The Septembere 24 New Yorker contains an article by Oliver Sacks that may be of great interest to this List. It is about the case of Clive Wearing, a musician and musicologist who suffers a particularly severe kind of amnesia. Mr. Wearing cannot retain memories for more than a few seconds, so that his whole world is a succession of unrelated surprises, without coherence, without a history. Nonetheless, he retains the ability to carry out many processes, which include self-care, using the telephone, speaking, reading, and writing in several languages, and ...MUSIC. As Sacks reports: "Clive cannot retain any memory of passing events or experience and, in addition, has lost most of the memories of events and experiences *preceding* his encephalitis--- how, then, does he retain his remarkable knowledge of music, his ability to sight-read, play the piano and organ, sing, and conduct a choir in the masterly way he did before he became ill?" The article is fascinating and frightening, like many of Sacks' inquiries. It can be accessed at: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/09/24/070924fa_fact_sacks Jon Gallant Department of Gnome Sciences University of Washington *********************************************** The CLASSICAL mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's HDMail High Deliverability Mailer for reliable, lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html