Music was a youthful respite from boarding school

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'I remember how my ribs stuck out'

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Music was a youthful respite from boarding school

Oliver Sacks Scientist

		Views	Duration
11. Music was a youthful respite from boarding school		812	01:00
12. 'I remember how my ribs stuck out'		741	01:03
13. You could always trust a prime		769	01:01
14. Seeking stability		758	00:15
15. The things boarding school has taken from me		960	01:33
16. Difficulty with human bonding	1	949	00:37
17. Misinterpreting Christopher Rawlence's signals		824	00:26
18. My lack of 'belief'		834	01:07
19. My belief in science		730	01:06
20. 'I'm an old Jewish atheist'		960	00:57

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I had a piano teacher there. She was in the village, a Mrs Clayton, and it was a pleasure to get out of the school and go to her, and music was a joy to me then. It had been a joy before I went to Brafield [on-the-Green]. My father was very musical and my brothers were. They had a music teacher, Francesco Ticciati, who loved Bach and instilled, sometimes rather ruthlessly, his love of Bach to them. I would hear him shout, 'No, no, no!' when they missed a note or whatever and... but Mrs Clayton continued and there was also horse riding, which I loved. But mostly I hated the school.

Oliver Sacks (1933-2015) was born in England. Having obtained his medical degree at Oxford University, he moved to the USA. There he worked as a consultant neurologist at Beth Abraham Hospital where in 1966, he encountered a group of survivors of the global sleepy sickness of 1916-1927. Sacks treated these patients with the then-experimental drug L-Dopa producing astounding results which he described in his book Awakenings. Further cases of neurological disorders were described by Sacks with exceptional sympathy in another major book entitled The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat which became an instant best seller on its publication in 1985. His other books drew on his rich experiences as a neurologist gleaned over almost five decades of professional practice. Sacks's work was recognized by prestigious institutions which awarded him numerous honours and prizes. These included the Lewis Thomas Prize given by Rockefeller University, which recognizes the scientist as poet. He was an honorary fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and held honorary degrees from many universities, including Oxford, the Karolinska Institute, Georgetown, Bard, Gallaudet, Tufts, and the Catholic University of Peru.

Title: Music was a youthful respite from boarding school

Listeners: Kate Edgar

Kate Edgar, previously Managing Editor at the Summit Books division of Simon and Schuster, began working with Oliver Sacks in 1983. She has served as editor and researcher on all of his books, and has been closely involved with various films and adaptations based on his work. As friend, assistant, and collaborator, she has accompanied Dr Sacks on many adventures around the world, clinical and otherwise.

Tags: Brafield on-the-Green, Francesco Ticciati, Johann Sebastian Bach

Duration: 1 minute

Date story recorded: 19-23 September, 2011

Date story went live: 02 October 2012