INNER MUSIC

Francis Joseph Leach

It is my intent to introduce the concept of "Inner Music" as a psychological phenomenon related to dreams.

By Inner Music, I mean music not heard, but only imagined, either in a stream of consciousness or experienced unconsciously. Most people experience this type of auditory imagery. It is commonly expressed by saying, "I can't get that tune out of my head."

Inner Music can occur in the form of a simple unaccompanied tune, or more elaborately, in the nuances of imagined harmonies. Imaginary music may be heard with or without accompanying words, with or without visual imagery. Inner music can take place without much emotion, or as Penfield has demonstrated, it can be accompanied by powerful feelings.

Silent music in thought is a separate reality from actually acoustically-sounded music. Since 1967, I have collected all the documentation I could find on the subject of Inner Music. On the basis of my study, I find it is useful to divide Inner Music into four theoretical types, consisting of two voluntary types and two non-voluntary types. Both of the first two types are willed. The third and fourth types are more mysterious, occurring spontaneously:

1. Voluntarily remembered music: by using the will, the subject can mentally hear a work previously heard, from memory.

2. Voluntary new music: the subject can mentally hear a voluntary improvization of new music.

3. Non-voluntary remembered music: a subject can become aware that without his intending it, some piece he has heard in the past is going through his mind.

4. Non-voluntary new inner music: the subject can become aware that he is inwardly hearing music which he has never heard before, and which does not exist as a previously composed piece. This happens spontaneously by a process we do not understand.

When musicians silently view a score, reading the music mentally, they are experiencing type one, voluntary inner music. Type two (voluntary new music) is used by composers when writing new works. Beethoven's famous notebooks seem to suggest his use of type two. The notebooks appear to describe voluntary mental improvization of new musical phrases.

Reik's interest in inner music seems to be concerned usually with the third, non-voluntary, previously composed type. He called it "the haunting melody." Reik was particularly aware of previously heard music that would run through his mind. When working with patients, he would give special attention to any such thought music. He wrote:

The fact that it is that particular melody, and not any other of the many thousand our mind harbors, is due to the emergence of something that was once closely connected with it in our thoughts.

John Cage wrote that though music sometimes occurs in his dreams, he has "not listened in a way to become interested in it." He added, "Yes, music sometimes runs through my head without my willing it. This is one of the things that annoys me about music." He is in good company; Aristotle complained of the same thing.

Penfleld's research is particularly important to a thorough understanding of type three, coming back directly from memories of previously ocurring music and depending on the brain's capacity to record music. Penfield stimulated the brain of a patient (identified as S.B.) with a galvanic probe transmitting a weak electric current. The patient said, "There was a piano there and someone was playing. I could hear the song, you know." Stimulating the point again, the patient said that someone was singing "Oh Marie, Oh Marie." When the point was stimulated a further time, S.B. heard the same song and explained that it was the theme song of a radio program.

Penfield concluded that the electrode evoked a single recollection, not a generalization or mixture of memories. He also concluded that the response was not voluntary. It is important that Penfleld discovered that the experience came back with all its original intensity in such a way that it was not possible for the patient to relive the past without also feeling the old emotions.

Seashore pointed out that the capacity to hear music in recall and to supplement the actual physical sounds in musical hearing is the most outstanding mark of the musical mind. He stated that the subject had received little attention due to an extremely behavioristic attitude of ignoring the existence of mental image, as a phenomenon "which does not lend itself accurately to psychophysical measurements." He gave auditory imagery a central place and stated that he expected "immediate and helpful leads from an informal inventory of the use of mental imagery."

Seashore observed that in various individuals, the capacity to recall tones of music range from an inability to mentally hear the tones at all, to the ability to mentally hear them as vividly as in actual perception. Seashore was able to measure the intensity of inner music. His 7 point rating scale graded the images from no image at all, to as vivid as in perception.

Probably the most renowned example of music actually heard in a dream is that of Tartini. He was a violinist and composer who lived from 1692-1770. In his dream, he bargained for his soul with the devil, who seized his violin and played a sonata of great beauty and tremendous virtuosity. When Tartini awoke, he immediately put onto paper what he could remember of the music. The piece he completed was called the Devil's Trill Sonata. Tartini's inner music seems to be of the fourth type: non-voluntary music unexpectedly flowing into consciousness.

Among the composers who refer to dream music are Schubert, Schuipann, Stravinsky, Beethoven, and Roy Harris. These composers most usually experienced new music rather than a memory of music previously heard.

Individuals who experience new non-voluntary inner music were described by Freud as having "what is essential and new in their creations" come to them "without premeditation and as an almost ready-made whole." This sounds almost like a reworded definition of the new, non-voluntary type of inner music, which in our arbitrary numbering system, we are calling the fourth type.

Music imagined as the result of hypnotism is included in a non-voluntary class of inner music. Thus a hypnotist inducing a subject to hear new music would fall into type four, with the subject non-voluntarily hearing music not previously composed.The result of hypnosis on a composer can be spectacular. Rachmaninoff s most famous concerto was written as the result of hypnosis under Dr. Dahl. Rachmaninoff dedicated this work to him.

The practical possibilities for inner music are richer than one might think at first. Rachmaninoff's experience of hearing music under hypnosis and Theodor Reik's use of inner music in a clinical setting are two examples of practical use of imaginary music.

There are thousands of documented instances of inner music. When music in a dream seems vague as to type, it might be useful to devise a scale where the dreamer could categorize his dream music on the basis of whether it sounds exactly like the same piece he has once heard, much the same, between a little and much the same, or not at all similar to any music he has heard before.

It may become possible to monitor the effects of inner music on the body, in a laboratory setting, using equipment similar to that used for other brain and mind research. Perhaps research can discover physiological changes accompanying inner music, no matter how minute they may be. Studying people experiencing inner music might contribute to research being done on the subject of time perception, particularly if it can be proven that the experience of inner music occurs in an altered state of consciousness.

The four distinct types of imagined music which I have described provide a theoretical basis for a typology of inner music, suggesting several areas for further study and consideration.

Bibliography

Freud, Sigmund. The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud. Translated and edited by Dr. A. A. Brill, Modern Library, New York, 1938.

Penfleld, Wilder. Memory Mechanisms. A.M.A. Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry. 67 (1952): 178-198.

Reik, Theodor. The Haunting Melody. Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, Inc., 1953.

Seashore, Carl. Psychology of Music. McGraw-Hill, 1938.