Mozart Effect
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Compare, say, W.A. Mozart's Symphony no. 25 in G minor, to W.A. Mozart's Symphony no. 40 in G minor. It cannot be denied that W.A. Mozart-- having heard fourteen other W.A. Mozart symphonies in the interim-- was able to produce a second G minor symphony with greater acuity in both horizontal and vertical musico-spatial puzzle-solving.
Even within the 1st movement of W.A. Mozart's Symphony no. 40 in G minor, the Mozart effect may be heard. For example, in the development section W.A. Mozart alters a single pitch in main theme that creates horizontal musico-spatial variety while also speeding up the rate at which sonic verticalities change. Such a clever thematic variation would have been statistically unlikely if W.A. Mozart hadn't already been listening to the 1st theme of the 1st movement of Symphony no. 40 in G minor by W.A. Mozart.
W.A. Mozart's output is filled with examples like these.
In conclusion, the data is in: listening to W.A. Mozart will temporarily[1] boost your W.A. Mozart.
1: Up to 1791, that is. :(
Yeah, maybe just a little.
(They turned "Leck mich im Arsch" into "Laßt froh uns sein". Cowards.)
So then how do you judge works of art when almost universally there is only one sample of an artwork? By definition, each is unique.
Is then judging Da Vinci's Mona Lisa a waste of time? If so, then why haven't we scrapped these old decaying paintings many years ago?
The answer is obvious and simple: an object - or anything for that matter - whether it's one or many - possesses intrinsic qualities and values - excellence, etc. - and it's those intrinsic values that we're discussing here.
These are metaphysical concepts and cannot be simply processed as numerical statistics. (They're 'simple notions' and thus cannot divided further, nor processed mathematically.)
Subjectively.
You're right, context is everything and the theoretical extrapolation of the value of something or anything in the absence of some reference - emptiness as you say - means that there's nothing with true intrinsic value. Strictly speaking, things only have perceived metaphysical values of our own making.
That said, human existence brings with it the concept of value; as humans, almost everything we think about or do is value-laden. Moreover, it does seem that the concept of 'value' or 'importance' is intrinsic to the Hunan condition, somehow it's built in. We could start with food and say our 'value' system derives out of biological necessity and then extrapolate from there. That's a long-argued philosophical discussion but it's of little point pursuing the topic here.
So what do we do when discussing music and other aesthetic subjects as here in this context? This too is complex and it's already a subbranch of philosophy but again it doesn't help much here. As I see it, in discussions such as this, trying to be be totally objective as if it were say a formal/logical argument between Russell and Whitehead serves little point. Thus, it seems to me the most logical way to discuss such matters is from a sociological perspective. So let's look at the facts.
- Mozart and some other composers from the Enlightenment and Romantic eras, Bach, Hayden, Beethoven and a few others have perennially withstood the test of time. That is, for several hundred years their works have remained consistently popular with lay listeners, musicians and scholars alike. Moreover, there's little or no evidence that this popularity is waining in certain sectors of the population.
- Yes, classical (for want of a better word) music is in decline in percentage terms when compared to much modern/pop music. The reasons for this are complex, some are obvious, others not. What we are certain of is that the suspect metric of comparing say the popularity of 'pop' versus 'classical' music tells us nothing about the 'intrinsic' value of either (sorry to use that term again but it's in inverted commas).
- That said, then where do the key compositions from key 'classical' composers stand in what's generally accepted as the Musical Corpus?
As mentioned, we cannot put an objective measure on them but we can say that their longevity, popularity and the cultural infrastructure built up around them - from orchestras to piano manufacturers, etc. - have ensured their importance within society in similar ways to the works of Shakespeare, Goethe or Plato - his Republic etc.; that is, they are already well-known cultural icons and have been so for a very long time.
Whether any specific individual likes 'classical' music or not is irrelevant as, at present, these musical works have accumulated sufficient cultural baggage/capital to ensure their current status remains for the foreseeable future. Discussing their popularity over the very longterm serves little purpose except to say that the deemed or perceived merit of certain works by say Plato are such that they have been kept 'alive and in print' so to speak for over two thousand years, thus history demonstrates it's possible - nothing more!
- Whether any of this music is of a quality and substance that enables it to be biologically beneficial to humans remains to be demonstrated, as yet nothing's proven.
I'd only add that certain pieces from this classical repertoire are able to generate such an emotional effect within me that they manifest in noticeable physical reactions and I know that I'm far from being alone in having such experiences when listening to music.
Why music - or why specific musical works - have the power to so affect certain people in this way and not so others isn't still clear and it's still a matter of current research.
Yeah, he had a damn hide expiring that early. :(
The idea is that very small humans interpret sufficiently complicated (in the information theoretic sense) music as a language.
Anecdotally, my infant son could be entertained by jazz when few other things worked. He really listened to it.
I don't remember how credible the evidence is and I've lost the references I had. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
That was my hypothesis as well. I often played "field recordings" (captures of real-life sounds, maybe later composed into something experimental) and all sorts of free-form music to our son when he was very young. He had a keen interest in those "strange sounds" at around age 3; with kindergarten and now school, he has IMO developed a more "mainstream-radio-pop-framed" understanding of music. Stupid radio songs, LOL. If I continue to bother him with weirdo stuff occasionally, I think he'll be good nonetheless, though.
The "everything is language, and everything is music" paradigm has always felt natural to me. That's why I also started to read out loud to our children even when they were inside mommy's belly. Later, I read all sorts of "adult books" to them as infants: the key was not having them understand every word (vocabulary development), but rather having them sense the melodic flow of human language. Be it mother tongue or not. The music of spoken word, so to say.
It's a development of the ancient language we use to communicate mood and intent by varying the pitch and rhythm of voice while speaking. Useless to transmit concepts, but excellent to transmit emotions.
If music is a language, it is certainly one that developed very very differently, by virtue of not being used to communicate ideas but rather emotions. But there's some crazy languages out there, and the first ones that come to mind which can absolutely debunk what you said are these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistled_language
But, there needs to be "agreement" in the meaning to make it a language of course. So the first four notes of symphony number 5 might not communicate something common to everybody who hears it, but neither does the sound "love" (/lʌv/) universally communicate the emotion of love. (Nor does it even in english; if I tell you "I love this weather", "I love my girlfriend" and "Of course I love walking on lego", that sound communicates extremely different things)
Your examples on ambiguity are poor IMO, there's a huge class difference between whether a passage of a symphony conveys linguistic meaning and the relatively small variance of interpretation of "love" for a single one of your examples. Also, we know the difference (in general) between those three uses of "love" (romantic, appreciative, sarcastic) from the context; you do get context in music but it suffers even more from wide variance in interpretation.
Prokofiev's 'Peter and the Wolf' is a great example of musical narrative but the passages portray a generalized emotion rather than language. Is Peter happy in the main theme, or just relaxed, maybe ignorant?
First is the obvious one: Where the entities conversing is the music and myself. I think most people can relate to this unidirectional experience.
Second, and less observed mode, is when consuming mostly-instrumental type of music. Here the entities 'conversing' have to be inferred, but most often my mind will settle on giving each instrument a personality.
In this mode, I'm merely a bystander listening in on a conversation. I often automatically imagine these instruments talking to each other, and the act of listening is simply an act of interpreting what they are talking.
This would be nothing new to many people reading this, but I know many people who often don't listen to music. Check this short clip if you want to play with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf-QV8Z8Pww
What our society associates with 'intelligence' is simply an ability to solve specific set of problem. If your situation demands a different set of problems (which is often, in real life), then your "IQ" is useless.
People solving IQ problems properly understand the questions, have been exposed to the right concepts to solve them and know how to answer. These capacities aren’t pure intelligence per se, but stay a good indicator of someone’s education and if they’ll traditionally fit in our societies.
Basically, it is the perfect measure for clubs like MENSA.
If you read chapter 5 in Freakenomics you’ll understand what I’m talking about.
I wonder if these effects can cancel.
The issue at hand is that human beings can’t multitask so any distraction from the main task leads to poorer performance.
The sudden entrance of a beauty, loud noises (open offices), bright lights, stress can all be forms of distraction and minimizing those can be as useful in the long term for performance as minimizing more overt distractions.
Your brain can ignore all of the above to a certain extent if it’s chronic. Which is why beauty becomes banal, open offices tolerable, and stress simply something to be banked away until vacation or burnout.
...But then there's that other Mozart effect experienced by those of us who know and love his music. It cannot be adequately described but only conveyed from one another by knowledge of the fact.
The theologian Karl Barth once quipped 'On the day God made Mozart he overdid the goodness essence' - and we know exactly what he meant.
Is it specific only to Mozart's music? What if we use an AI to generate Mozart like music? Music AI was a thing before AI was a modern mainstream term (1 , note the date:1997). With a large enough sample set, eventually, if there is a signal we should be able to detect it.
(1) https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/11/science/undiscovered-bach...
Numerous cases show that few people if any ever fully agree when they use normal language to describe the effects of music on their psyche. The issue is the same whether it's Mozart's music or that of others.
If AI generated music of comparable quality to that of Mozart's then I'm certain that I'd be equally satisfied.
By that I mean I've no special allegiance to Mozart the person per se (after all, he was a bit before my time so I never knew him personally). The same goes for Bach and others.
:-)
Music is a universal language of feelings. Some speak it haltingly, with maybe some 'hot flashes'. Some readily speak fluently with such nuance, grace, meaning, that profound experiences result. Regardless of genre, that language and its refinements can recognized by many who have listened closely enough to comprehend. Each accomplished composer has a connection with some authentic source.
what a bundle of hogwash. IQ test = flawed. effect of music on intelligence = dubious. Whether Mozart qualifies as good music = dubious.
Obviously, you've never listened to any.
My assertions of flaws and dubiousity of the above three propositions are irrefutable, whether you trust me or not. A quick google search will cure you of your distrust. :)
who brings this assumption?
Perhaps when mulling over the question you should keep in mind that Mozart's music has been at or near the top of both the listening and performance repertoire since 1791 and there isn't any hint of his popularity diminishing any time soon. 231 years at the top requires some some beating.
If popularity and the word standard are in anyway connected then with Mozart's music it's no contest.
Type 'Mozart' into YouTube and see how may hits you get.
Now, exactly what is your definition of the word standard?
Why is that? Is that because it is objectively good, or is that because we *think* it's good because everyone tells us it's good?
It is objectively good because we were told it is good. And we were told it is good because it is objectively good.
It is just like other phenomena of social reality. Money is valuable because people believe they are valuable, and people believe that money is valuable because money is valuable.
For instance, take Beethoven's Symphony No 5 in C minor, you know the one with the famous opening that repeatedly taps out 'V' for victory in Morse code. Not only are we told that it's by the famous deaf composer Beethoven but also we've become very familiar with it because it's played so often. That's further reinforced when we're told the sad story about how Beethoven 'overcame' his deafness and became the greatest of great composers. It's a well-known story steeped deep within our culture.
However, as one becomes more familiar with the work and or as one's knowledge of music increases something else happens. One begins to see there's something very cleaver and unusual about how Beethoven modulates his themes across and between different instruments. Instead of, say, giving the melody or main theme to just one instrument or a group of them to play in unison one notices that he often breaks it up and shares it across numbers of seemingly disparate instruments in a somewhat illogical fashion; that is until one realizes the remarkable sounds and effects he's produced by doing so.
The first time one picks up a full orchestral score of a Beethoven symphony or piano concerto it'll drive one a little crazy, one's jumping all over the page trying to follow what he's done.
It's only when one begins to get the full gist of what he's on about that one begins to realize and appreciate the true genius of the man - and that what he's done is far from being illogical and contorted - but instead his arrangement has turned out to be about as cleaver as is possible. In fact, what one's witnessing is genius at work.
Eventually, one comes across a composition by Beethoven that one's never been told about let alone one's ever heard before, one's opinions thus have to be made made in comparative isolation. When one again recognizes similar techniques and traits of genius here too then one comes to the inevitable conclusion that there's something very special about the works of this man that no else has ever successfully duplicated.
What happens is that the more one becomes involved with and knowledgeable about music the more one becomes familiar with the reasons for why certain composers and or why certain compositions of theirs have become famous and why they have been repeatedly deemed so over many, many decades.
In the grand schema of things, throughout history these composers and their works have been singled out by many different people from many different cultures and backgrounds and with varying degrees of expertise and for whatever reason they all come to commonly similar conclusions that there's something special about these composers and their works.
The fact that many people from disparate origins have come to similar conclusions and have done so over such a long time suggests there's something more at work than people just thinking these works are good for no particular reason. Clearly, for whatever reason, these works possess some quality that sets them apart; nevertheless, despite that, it's my understanding there's still no general agreement about what that property actually is. Discovering and quantifying that 'essence' ought to be worthy of a Nobel prize, I reckon.
To illustrate the point let's again take Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. During the height of WWII, the British singled out this symphony because its opening bars dramatically and repeatedly rang out 'V' for Victory, it was a great rallying call to British citizens and their allies. Yet nevertheless at no time was Beethoven's German heritage brought into question. Simply, the music spoke for itself, not the background and culture from which it came.
Similarly, Zadok the Priest, a famous British anthem, was composed by the German composer George Frideric Handel, yet in 1953 with WWII still fresh in British minds, it didn't stop it being performed at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
Music is mostly valued for what's perceived as its 'intrinsic' quality, its roots and cultural origins play little part in that perception.
Always worth pointing out that Beethoven's 5th predates Morse Code by a good 40 years or so, though. Morse was in his early teens when Beethoven wrote it.
I should have been more explicit, I've a tendency to forget that many of today's internet users have probably never even even heard Morse code let alone understand it.
While we are talking about music, it is about tastes that the real debate is. I think naive standardization is a problem. You don't need standards when it comes to tastes and preferences.
What is the best fruit in the world? According to your comment, the most popular fruit should be, right?
Different people like different fruits, and they may like many different fruits at the same time, without exactly knowing the numeric values of their derived utilities (as suggested by economists).
The same applies to music. Hence, the assertion that Mozart is the best music there is dubious at best.
I've had a great deal to say about this story in my comments and replies and at NO time have I ever said Mozart's music was the best.
In fact, I have been assiduously careful in choosing my words to the extent of being excessively prolix to ensure that no one could reasonably accuse me of making that claim - for the very reason that in previous discussions on this and related topics it's common for people who don't like Mozart or 'classical' music or both to make this accusation even though these stores never actually make such a claim.
The case is the same here with this story. It too is about the dubious-at-best claim that listening to Mozart improves IQ, it's not about claiming Mozart's music is the best per se - and I even make the specific point in one comment that my IQ never changes an iota whenever I listen to Mozart.
This is an old story so there are many other instances of it and comments about it are numerous. It's a curious observation that so many people have claimed and continue to claim these stories are about Mozart's music being the best when they're not. One can only speculate the reasons are that they're annoyed or upset that their favorite composer wasn't the center of attention.
The only other reason that's likely is that when the original authors of this story singled out Mozart by claiming that listening to his music improves one's IQ is that those claimants who don't like Mozart's music or never listen to it have misinterpreted the story and or read into it the implication that they're less intelligent beings than those who do.
Any such notion, of course, is sheer utter nonsense.
<< If popularity and the word standard are in anyway connected then with Mozart's music it's no contest.
Type 'Mozart' into YouTube and see how may hits you get.>>
While not specifically SAYING: "Mozart's music is the best there is.", the implication gathered from your statement is that:
Mozart is very popular (as per YT hits)
and
Popularity is connected to "standard"
Hence: the conclusion: Mozart is a standard for good music (if not best, given the very high number of hits on YT.).
In any case, my beef is with the original article since it blurted out "Mozart effect", thus, again, automatically and unqualifyingly placing Mozart in the pedestal of music that is good enough to make you smarter.....
That they chose Mozart but no OTHER music, therefore, implies, that they consider Mozart to be the standard of good music--the best music, as it were--for improving IQ outcomes.
Covid has shown me the fragility of society, and that you never appeal to authority, especially one that is objective in name and subjective in essence.
Simply, in standards documents definitional precision and information/data accuracy are everything, there being absolutely no room for ambiguity or error.
For that to occur, a necessary prerequisite is for those involved in the standards process must know and understand the meaning and definition of the word standard in all of its broader contexts so that a new much more accurate and narrowly-honed definition is agreed upon before it can be applied to standards work.
How you can claim standards are 'subjective in essence' is beyond my comprehension, as in fact they are the antithesis of any such notion. Clearly, you've had nothing whatsoever to do with the matter of standards.
In effect, what you are saying is that the hundreds of years' worth of precision science and engineering work that's gone into say ISO standards such as the definitions and concomitant standards which comprise the SI System of Units and Measurements is essentially poppycock nonsense.
So presumably it would be alright with you if say on a whim that Planck's constant and the Speed of Light were to take on different values on weekdays than they would do at weekends.
Sorry, but that's utter nonsense, it's postmodernist thinking at its worst.
I actually agree with you on the matter of COVID and the fragility of society, but from your comments it's pretty certain that I do so for opposite reasons.