ABSTRACT
Did Dmitri Shostakovich have music on the brain? An extraordinary article by a Chinese neurosurgeon in next month’s Musical Times suggests that he had a piece of shell shrapnel lodged deep inside his brain, and that as a result each time he leaned his head to the side he heard musical melodies—different each time—which he could use when composing. Moving his head back level immediately stopped the music. Dr Dajue Wang claims to have had the story from the Soviet neurosurgeon whom Shostakovich consulted, and whose x-rays allegedly located the musical fragment in the temporal horn of the left ventricle. Shostakovich was in Leningrad during the siege, but there has previously been no mention of any injury. Dr Ronald Henson, a British neurologist consulted about Wang’s story, says cautiously: ‘I would hesitate to affirm that it could not happen.’
