Clin Med
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Biography Historical Article
Shostakovich versus the Central Committee: the power of music.
The centenary of Shostakovich's birth, celebrated in 2006, generated considerable interest in his life and music. During the Cold War his music was rarely played in the West, and it was not until after his death in 1975 that it re-emerged. ⋯ Much debate has focused on whether Shostakovich was a victim or mouthpiece of Communism. In order to fully appreciate his music, it is essential to understand his personal and professional life under Josef Stalin--in particular his public humiliation by the Central Committee, and by professional musicians who were Communist Party members.
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Hubris syndrome is associated with power, more likely to manifest itself the longer the person exercises power and the greater the power they exercise. A syndrome not to be applied to anyone with existing mental illness or brain damage. ⋯ It is less likely to develop in people who retain a personal modesty, remain open to criticism, have a degree of cynicism or well developed sense of humour. Four heads of government in the last 100 years are singled out as having developed hubris syndrome: David Lloyd George, Margaret Thatcher, George W Bush and Tony Blair.
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Performing music at a professional level requires the integration of multimodal sensory and motor information and precise monitoring of the performance via auditory feedback. In the context of Western classical music, musicians are forced to reproduce highly controlled movements almost perfectly with a high reliability. These specialised sensorimotor skills are acquired during extensive training periods over many years. ⋯ Auditory-sensorimotor integration, for example, is accompanied by rapid modulations of neuronal connectivity in the time range of 20 minutes. Finally, dysfunctional plasticity in musicians, known as musician's dystonia, leads to deterioration of extensively trained fine motor skills. Musician's dystonia may be caused by training induced dysplasticity with pathological fusion of central nervous representations in sensorimotor cortical and subcortical brain regions.