Animal Magnetism For Musicians

This title was first publushed in 2000. Phyllis Weliver investigates representations of female musicians in British novels from 1860 to 1900 with regard to changing gender roles, musical practices and scientific discourses. During this time women were portrayed in complex and nuanced ways as they played and sang in family drawing rooms. Women in the 19th century were judged on their manners, appearance, language and other accomplishments such as sewing or painting, but music stood out as an area where women were encouraged to take centre stage and demonstrate their genteel education, graceful movements and self-expression. However within the novels of the Victorian were begining to move away from portraying the musical accomplishments of middle- and upper-class women as feminine and worthwhile towards depicting musical women as truly dangerous. This book explores the reasons for this reaction and the way labels and images were constructed to show extremes of behaviour, and it looks at whether the fiction was depicting the real trends in music at the time.

This book is the first attempt to provide a basis for the interaction of the brain and nervous system with painting, music and literature. The introduction deals with the problems of creativity and which parts of the brain are involved. Then an overview of art presents the multiple facets, such as anatomy, and the myths appearing in ancient descriptions of conditions such as polio and migraine. The neurological basis of painters like Goya and van Gogh is analysed. Other chapters in the section on art cover da Vinci's mechanics and the portrayal of epilepsy. The section on music concerns the parts of the brain linked to perception and memory, as well as people who cannot appreciate music, and the effect of music on intelligence and learning (the Mozart effect). The section on literature relates to Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Conan Doyle, James Joyce and the poetry of one of England's most famous neurologists, Henry Head. Sample Chapter(s) Chapter 1: The Cerebral Localization of Creativity (92 KB) Chapter 5: Leonardo da Vinci's Mechanical Art and the Origin of Modern Neurology (83 KB) Contents:Introduction:The Cerebral Localization of Creativity (G K York)Neural Concept Formation and Art: Dante, Michelangelo, Wagner (S Zeki)Art:The Neurology of Art: An Overview (F Clifford Rose)Galen and the Artful Symmetry of the Brain (J Rocca)Leonardo da Vinci's Mechanical Art and the Origin of Modern Neurology (D Steinberg)The Art of Sir Charles Bell (C Gardner-Thorpe)Normal and Pathological Gait as Inspiration for the Artist (G Aubert)Epilepsy in Pictorial Art (B A Engelsen)Music:Brain Mapping in Musicians (M E Charness & G Schlaug)The Cerebral Localisation of Musical Perception and Musical Memory (H Platel et al.)Musical Instruments as Metaphors in Brain Science: From René Descartes to John Hughlings Jackson (C U M Smith)The Music of Madness: Franklin's Armonica and the Vulnerable Nervous System (S Finger & D A Gallo)The Mozart Effect (J R Hughes & J J Fino)The Amusias (J Warren)Music and the Brain: A Musicologist's Viewpoint (P Robertson)The Convulsionary Samuel Johnson and the Miaowing of Mozart (M Keynes)Literature:The Influence of Shakespeare on Charcot's Neurological Teaching (C G Goetz)Epilepsy in Literature: Writers' Experiences and Their Reflections in Literary Works (P Wolf)The Aetiology of Dostoyevsky's Epilepsy (H Kierulf)Neurology and Sherlock Holmes (E W Massey)James Joyce in a Clinical Context (J B Lyons)Neurology in the Nordic Sagas (R Stien)The Poetry of Henry Head (C Gardner-Thorpe)Silas Marner, George Eliot and Catalepsy (F Clifford Rose) Readership: Laypeople interested in painting, music and literature; doctors and neurologists. Keywords:Art;Music;Literature;Brain;Nervous System;Creativity;MythReviews:“This is an unusual and often amusing book … This volume not only is less ephemeral but also provides some lasting tibits of information on the interrelation between the neurosciences and the arts.”Neuromuscular Disorders “… the chapter by Semir Zeki truly is a thoughtful and provocative analysis of the relationship between art and neurology.”Journal of Neurology “Besides the giddying questions just discussed about the basis of creativity and the aesthetic response, these connections include the neurological disorders of artists, representations of these disorders in art, the inspiration of medical work by artistic example and vice versa. All these and more are touched upon in this entertaining collection of essays.”Brain

"A jewel of musical history-- the story of Ben Franklin's favorite invention, the glass armonica-- including the composers who wrote for it (Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, among others); Dr. Mesmer who used it to hypnotize; Marie Antoinette and the women who popularized it; its decline and recent comeback"--Amazon.com.

A stimulating new approach to understanding the relationship between music and culture in the long nineteenth century.

Music has been used as a cure for disease since as far back as King David's lyre, but the notion that it might be a serious cause of mental and physical illness was rare until the late eighteenth century. At that time, physicians started to argue that excessive music, or the wrong kind of music, could over-stimulate a vulnerable nervous system, leading to illness, immorality and even death. Since then there have been successive waves of moral panics about supposed epidemics of musical nervousness, caused by everything from Wagner to jazz and rock 'n' roll. It was this medical and critical debate that provided the psychiatric rhetoric of "degenerate music" that was the rationale for the persecution of musicians in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. By the 1950s, the focus of medical anxiety about music shifted to the idea that "musical brainwashing" and "subliminal messages" could strain the nerves and lead to mind control, mental illness and suicide. More recently, the prevalence of sonic weapons and the use of music in torture in the so-called War on Terror have both made the subject of music that is bad for the health worryingly topical. This book outlines and explains the development of this idea of pathological music from the Enlightenment until the present day, providing an original contribution to the history of medicine, music and the body.