There are certain interesting points of relationship between internal song and internal speech. For example, many persons find internal tunes generally fuller, more real, and sometimes only tunes at all because they remember the appropriate words, because they have sung the words to the tune, or at least, because they have hummed the refrain aloud. Here there is clearly a motor type of music performers. But this motor requirement is extremely variable. In some cases the tune must be associated with a particular instrument, and this is done only by the reproduction of the proper sensations in the finger tips, lips, etc., used in playing that instrument. On the other hand, there are facts which show that the motor type is only a type, and that even in these cases auditory tune memories are necessary. Musical recognition in childhood often precedes verbal recognition. Musical expression usually precedes verbal expression, both when there is a clearly inherited musical tendency,[1] and in ordinary imitative reactions.[2] In cases of ‘absolute hearing’–discussed below–we have apparently recognition of pitch without any motor-speech or song-images. Further, there is the critical fact that motor aphasia, and even verbal deafness, may exist with no impairment of the musical faculty–no amusia, as defects of musical faculty are called by Brazier. This is true both for musical recognition (case of Wernicke), and for musical expression.[3] Cases show, however, that the latter, musical expression, is never lost without involving speech; although musical recognition seems sometimes (Carpenter’s case) to be lost without impairing speech. The conclusion that musical reproduction is auditory is supported also by such facts as the following: that we often recognize an air after hearing it once, even when
- ↑ Interesting cases are cited by Ballet, loc. cit., p. 24.
- ↑ My child E. imitated a run of three notes, vocally, long before she showed any verbal imitations whatever.
- ↑ Cf. v. Franckl-Hochwart, Ueber den Verlust des musikalischen Ausdrucksvermögens in Deutsche Zeitschrift für Nervenheilkunde, I, p. 283.
1891, heft I; Lotze, Medicinische Psychologie, p. 480; G. E. Müller, Grundlegung der Psychophysik, p. 288; besides the voluminous literature of aphasia. An interesting late article, full of bibliographical references, is by Brazier, Revue Philosophique, Oct., 1892, p. 337.
