According to various music therapy researchers, the number one composer whose works have been most frequently "prescribed" is, not at all surprisingly, Mozart. What is perhaps interesting though is the wide range of healing properties (for a variety of neurological diseases and brain function enhancements) Mozart's music is supposed to have. Don't take me wrong, I love Mozart's music, and can listen to it almost any time. I have myself, on a great number of occasions felt his music revitalize me, relax my busy mind, or helped me meditate and fill me with positive energy.
There is even some scientific evidence that there is something really special (and spatial) about Mozart. The "Mozart effect" as it became to be known, first came to light in a 1993 paper in Nature, when neuroscientist Fran Rauscher showed that college students who listened to Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major for 10 minutes performed better on a spatial reasoning test than students who listened to some new age music or nothing at all. (Interestingly, there were numerous attempts to replicate the original results but mostly without success. These resulted in a series of authors dismissing the "Mozart effect" as mere hoax or as a self-propelling reflection of a "deeply-rooted but generally unspoken human impulse, to 'get something for nothing'" as Norman Weinberger puts it.)
The term "Mozart effect" was coined by Dr. Alfred Tomatis for the alleged increase in brain development that occurs in children under age 3 when they listen to the music of Mozart. He (and Mozart) even helped French actor Gerard Depardieu to transform a young delinquent and wanderer into a leading actor capable of such performances as his Cyrano or Bernard Granger in Truffaut's Le Dernier métro.
"Before Tomatis," Depardieu says, looking back, "I could not complete any of my sentences. He helped give continuity to my thoughts, and he gave me the power to synthesize and understand what I was thinking."
So, if it helped Depardieu, I might as well use its benefits, too. In order to test the claims, I am going to recreate one of the chart breaker Mozart Effect CDs with the following main features from my own CD collection:
There is even some scientific evidence that there is something really special (and spatial) about Mozart. The "Mozart effect" as it became to be known, first came to light in a 1993 paper in Nature, when neuroscientist Fran Rauscher showed that college students who listened to Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major for 10 minutes performed better on a spatial reasoning test than students who listened to some new age music or nothing at all. (Interestingly, there were numerous attempts to replicate the original results but mostly without success. These resulted in a series of authors dismissing the "Mozart effect" as mere hoax or as a self-propelling reflection of a "deeply-rooted but generally unspoken human impulse, to 'get something for nothing'" as Norman Weinberger puts it.)
The term "Mozart effect" was coined by Dr. Alfred Tomatis for the alleged increase in brain development that occurs in children under age 3 when they listen to the music of Mozart. He (and Mozart) even helped French actor Gerard Depardieu to transform a young delinquent and wanderer into a leading actor capable of such performances as his Cyrano or Bernard Granger in Truffaut's Le Dernier métro.
"Before Tomatis," Depardieu says, looking back, "I could not complete any of my sentences. He helped give continuity to my thoughts, and he gave me the power to synthesize and understand what I was thinking."
So, if it helped Depardieu, I might as well use its benefits, too. In order to test the claims, I am going to recreate one of the chart breaker Mozart Effect CDs with the following main features from my own CD collection:
For Intelligence & Learning
1. Allegro, Violin Concerto No.3 in G Major, K. 216
2. Allegro, Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Major, K. 107
3. Rondo-Allegretto grazioso, Sonata in F Major for Violin and Piano, K. 376
4. Rondo-Allegro, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik in D Major, K. 525
5. Andante grazioso, London Night Music No. 1, K. 247
6. Molto Allegro, Symphony #14 in A Major, K. 114
7. Presto, Divertimento in D Major, K. 136
8. Allegro, Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218
9. Church Sonata in C Major, K. 336
