Then he could examine them and tell you all sorts of interesting things about yourself. He could stick electrodes on your scalp and his amplifiers would draw your brainwaves on yards of tape. This was Gilbert Lister’s line of territory. There are, in fact, steady pulsing rhythms going on all the time, and they can be detected and analysed by modern instruments. “In an audience as well educated as this,” said Harry, with an emphasis that made it sound positively insulting, “there will be no-one who’s unaware of the fact that much of the brain’s activity is electrical. He wasn’t concerned with the sounds themselves, but only what happened when they got past the ears and started doing things to the brain. ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’ and the Choral Symphony were all the same to him. So when I said that his interest was cerebral, I meant it quite literally. He was, primarily, a physiologist, specialising in the study of the brain. “However, I must confess that Gilbert Lister’s interest in music was purely cerebral. Moreover, it doesn’t-as some people might think-preclude a purely aesthetic appreciation of music for its own sake. It’s a fascinating study in itself, and one that appeals strongly to the scientific mind. And then, of course, there’s the underlying theory-harmonic relations, wave analysis, frequency distribution, and so on. As far as the mathematicians are concerned, one can think of obvious reasons for this fondness: music, particularly classical music, has a form which is almost mathematical. I’ve known several large labs that had their own amateur symphony orchestras-some of them quite good, too. “I don’t know why it is,” said Harry Purvis, “that most scientists are interested in music, but it’s an undeniable fact. It always annoyed a lot of people when he had to stop in mid-flight for a refill. For I know a man who found out.”Īutomatically, someone handed him a beer, so that the tenor of his tale would not be disturbed. “I don’t know what the answer is,” replied Harry. Now what is there about these tunes that has this effect? Some of them are great music-others just banal, but they’ve obviously got something in common.” When the last “Plonk!” had died away he continued: Harry had to pause for a moment until his audience had stopped zithering. Then there’s that ‘Third Man’ piece-da di da di daa, di da, di daa… look what that did to everybody.” I got saddled that way for a whole week with the big theme from the finale of Sibelius Two-even went to sleep with it running round inside my head. “There are some melodies that you can take or leave, but others stick like treacle, whether you want them or not.” “I know what you mean,” said Art Vincent. And then, suddenly, they’ve vanished again.” The good ones grab hold of you so thoroughly that you just can’t get them out of your head-they go round and round for days. “Well, they come along out of nowhere, and then for weeks everybody’s humming them, just as Charlie did then. Has it ever occurred to you that there’s something rather-fundamental-about hit tunes?” But don’t let’s quarrel about that, for heaven’s sake. “Some of us,” retorted Harry, “don’t care for an exclusive diet of Elizabethan madrigals. “You ought to stay tuned to the Third Programme. I’ve heard it every time I’ve switched on the radio for the last week.” I only remember that it triggered off one of Harry Purvis’ most disturbing stories. Then, probably in a deliberate attempt to break that unsettling feeling of suspense, Charlie Willis started whistling the latest hit tune. The Silence came, as unexpectedly as it always does. It was like that one Wednesday evening when the place wasn’t quite as crowded as usual. That’s how I feel about it, however cheerful the company in which it happens. It’s almost as if everybody is listening for something-they don’t know what. Of course, the whole thing’s merely caused by the laws of probability, but somehow it seems more than a mere coinciding of conversational pauses. Have you ever noticed that, when there are twenty or thirty people talking together in a room, there are occasional moments when everyone becomes suddenly silent, so that for a second there’s a sudden, vibrating emptiness that seems to swallow up all sound? I don’t know how it affects other people, but when it happens it makes me feel cold all over. Signature Buildings of San Francisco Backstory.Presentations for Biography of a City: San Francisco.Humanities Course Keynote Presentatioms.Biography of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld.
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