Definition of "mind's ear"
mind's ear
noun
plural mind's ears or minds' ears or (less common) minds' ear
(idiomatic) The mental faculty or inner sense with which one produces or reproduces imagined or recalled sounds solely within the mind; the supposed organ within the mind which experiences such sounds.
Quotations
"I must read Shakspeare [i.e., William Shakespeare]?" / "You must have his spirit before you; you must hear his voice with your mind's ear; you must take some of his soul into yours."
1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “Coriolanus”, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […]
[K]eep our thoughts from wandering, open our minds' ears to hear, open our mouths to sing thy praises, let us not trifle in thy house, but ever remember "thou God seest me."
, T[homas] Major Lester, “Morning”, in Prayers and Hymns for the Use of Sunday Schools, London: Wertheim, Macintosh, & Hunt, […], page 3
The likeness of the great bass horn remained upon the retina of his mind's eye, losing nothing of its brazen enormity with the passing of hours, nor abating, in his mind's ear, one whit of its fascinating blatancy.
1916, Booth Tarkington, “Yearnings”, in Penrod and Sam, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, page 293
Perhaps we may hear in our minds' ears echoes of the sacred duets of Orlando di Lasso, [Claudio] Monteverdi, [Edward] Gibbons, and [William] Lawes, sung in exquisitely responsive improvised harmony to words immediately inspired in them both.
1993, Diane Kelsey McColley, “The Arts of Eden”, in A Gust for Paradise: Milton’s Eden and the Visual Arts, Urbana; Chicago, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, page 142
There is harmony in the scene; harmony between heaven and earth; harmony in the sounds that the artist allows us to hear within our minds' ear, issuing from the double rank of pipes, sounding to an angel's touch.
1994, Thomas Levenson, “A Perfect Order”, in Measure for Measure: A Musical History of Science, New York, N.Y.: Touchstone, Simon & Schuster, part 1 (By Design), page 20
Other people do "Don't Smoke in Bed" and "I've Got Your Number" and "You Came a Long Way From St. Louis," but when I hear them in my mind's ear, hers [Peggy Lee's] is the voice I hear.
2002 January 27, Terry Teachout, “A master and mentor in song”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, archived from the original on 2021-01-07
I used to be a schoolteacher, teaching children roughly between the ages of ten and thirteen, and I noticed that when they wrote stories, many of them were much better at dialogue than at narrative. […] What they could do very well was put down the things they were hearing in their minds' ear, because those things already had words.
2007, Philip Pullman, “The Writing of Stories: Making It Up and Writing It Down”, in Simon Mason, editor, Dæmon Voices: Essays on Storytelling, Oxford, Oxfordshire: David Fickling Books, page 42
What's more, it is to assume that we are not, in general, capable of telling whether we are actually looking at a painting or merely imagining one, or actually hearing a string quartet as opposed to listening to our own mind's ears.
2009, David Berger, “The Beautiful and the Agreeable”, in Kant’s Aesthetic Theory: The Beautiful and Agreeable (Continuum Studies in Philosophy), London: Continuum International Publishing Group, page 63
Examine as many transcriptions as you can find and compare them to the original Gesellschaft score—you will see the vast range of harmonies transcribers have heard in their minds' ear over the years!
2017, Harry George Pellegrin, Classic Guitar Method, 5th edition, Scotia, N.Y.: PAB Entertainment Group, page 264
"Albers" is musically ambiguous. In its basic form, it isn't unequivocally in C major, but in our minds' ears we tend to make it be in C major.
2023, Pedro de Alcantara, “Sonic Play”, in Creative Health for Pianists: Concepts, Exercises & Compositions, New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, page 274