vortex, he writes
repeatedly of music, mostly of musical performance, but some‑
times of that odd form of musical imagery when a song or tune
suddenly pops into the mind:
The neuralprocesses underlyingthat which we call creativ‑
i ty have nothingto dowith rationality. That is to say, if we
look at howthe braingenerates creativity, we will see that it
is not a rational process at all; creativity is n o t born out of
reasoning.
Letus think again of our motor tapes in the basalganglia.
I should like to suggest to you that these nuclei do n o t
always wait for atape to becalledup for use by the thalamo‑
cortical system, the self. . . . In fact, the activity in the basal
ganglia is running all the time, playing m o t o r patterns
and snippets of motor patterns amongst and between
themselves‐and because of the odd, re‐entrant inhibitory
connectivity amongst and between these nuclei, they seem
to act asa continuous, random, motor pattern noise genera‑
tor. Here andthere, a pattern or portion of a pattern escapes,
without its apparent emotional counterpart, into the con‑
text of the thalamocortical system.
“Andsuddenly,” Llinasconcludes, “youhear asongin your head
or out of seemingly nowherefindyourself anxious to play tennis.
Things sometimes just come to us.”
Anthony Storr, apsychiatrist, writes eloquently in Music and
the Mind of his own musical imagery and wonders ”what pur‑
pose is served by music running in the head unsummoned and

perhaps unwanted?” He feels that such music generally has a
positive effect: ” I t alleviates boredom, makes . . . movements
more rhythmical, and reduces fatigue.” It buoys the spirits, is
intrinsically rewarding. Music drawn from memory, he writes,
”has many of the same effects as real music coming from the
externalworld.” It has the additionalbonus of drawingattention
to otherwise overlooked or repressed thoughts, and in this way
may serve a function similar to that of dreams. All in all, Storr
concludes, spontaneous musical imagery is basically “benefi‑
cent” and “biologically adaptive.”3
Our susceptibility to musical imagery indeedrequires exceed‑
ingly sensitive andrefinedsystems for perceivingandremember‑
ing music, systems far beyond anything in any nonhuman
primate. These systems, it seems, are assensitive to stimulation
from internal sources‐memories, emotions, associations‐as to
external music. A tendency to spontaneous activity and repeti‑
tion seems to bebuilt into themin away that hasno analogue in
other perceptual systems. I see my room, my furniture every
day,
but they do not re-present themselves as “pictures in the mind.”
Nor do I hear imaginary dog barks or traffic noises in the back‑
groundofmy mind,or smell aromas of imaginarymealscooking,
3. William James, by contrast, wrote about our ”susceptibility
to music”; hepresumably
meant this to include our susceptibility to musical imagery
aswell. But he saw this as
having “no zoological utility,” asreflecting no more than “a
mere incidentalpeculiarity
of the nervous system.”
4 O M U S I C O P H I L I A

even though I am exposed to such perceptions every day. I do
have fragments of poetry and sudden phrases darting into my
mind,butwithnothinglikethe richnessandrange of my sponta‑
neous musicalimagery.Perhapsit is n o t just the nervous system,
but music itself that has something very peculiar about i t ‐ i t s
beat, its melodic contours, so different from those of speech,
and
itspeculiarly direct connection to the emotions.
It really is avery oddbusiness that allof us, to varying degrees,
have music in our heads. If Arthur C. Clarke's Overlords were
puzzled when they landed on Earth and observed how much
energy our species puts into makingandlisteningto music, they
would have been stupefied when they realized that, even in the
absence of external sources, most of us are incessantly playing
music in our heads.

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