Progress in brain research, volume 216

Serial Editor

Vincent Walsh
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
University College London
17 Queen Square
London WC1N 3AR UK


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Contributors
Dirk-Matthias Altenm€
uller
Epilepsy Center, Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital Freiburg,
Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
Eckart Altenm€
uller
University of Music, Drama and Media, Institute of Music Physiology and
Musicians’ Medicine, Hannover, Germany
Hansj€
org Ba¨zner
Department of Neurology, Klinikum Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany
Christian Blahak
Department of Neurology, Universita¨tsmedizin Mannheim, University of
Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany
Julien Bogousslavsky
Genolier Swiss Medical Network Neurocenter, clinique Valmont, Glion/Montreux,
Switzerland
Franc¸ois Boller
Department of Neurology, George Washington University Medical School,

Washington, DC, USA
Paul Eling
Department of Psychology, Radboud University Nijmegen, Donders Institute for
Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Stanley Finger
Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA
Christian Foerch
Department of Neurology, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Antonia Francesca Franchini
Department of Clinical Science and Community Health, University of Milan,
Milano, Italy
Amy B. Graziano
Division of Music History, Hall-Musco Conservatory of Music, Chapman
University, Orange, CA, USA
Samuel H. Greenblatt
Department of Neurosurgery, Alpert Medical School of Brown University,
Providence, RI, USA
Michael G. Hennerici
Department of Neurology, Universita¨tsmedizin Mannheim, University of
Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany
Julene K. Johnson
Institute for Health & Aging, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA

v


vi

Contributors

Axel Karenberg
Institute for the History of Medicine and Medical Ethics, University of Cologne,
Cologne, Germany
James Kennaway
School of History, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, UK
Howard I. Kushner
Neuroscience & Behavioral Biology, and Department of Behavioral Sciences &
Health Education, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta,
GA, USA
Richard J. Lederman
Department of Neurology, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case
Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA
Marjorie Perlman Lorch
Applied Linguistics and Communication, School of Social Sciences, History, and
Philosophy, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK
Lorenzo Lorusso
Department of Neurology, “Mellino Mellini” Hospital Trust, Brescia, Italy
Alessandro Porro
Department of Medical and Surgical Specialties, Radiological Science and Public
Health, University of Brescia, Brescia, Italy
Henry Powell
Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego,
CA, USA
Michele Augusto Riva
Research Centre on History of Biomedical Thought, Centro Studi sulla Storia del
Pensiero Biomedico (CESPEB), University of Milano Bicocca, Monza, Italy
Vittorio Alessandro Sironi
Research Centre on History of Biomedical Thought, Centro Studi sulla Storia del
Pensiero Biomedico (CESPEB), University of Milano Bicocca, Monza, Italy
Reinhard Steinberg

€nchen, Germany
Josef-Lutz-Weg 2, Mu
Harry Whitaker
Department of Psychology, Northern Michigan University, Marquette, MI, USA
Yuri Zagvazdin
College of Medical Sciences, Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, FL,
USA
William Zeitler
San Bernardino, CA, USA


Preface
This is the first of two volumes dealing with music, neurology, and the basic neurosciences. It follows two volumes on the fine arts (one exploring historical dimensions
and the other looking at newer developments) and two on literature (one on historical
and literary connections, and one on neurological and psychiatric disorders). These
four earlier volumes appeared in Progress in Brain Research in 2013 (vols. 203–206)
and were assembled by two of the three current editors (Stanley Finger and Franc¸ois
Boller) working with others specializing in these fields (Dahlia Zaidel and Julien
Bogousslavsky on the fine arts, and Anne Stiles on literature). Neurologist–
musicologist Eckart Altenm€
uller is our specialist member of the editorial team for
the two music tomes that complete this six-volume series.
History is the common theme permeating all of the contributions to this volume,
whereas its companion volume provides some history but focuses more on new developments and insights related to music, the brain and the nerves. This organization
parallels how the two fine arts books were assembled. In contrast, all of the chapters
in the two literature volumes in one way or another take us back in time.
Although there have been quite a few newer books dealing with music and the
nervous system, these compilations are not as historically oriented as the present volume, although most do have introductory chapters or parts of chapters that provide
some historical material, particularly when famous musicians and their possible neurological disorders are mentioned. Moreover, by being devoted solely to music and
the nervous system, this volume and its companion piece also differ from those neurology and neuroscience books that deal with painting, literature, and music under a

single cover, and therefore are more general and less focused, as well as from books
dealing with famous musicians and all of medicine.
Thus, this volume has special and even unique features. Nevertheless, it goes
without saying that, even with this focus, it is impossible to come forth with a volume
that deals with music and all facets of the basic and applied neurosciences, especially
when also adding in history. The literature is simply too vast and the connections are
too numerous. The best that anyone or a team can do is to offer a sampling of the
different ways in which music and these specialized scientific and medical fields
can be brought together, with the hope that such an endeavor will stimulate others
to think about additional connections that would shed even more light on several
disciplines.
With these thoughts in mind, we have chosen to open this volume with two chapters from the history of the neurosciences. One deals with how Franz Joseph Gall and
the phrenologists who followed him early in the nineteenth century approached
music—boldly trying to localize a “faculty” for this function in the front of the
cerebrum based on human and lower animal skull features. The other examines
how music, neurology, and psychology were coming together somewhat later in
the nineteenth century.

xv


xvi

Preface

The second section of this volume deals with music and aphasia, but not in famous
musicians who suffered strokes. These chapters are largely concerned with children
living during the nineteenth century, who attracted the attention of British neurologist John Hughlings Jackson and other medical practitioners because they had very
limited speech yet were able to sing. Historians have largely overlooked these cases
until now, and they make for fascinating reading.

Our third section, although again only brief, focuses on a frightening belief,
especially common late in the 1700s and into the 1800s, namely that some types
of music can be pathological. Most notably, some writers and musicians believed
that the vibrations from the glass armonica, a musical instrument invented by
Benjamin Franklin in the mid-1700s, could fray nerves and some drive people
insane! As will be seen, “susceptible” populations at this moment in time meant
individuals supposedly having weak nervous systems, often women living in urban
settings.
The fourth section is by far the longest, and it is here that our authors examine
famous musicians with neurological and psychiatric disorders, discussing how they
were treated and how their afflictions affected their compositions and/or playing.
The sampling of musicians and their illnesses includes, but is not limited to: Robert
Schumann, whose insanity has been attributed to syphilis; Paul Wittgenstein, an amputee who suffered from phantom limb syndrome; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who,
contrary to popular belief, probably did not have Gilles de la Tourette syndrome; and
Fre´de´ric Chopin, whose problems are still a source of great controversy and, as our
author opines, should make us think carefully and perhaps differently about all retrospective diagnoses.
The idea that opera can tell us a lot about what nonphysicians (i.e., librettists)
might have been thinking in the past, and about what general audiences were being
told about certain neurological and psychiatric disorders, is the subject of our last
section. The first chapter here examines somnambulism (sleepwalking) as portrayed
in the operas of Verdi and Bellini, the former based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth and
the latter being more representative of the Romantic Era in outlook. The second is
largely concerned with madness in opera, a subject that has always captured the popular imagination.
As with the other volumes in this series on neurology/neuroscience and the arts,
we hope that this collection of scholarly papers will show readers some of the many
ways in which the basic neurosciences, neurology, and the arts can come together to
reveal more about brain functions, the arts and humanities, and, for that matter, certain features of everyday life. Ideally, the material covered in this volume will also
serve as a fitting prelude to our second music volume, which will have a greater focus
on newer ideas and discoveries, and will also examine music therapies then and now.
Eckart Altenm€uller

Stanley Finger
Franc¸ois Boller


Preface

RECOMMENDED ADDITIONAL READINGS
Bogousslavsky, J., Boller, F. (Eds.), 2005. Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists. Karger,
Basel.
Bogousslavsky, J., Hennerici, M.G. (Eds.), 2007. Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists—
Part 2. Karger, Basel.
Bogousslavsky, J., Hennerici, M.G., Ba¨zner, H., Bassetti, C. (Eds.), 2010. Neurological
Disorders in Famous Artists—Part 3. Karger, Basel.
Critchley, M., Hensen, R.A. (Eds.), 1977. Music and the Brain: Studies in the Neurology of
Music. Heinemann Medical, London.
Horden, P., 2000. Music as Mwedicine: The History of Music Therapy since Antiquity.
Ashgate Publishing Ltd., Aldershot, UK.
Kennaway, J., 2012. Bad Vibrations: The History of the Idea of Music as a Cause of Disease.
Ashgate Publishing Limited, Farnham, UK.
Neumayr, A., 1994–1997. Music & Medicine (3 vols.). D.J. Parent, trans Medi-Ed Press,
Bloomington, IL.
Rose, F.C. (Ed.), 2004. Neurology of the Arts. Imperial College Press, London.
Rose, F.C. (Ed.), 2010. Neurology of Music. Imperial College Press, London.
Sacks, O., 2007. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
Zeitler, W.W., 2013. The Glass Armonica: The Music of Madness. Music Arcana, San
Bernardino, CA.

xvii

CHAPTER

Franz Joseph Gall and
music: the faculty and
the bump

1

Paul Eling*,1, Stanley Finger†, Harry Whitaker{
*Department of Psychology, Radboud University Nijmegen, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition
and Behaviour, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
†
Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA
{
Department of Psychology, Northern Michigan University, Marquette, MI, USA
1
Corresponding author: Tel.:+0031-24-3612557, e-mail address:

Abstract
The traditional story maintains that Franz Joseph Gall’s (1758–1828) scientific program began
with his observations of schoolmates with bulging eyes and good verbal memories. But his
search to understand human nature, in particular individual differences in capacities, passions,
and tendencies, can also be traced to other important observations, one being of a young girl
with an exceptional talent for music. Rejecting contemporary notions of cognition, Gall concluded that behavior results from the interaction of a limited set of basic faculties, each with its
own processes for perception and memory, each with its own territory in both cerebral or
cerebellar cortices. Gall identified 27 faculties, one being the sense of tone relations or music.
The description of the latter is identical in both his Anatomie et Physiologie and Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau et sur Celles de Chacune de ses Parties, where he provided positive and negative evidences and discussed findings from humans and lower animals, for the faculty. The
localization of the cortical faculty for talented musicians, he explained, is demonstrated by a
“bump” on each side of the skull just above the angle of the eye; hence, the lower forehead of
musicians is broader or squarer than in other individuals. Additionally, differences between

singing and nonsinging birds also correlate with cranial features. Gall even brought age, racial,
and national differences into the picture. What he wrote about music reveals much about his
science and creative thinking.

Keywords
Gall (Franz Joseph), Spurzheim (Johann), organology, craniology, phrenology, music faculty,
musicians, amusia, cortical localization of function, physiognomy

Writing about the history of the discovery of the organ for music, Franz Joseph Gall
(1758–1828; Fig. 1) informs his readers: “There was shown to me a young girl,
named Bianchi, aged about 5 years, and I was asked to decide what was the most
Progress in Brain Research, Volume 216, ISSN 0079-6123, />© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

3


4

CHAPTER 1 Gall and music

FIGURE 1
Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828).
From the Collection BIU Sante´ Me´decine.

remarkable talent of this child.”1 He then states, “The idea had not yet presented itself
to my mind, that the talent for music could be recognized by the form of the head.”
What he learned about this girl (date not given, but likely in the 1790s) is notable.
To quote,
This child repeated all that she had heard sung or executed on the piano; she
retained by heart whole concertos, which she had heard at most twice . . . Her parents assured me that she was endowed, with this astonishing faculty for music

only. What could I conclude from this declaration? That there exists a well marked
difference between memory for music, and the other species of memory which
I knew at that period; and that each species of memory must have its distinct
organ.
Gall (1835, vol. 5, p. 63)

He continues with these even more overlooked words:
From that moment I devoted myself to more connected researches into the different species of memory. In very little time I became acquainted with a considerable
number of persons, who had an excellent memory for certain objects, and a very
1

We have unsuccessfully tried to trace this young girl. Antonia Bianchi was a famous opera singer, born
in 1800 in Como, Italy. We believe that the 5-year-old girl mentioned by Gall had to be born before this
time, i.e., around 1790, since he states that she stimulated him to develop his organology more systematically, leading to his public lectures from 1796 onward, as described in his letter to von Retzer in 1798.


Gall and music

feeble memory for others. These observations led me to augment the number of my
denominations for memory, and I admitted a peculiar memory for tones.
Gall (1835, vol. 5, p. 63)

What Gall wrote about Bianchi, and indeed his entire section on the “Faculty of
Perceiving the Relation of Tones, Talent for Music (Ton-sinn),” is the same in his
two most famous works. These are his landmarks: Anatomie et Physiologie du Syste`me Nerveux en Ge´ne´ral et du Cerveau en Particulier. . ., written in part with his
assistant, Johann Spurzheim, and his later, smaller and less expensive Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau et sur Celles de Chacune de ses Parties, which was translated by
Winslow Lewis in 1835 and from which the quotations presented above were taken.
(Because we found Lewis’ English translation to be consistent with the French text,
we will continue to cite it when quoting Gall on the music faculty, rather than
translating anew).

This revelation about a specific talent for music clearly energized Gall, altered his
thinking, and affected the course of his research program. Based on his own words,
the idea of distinct faculties located in specialized cortical areas seems to have been
present in Gall’s mind, in at least nascent form, prior to Bianchi. At this time, while
his ideas about the organization of the mind were still taking shape, he apparently
realized that he had another basic faculty to consider, another reason for collecting
special or unusual cases, and another reason to think differently about memory.
These were extremely important developments that shaped his public theorizing
about brain and behavior (i.e., his organologie also termed his Scha¨dellehre or craniology; for more on Gall’s terminology, see Clarke and Jacyna, 1987, pp. 222–223;
Van Wyhe, 2004), which would soon emerge from a developmental state to a more
formal system of conjectures, methods, and (in his mind) facts backed by empirical
evidence.
The two aforementioned quotations also reveal that the starting point for Gall’s
theorizing stemmed from his interest in individual differences. Bianchi, for one,
revealed that some individuals possess specific talents that others do not have and
that a person can be exceptional at one thing, such as music, while being quite ordinary at others. Clearly, Gall concluded that the human mind is not a general faculty
or even made of a few components such as common sense, fantasy, imagination,
judgment, and memory. On the contrary, there are various specific faculties, each
with its own memory function. Additionally, Gall was becoming even more certain
that talent is not primarily a matter of learning. Because Bianchi never studied music
and was just a child, her unique talent must be innate, although capable of being
shaped to some extent by experience.
All of this was of great significance to Gall, whose overriding passion was to
comprehend what might be called human nature. He trained and practiced as a physician, and he was an exceptionally good anatomist (a fact recognized by even the
staunchest opponents of his organology). But what he wanted most was to understand
why human beings behave as they do and especially why they tend to act
differently—an observation suggesting to him that people do not possess perfectly

5

6

CHAPTER 1 Gall and music

similar brains. This imposing challenge was his calling, and it, more than his neuroanatomical demonstrations or even cranioscopy, was his obsession.
In this contribution, we shall focus on Gall’s views about a basic faculty for music
with its associated cranial bump. In order to approach this largely neglected topic in a
meaningful way, we shall briefly describe Gall’s formative years and training, and
why he rejected traditional views of the mind. We shall then turn to how he developed his “science,” examining his research strategies and methodologies. With this
as background, we shall then turn more specifically to music, looking in detail at
what he wrote about a cortical organ for music, venturing beyond the influential case
just mentioned. In closing, mention will be made of Gall’s legacy, including his belief that one could identify a highly developed cortical area that might distinguish
talented musicians from their less talented cousins.

1 A BRIEF SUMMARY OF GALL’S LIFE
Much has been written about Gall and the features of his organology, more commonly referred to as his “phrenology,” a term he, however, did not use.2,3 He was
born on March 9, 1758, in Tiefenbronn, a small village in the Grand Duchy of Baden.
His father was a merchant of Italian extraction (originally, Gallo), who wanted his
son to enter the priesthood. The boy, however, was more interested in the natural
world than the spiritual world and after some basic schooling began his medical studies in the French city of Strasbourg, where he married his first wife.
In 1781, he moved to Vienna, where he received his Doctor of Medicine degree 4
years later. Gall then established a private practice there and in 1791 published two
chapters of a book on diseases that he never finished (Gall, 1791). Three years later,
Anton von St€
orck (1731–1803), physician to Empress Maria Theresa (1717–1780),
recommended Gall to be his successor. Stating that he was not one for court life, Gall,
who was doing very well, rejected the offer and suggested another physician, Joseph
Freiherr von Stifft (1760–1836), as more suited for the position—a recommendation
that he would soon regret.

“Documents do exist which show that Gall was working on the elaboration of his
doctrine on the brain at least since 1792” (Ackerknecht and Vallois, 1956, p. 8).
Hollander (1901a, p. 4), one of Gall’s biographers, states that Gall began announcing
and lecturing on his new brain physiology in 1796. Other historians cite 1798 as the
date of an important published letter to Joseph Friedrich von Retzer (1754–1824) on
the functions of the brain (Gall, 1798) and as the beginning of Gall’s craniological
2
For more on Gall and his system, see below and, for example, Lewes (1871), Hollander (1901a,b,
1909), Temkin (1947), Ackerknecht and Vallois (1956), Jefferson (1960), Clarke and Jacyna
(1987), Young (1970), Lesky (1979), Zola-Morgan (1995), Finger (2000), and Van Wyhe (2004).
3
“Phrenology” was Spurzheim’s preferred term, although he did not coin it (Clarke and Jacyna, 1987,
pp. 222–223). Based on the Greek word phrene, for mind, it literally means discourse on, or study of,
the mind, which Spurzheim held included the relationship between the mind and the body, more specifically the brain.


1 A brief summary of gall’s life

project (see Ackerknecht and Vallois, 1956, p. 8; Jefferson, 1960, p. 98). Making the
dating of when Gall first began to present his ideas publically even more complex,
some of those present at his lectures took and shared notes, helping to spread the
word well before he published his doctrine.
In December 1801, Dr. Stifft (now “his medical majesty”) advised Emperor
Francis II (1768–1835) to prohibit Gall from publicly lecturing, because it promoted
dangerous materialism. Stifft and the emperor were supported by the conservative
Roman Catholic clergy.4 The government responded with a “general regulation” that
prohibited all private lectures without special permission (Capen, 1881; also see
Gall, 1835, vol. 1, p. 19). Gall never applied for this permission, well aware of where
Francis I stood on the issue, the strength of his opponents, and who was being targeted. Thus, Gall’s public lecturing ended, at least in Vienna.
In 1805, Gall embarked with his recently acquired assistant, Johann Spurzheim

(1776–1832; Fig. 2),5 on a lecture and fact-finding tour of Germany, Switzerland,
Holland, and Denmark (Van Wyhe, 2002). Their travels involved stops at prisons,
asylums, universities, and primary schools. Gall met kings, queens, and other royalties, and was frequently treated as a great celebrity, even though he had not published
anything on his new system other than the letter to Baron von Retzer. Spurzheim
informs us that Gall had started on his anatomical studies of the nervous system prior
to this time but after 1800.6
Gall and Spurzheim entered Napoleon Bonaparte’s (1769–1821) Paris during the
fall of 1807, where there was freedom of the press and Gall could lecture without
censorship. He thought he would spend 1 year there but stayed for his remaining
21 years. Anxious to be recognized as a great scientist with a world-class affiliation,
Gall, who was fluent in French, quickly submitted a memoire, coauthored by
Spurzheim, to the Acade´mie des Sciences in 1808, in which he presented his extensive anatomical findings and discoveries, based on dissecting the brain from below
and following fiber tracts centrally (Gall and Spurzheim, 1809). Stating that the Acade´mie des Sciences was prepared to deal only with the physical sciences, but probably also because of its bias against Gall’s materialism, support for other views of the
brain (as a gland), and Napoleon’s xenophobia, his application for membership was
rebuffed. Later, when offered a chance to return to Vienna, he turned it down.7
While continuing to build a flourishing private practice, he and Spurzheim
embarked on an ambitious project in French dealing with organology, their Anatomie
4

There were also other charges facing him, one being that what he was teaching was particularly seductive to the impressionable female mind. Gall responded that he only knew of four young ladies who
had attended his lectures, all chaperoned by their mothers.
5
Johann Spurzheim was born in Germany’s Mosel Valley, where his father was a farmer, and began as a
theology student before turning to medicine. He first met Gall during one of his lectures in 1800. Prior
to this time, a student named Niklas assisted Gall with his dissections.
6
A concise list of Gall’s many discoveries and insights about the gray matter and white matter, the fiber
tracts, and the cerebral and cerebellar cortices can be found in Hollander (1909, pp. 5–7). For a newer
discussion of his anatomy, see Rawlings and Rossitch (1994).
7

The invite was due to Prince Klemens Von Metternich (1773–1859), the Austrian ambassador to
France, who had known Gall in Vienna and influenced Francis II to invite him back in 1814.

7


8

CHAPTER 1 Gall and music

FIGURE 2
Johann Spurzheim (1776–1832).
Portrait from the Phrenological Journal and Miscellany, 1832. Reproduced with permission from the Whipple
Library, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge.

et Physiologie, which was published in four folio volumes between 1810 and 1819
with a separate folio atlas (dated 1810) containing 100 copperplate engravings (Gall
and Spurzheim, 1810–1819). Spurzheim was coauthor on the first two volumes,
dated 1810 and 1812, but left Gall in France for England and Scotland in 1813, while
the second volume was being prepared. Only Gall’s name appears on the 1818 and
1819 volumes. Realizing the price of these monumental works greatly limited sales
and dissemination, Gall came forth with a slightly adapted set of six volumes (without an atlas), Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau et sur Celles de Chacune de ses Parties,
which appeared between 1822 and 1825 (Gall, 1822–1825). These volumes were his
last major publications.
Gall’s anatomy continued to be admired during his Paris years, and his large practice was lucrative and included at least 10 ambassadors. Nevertheless, his craniological ideas and other notions about brain and mind generated considerable and
sometimes heated controversy. Venerated by some and severely criticized as a


2 Abstract and newer faculties

charlatan or quack by others, Gall’s health began to deteriorate about 18268; he suffered a paralytic stroke 2 years later and died on August 22, 1828, in his villa at
Montrouge (near Paris) at age 71. His cranium was added to his own collection of
skulls,9 which was acquired by Muse´e National d’Histoire Naturelle, and his body
was laid to rest in the famed Pe`re Lachaise Cemetery.

2 ABSTRACT AND NEWER FACULTIES
Gall was not a philosopher: he was not specifically trained in classical theories of the
soul or the mind. He had a great interest in nature, both plants and animals. He studied, collected, and dissected animals; he could talk in great detail about their bodily
structures and habits; and he has even been regarded as a pioneer in ethology, comparative biology, and animal psychology (Lesky, 1979). Lesky also argued that Gall
also played an important role in the development of biologically oriented psychiatry
many years before German neurologist and psychiatrist Wilhelm Griesinger
(1817–1868).
Aware of behavioral differences between species, as well as within a species,
such as between males and females, it seemed obvious to Gall that these notable differences must be associated with structural features, meaning bodily characteristics.
Yet he felt he could not accept a theory of the mind and brain based on the general
faculties of perception, judgment, and memory when trying to explain these differences in behavior. Thus, he rejected the time-honored view traceable to the early
Greek philosophers, which, when associated with the cell-like ventricles of the brain,
is sometimes referred to as “cell theory” (see Whitaker, 2007).
More specifically, Gall repeatedly indicates that the adherents of this theory are
involved with abstract notions that cannot explain naturally occurring phenomena.
Humans and animals can, of course, perceive and remember, but they perceive and
remember concrete features. To perceive color, for example, we humans must be
able to perceive specific elements in the light reaching our eyes, whereas to perceive
tones or words, we have to be able to perceive specific vibrational patterns, an
eighteenth-century scientific view directly linked with Newton. The faculties of perception and memory are not abstract and independent of the features for which they
are designed; they are specifically constructed for these specific faculties. Perception
and memory are not basic qualities or faculties; they are secondary attributes belonging to fundamental faculties.

8

A small tumor would be found on his cerebellum. This is interesting because Gall had a reputation for
being a womanizer and it was here that he had located the organ for amativeness.
9
Gall’s Paris collection contained 354 skulls, casts of skulls, and brains, along with 253 anatomical
preparations. This was his second collection, an earlier one having been left in Vienna. It was not, however, the largest skull collection at the time (see Hollander (1901a,b, p. 388). As can be imagined,
Gall’s own skull was extensively analyzed by both admirers and critics of his system (see
Ackerknecht and Vallois, 1956, pp. 61–72).

9


10

CHAPTER 1 Gall and music

From these premises, Gall assumed that all animals, including human beings,
have specific organs serving the functions reflected in the behavioral repertoire of
a species. He accepted the eighteenth-century views of la grande chaine d’etre,
the great chain of being, and that there is unity in nature and an indivisible structural
plan that is perfected by degrees as one progresses from lower to higher organisms
(Lesky, 1970; Lovejoy, 1960). This was a static notion, with the species and even
races (Gall would use the term “nations”) being immutable—Darwinian evolution
was still decades away.
With the eyes of a naturalist and the mindset of a physiologist, Gall was convinced that each faculty must be responsible for different behaviors. Yet, although
a species possesses a given set of faculties, Gall also knew that individual members
of that species, even those of the same gender, could differ behaviorally from one
another. This could be explained, he maintained, by assuming that the same faculties
can differ in “proportion” from one person or type of animal to another and thereby
vary in level of activity. Clearly, there is no perfect moral or intellectual equality on a
biological or behavioral level. Moreover, training and education could affect how

one might use the various innate faculties (Gall did not use the word “function” here;
for a detailed analysis of Gall’s psychophysiological concept of function, see
Hoff, 1992).
Gall was not the extreme materialist he is often portrayed to be (Temkin, 1947).
He repeatedly mentions God (or the Creator) in his writings and argues that the cortical organs are merely the instruments necessary for specific tasks. He even discovered (a word Gall uses when describing his faculties) a faculty for God and religion.
Historian Temkin (1947, pp. 300–301) states that, although Gall shunned discussions
on the immortality of the soul and was not trying to support intelligent design, he
should rightfully be considered a deist.10 To this, Lesky (1979, p. 27) added that
Gall’s views fit into a scientific stream of natural history investigations, characterized as physicotheology or natural theology, a movement that originated with
William Derham.11
Still, one reason some people have considered Gall an ardent materialist is his
claim that there is no sharp distinction between man and lower animals. In addition
to the 19 faculties he claimed that all animals possessed, he stated that people have
8 additional faculties serving distinctly human higher functions. But these are not
principally different from the other faculties, he informs his readers (Lesky,
1970). Another argument centers on the notion of free will, a concept that has long
played an important role in religious discussions (Temkin, 1947). Gall did not include a faculty of free will, and his opponents argued that his conceptual schema left
10

Deism is the belief that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to determine the
existence of a creator, accompanied with the rejection of revelation and authority as sources of religious
knowledge. Deism gained prominence during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—the Age of
Enlightenment—especially in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States.
11
William Derham (1657–1735) was an English clergyman and natural philosopher. He wrote the
Artificial Clockmaker in 1696 and Physico-Theology in 1713.


2 Abstract and newer faculties

no place for it. Man, they contended, is not the slave of the motives and tendencies of
his faculties; humans are endowed with free will to overcome these primal
tendencies.
As will be seen, Gall would localize the physical organs for these faculties in the
gray matter in the rostral brain, the cerebral and cerebellar cortices. He was, in fact,
the first to distinguish systematically between the gray matter as the end points of
nerves and the white matter. The white matter, in his view, represented connecting
fiber pathways, and he wrote about divergent fibers (les filets sortants) and convergent fibers (les filets rentrants). These connections link the periphery and brain
stem to the cortical organs, and they allow the cortical organs to work in a
unified way.
He arrived at this new conceptualization of the nervous system by comparing
lower and higher animals, starting from the spinal cord.12 As noted, this was also
the way he dissected the human body, working upward to the brain, all the while
assuming that the grand plan has to be similar in all species (Lesky, 1970). Gall,
it is worth noting, was also instrumental in determining the anatomy of many of
the cranial nerves. Further, he knew that the different senses had their own pathways
and could see that they too had distinct territories after they entered the brain. Hence,
Gall had multiple anatomical reasons for assuming that the faculties of mind could be
associated with distinct cortical organs, in addition to the increasing size of the cerebral hemispheres, especially those in the front of the brain, which anyone could
easily see increased in size as one climbed nature’s ladder from lower organisms
to the most intellectual and moral of all God’s creatures, human beings.
But are there external markers for the different organs? Here, Gall made an assumption, perhaps based solely on his anatomy, perhaps also influenced by what the
physiognomists, including Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801), were then claiming
in less precise ways. He reasoned that the cortical organs are present before the skull
finishes growing over them and that their size can shape the morphology of the cranium. In other words, a highly developed organ, being large, would produce some
sort of telltale bump on the skull that could be correlated with specific behaviors,
whereas a poorly developed organ would have no such bump or perhaps even a depression. He first stated this in the aforementioned 1798 letter to von Retzer:
From the genesis of the bones of the skull from infancy to the greatest age, the
shape of the exterior surface of the skull is determined by the shape of the brain;
therefore so far as the outer surface of the skull and the inner coincide, and no

12

Gall’s concept of cortical localization of function really was new. No one else had been as detailed,
inclusive, and systematic as him, and although Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) had some very good
insights in the mid-1700s, especially about the motor cortex, what he had concluded from his analyses
of clinical cases was virtually unknown and had no impact at this time (Swedenborg, 1740–1741, 1745,
1882/1887, 1940; also see Akert and Hammond, 1962; Finger, 2000, pp. 119–121; Ramstr€
om, 1910;
Toksvig, 1948).

11


12

CHAPTER 1 Gall and music

exception is made for the usual contours, particular aptitudes and tendencies can
be concluded.
See Van Wyhe (2004, p. 17)

Remarkably, Gall never described the organs on the cortical surface itself. He
seemed content to assume that the exterior of the skull is a very faithful indicator
of the location and status of the organs comprising his system of faculties, give or
take some organs located in much harder to assess positions (i.e., not pressing on
the skull itself ). As for the overall size of the skull, Gall did not deny that it might
give a clue as to mental power, but, in his opinion, it will not indicate “the direction in
which that power will be manifest: whether in the direction of the intellect, the higher
sentiments, or animal passion” (Hollander, 1909, p. 26).

Let us now return to Bianchi to see how this talented 5-year-old girl helped Gall
to develop his system and to see how prototypical her case was to Gall, as he considered the various kinds of evidence to include when finalizing his new and in many
ways revolutionary thoughts about where the various faculties of mind should be
located.

3 METHODOLOGY AND CORTICAL LOCALIZATION
Gall tells us that the seeds for his theory of discrete cortical functions were planted
when he was just 9 years old, after casually observing that some of his schoolmates,
who were far better at learning languages than he was, had bulging oxlike eyes. This
observation, however, did not seem to register fully on him at that time, but it did
after he later recognized the same thing among his classmates while attending university. Gall now inferred that verbal memory might be localized behind the eyes,
pushing them out when highly developed. In his words, “I could not believe, that
the union of the two circumstances which had struck me on these different occasions
was solely the result of accident. . . I began to suspect that there must exist a connection between this conformation of the eyes, and the faculty of learning by heart”
(Gall, 1835, vol. 1, pp. 58–59).
Working from this premise, he quickly reasoned that, if one function could be
localized by external markers, so could others. To quote,
Proceeding from reflection to reflection, and from observation to observation, it
occurred to me that, if memory were made evident by external signs, it might be so
likewise with other talents or intellectual faculties. From this time all the individuals who were distinguished by any quality or faculty, became the object of my
special attention, and of systematic study as to the form of the head.
Gall (1835, vol. 1, p. 59)

It is possible that Bianchi, the musical prodigy, triggered Gall to think about his
childhood observations, since, as we have seen, he did not even mention her skull
when describing her unique talent. Yet it also seems possible that she entered the


3 Methodology and cortical localization

picture at about this time, being one of those cases that “became the object of my
special attention.” After all, her case helped to convince him that there are distinct
forms of memory, not just a single faculty for memory, and that tone relationships or
music would henceforth have to be treated as one of the basic faculties.
In either case, it is easy to imagine Gall’s excitement at this juncture, realizing that
some people are good in remembering words or music, while others excel in finding
their ways around town or with numbers and dates, whereas no one seemed to possess
all of these different kinds of superior memory talents. Moreover, he was now convinced that carefully studying crania would allow him to map the organs of these and
other higher functions of the brain, each, he assumed, with its own memory.13
It must be remarked that Gall was now going well beyond what the physiognomists had been claiming. The latter were trying to correlate facial and perhaps other
body features with personality traits, but were not linking their findings to the brain.
Gall, in contrast, was interested in discovering the fundamental faculties of mind and
was asking how they might be related to brain physiology. In this regard, Gall was
setting forth both as a psychologist or behavioral scientist and as an anatomist and
physiologist.
But how many fundamental organs does a human being have? Gall admitted that
it could be difficult to determine whether a given behavior is the result of a welldeveloped basic faculty or whether it results from a combination of faculties. In
his view, empirical research was the only way to determine the number. It was critical to collect all sorts of observations that might suggest a fundamental faculty, and
this meant studying how organisms survive and reproduce, interact, communicate,
and the like.
The Bianchi example reflects how Gall now approached his work and why his
favorite method was observation. First and foremost, he would look for individuals
with specific talents and then determine if they are independent of other behaviors.
But going beyond what he tells us about Bianchi, he would look for special skull
markers (“bumps”) characterizing the people or animals possessing these specific
talents or propensities. He was also open to correlating skulls and behavior in the
opposite way, that is, finding people with unusual skulls and then observing their
strengths and deficiencies.
Thus, Gall did things like inviting groups of ordinary people for sessions at his
house. After making them comfortable, he asked them to tell him what they thought

was so special about another person they knew. In this way, he tried to determine
what people were implicitly thinking as fundamental characteristics while also establishing a “wish list” of people to study. Another method was to go to places where he
could observe people who were exceptionally good or deficient in a given domain,
13
It can be argued that some of these ideas have antecedents in the writings of Swiss naturalist Charles
Bonnet (1720–1793) and philosopher Johan Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803) (Lesky, 1970).
A principled difference between the psychologies of Gall and some of his predecessors is that he believed that faculties are inborn, opposing the notion that all knowledge comes through the senses (also
see Temkin, 1947).

13


14

CHAPTER 1 Gall and music

the latter to obtain negative evidence or counterproofs to support his thinking based
on positive instances. This meant visiting mental asylums, as well as universities and
prisons. To aid in these investigations, and to serve as a reference library, he made
casts of skulls and collected skulls of people with exceptional talents or markedly
deficient in a talent, filling his workplace with hundreds of human and animal specimens and, when possible, known information about each (Ackerknecht and Vallois,
1956; Hollander, 1901a).
With regard to animals, Gall also kept his eyes open for unusual pets. He wanted
to learn about unusual animals, such as a dog that would eat only “stolen” food or a
lost dog able to find its way home from a distant place. He would then do what he was
doing with people; that is, look at the cranial features of these animals and compare
them to the skulls of nonexceptional or deficient animals of the same species. He
would also do gender and cross-species comparisons, hoping to unravel some of nature’s deepest secrets.
It is wrong to think that Gall had absolutely no interest in neurological cases or
experimental work with animals. This idea might have stemmed from his firm conviction that “accidents of nature” cannot be duplicated, from the fact that even focal

brain damage in a laboratory study will inevitably be associated with a host of secondary effects (e.g., infections) that can make the findings difficult if not impossible
to interpret, and from what he considered horribly cruel treatment of animals. He
knew, for example, that patients with severe head wounds really are not testable right
after injury and that many will soon die, with the survivors disappearing before good
assessments could be procured. This understanding of brain lesions formed a part of
Gall’s response to Pierre Flourens’ (1794–1867) attacks on his organology.
Still, he did present some clinical cases of brain damage in his books (e.g., when
discussing memory for words). Importantly, “mutilations” never guided his thinking,
which was primarily based on skull features; instead, they were chosen selectively to
support a conclusion. Equally importantly, what he presented clinically was skewed
by the fact that he did not hesitate to throw out or explain away challenging or nonconfirmatory cases.14 Indeed, the same could be said about how he treated all of his
findings. He would be assailed by a growing number of scientists for presenting only
supportive (positive and negative) data, this being poor science even in his day.
Among Gall’s other methods, we would be remiss if we did not include his neuroanatomical research, which involved tracing fibers, such as those from the eye, up
through the brain. Developmental correlations might also be mentioned in this
context.
As noted, Gall’s search for cortical organs resulted in a list of 27 faculties, 19 of
which were common among men and animals, with the remaining 8 being specific to
humans. Their numbering is the same in both of his major writings, and these
14

Gall gave many reasons for excluding certain findings, such as speculating that there might be brain
disease, alluding to missing parts of a specimen, pointing to training as opposed to innate talent, and
arguing that other cortical organs working in concert could be mistaken for the functions of the one in
question.


3 Methodology and cortical localization

faculties are presented in Table 1. Notably, his one-time assistant, Spurzheim, included more faculties in his popular phrenology books, while eliminating the

“bad” faculties and classifying them differently. Gall, for his part, became highly
critical of Spurzheim, but never maintained that he had a final list, or full knowledge
of the anatomy, when he presented and defended his own 27 faculties.

Table 1 Faculties as indicated in the index of the English translation of Gall’s
Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau et sur Celles de Chacune de ses Parties (for some
faculties, the German name was also given)
I. Instinct of generation, of reproduction; instinct of propagation, etc
II. Love of offspring
III. Attachment, friendship, history of its discovery
IV. Instinct of self-defense, disposition to quarrel, courage (Muth, Raufsinn)
V. Carnivorous instinct; disposition to murder (Wurgsinn)
VI. Cunning, trick, tact (List, Schlauheit, Kluheit)
VII. Sense of property, instinct of providing, covetousness, propensity to steal
(Eigenthumssinn, Hang zu Stehlen)
VIII. Pride, hauteur, loftiness, elevation (Stolz, Hochmdh, Herschsucht)
IX. Vanity, ambition, love of glory (Eitelkeit, Ruhmsucht, Ehrgeitz)
X. Cautiousness, foresight (Behutsamkeit, Vorsicht, Vorsichtigkeit)
XI. Memory of things, memory of facts, sense of things, educability, perfectibility
(Sachgeda¨chtniss, Erziehungs-fa¨higkeit)
XII. Sense of locality, sense of the relations of space (Ortsinn, Raumsinn)
XIII. The faculty of distinguishing and recollecting persons (Personen-sinn)
XIV. Faculty of attending to and distinguishing words; recollection of words, or verbal
memory (Wort-geda¨chtniss)
XV. Faculty of spoken language; talent of philology, etc. (Sprach-Forschungs-sinn)
XVI. Faculty of distinguishing the relation of colors; talent for painting (Farben-sinn)
XVII. Faculty of perceiving the relation of tones, talent for music (Ton-sinn)
XVIII. Faculty of the relations of numbers
XIX. Faculty of constructiveness (Kunst-sinn, Bau-sinn)
XX. Comparative sagacity, aptitude for drawing comparisons (Vergleichender Scharf-sinn)

XXI. Metaphysical depth of thought; aptitude for drawing conclusions (Metaphysischer
Tief-sinn)
XXII. Wit (Witz)
XXIII. Talent for poetry (Dichter Geist)
XXIV. Goodness, benevolence, gentleness, compassion, sensibility, moral sense,
conscience (Gutmuthigkeit, Mitleiden, Moralischer-sinn, Gewissen)
XXV. Faculty of imitation, mimicry
XXVI. God and religion
XXVII. Firmness, constancy, perseverance, obstinacy

15


16

CHAPTER 1 Gall and music

In closing this section, we should not forget that Gall’s main focus was very much
on the components of human nature, that is, discovering and delineating the fundamental qualities that determine our behavior. Localization was secondary, a logical
outgrowth of his primary quest. He even tells us that his anatomical research grew out
of his physiological or psychological ideas, writing:
The knowledge of the functions has always preceded that of the parts. It is, also, as
I have said elsewhere, without the aid of the anatomy of the brain, that I have made
all my physiological discoveries; and these discoveries might have existed for
ages, without their agreement with the organization having been detected.
Gall (1835, vol. 2, pp. 25–26)

In a very real way, Gall used this anatomy largely to confirm and extend his behavioral
discoveries. Small wonder that, when describing the individual cortical organs, including music, he first discussed the faculty and the evidence for it before turning to what
he believed was the probable cortical location for each of his chosen faculties.15

4 THE “FACULTY OF PERCEIVING THE RELATIONS OF TONES,
TALENT FOR MUSIC”
Gall numbered his music faculty XVII and labeled it with the words we have chosen
to head this section. We shall now work through what he wrote in both his Anatomie
et Physiologie and Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau et sur Celles de Chacune de ses
Parties, again using Lewis’ translation (Gall, 1835, vol. 5, pp. 59–80). Our plan is
to follow Gall’s line of reasoning, i.e., to follow his thoughts from the start to the
conclusion of his section on this faculty, presenting quotations to provide a better
feel for the color and depth of his writing, and just how he was expressing himself.
Gall opens the discussion by asking, “Why seek in the brain an organ for music?”
He then immediately states, “To be apt for music, nothing is requisite but an ear”
(p. 59). Here, he is alluding to a position he had attacked in his first volume, when
discussing the five senses, wanting to lay a popular but ridiculous notion to rest. Gall
argues that having a good ear is by no means the basis of a talent for music. There are
animals with finer ears than we have, and yet they do not show the slightest aptitude
for music. Further, there are no differences in hearing between birds that sing and

15

It is noteworthy that Gall liked to number the various faculties on his skulls and diagrams without
showing hard and fast boundaries of the territories. As put by Young (1970, p. 28), “Gall was content to
specify the areas and to admit freely that he neither knew the functions of all the cerebral parts nor the
precise limits of those parts who function he had specified.” Spurzheim, in contrast, was more inclined
to show solid lines for the boundaries, which suggested he knew more about the boundaries, something
Gall felt could not be supported. It should also be remembered that both men found the brain regions
behind the frontal sinuses to be a challenge, since they do not press upon the skull. Hence, neither man
could write in any detail about localizing specific functions on the underside of the brain.

4 The “Faculty of perceiving the relations of tones, talent for music”

those that do not, and among the species of singing birds, only the males sing, even
though the females have the same organ for hearing. If the ears were the crucial organ
for music, he continues, birds and humans would only repeat what they hear, and
clearly, this is not the case. Young birds, hatched and raised by birds from a different
species, sing the peculiar tunes of their own species. Further, “Why then are not persons, endowed with the finest ear, likewise endowed with the most distinguished talent for music”? (p. 61).
Gall mentions that French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
(1807–1788), and French physician, physiologist, and materialist philosopher PierreJean-George Cabanis (1757–1808) claimed that faults of certain composers were
caused by an inequality between the ears. He argues that this statement is also misguided. The well-known chapel master Holzbauer, he explains, was deaf in one ear
and yet still composed very harmonious music. Another counterexample comes from
English surgeon and anatomist Astley Cooper (1768–1841), who described a man
who had been very hard of hearing since childhood, but played his flute with great
skill in concerts. “All these facts prove,” Gall explains, “that the ear is, at most, but
one of the conditions for executing musical compositions; but that it cannot be considered as the cause of the perception of music and of musical invention” (p. 61).
A similar argument is made against those who maintain that the ability to sing can
be attributed to the throat. The throat is for the note what the hand is for the painter; it
is nothing more than a means for execution. There remains, therefore, no other course
to take, but to admit, that there exists in the brain, a particular organ for music. Although English physician Thomas Willis (1621–1675) had previously tried to implicate the brain in music, thinking that an aptitude for music might correlate with the
softness of the brain, he could not prove it (Lorch, 2010). In contrast, Gall was focused on a fundamental faculty that he believed must have its own special cortical
territory, choosing to follow a very different path into the brain than the one traversed
approximately a century and a half earlier by Willis.
Gall’s passages about tone or music are divided into sections, and he now turns to
“history of the discovery of this organ.” Here, he tells the story of Bianchi, mentioned
above, and how she stimulated his research, likely even before he had the idea “that the
talent for music could be recognized by the form of the head” (p. 63). Inspired to look
for individuals with excellent memories for certain things, he relates how he now got in
touch with many people and concluded that there must be a peculiar memory for tones.
Musicians and composers are very much a part of the story, and they led him to
the idea that what he was studying was not simply a memory for tones. To quote:

. . .I did not fail to perceive, that the individuals, endowed with an excellent memory of tones, were ordinarily good musicians, and sometimes composers in this
art. This observation led me to conclude, that the denomination, memory of tones,
was too limited. . . I therefore adopted the expression, faculty of the relations of
tones, an expression which refers to the manner, in which the intellect of the musician brings into operation the relations of tones, to the mode of action of the
senses in general. (pp. 63–64).

17


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CHAPTER 1 Gall and music

This faculty, Gall assures his readers, is independent of the aggregate force of the
intellectual faculties in general. It is a fundamental faculty, and as such, it must have
its own particular organ. The issue he faced was how to identify this physical organ.
Gall again turned to musicians and noted that the superior lateral part of a musician’s forehead tends to be narrow, whereas the temporal parts seem quite broad,
making their foreheads appear like “a segment of a truncated cone.” This, he initially
thought, was the external sign of the music faculty. But he now took the opportunity
to observe the heads or busts of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), and other musicians “of the highest merit” in Vienna,
and they led him to question his first impression. He made molds of some of their
heads to make comparisons easier, and he now saw that it was actually another part
of the forehead that was quite enlarged in musicians “endowed with inventive
genius,” a topic he would soon return to in his section on the faculty for music.
Following his general strategy, Gall first wants to describe how he looked for
children and adults with absolutely no talent for music and some other material.
He found that the suspected area in these cases was absolutely flat. Interestingly,
he does not say “area of the skull” in this passage; rather, he writes “region of the
brain”! With some skulls from other musicians adding to his armamentarium, he

writes that he now knew “exactly” (again his wording) where the faculty must be
located.
Gall next discusses what he calls the “natural history” of this faculty. That is, how
did it come about? Music is not an invention of man, he maintains, but the creator has
revealed it to us through a particular organization of the nervous system. Through
this organization, we are capable of making contact with certain vibrations that follow certain laws, that is, sound waves. German mathematician and pioneer in the
study of acoustics, Ernst Chladni (1756–1827), had performed some experiments
in which he made these vibrations visible on plates of sand—the intricate patterns
now being eponymic (i.e., “Chladni patterns”; Ullmann, 2007). Tones are founded
on these lawful patterns of vibrations, writes Gall. And, in order to hear music, we
must have an organization to detect these patterns—an organ for perceiving the relationships between tones and the capacity to judge these perceptions, which is the
basis for composing and producing beautiful music.
Wherever the organ is wanting, there exists no relation between the animal and the
tones. Where the organ exists, the animal or man is agreeably affected by harmony,
and disagreeably, by the discordance of tones. When this organ has acquired a
certain perfection, the animal or the man not only perceives and judges well
the relations of the tones, but also creates within himself relations and successions
of tones, which please the more, as they are conformable to the external laws of
vibrations, and to the organization of other individuals. (p. 66).

That this must be a fundamental faculty is further demonstrated by the fact that it may
exist in high degrees of perfection in some individuals from the “tenderest age.”
Here, Gall mentions George Frideric Handel (1685–1759), who “had hardly begun
to speak, when he attempted to compose music”; Niccolo` Piccinni (1728–1800);


4 The “Faculty of perceiving the relations of tones, talent for music”

Leopold Mozart (1719–1787), who “travelled through Europe at the age of six
years”; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, “who studied composition at the age of twelve

years”; and a cast of other prodigies far lesser known today (e.g., Desales, Mademoiselle Bills, Crotch, Crouchby, the brothers Pixis, and Baron de Praun). These people
were active in different fields of music (various instruments, composition, etc.) but
had been like other children in all other ways, “which proves that the faculty by
which they distinguish themselves, as well as its organ, are independent of all the
other faculties and all the organs” (pp. 67–68).16
The next section in Gall’s treatment of music deals with idiocy and “mental
alienation.” Here, he writes something well known by special education teachers today; that is, that in certain cases of idiocy (he also states mania), where all faculties
might seem deranged, the music faculty can “manifest itself almost in a state of
integrity” (p. 68). He illustrates this statement by describing a 14-year-old girl
who could sing 40 songs accurately and by heart, although she was “in such a state
of idiocy, that she ate plaster and charcoal, gnawed bones like a dog, and made efforts
to devour whatever fell into her hands” (p. 68).
He also mentions people who became ill and then started to sing. Philippe Pinel
(1745–1826), the famous French psychiatrist who was instrumental in dealing with
the insane in more humane ways, provided one of these cases. He had treated a musician and, when he improved, he was given his instrument again. Pinel related that
he could play like he used to do prior to his illness, yet still embarked on the most
rambling discourses. Another Frenchman, physiologist Pierre-Jean-George Cabanis
(1757–1808), is cited somewhat differently. He had described people who always
sung “false” when in a state of health, but sang “justly” when attacked by fever
or when in certain ecstatic states. Hence, more evidence that the faculty of music
can remain intact even when the mind itself seems deranged.
Having ascertained the existence of the music faculty based on observations of
special cases, both gifted and wanting, Gall returns to the question of localization, or
to use his subtitle, the “External Appearance of the Organ of Music in Man.” As
noted above, he had reasons for attending to anatomy only after satisfying himself
with the behavioral evidence for a faculty (his physiology)—only after convincing
himself that the trait must have a special cortical locus. But he first issues a warning:
not all people who have become musicians are suitable for study. What he is trying to
say is that some musicians have achieved a level of proficiency not because of the
innate music faculty, but because of practice. These are not true musicians, because

their skills lie in their fingers rather than their minds!
Thinking he can distinguish true musicians by their countenance and how they
delight in their music, he tells us that the music faculty can appear in either of two

16

Amthor (2012) wrote a PhD thesis on music prodigies from 1791 to 1860, covering over 370 of them.
She does not mention Bianchi. Interestingly, all were able to play music or show a talent for singing at a
relatively young age, whereas those who also became composers were about 28 years old when they
first produced a memorable piece of music.

19


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CHAPTER 1 Gall and music

FIGURE 3
Photograph of skull with the faculty of music (Ton-sinn) indicated by an arrow.
The photo was made by Eszter Blaha´k and is reproduced with permission from the Semmelweis Museum of the
History of Medicine, Budapest, Hungary.

forms. His wording about the anatomy is not easy to follow,17 but his basic message is
that the faculty can be located just above the external angle of each eye, with some
musicians having very broad, and others square, lower foreheads (p. 70, Fig. 3).
Famous musicians showing the first mentioned pattern include the two Mozarts
and Michael Haydn (1737–1806). Among those showing the squarer feature
are Ludwig van Beethoven, (Franz) Joseph Haydn (1732–1809), opera composer
Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–1787), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau

(1712–1778), the famous philosopher and writer of the Enlightenment, who also
composed music. Gall produced some drawings of the musicians he cited by name
(Plate 86 in his atlas; see Fig. 4). He admitted that he had not been able to distinguish
differences in musical talent that he could associate with two types of crania, but
thought that over time an expert in music and organology would be able to detect
differences in their musical skills.
17
“Either the external angle of the forehead, placed immediately above the external angle of the eye,
enlarges itself considerably toward the temples, in such manner, that in this case the lateral parts of the
forehead overlap the external angle of the eye, in which case all the frontal region above the external
angle of the eye, as far as the half of the height of the forehead, is considerably prominent; or there rises
immediately above the external angle of the eye, a prominence in the form of a pyramid, the base of
which is supported above the eye, and the point extends to the external anterior edge of the forehead, as
far as the half of its height” (Gall, 1835, vol. 5, p. 70).