Kathryn Brickell Music is proud to offer voice lessons to our students in Brooklyn. We will be posting informative articles relating to voice instruction and voice lessons.
The following article consists of fun facts about the power of music.
We hope you will enjoy your voice lessons with our wonderful, experienced and dedicated local voice teachers.
A Brief Anecdote Regarding the Power of Music (adapted from Oliver Sacks A Leg to Stand On)
This is a true story:
A few years ago a young man was walking alone in the hills of Southern Spain when he happened upon a large, bright-yellow sign nailed to the side of a tree that read, Beware of Bull. He thought for a moment that perhaps he had taken a wrong turn and that perhaps it might be best if he stop and retrace his steps, but he quickly put those thoughts aside with a rationalization having to do with how beautiful the hills were and how impossible it would be for something bad to happen in a place as beautiful as this, and he walked on. No doubt, this young man shortly happened upon a bull, which charged him and broke his leg in a dramatic scene of blood, pain and gore.
Getting to the part about music now, the young man was lying there in the woods, essentially in the middle of nowhere, with a broken leg and a dangerously violent bull roaming around in the immediate vicinity. He had to do something; he couldn’t just lie there. But the pain was too great to stand walking. So here’s what he did: he sang a song to himself. Namely, he hummed to himself the tune of Schubert’s fantasy in f minor. Somehow, this young man was able to get into the rhythm of the song, stand, and walk to town and safety. In retrospect, this young man attributes his ability to have done so to the mysterious and overwhelming power of the music that was coursing through his brain.