Music is the key to human evolution: Tatiana Chernigovskaya

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

How does art affect our brain, why should all children be taught music, and how are those who can play instruments different from other people? Tatiana Chernigovskaya, a professor at St. Petersburg State University, Doctor of Philology and Biology, a person and ambassador of modern science in St. Petersburg, spoke about this.

The brain is also art

It seems to me that the brain and what it does most of all resemble music, or rather a jam session, jazz improvisation. All participants in the events are neurons or clusters of neurons. Everyone has their own place of residence, but when they have to complete a task, they come together and begin: they have no score, no conductor, they have never even met before, but start playing together. Our brains are an incredible tool with a billion keys that we don't deserve. The trouble is that you need to learn to play on it, it takes a lot of time and effort, and you might never learn.

Why do we need art

Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman was sure that the need for art is obvious, since it gives a person the opportunity to walk the unbeaten path, to experience what has not been experienced in the real world, that is, art is a second life. People are creatures that live in at least two worlds. The first is the world of chairs, computers, oranges and cups, that is, material, and the second is symbolic. Where did it come from, why did art begin at all, now there is a cup, why draw it? The answer "to remember" does not suit me. Why was it necessary to create a theater thousands of years ago? Moreover, the second world may be even more important than the material one - because of it, wars were unleashed, for example, on religious grounds.

Why we perceive art differently

Ludwig Wittgenstein claims that any text - musical, pictorial, sculptural, literary - is a carpet, and the one who looks at it pulls his threads out of it, reads it in his own way. Such complex objects as works of art exist only when there is someone who looks at them and understands them, understands the concept and can interpret. The sound wave enters the ear, the perfume molecules fly into the nose, all these are just physical signals, but when they reach the brain, they become music, but only if the perceiver knows what it is, if he is prepared. If there is no preparation, something happens that we have all seen a hundred times in the Hermitage, when, looking at Matisse, people with an unclouded mind say: "Oh, my 4-year-old son still draws not like that." They are simply not ready, for them Shostakovich is a mess instead of music.

Art is born out of wrong

Alfred Schnittke remarked: “To form a pearl in a shell lying on the bottom of the ocean, a grain of sand is needed - something 'wrong', foreign. Just like in art, where the truly great is often born "not according to the rules." If a computer writes music, then this is of no interest, because it simply goes over the different options that have been put into it.

A person has many languages: verbal, mathematics, posture, gestures, facial expressions, clothing. Music is one of the most complex, subordinate to rational regulation, but, as it were, completely out of meaning. It has its own semantics, but non-plot. “This is a language where the semantics are all random and fragmented, as if a person controls forces that do not obey him,” notes Schnittke. This is also important: what are these forces that do not obey us, who is the boss in the house? There is no answer to this question. A person is like a student of a sorcerer who uses magic formulas without understanding how they work. Probably something like that happens to the music.

Such complex objects as works of art exist only when there is someone who looks at them and understands them, understands the concept and can interpret

Schnittke says: “A mistake or handling a rule on the verge of risk is the zone where life-giving elements of art arise and develop” - this is the trick. When they ask me who I am hiring, I answer that I definitely do not need excellent students, they are completely uninteresting to me. I do not need a person who has learned everything: firstly, I have already learned everything myself, and secondly, for this I already have a computer that remembers everything. I need an employee who thinks in an unusual way - a C grade is suitable, and even better, a poor student.

It is generally believed that someone who thinks logically thinks well. This is true, but for some time: logic is a good thing, but it can become an obstacle to new knowledge. If something does not fit into the standard logic, then what to do with it, throw it away? If so, then we need to throw out our entire civilization, because all the breakthroughs have been made against a rigid framework.

Which hemisphere is responsible for the music

It is believed that the right brain is the artist, and the left brain is the mathematician. Scientists used to think so, but it's long gone, but many people are still convinced of this. This has nothing to do with reality, because there are many different arts and different mathematicians, for example, the research of OBERIUTS is a purely left-brain activity. The right hemisphere is responsible for the so-called fuzzy sets, a different type of thinking and, of course, when it comes to major breakthroughs, it comes into its own. Computers do not make discoveries, they only help us with this.

Music and Time

What is mathematics and music? Is this really the language of the brain? And then what happens over time? I asked several serious musicians how they are doing with time on stage. I heard from several of them that while they walk from the wings to the piano, they have time to play the whole play in their head. I say: “It can't be like that, it's big. And is it really always? " They answer that it is not always, but if it is not played, then the concert will be unsuccessful. Over time, they have a special relationship, one very cool said: "Time is like jelly for us, we can squeeze it, and it can suddenly explode, come in full shape."

Music and Mathematics

Math and music are very similar things. For those who are able to understand the formulas, they are unusually beautiful and evoke the same aesthetic enthusiastic feelings that others have a piece of music. Such experiments were carried out: people were examined in a functional magnetic resonance imager, and the mathematician's brain showed a similar activity from contemplating beautiful pictures and an amazingly derived theorem. This suggests that the brain has general mechanisms of reaction to beauty - not to what is hanging in a frame, but to beauty as such.

Art is like a dream

Pavel Florensky wrote: "A powerful blow to our being is required, suddenly plucking us out of ourselves, or the shattering and even twilight of consciousness, always wandering at the border of the worlds, but not possessing the ability and strength to delve into one or the other on its own." I translate into Russian: a person who makes a creative breakthrough in science or art is in a dull state, he is not fully conscious, but somewhere on the edge. Of course, we must not forget that a dream is not a dream, just anyone. Mendeleev, not his cook, saw the periodic table, since the scientist had to suffer for many years before the table got tired of it and she decided to come to him.

As you know, Einstein played the violin and argued that if he had not become a physicist, he would have been a musician, which sees life in a musical aspect. And it was not a way for him to rest, it was an important part of his mental and spiritual space. He said: "Intuition is a sacred gift, reason is an obedient servant."

Tatiana Chernigovskaya: "If you are bored with life, you are a complete fool"

When they say that the human brain is an algorithm, I wonder what algorithms the works of Botticelli, Leonardo, Durer could create. None! If people from Skolkovo were sitting here, they would say: “Come on, we’ll write you a program that will start Dürer’s output at eight pieces per second”. Formally - yes, indeed, it will be a la Durer, but any person who understands at least something in art will understand that this is a deception.

Art is a mysterious thing, it answers questions that have not yet been asked, and is far ahead of science and real events. For example, the Impressionists explained to us how visual perception occurs in humans many decades before scientists got to it.

What is the brain of a musician

Creators really have different brains: the data of tomographs show that some parts of it work more actively for them than for other people. I am sure that every young child needs to be taught music, because this is a fine and sophisticated neural network tuning - and it does not matter if he becomes a professional or not. Music teaches you to pay attention to details: which sound is higher and which is lower, which is shorter and which is longer - this is preparation for reading, writing, further complex cognitive work, in a sense it is an investment in your old age. People who speak more than one language and those who practice music are known to postpone Alzheimer's disease by several years. If you train your head from childhood, your memory will deteriorate at a much slower rate.

When a person plays the piano, his right hand does one job, the left hand does something completely different, and this is a terrible brain strain. And I'm not saying anything yet, about meanings, emotions, only about technology.

If you want to keep your mind in a decent condition, then the head must constantly and hard work.

It has been proven that in people who play the violin, the part of the brain that is responsible for the motor skills of the hand with the bow is twice as large as that that is responsible for the side on which the instrument is held. That is, the brain develops those parts that are engaged in business. If you want to keep your mind in a decent state, then the head must constantly and hard work. Learning physically changes the brain, affects the quality of neurons, the thickness of the cortex, and the volume of gray matter. Music is a complex cognitive activity. There is no rest for the brain at all, only if you are a complete fool, lie on the couch, eat hamburgers and watch some kind of rubbish. And while playing music, amazing things happen, genes can be turned on, which are usually inactive.

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How listening to music trains the brain

Alexander Pyatigorsky wrote: "The thought holds until we forget to hold it." It is generally difficult to think, thought strives to run away from you. A year ago we went to the Dalai Lama and there we were offered to participate in a meditation session - for me it was the first experience. Said, "Think about the point under your nose." It turned out that concentrating all of myself on something is very difficult, I was always carried away somewhere. To keep a thought, you need tremendous strength, just as in order to tensely, attentively listen to complex music, you start thinking about something all the time, but you need to concentrate on one point. Music is one of the most important human skills, it is still not fully understood what it is, and we must cherish it, cherish and cherish it.