AustLit

'Tone deafness, or to use its more technical term, “congenital amusia,” is not an illusion, though some teachers of singing have optimistically claimed that it is. It is true that most people can sing and that some people who sing badly nevertheless hear music very well. The Collins Concise Dictionary (Australian edition) gives as the definition of tone deafness: “unable to distinguish subtle differences in musical pitch.” A scientific study in the Science Daily (August 2007) has estimated that about one in twenty of the population has this condition, which should not be confused with ordinary deafness or progressive loss of hearing like that which affected the Australian poets and writers, Henry Lawson and Judith Wright. Henry Lawson had completely lost his hearing by the age of fourteen as the result of a childhood ear infection and Judith Wright progressively lost her hearing as an adult and became totally deaf in her seventies. Like the composer Beethoven, who continued to compose after losing his hearing, their perception of musical pitch was unaffected. Amusics, or those with tone deafness, have a perceptual problem. They are unable to distinguish differences in pitch or even in some cases to follow the simplest musical tunes. It is my contention that, while many, perhaps most, poets are drawn to poetry through an initial love of music or song, some of the greatest are deaf to musical pitch and are drawn primarily through the musicality of language.' (Introduction)