Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A psychiatrist and author who explores music's emotional impact, best known for his book "Music and the Mind".
On the island
Eight records
Ich will bei meinem Jesu wachen
The first record is one of the tenor arias from the St. Matthew Passion of Bach. And this partly originates in the fact that I used to hear that… the St Matthew Passion quite regularly in my childhood, because the Westminster Abbey Choir performed it every year.
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77
Part of Brahms's violin concerto with Fritz Kreisler as the soloist. Kreisler was a great hero of mine… He played it as if he'd never played it before.
I'd like to hear my dear friend Alfred Brendel, who I think is a great, great pianist, playing some of Beethoven's Diabelli variations because… they comprise all of Beethoven, as it were, in one piece.
String Quartet No. 3 in G minor, Op. 74
I want to play part of one of the Haydn string quartets. One of my friends in music was Hans Keller, and he tragically died… the last thing he said to me was, 'You will go on listening to the Haydn quartets, won't you?'
I want a piece of Bartók because I love Bartók. I think he's exciting and interesting and melancholy and a wonderful composer.
The next piece of music is from Debussy's piano music… I love Debussy's piano music… I chose this piece, 'Soirée dans Grenade', because it's part of Debussy's Spanish music, and… we might talk about why that's of particular interest in a minute.
The next piece, I want to hear Glenn Gould, who I think is an incomparable Bach interpreter… I would like to hear him play some of the Goldberg variations.
String Quintet No. 3 in G minor, K. 516Favourite
Arthur Grumiaux, Arpad Geréz, Georges Janzer, Max Lesueur, Eva Czako
Record number eight is Mozart's string quintet in G minor, which I think is one of the supreme works of music.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:21What is music, and why does it reach the parts of us that perhaps other art forms don't?
I think music resonates with the body. I mean, the first thing about music is that it really affects you physiologically and it can be measured. I mean, your heart rate increases, your breathing alters, and all sorts of things happen to you physically. Listening to music makes you want to move or to dance, but looking at a picture doesn't make you want to dance. I mean there's a great difference between music and the other arts for this reason.
Presenter asks
5:46Would you describe [life at Twenty Dean's Yard] to me? I mean, what was life like living there?
Well, it was very … my parents belonged to the Victorian age, 'cause my father was born in 1869, and he was over fifty when I was born, and my mother was very nearly forty-five. And so it was very much a Victorian household. In fact, we had family prayers before breakfast, you know, with my father reading a bit of the Bible, then we all said the Lord's Prayer before we had our breakfast, and so on.
Presenter asks
10:48From your prep school you were sent on to Winchester, where still apparently you felt rather isolated and unhappy. … Would you say that you're lucky to have emerged from what was obviously rather an unusual and solitary background as … rounded and balanced as you are?
The keepsakes
The book
Marcel Proust
I was introduced to Proust when I was an undergraduate by CP Snow, and I've always enjoyed reading it. It's a nice long book.
The luxury
I think my luxury would have to be a piano. Maybe, if I had nothing else to do, I would finally master this bloody instrument with which I have wrestled all my life.
Well … I don't think I am particularly. But no, I think I am very lucky. … I felt out of it, and I felt that people didn't like me when I was young … so I developed various techniques of dealing with this … and one of them was becoming a good listener … And because I developed this technique of … ingratiating myself with people, I think it's one thing that drove me into psychiatry actually, because I discovered that this was a way of relating to people.
Presenter asks
20:45How would you define the job of a psychoanalyst, Dr Storr? Is it fundamentally to be a good listener?
Well, you have to be tolerant and you have to have empathy, but at the same time you have to be able to be objective and detached. And it's that combination which is difficult. … I've seen a lot of harm done by tea and sympathy. … you also have to have this very objective attitude and a lot of experience of the difficulties that human beings get into if you're really going to be prepared to help them.
Presenter asks
24:14Does your childhood experience of solitude and feelings of isolation mean that you would enjoy your desert island, Dr Storr, or does it mean you have a horror of being too much alone?
No, I like being alone. I don't have a horror of it at all. I mean, obviously I'm an ordinary human being … I want human companionship, but it doesn't fill me with the same horror that it does many people. So it wouldn't be the first thing that I should be anxious about on a desert island by any means at all.
Presenter asks
24:43You believe, like Gibbon, don't you, that solitude is the school of genius? … Do you think it is possible for a man or woman to be entirely happy alone on a desert island?
No, I don't. I mean, men and women are social beings and we all need human relationships. … but people vary very much in how much they need human relationships at any one given time … I think as people get older, they tend to turn to more impersonal interests. … I think of the changes that occurred in Beethoven's writing during the course of his life and so on. So I think that as you get older, probably your interest in other human beings declines to some extent.
“I think Haydn is my favourite antidepressant. I know no other composer, and I'm not alone in this, who has such a powerful effect on changing the mood if you happen to be feeling depressed.”
“I look back on it as solitary but very happy when I was at home. But then, of course, things went wrong because my parents thought that for my health's sake I ought to go away to school in the country, and this was a disaster. I was sent away when I was eight, and like so many people of my generation and so on, I was very miserable and only really happy at home.”
“I once started to write an autobiography which I've abandoned, I called it 'Found Wanting' because I felt I'd always been weighed in the balance and found wanting.”
“I think a beneficent Providence ensures that we shall become rather detached when we're dying and not be too anxious about the process.”