You Are the Music: How Music Reveals What it Means to be Human by Victoria Williamson
Authors: Victoria Williamson
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identification tells us that these aspects of musical memory may be stored differently in our minds.
Interestingly, there was also a preference for older songs in the study, from the 1960s and 1970s, even though the participants were young adults. This result could be interpreted as an impact of more distinctive styles and recording techniques on memory; a ‘uniqueness effect’. Or maybe songs from that era were associated with more iconic representations of history that were stronger in general episodic and semantic memory. Possibly there was an increase of exposure effect on memory, with the young adults having heard the music of their parents for longer than their own.
Or perhaps, as Krumhansl puts it, ‘it may be better music’: an interesting and, to my mind, not entirely fruitless argument.
Finally, Krumhansl used her study as a basis for estimating the capacity of musical memory. If you listen to twenty hours of music a week (like her volunteers) then you will hear an average of 22,000 songs every year (based on about three minutes’ length each). Although that includes many repetitions it is still reasonable to assume that an average memory for a listener of this frequency would extend to hundreds ofthousands, if not millions, of identifiable memorised pieces of music over a lifetime.
It’s a musical life
Another indicator of the power in musical memory is its longevity. David Rubin wrote about oral traditions 21 ; how many folk, children’s and tribal songs have remained in human culture for hundreds if not thousands of years without ever being written down. It appears that music can survive perfectly well relying only on human memory over countless generations.
Musical memory also survives well over the course of a single human lifetime. My grandma is an example of someone with an excellent and longstanding musical memory. She loves to sing and will very often come out with a tune just because you utter a phrase that reminds her of a song. She has a particularly good memory for songs she heard as a child or young woman, a feature of general memory called the reminiscence bump .
Studies have shown, in fact, that older listeners retain many important music memory skills such as the ability to recognise alterations to melodies, even though performance is slowed slightly in line with theories of cognitive ageing. 22 And as we shall see more in the next chapter, the music that provides comfort and stimulates memory most effectively in older people is most commonly the music that has been in their memory for the longest time, from their reminiscence bump. 23
The fact that music memory lasts well for a lifetime is the basis for the popular radio format where a well-known individual tells the story of their life through their favourite music, for example the BBC Radio 4 programme, Desert Island Discs . Listening to an individual’s memories told partly through their musical choices provides a unique insight into a person’s experiences but also their personality and outlook.Over our lifetimes, music becomes a part of who we are because it interweaves so well with our episodic memories for events and people.
In this section we have seen some of the true capabilities of musical memory. It may not be the most reliable memory system when it first hears a piece of music but, given time, it can build durable and long-lasting musical memories that easily mix with our life experiences to become a central part of who we are as people. In the next section I will look at the power of musical memory from a related angle: its ability to survive.
‘The Survivor’
To anyone who has cared for an elderly individual it will come as no surprise that musical memory can often survive when other aspects of memory begin to fade. I have heard many heartwarming stories of individuals with dementia-related illnesses or Alzheimer’s who find comfort in music and who may even manage to retrieve memories in its presence that
Interestingly, there was also a preference for older songs in the study, from the 1960s and 1970s, even though the participants were young adults. This result could be interpreted as an impact of more distinctive styles and recording techniques on memory; a ‘uniqueness effect’. Or maybe songs from that era were associated with more iconic representations of history that were stronger in general episodic and semantic memory. Possibly there was an increase of exposure effect on memory, with the young adults having heard the music of their parents for longer than their own.
Or perhaps, as Krumhansl puts it, ‘it may be better music’: an interesting and, to my mind, not entirely fruitless argument.
Finally, Krumhansl used her study as a basis for estimating the capacity of musical memory. If you listen to twenty hours of music a week (like her volunteers) then you will hear an average of 22,000 songs every year (based on about three minutes’ length each). Although that includes many repetitions it is still reasonable to assume that an average memory for a listener of this frequency would extend to hundreds ofthousands, if not millions, of identifiable memorised pieces of music over a lifetime.
It’s a musical life
Another indicator of the power in musical memory is its longevity. David Rubin wrote about oral traditions 21 ; how many folk, children’s and tribal songs have remained in human culture for hundreds if not thousands of years without ever being written down. It appears that music can survive perfectly well relying only on human memory over countless generations.
Musical memory also survives well over the course of a single human lifetime. My grandma is an example of someone with an excellent and longstanding musical memory. She loves to sing and will very often come out with a tune just because you utter a phrase that reminds her of a song. She has a particularly good memory for songs she heard as a child or young woman, a feature of general memory called the reminiscence bump .
Studies have shown, in fact, that older listeners retain many important music memory skills such as the ability to recognise alterations to melodies, even though performance is slowed slightly in line with theories of cognitive ageing. 22 And as we shall see more in the next chapter, the music that provides comfort and stimulates memory most effectively in older people is most commonly the music that has been in their memory for the longest time, from their reminiscence bump. 23
The fact that music memory lasts well for a lifetime is the basis for the popular radio format where a well-known individual tells the story of their life through their favourite music, for example the BBC Radio 4 programme, Desert Island Discs . Listening to an individual’s memories told partly through their musical choices provides a unique insight into a person’s experiences but also their personality and outlook.Over our lifetimes, music becomes a part of who we are because it interweaves so well with our episodic memories for events and people.
In this section we have seen some of the true capabilities of musical memory. It may not be the most reliable memory system when it first hears a piece of music but, given time, it can build durable and long-lasting musical memories that easily mix with our life experiences to become a central part of who we are as people. In the next section I will look at the power of musical memory from a related angle: its ability to survive.
‘The Survivor’
To anyone who has cared for an elderly individual it will come as no surprise that musical memory can often survive when other aspects of memory begin to fade. I have heard many heartwarming stories of individuals with dementia-related illnesses or Alzheimer’s who find comfort in music and who may even manage to retrieve memories in its presence that
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