Music, Poetry and the Brain

Choral music is so closely wedded to poetry that it’s almost impossible to think of one art without the other.  There are wordless choral pieces out there, but not many.  The vast majority of choral works meld music and text in a close embrace, and in fact, there is a long history of music in service of words.  Think of the word painting and poetic expressiveness of the great composers of the Renaissance and the Baroque, and you have nearly 350 years of the composer as poet.  Think further back to ancient Greece and the epics of Homer, the tragedies of Sophocles; although we know them as poetry, they were originally sung.  And even when, in the nineteenth century, the musical world fell in love with “absolute music”—instrumental music unhampered by words—a strong vein of poetic vocal music was carried forward by Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schubert, and many more.

Perhaps it isn’t surprising, then, to discover a study led by a neurologist at the University on Exeter in the UK, Professor Adam Zeman, in which a connection between the areas of the brain stimulated by poetry and the part of the brain that reacts to music was discovered.

Thirteen volunteers were given prose and poetry to read, everything from a prosaic heating installation manual to highly descriptive passages from novels to various sonnets to their own favorite poems.  As they read, their brains were scanned by imaging technology which showed “reading network” areas kicking into gear.  But it was in the reading of the beloved poems, the ones that called forth the strongest emotional responses in the participants, that the musically responsive regions of the brain lit up.

It seems that emotionally charged poems and music stimulate the same areas of the brain, those associated with memory and introspection—and on the right side of the brain, by the way!  In fact, these were more strongly stimulated than the network that is activated by written words.

It makes sense, of course.  There is rhythm in poetry, and a sense of word coloration that interlocks so well with the rhythm of music and the passionate variations of the human voice.  The poignancy, joy and emotive power in both arts is enhanced when they are combined.  But it wasn’t just poems in general, it was the favorite poems, the ones that most touch the heart, that made the connection possible.

Professor Zeman says that this study is helping to make sense of art, psychologically, biologically, and anatomically.

Is that really possible?!

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic director and conductor

Master Chorus Eastside