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Still Searching For The Perfect Chord

Posted in 2025 Book Review, Book Review, General Comments, Music, Reviews, tagged Alzheimer's Disease, Biology, Brain Plasticity, Daniel J. Levitin, Depression, General Comments, Hallelujah, I Heard There Was A Secret Chord: Music As Medicine -- book review, John Travolta, Leonard Cohen, Lucy, Music, Parkinson's Disease, Phenomenon, Science, Scientific Reductionism, Strong Book Recommendation on April 5, 2025| Leave a Comment »

“I Heard There Was A Secret Chord: Music As Medicine” (2024©) — book review
Today’s book review is for a “general public” book written by Daniel J. Levitin. It is a survey of the status of studies on the use of sounds (specifically music) in the general science of biology (specifically medicine). Even with a limited knowledge of science and music, pretty much all of us “know” that music can effect us on multiple levels – emotional, physical and psychological – frequently for good, but sometimes not so “good”. The author has spent many years studying this effect as a neuroscientist and has also been a working musician. I feel this has offered him an opportunity to accumulate and catalogue a fair number of anecdotal stories and the results of some actual controlled experiments in order to provide his analysis of this status of knowledge / summary for the general reader. Specific illnesses referred to include: Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, depression, and chronic pain, but this really isn’t a book about specific illnesses. Levitin tells us about how music (sound) has been used as a form of treatment (medicine) across many cultures and for all of known history.

The first part of the title is a lyric from the song: “Hallelujah” written by the late Leonard Cohen. As mentioned, the author has spent time as a working musician and many of his anecdotes walk a thin line between being interesting / informative and kind of “just” name dropping. I, personally, like this song a great deal, so it’s use in the title was more of a hook than an annoyance.

Is this a good book? Is it thought provoking? Is it entertaining? Interesting? Yes. Yes. Not really. And, yes.

Good: I found the book to be a reasonably fast and enjoyable read. I tended to read it in blocks of 10-15 pages or a single chapter at a time as this allowed me to “process” / internalize what was covered. I was not particularly interested in the names and various parts of brain anatomy – mainly because the parts don’t really have much significance for me. This was a fair chunk of the early sections, so this was a bit of a slog for me. As it got going, more thought provoking snippets about music were introduced and I started to get more “into” the book. I’m not sure if this was just the author’s style or if he felt he needed to lay some biology groundwork before getting around to the less “firmware” topics.

Thought provoking: The brief statements about the history of brain imaging were definitely more interesting to me, but they got significantly less coverage / explanation. I did like Levitin’s weighing in on the “Lucy” question. The “Lucy” question refers to the SciFi movie trope of what percentage of our brain is in use at any point in time. The general trope is: “We only use 10% of our brains at any time, and if only we could use 100% we’d be able to…” The movie “Lucy” is about a lady who accidentally gets a drug which gives her increased simultaneous access to a greater proportion of her brain. It’s similar to the John Travolta movie “Phenomenon“, where Travolta’s character gets a form of brain cancer which has the same effect. Interestingly (to me) the increased access leads to the deaths of both main characters. Anyway, Levitin says we now know we all use all of our brain at the same, just for different things. Modern science tends to “reductionism” analysis as a means of trying to find a direct and specific cause of something. Medical science indicates the human brain doesn’t assign tasks / responsibilities in this “exact” way. There is “some” of it (targeted brain function), but the brain has remarkable “plasticity” and can pull in other parts of the brain to “cover” for when a normally assigned area is damaged (injury or illness).

Entertaining: No. Not so much really. This is not a book I’d describe as: “Wow! I really want to go back and read that again!” But, then again, there aren’t many books I can say that about…

Interesting: Definitely. When I think about “Science”, I always have to define in my mind whether I mean “real” science or “mathematically supported” science. The difference being: is there a control and a repeatable process or do we need to use statistics to establish degrees of confidence. While biology is normally referred to by the public as a “science”, when you talk to a practitioner, they frequently speak of the “art of medicine”. In general, most of modern Western medicine is emergency / fix-it stuff (broken bones and surgery) while therapeutic medicine tends more to the “art” side. Levitin almost specifically concedes “music as medicine” is therapeutic art and not controlled science. Music makes many of us feel better. But no specific music makes ALL of us feel better. Further, the specific music which helps you now – today, may not help you later – today, or even tomorrow – next week; let alone at relatively distant points in each of our lives. We change and our tastes in music changes. Therefore, we can lean towards our favorite songs / music, but we can never absolutely rely on music to help us in a specific way. And, so, the controlled methodology of science eludes us…

Final recommendation: strong recommendation! As popular science written for the general population goes, I found this an interesting book. I’m a little disappointed I didn’t learn the specific “secret chord that pleased the Lord“, but that was probably a bit too much to hope for. Oh well, back to practicing my chords and scales…

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