we have never tried to sing it, and could not if we tried; that in singing or humming a tune, we know that we are wrong even when we are unable to correct it; tune hallucinations are reported without words or vocal quality, and, similarly, illusions stimulated by accidental sounds;[1] many persons are able to remember and recall musical chords and combinations which it is impossible for the human voice to reproduce, i.e., we can mentally depict harmony; further, there are cases of persons who can recognize the pitch of tones from instruments, but not of the tones of their own voice.[2] It seems, indeed, on the surface clear, that of the elements distinguished above as essential to musical reproduction – pitch, rhythm, timbre, and emotional tone – the most essential, pitch, finds no adequate basis in motor speech or song memories. The range of intonation in speaking and singing is too narrow to supply the material for musical reproduction, although there are, no doubt, individuals whose musical capacity – especially of expression – is confined to these limits.
It is probable, accordingly, that there is a brain-center for tune memories – a center whose impairment produces so-called notal amusia – that this center is a part, in function, at least, if not anatomically, of the auditory center, and that cases will occur in different persons, of partial amusia, due to the degree in which this function involves others.[3] This general conclusion is confirmed, I think, by what follows on pitch memory, the only one of the four elements of musical reproduction which I am able to discuss in this paper.[4]
- ↑ Ordinary internal tunes are usually stimulated in this way, as I have found by analysis of a great many such tunes at the time of their occurrence.
- ↑ Cases of v. Kries cited below.
- ↑ For example, musical deafness without verbal deafness; case of Grant Allen in Mind, III, p. 157, and that of Brazier, loc. cit., p. 359. Bastian, Loc. cit., p. 664, quotes a case from Lasègue of an aphasic musician, who could write nothing but passages of music which he had just heard. A recent case of Pick's (Arch. für Psych., 1892, p. 910) seems at first sight to give trouble, i.e., a case of loss of musical recognition with no impairment of musical expression. Yet Pick's location of the lesion as subcortical sufficiently accords with the view in my text. The seat of auditory attention was not injured. Cf. note on Pick's position below in this article.
- ↑ I hope, however, to say something on the psychology of musical 'time' and 'expression' later.
