"Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit and never dies. It wanders perturbedly through the halls and galleries of the memory, and is often heard again, distinct and living as when it first displaced the wavelets of the air."
- Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton
WHAT is music?
The easy answer: music is melodic sound heard by the ear and interpreted by the brain.
But what if that is only one aspect of a vast, more exciting story?
Without conscious intent, our brains often transmit memories of words to our fingers as we type; so is it too much of a stretch to believe the brain can also sense or "hear" sounds way beyond the range of normal hearing?
If we can accept that idea, where do those sounds originate? What might they mean to our understanding of autism, or of the progressive decline in awareness of people with Alzheimer's disease and other dementias?
Baron Edward Bulwer-Lytton - the man for whom Lytton, British Columbia was named in 1858 - was an author, poet and sometime politician with no formal connection to the world of music. Yet his words resonate with those of William Congreve, another English poet who, a century earlier, had written "music hath charms to soothe the savage breast."
Both men accepted that the sounds we call music have qualities that echo far beyond the notes jotted on a manuscript or enjoyed in theatres.
These thoughts and more were triggered recently when a friend sent me a link to some short YouTube videos.
Although I was to learn it contained "an accumulation of misinformation," one audio clip held my attention and took me down unexpected pathways into the worlds of academe, medicine and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Seeking a more reliable source than YouTube led me to Don Gurnett, professor of physics at the University of Iowa (uiowa.edu/be-remarkable/portfolio/ people/gurnett-d.html) whose assistant, Larry Granroth, began to unravel the story.
He explained that the musical renditions on the clip were probably speed-reduced modifications of the radio-wave sounds of Saturn's kilometric radiation recorded by the Cassini-Huygens robotic spacecraft as it orbited the planet.
Gurnett is said to have been surprised that the aurora-related sounds at Saturn so closely resemble those recorded during aurora events on Earth.
So what do discoveries in the world of space exploration have to do with medicine?
The clues may lie, not only in the words of Congreve and Bulwer-Lytton but in the genius of deaf composer Ludwig van Beethoven who, way back in the 18th century, believed "music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents."
That Beethoven's theory has merit is reinforced by another unintended link to the innocent email that launched this discussion.
My friend's mother, you see, has Alzheimer's disease.
In a Vancouver care home, that lady is gentle and not inclined to wander away as some people with dementia are prone to do.
Healthy and fit beyond today's capacity of her consciousness, what "Mom" enjoys most is humming familiar songs as, arm-in-arm with the daughter she does not recognize, they walk and sing through the treed neighbourhood she used to know so well.
So if the essence of music is a manifestation of electrical energy, is that where Mom's spirit now lives and thinks?
And what does music mean for children and youth who have autism spectrum disorder (ASD)?
We are on the brink of learning more about how music enhances the lives of those young people.
Funded by the Grammy Foundation, a team of American researchers led by Drs. Elizabeth Laugeson and Istvan Molnar-Szakacs at the University of California, Los Angeles, set out to learn whether children with autism are as adept at "recognizing emotions in music as are typically developing kids."
"The full report of our study will be released sometime this year," Laugeson said.
Many studies have shown that including music in the therapy and education protocols benefits people with neurological challenges who often respond favourably to music where the spoken word may either disturb them or be unrecognized.
So we have to ask: Is that because they are passive bystanders who enjoy the music they hear? Or could it be that their brains "understand" and respond to the vibrations or radio-waves that produce musical sounds.
Marc Chagall, the famous 19th century painter, claimed that "Mozart never composed anything, ever! He copied what was written on his soul."
Was he closer to the truth than we might have expected? Is it that the brain of the child prodigy that was Mozart had received from afar the music that he wrote?
Beyond my lifetime - or yours I suspect - the answers may come from astronomers and space explorers yet to be.
On Jan. 11, the Royal Astronomical Society announced that "An international team of astronomers, led by academics from the University of Central Lancashire, has found the largest known structure in the universe. The large quasar group (LGQ) is so large it would take a vehicle travelling at the speed of light some four billion years to cross it."
Three hundred and forty-three years after Congreve, we still have so many miles to go before future generations can truly understand the meaning of either music or the universe.
Do you wish, as I do, that you could be around to know it?
