Voices of the Past with Friends of the Present
On a Sunday afternoon at Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, I was eagerly awaiting the Orlando Consort to begin their concert. These choristers selected Renaissance pieces from important composers and traditions whose works contained within them resonances to representations of music in Renaissance art. As I flicked through the concert booklet, I looked up to watch other concert goers shuffle to their seats. Those in the balcony opposite me in some ways seemed like profiles and portraits along a wall that framed the concert hall. I must have looked the same to them. I could not hear his voice, but with little more than a slight observation of his gestures begging the pardon of a patron he needed to pass by in his row, I instantaneously recognized my neurologist friend. Not two peas in a pod, more like two pigments on a palette, I thought.
When I think about Renaissance art compared to earlier periods, I see paintings with a more realistic approach and a European perspective. It reminds me of Occam's razor—seeking a simple explanation for the events happening in the painting. On the other hand, with earlier Medieval paintings, the perspective of the paining is not tuned to mimic the natural vanishing point as if the viewer were looking at a real scene, but instead, multiple foci and events happen simultaneously in one painting. It reminds me of Hickam's dictum, where many possibilities might be happening simultaneously
While listening to songs from Renaissance composers such as Dufay and Josquin des Prez, we thumbed through the program, which contained images of paintings depicting musical figures from the past.Some were sacred images bridging earth and divine realms where angels sang, while others were secular pieces where people danced, enjoyed life, and loved. Same with the songs. After the concert ended, my friend and I wandered through the Gardner trying to find all the referenced artworks like a game of aesthetic I Spy. With the tunes still playing in our heads and the artifacts before our eyes, everything harmonized to a diachronic multimodal experience. It was like stepping into a time capsule and hearing the echoes of the past in every footstep.
Arts have played a significant role in my adaptation to living in a different country since I moved to Boston almost a year ago. When I listen to young musicians playing Turkish classical or Klezmer, I feel back home in Istanbul, where once (in Ottoman times) Armenian, Greek, and Turkish musicians played together, like today in Boston. When I see birch trees on the street, I imagine them bending like some children jumping over, as Robert Frost described, although I never did that growing up. The familiarity I feel in this new city is related to my appreciation of art, through my limbic system. This concept falls into the neurohumanities realm.
As an amateur flutist, I enjoy deciphering new notes, especially from the Baroque and Renaissance eras. I try to understand the pattern and melody of the song and then fine-tune sounds and passages and focus on the emotion. As humanism once brought a new perspective to music and other arts, neurosciences are helping us to understand the origins of emotion. As art enhances observational skills, neurohumanities will further help us develop empathy, language awareness, and critical thinking. As a neurologist to be, I hope that spending time with music and arts will help me to better empathize with and understand my patients' concerns.
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Osman Corbali is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Department of Neurology. He graduated from Istanbul University, Cerrahpasa Faculty of Medicine (2021), and is applying for neurology residency this year (Match 2023, fingers crossed!). His academic interests include neuroimmunology, particularly neuromyelitis optica spectrum diseases. Twitter: @OCorbali .
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