Abraham, Gerald, Friedrich Blume, Otto Erich Deutsch, Hans Engel, Karl Geiringer, Paul Hamburger, Arthur Hutchings, Hans Keller, H. C. Robbins Landon, Jens Peter Larsen, and Donald Mitchell. The Mozart Companion. New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc., 1956.
This source of reference was originally planned and published as a contribution to the Mozart bicentenary celebrations of 1956. Throughout this book where applicable, the numbers of Kochel’s thematic catalogue of Mozart’s works precede those of the third edition prepared by Alfred Einstein in 1937, which was revised in 1947. The table of contents includes the following categories: (1) Mozart Portraits, (2) Mozart’s Style and Influence, (3) Keyboard Music, (4) Serenades for Wind Band, (5) Chamber Music, (6) Smaller Orchestral Works (7) Symphonies (8) Concertos and Their Sources, (9) Concertos and Their Musical Origin and Development, (10) Operas, (11) Concert Arias, (12) Church Music, (13) an index to music examples and (14) a general index.
The picture of the whole Mozart is too complex in extent and content—too enigmatic for one mind to comprehend the total unity, which exists behind the dazzling variety. The late Dr. Alfred Einstein, to whom this book is gratefully dedicated, came wonderfully near to catching Mozart’s essential spirit in a very compressed space. However, much detail was lacking, particularly in his discussion of the music, and perhaps not every facet of Mozart’s personality was revealed.
Boshman, Lamar. The Rebirth of Music. Shippensburg, Pa., Revival Press (Worship and Praise Division of Destiny Image Publishers, 9th printing Sept. 1989.
This is a great source of biblical references regarding music and scriptures. Lamar shares some very revealing scriptures regarding Lucifer’s (Satan’s) involvement in music before he fell from heaven. As Phil Driscoll believes, “We as the body of Christ can no longer allow the world to dictate the trends of music, but we must instead offer music that is unparalleled in power because of the creative power of God that dwells in us.” The table of contents includes the following categories: (1) music in the beginning, (2) music and Lucifer, (3) the importance of music, (4) the anointing power of music, (5) music and the prophetic, (6) music and warfare, (7) the healing power of music (8) which music is of God, (9) music – a sign of restoration and revival, (10) music in heaven, (11) music and praise, (12) appendix, which provides a list of 989 references to music in scripture.
Bowman, Darla Price, Presentations. Adams media Corporation. Avon, Massachusetts 1998.
Presentations equip the reader with tools needed to create a winning presentation, from proposals to sales pitches to motivational speeches. It offers step-by-step instruction on developing and delivering the perfect presentation. The following categories are listed: (1) organization and delivery, (2) assessment of the audience and tools to engage them, (3) visual aids that capture the attention, (4) uses of surroundings to maximize the impact of your presentation.
Bressler, Randy A. Music and cognitive abilities: a look at the Mozart Effect. Psych. Diss., Chicago School of Professional Psychology 2003. Available online @ http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/preview_ all3112138.
Rauscher, Shaw and Ky (1993) demonstrated that listening to complexly composed music produced bilateral activation of the brain, which augmented cognitive processes. Specifically, they found that listening to the Mozart Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (K. 448) enhanced spatial reasoning and their subsequent studies have shown that this effect is long-term. This study extends the work of Rauscher and colleagues by investigating the influence of the ‘Mozart Effect’ on the memories in 24 children who are five years old. These children were recruited from day-care centers in urban and suburban municipalities in New Jersey. A random sampling method was used to assign each child to a condition. Thirteen children were assigned to a listening condition and eleven children were assigned to a silent condition. Both groups were handed a popular coloring book and asked to choose and color any of the designs in the book.
The Mozart musical selection was played for those in the listening condition while they were coloring. Those children in the control condition colored in silence for a ten minute period. The children were administered selected subtests from The Children’s Memory Scale when this time elapsed. The present research project used a post-test-only control group design. They hypothesized the children who listened to Mozart (K. 448) would perform significantly better than those from the silent condition in any of the three memory domains (i.e. auditory-verbal; visual-non-verbal; attention and concentration) along with a measure that assessed learning was not supported.
Campbell, Don. The Mozart Effect for Children: Tune up your mind Vol. 1 Pickering, Ontario Canada: The Children’s Group Inc. 1997.
Musician, teacher and author, Don Campbell, has selected some of the best of Mozart’s music to stimulate and inspire young minds, improve intelligence and help develop the IQ. Details include medical and psychological studies and up-to-date research in learning and creativity. The following pieces are included on this CD: “Rondo from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik”, “Allegro moderato”, “Violin Concerto No. 2, K. 211,” “Variations, Sinfonia K. 297”, “Andante, Symphony No. 17, K. 129”, “Andantino, Symphony No. 24 K. 182”, “5 Variations on Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, K. 265”, “Allegro aperto, Violin Concerto No. 5, K. 219”, “Andante, Symphony No. 15, K.. 124.”
Campbell, Don. The Mozart Effect for Children. New York: Harper Collins Publishers Inc., 2000.
Don Campbell explains how music is the perfect tool to improve children’s language, movement and social skills at home, school, and play. He presents dynamic, inventive ways to invigorate a child’s imagination, and he supplies simple exercises, musical menus and entertaining games that will improve your child’s memory. Practical and profound, The Mozart Effect for Children is an invaluable resource for all parents and educators who want to help their children imagine, achieve, and grow in every aspect of their lives. Each chapter focuses on a particular age between prenatal through age ten. The table of contents includes the following categories: (1) Twinkle Twinkle, little neuron, (2) Mozart listened to Mozart, (3) Cry baby, lullaby, and itsy-bitsy songs, (4) crawl, reach and clap, (5) dance and play, (6) tap, rap, and sing along, (7) sing…sing a song, (8) rhythms of thought, (9) Mozart Jr., (10) an unfinished symphony,
(11) notes, (12) recommended reading, (13) music of Mozart, (14) children’s songs, (15) index.
Campbell, Don G. Introduction to the Musical Brain. Saint Louis, Mo.: MMB Music, 1992.
Music is not only seen as art and entertainment, but as an essential manner of sensorial patterning that increases long-range memory, reading skills and physical development. The remarkable work of Dr. Alfred A. Tomatis in France has opened remarkable vistas of educational possibilities through the music of Mozart, the use of the voice and chanting. Teaching and learning will take a new direction in the next century. Music teachers now have so many of the fundamental tools and answers for life long learning skills. The researchers and specialists are just now realizing how to frame the questions. Creativity and multi-sensorial patterning are fundamental for holding interest, attention, and joy in learning. In the orchestration of perception, consciousness and expressions, we are at the new frontier where the arts and sciences can merge.
The table of contents contains the following categories: (1) Acknowledgements, (2) foreword to the first and second edition, (3) where are we headed? (4) brain bowl, (5) what’s left for us? (6) what’s right for us? (7) musical connections, (8) putting our heads together: whole musicians, (9) hum-drum exercises (brain dances, musical tongues, toning the voice, musical maze, devil’s tuning fork, legato jump rope, kinesthetic techniques for Orff-Schulwerk, mental keyboards), (10) appendix on education and the arts, (11) bibliography.
Campbell, Don. The Mozart Effect: Tapping the power of music to heal the body, strengthen the mind, and unlock the creative spirit. New York: First Avon Printing, 1997.
Stimulating, authoritative and often lyrical, The Mozart Effect offers dramatic accounts of how doctors, shamans, musicians and healthcare professionals use music to deal with everything from dyslexia, to mental illness. Students who sing or play an instrument score up to 51 points higher on SATs than the national average. During childbirth, music can relieve expectant mothers’ anxiety and help release endorphins, the body’s natural anesthesia. The director of a Baltimore’s hospital’s coronary care unit says that half an hour of classical music produces the same effect as 10 milligrams of Valium. Drawing on medicine, eastern wisdom, and the latest research on learning and creativity, Campbell reveals how exposure to sound, music and other forms of vibration, beginning in utero, can have a lifelong effect on health, learning and behavior. He shows how to use sound and music to stimulate learning and memory; how to strengthen listening abilities; how to use imagery to enhance the Mozart Effect; and how to harness the power of toning, chanting, mantras, rap and other self-generated sounds. Campbell lists fifty common conditions, ranging from migraines to substance abuse, for which music can be used as a treatment or a cure. He recommends more than two dozen specific, easy-to-follow exercises to help you raise your spatial IQ, sound away pain, boost creativity, and make the spirit sing.
The table of contents contains the following categories: (1) speech of angels and atoms, (2) a healing breeze of sound, (3) Mozart effect, (4) anatomy of sound, hearing and listening, (5) healing properties of sound and music, (6) your original instrument, (7) using music for therapy and rehabilitation, (8) orchestrating the mind and body, (9) enhancing learning and creativity with music, (10) bridge between life and death, (11) eternal song, (12) miracle stories of treatment and cure, (13) sound recordings
(14) recommended reading, (15) notes, and (16) an index.
Campbell, Don. Music and Miracles. Wheaton, Il.: Quest Books, 1992.
This collection of essays from doctors, healers, researchers, musicians and theologians provides vivid personal testimony to the miraculous powers of sound and rhythm. The list of contributors include: Jean Houston, Jeanne Achterberg, Don Campbell, Dr. Larry Dossey, Therese Schroeder-Skeker, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Ken Carey, Pat Cook and Kitaro. Music and vibration are powerful forces for physical, mental and spiritual transformation. The table of contents is organized into the following categories: (1) miracle of sound, (2) body of sound, (3) instruments and healing, (4) music therapy and transformation, (5) therapeutic healing with sound, (6) sound as world healer, (7) postlude, and (8) an index.
Clynes, M., Music Beyond the Score. Somatics, Vol. V, No. 1., (Autumn – Winter 1984 –1985).
Dr. Manfred Clynes was born in Vienna and as a musician studied with Pablo Casals and Sascha Gorodniszki. He holds a doctorate in neuroscience and engineering from the University of Melbourne and a master’s degree from the Julliard School in New York. He is also leader of the research center at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music. According to Clynes, several of the great classical composers like Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert or Brahms produced a characteristic pulse that became the hallmark of their work. It was a reflection of their unique identity and creativity. And it is the musical pulse, which does much to determine the subtle characteristics of music. As Clynes says, “It can touch the heart as directly as a physical touch.”
Cumming, Naomi. The sonic self: musical subjectivity and signification. Indiana University Press Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2000.
Using classical violin music as her principal laboratory, the author examines how a performance incorporates distinctive features of the work and the performer. She also observes how the listener interprets the composer’s work and the performer’s rendition. The Sonic Self models a richly interdisciplinary approach to a very common, yet persistently mysterious part of our lives.
Two-thirds of this book may be read and understood by persons who have no training in music theory, and what such readers will have to skip is not essential to the intelligibility of the overall argument. The entire book can be read and understood by musical scholars who have no prior training in philosophy. This book, also, displays the quintessentially philosophical craft of extracting important questions from the most commonplace kinds of thought and experience. The Sonic Self deals with controversial problems in musical aesthetics and music theory—the mental content of interpretation, the contribution of musical structure to musical affect and the premises of judgment and valuation. Naomi Cumming, fine violinist and music theorist has published a host of journal articles and lectured internationally on the philosophy, psychology and semiotics of music. Her article on musical semiotics appears in the second edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. She was a fellow researcher in music theory at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Melbourne and recipient of an award from the Society of Music Theory in 1998.
The table of contents contains the following categories: (1) introduction, (2) signs of subjectivity, (3) listening subjects and semiotic worlds, (4) musical signs, (5) naming qualities; hearing signs, (6) gesturing, (7) framing willfulness in tonal law, (8) complex syntheses, (9) culturally embedded signs, (10) values and personal categories, (11) appendix: theorizing generals, (12) notes, (13) bibliography and (14) an index.
Davies, John Booth. The Psychology of Music. Stanford University Press. Stanford, California 1978.
The psychology of Music explores the nature of man’s need for, and love of, music. Drawing on current research in psychology and social psychology he explores the underlying processes of this need in a fluent and lively style. Unlike many serious studies of music, the book is concerned not just with classical music but also equally with pop, jazz, and folk. John Davies is principally concerned with the listener and with the many theories of “musicality.” The discussion ranges from the physic of sound through musical aesthetics—why people like the tunes they do; the testing of musical aptitude; the use of rhythm in western music, and concludes with some irreverent speculations about the personality of musicians and their instruments. The original German edition of this book was generally acknowledged as a most valuable work, of equal rank with Deutsch’s similar documentary biographies of Schubert and Handel. The English edition is altogether highly reliable.
Deutsch, Diana. The Psychology of Music. San Diego: Academic Press, 1999.
The focus of this book is to interpret musical phenomena in terms of mental function—to characterize the ways in which we perceive, remember, create and perform music. At the time the first edition was written, the field, as we know it was just emerging. In particular, increasing numbers of psychologists were recognizing the value of musical materials by exploring mechanisms of attention, memory, shape recognition, and so on. Musicians were becoming increasingly interested in the experimental testing of theoretical ideas, as well as the practical application of experimental findings to musical composition and performance. The present volume is intended as a comprehensive reference for musicians, in particular for those who are interested in the way that music is perceived, apprehended and performed. It is also intended as a reference source for perceptual and cognitive psychologists. In addition, this volume is designed for use as a textbook for advanced courses in the psychology of music.
The table of contents contains the following categories: (1) nature of musical sound, (2) concert halls: from magic to number theory, (3) music and the auditory system, (4) perception of musical tones, (5) exploration of timbre by analysis and synthesis, (6) perception of singing, (7) intervals, scales and tuning, (8) absolute pitch, (9) grouping mechanisms in music, (10) processing of pitch combinations, (11) neural nets, temporal composites, and tonality, (12) hierarchical expectation and musical style, (13) rhythm and timing in music, (14) performance of music, (15) development of music perception and cognition, (16) musical ability, (17) neurological aspects of music perception and performance, (18) comparative music perception and cognition, (19) references and (20) an index.
Flohr, J. W. Recent brain research on young children. Teaching Music, vol. 6 (June 1999) p. 41- 43.
A variety of new research techniques are now being used to investigate brain functions and development in young children. Preliminary results indicate that music may have an impact on brain activity, especially during the early childhood years, when human development hinges on the interplay between nature and nurture. This article provides information about current research and offers some recommendations for music educators based on recent findings. J. W. Flohr and D. C. Miller used an electroencephalogram (EEG) to investigate subtle changes in brain electrical activity. Five-year-old children listened to music by Vivaldi and an Irish folk song while their brain activity was assessed. To focus the childrens’ attention on the music, the researchers asked them to tap a steady beat using rhythm sticks. Increased activity in the temporal region (auditory centers) of their brains was observed. This finding served to establish that the EEG technique was useful with young children and detrained that EEG could help localize the brain’s response to music.
In 1994 and 1997, France Rauscher and her colleagues used behavioral tests to examine the effect of music instruction on young children’s brain functioning. Results of their first study were presented in 1994 at the American Psychological Association’s 102nd Annual Convention in Los Angeles in a paper entitled, “Music and Spatial Task Performance: A Causal Relationship.” Their 1997 study was reported in “Music Training Causes Long Term Enhancement of Preschool Children’s Spatial-Temporal Reasoning,” Neurological Research, Vol. 19. They found that children who had received music instruction, including keyboard lessons scored higher in spatial task ability than those who had not. Findings suggested that children’s brains respond differently to different types of music after the age of five and that these differences can be located using the EEG technique.
Fredrickson, W. E., and C.M. Johnson. “The effect of performer use of rubato on listener perception of tension in Mozart.” Psychomusicology, Vol. 15 (Spring – Fall 1996). P. 78 – 86.
The purpose of the present study was to examine the extent to which individual performers can influence listener’s perceptions of tension in music. Participants were 120 college music majors who listened to short excerpts of two different performances of Mozart’s “Concerto for Horn and Orchestra No. 2, Movement 1.” One of the primary differences between the two performances was the performer’s use of rubato. Rubato usage for the two excerpts had been mapped in a previous study. The Continuous Response Digital Interface (CRDI) was used to record subject perceptions of tension in the excerpts. Results indicated that there was very little difference between group responses to the two excerpts. A Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was calculated showing a correlation of .89. Some minor differences can be seen when graphs are compared, but no consistent pattern of differences can be attributed to the performer’s use of rubato. While it remains that all individuals hear music in slightly different ways, the extant research in this area is beginning to highlight some consistencies in group responses to musical stimuli.
Garfield, Laeh Maggie. Sound medicine: healing with music, voice and song. Berkeley, Cal.: Celestial Arts, 1987.
This book clearly and practically seeks to reveal the deeper levels of the psyche that we are all privy to, yet the majority have been taught to deny. Throughout the text, exercises, ideas and methods are expounded at length for your assistance. Assimilating esoteric material is beyond thinking; your heart and soul must interact as well. Music tones, singing, chanting and even silence all can be focused and applied toward the healing process. Author Laeh Maggie Garfield examines the many techniques in use today. She goes on to discuss the philosophies involved and the metaphysics of sound medicine—the relationships between sound harmony, inner peace and world peace. The table of contents is divided into the following categories: (1) sounding off, (2) voice and sound, (3) music, (4) medicine sounds, (5) vibrational sound, (6) sacred sound, (7) subliminal sound, (8) Don Hunter the sound pioneer, (9) crystals, (10) Joska soos urban shaman, (11) earth, fire, wind and water, (12) healing science, (13) glossary, (14) booklist, and (15) an index.
Gonzalez, Melecio Jr., Glenn E. Smith IV, David W. Stockwell, and Robert S. Horton The “Arousal Effect”: An alternative interpretation of the Mozart Effect. American Journal of Undergraduate Research Vol. 2 No. 2 (2003).
Previous research suggests that listening to Mozart’s music enhances performance on subsequent tests of spatial ability. One explanation for this result is that Mozart’s music produces a positive arousal state that increases alertness and thus, enhances spatial performance. In this study elementary students were sampled in order to investigate (1) the presence of the Mozart Effect and (2) the possibility that the Mozart Effect can be explained by increased levels of arousal. Participants were randomly assigned to (1) listen to Mozart (Mozart group), (2) play active games (active group) or (3) sit in silence (control group) prior to completing a spatial abilities task. The expected outcome was (1) both the Mozart and active groups would perform better on the spatial test than the control group and (2) the active group would perform better on the spatial test than the Mozart group. Pre-planned orthogonal contrasts revealed that the Mozart and active groups outperformed the control group but the Mozart and active groups performed similarly. Implications of this data for understanding the Mozart Effect and for improving grade school education are discussed.
Halpern, Steven. Sound health: the music and sounds that make us whole. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985.
This source is a study of the effects of music and sound on the body, mind and spirit. It describes how to develop a proper “diet of sound’—even in the midst of environmental noise—to achieve a calmer, livelier and healthier self, which ultimately improves the quality of one’s life. Drawing on extensive scientific and medical research into the relation of music and sound to well being, with historical psychological, and artistic considerations, Sound Health provides concrete ways to control and improve sound intake for psychological and physical wellness, peace and harmony. It provides the tools for achieving individual wholeness and for helping bring about sonic sanity. Stressing the importance of preventive medicine, the author make us aware that sound—whether it be the music of instruments, the voice of a singer, the hum of human conversation or the roar of traffic—can be a powerful ingredient in the formula for health.
Sound Health provides the needed information, background and motivation to alert people to the inherent hazard and potentially tremendous rewards of one of the most important, universal but least understood elements of human life and well-being which is sound. The author also provides helpful resources including a discography for readers who wish to pursue the subject further.
Hetland, Lois. Listening to music enhances spatial-temporal reasoning: evidence for the “Mozart Effect.” The Journal Of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 34, No. 3 – 4 (Fall – Winter 2000)
Music listening enhances performance on spatial-temporal tasks more than on nonspatial-temporal tasks. Contrast analyses showed that the Mozart Effect extends to music other than Mozart’s, is not influenced by carry-over, is stronger with higher quality studies or in different lab settings and is not stronger in published studies. There is a moderate Mozart Effect in spatial tasks requiring mental rotation. Not fully researched are whether spatial performance is enhanced because the subject likes the music heard, or whether spatial enhancement occurs because of rhythm alone.
Hetland, Lois. The relationship between music and spatial processes: a meta-analysis. Ed. D. diss., Harvard University, 2000. Available online @ http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/preview_all9992322.
This dissertation reports the first comprehensive and systematic review of findings that assesses both the temporary effects on spatial task performance of adults of brief exposure to music and the effects on children’s spatial task performance from programs of music instruction. A relationship between musical and spatial domains has been suggested both theoretically and empirically. Such a relationship is of scientific interest to scholars of modularity and transfer of learning, because music and spatial reasoning might be related psychologically and perhaps neurologically as well. A relationship between the two abilities could also have practical implications for education, perhaps leading to instruction that better develops spatial ability, which is important to many disciplines and professions (e.g., physic, archaeology, medicine, engineering). Cognitive scientists who seek to understand the workings of the human mind, want to know whether and by what mechanism the areas of the mind/brain that process musical and spatial information are related psychologically and/or neurologically.
Music and arts education researchers share that interest, but they focus on how such links might enhance learning. Although schools rarely teach “Spatial Orientation 101,” spatial abilities underlie and can be used to express logical, aesthetic and mechanical relationship in humanities, sciences and arts, including such diverse fields as biology, physics, visual arts, dance, sports, architecture, strategic planning, navigation, archaeology, engineering and geometry.
Hodges, Donald A. Handbook of Music Psychology. San Antonio: IRM Press, 1996.
The comments are restricted to the following three general topics: (1) literature of music psychology,
(2) the notion of ecological validity and (3) the notion of research teams. In chapter 1, Eagle comments on the growth of literature, which has increased in recent years with the publishing of many more books and articles particularly the periodical literature, which appears in a wide array of journals, each reflecting many different disciplines. Electronic databases are providing faster and easier access to this literature. Throughout the Handbook, the reader will frequently encounter an author’s call for more research on a given topic, because there is insufficient information from which to derive definitive conclusions. Those engaged in music psychology research must continue to reflect on whether the experimental results obtained are genuinely moving us toward a greater understanding of the musical experience. The history of music psychology has been a somewhat dichotomous one in terms of the orientation of the researchers involved. To generalize, researchers are usually professional scientists with less formal training in music or professional musicians with less formal training in science. Thus, the research literature often reflects these biases and their corresponding strengths and weaknesses. With regard to this edition of the Handbook, a brief note concerning redundancies might be in order because several topics are discussed in more than one chapter. There are at least two defensible reasons for this: (1) Not all readers will read the chapters in order so each chapter must stand alone as much as possible. (2) Topics receive different levels of treatment and different viewpoints from different authors. Thus, the redundancies can be viewed as being helpful.
Howell, Peter, Ian Cross, and Robert West. Musical Structure and Cognition. London, England: Academic Press, 1985.
The scope and volume is intended to be broad. The content ranges from an analysis of systems of pitch organization in music theory to an account of the constraints on musical structure that may be imposed by the human motor system. The emphasis is on empirical investigation, and the need to base theoretical accounts of music structure on extra musical principles relating to human cognition. Though the primary purpose of this volume is to convey the “state of the art” in the study of musical cognition, many of the chapters should be assessable to undergraduate students of music and psychology. It should contain sufficient background material to provide an introduction to important topics within the field.
Chapter 1 sets the remainder of the volume in a historical context by analyzing the implication for the cognitive study of pitch provided by Western musical theory. Chapters 2 – 8 are principally concerned with the perceptual organization of music in terms of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic properties. Chapter 2 reviews current models of musical structure and proposes a scheme for a more broadly based approach, while Chapter 3 considers formal models of metric and rhythmic groupings. Chapter 4 shows how probalistic rules based on theoretical principles of tonal organization can capture significant details of melodic perception. Chapter 5 takes a more abstract, formal level of pitch organization as its basis in seeking to describe how listeners arrive at a sense of scale in the course of listening to a melody. Chapter 6 presents data from recalls of a folk tune that provide striking insights into what information we have access to from melodies to which we have recently listened. Chapter 7 describes an empirical investigation into the role of pitch contour in the perception and recognition of melodies. Chapter 8 takes us away from the perception of pitch sequences to the perception of pitch in isolation—the thorny problem of absolute pitch identification. The final four chapters focus primarily on production of music. Chapter 9 examines the relationship between structural and expressive cognitive representations of rhythm in musical performance, while Chapter 10 examines how motor control in human movement may influence the structure of instrumental repertoire and performance. Chapters 11 and 12 are intended to be read as a pair and take the reader through a basic introduction to principles governing voice production and feedback, to an account of how singers may regulate their vocal output.
Ivanov, Vesna K. and John G. Geake. The Mozart Effect and primary school children. Psychology of Music, Vol. 31, Issue: 4, (October 2003): p.405 – 413.
This study is the first to find a Mozart Effect for school children in a natural setting, in contrast to the original study of Rauscher, Shaw and Ky (1993). This study found some evidence for the existence of a Mozart Effect with upper-primary school-aged children in a school setting. Scores on a Paper Folding Task (PFT) for a class, which listened to Mozart during testing, were significantly higher than the PFT scores of a control class. Moreover, a similar result was obtained for another class, which listened to Bach during testing. The background questionnaire did not significantly contribute to the variance in PFT scores. This article includes the following details: (1) temporary enhancement of spatial reasoning abilities, (2) increased physiological activity in the temporal and left frontal areas of the brain, (3) the specificity of the stimulus, (4) Mozart or Bach? (5) Upper-primary school children and (6) first study that examined the effects of listening to the music of Bach with a Mozart paradigm.
Jackson, Catherine S., Route-learning and the Mozart Effect. Psychology of Music, vol. 32, No. 2 (April 2004).
Empirical tests of the “Mozart Effect,” an increase in spatial reasoning performance following exposure to Mozart’s music, have resulted in inconsistent findings. While the majority of the investigations have relied on paper-and-pencil tests, it is argued that, for the effect to be educationally valuable, performance must be enhanced in both laboratory and naturalistic settings. In a naturalistic study, participants repeatedly negotiated a series of computer-stimulated rooms immediately after listening to a sonata by Mozart or a piece by Glass. Evidence of significant learning was observed in both conditions, but there was no difference between listening conditions. It was concluded that critical variable affecting the relationship between music and spatial reasoning ability are not yet discovered.
Jausovec, N., and K. Habe. The “Mozart effect”: an electroencephalographic analysis employing the methods of induced event Related desynchronization / synchronization and event-related coherence.” Brain Topography 16 (2): 73 – 84 (Winter 2003).
The event related responses of 18 individuals were recorded while they were listening to three music clips of 6 s duration which were repeated 30 times each. The music clips differed in the level of the complex structure, induced mood, musical tempo and prominent frequency. They were taken from “Mozart’s sonata in D Major (K. 448),” and Brahms “Hungarian Dance No. 5.” The third clip was a simplified version of the theme taken from Haydn’s symphony (no. 94) played by a computer synthesizer. Significant differences induced event-related desynchronization between the three music clips were only observed in the lower-1 alpha band, which is related to attentional processes. A similar pattern was observed for the coherence measures. While respondents listened to the Mozart clip, coherence in the lower alpha hands increased more, whereas in the gamma band a less pronounced increase was observed as compared with the Brahms and Haydn clips. The clustering of the three clips based on EEG measures and distinguished that even though the Hadyn and Brahms clips were at opposite extreme with regard to mood when compared to the Mozart clip they induced musical tempo and complexity of structure in listeners. This would suggest that Mozart’s music – with no regard to the level of induced mood, music tempo and complexity – influences the level of arousal. It seems that modulations in the frequency domain of Mozart’s sonata have the greatest influence on the reported neurophysiological activity.
Jones, Mari Riess and Susan Holleran. Cognitive Bases of Musical Communication. Washington D. C.: American Psychological Association, 1992.
Sixteen contributors offer their thought on the theory and research experience in musical cognition by outlining new theoretical approaches and experimental results developed only in the past few decades, since psychologists have launched intensive, systematic studies of music as a form of communication. Cognitive Bases of Musical Communication systematically extends and deepens our knowledge of the mechanisms by which music is communicated among human beings.
By providing insight into possible applications of musical patterns to cognitive theory this volume breaks new ground in this new psychological discipline. Mari Riess Jones has been a professor of psychology at The Ohio State University since 1969. Dr. Jones’s research and numerous publications have centered on the theoretical effects of structural variables on perception and memory of auditory and visual patterns. A particular focus of her research is on the role of temporal structure. The table of contents divides the chapters into the following categories: (1) communication, meaning and affect in music, (2) the influence of structure on musical understanding, (3) pitch and the function of tonality, (4) acquisition and representation of musical knowledge and (5) communicating interpretations through performance.
Langdon, H. C. Robbins. The Mozart Companion: a symposium of leading Mozart scholars. The Norton Library, W. W. Norton and Company Inc.: New York, 1969.
This source illumines many vital aspects of Mozart’s music and the many varying interpretations of it, which are as various as the composer’s shifts in mood and in dramatic and artistic standpoint. The diversity of opinion represented by a symposium reflects something of the diversity of Mozart’s art. Each contributor selects the works he discusses within his own field—this book does not attempt to mention Mozart’s every composition—and reveals his own attitude to the composer. In each case, part of the essential Mozart is revealed, and he emerges triumphant and undiminished from the most various of approaches including historical, musicological, textual and analytical. One only needs to note a few of the composers (e.g. Hadyn, Brahms and Chopin) who have lavished praise upon Mozart to realize how wide a scope of musical opinion their collected judgments would disclose.
Lang, Paul Henry. The Creative World of Mozart. W. W. Norton and Company. Inc., New York: 1963.
This source of reference contains descriptions of Mozart’s music, personal life, compositional techniques and philosophies regarding life. Details are included about his financial affairs and publishing rights. Even in his early works, most “themes” of his music are already present, and it is fascinating to watch how these “themes” reappear in successive works, always deepened and enriched. The chapters are divided into the following categories: (1) Mozart’s creative process, (2) Mozart’s rhythms, (3) Mozartean modulations, (4) Mozart and the clavier, (5) Mozart and Haydn, (6) Requiem but no Peace, (7) the melodic sources of Mozart’s most popular lied, (8) some fallacies in Mozart biography.
Lemonick, Michael. Fast-Trak Toddlers. Time, vol. 154, Issue: 7, (08/16/99).
This article discusses the so-called Mozart Effect, as of August 16, 1999. This theory states that playing the composer’s music to infants and toddlers stimulates brain development. The original research was conducted on college students regarding test performance. The original research said nothing about infants or even about intelligence and it certainly made no claims about development. All it showed was that a group of college students did better on a battery of specialized tests shortly after listening to Mozart. To make matters worse, no scientist has been able to duplicate those results despite numerous attempts.
Lerch, Donna. The Mozart Effect: Scientific explanations for the Mozart Effect. UIUC (Spring 2000). Available online: http://Ird.ed.uiuc.edu/students/lerch/edpsy/mozart_effect.html.
There is an ever-building volume of research suggesting that music may actually hard wire the brain, building links between the two hemispheres that can thereafter be utilized for a variety of cognitive activities. This article is divided into various categories. The first section includes historical descriptions of all the various experiments. The second section is divided into the following categories: (1) scientific explanations for the Mozart effect, (2) psychological basis, (3) sensory stimulation. A number of studies have indicated that listening to Mozart’s works may temporarily increase cognitive skills. Other studies have found no statistically significant “Mozart Effect”. Music educators should be aware of the controversy, and neither center music curricula around certain types of music for maximum intelligence building, nor exclude the possibility that there may be a link between listening to music and intelligence. There needs to be further serious research into this intriguing area of science and far less unsubstantiated, profit motivated action.
Lingerman, Hal. A., The healing energies of music. Wheaton, Il.: Theosophical Publishing House, 1995.
In this revised and updated edition of a best-selling classic, musical therapist and teacher, Hal Lingerman, presents a wealth of resources for choosing and locating just the right music for physical, emotional and spiritual growth and healing. With comprehensive lists of current recordings, including new and remastered CDs, Lingermans’s exhaustive sourcebook will guide you in finding music to benefit your temperament, lifestyle and spiritual aspiration. This source includes expanded chapters on Women’s Music, World Music, the Music of Nature and Angelic Music. Hal A. Lingerman, M. A., M. Div., is an ordained minister, teacher and workshop leader. He is Core Adjunct Professor in Arts and Sciences at National University in San Diego and Counseling Coordinator at North County Interfaith Council in Escondido, California. He is author of Life Streams: Journeys into Meditation and Music, Living Your Destiny, and The Book of Numerology: Taking A Count of Your Life. Lingerman includes a chronological listing of the birthdates of representative composers.
Miles, Elizabeth. Tune Your Brain. Polygram Classic and Jazz, (a division of Polydor International Gmbh) 1998. Deutsche Grammophon, GmbH, Hamburg. Manufactured and marketed by Polygram Classic and Jazz, a division of Polygram Records, Inc., New York, New York: Printed in U. S. A.
The music on this disc works on your autonomic nervous system and brain waves to counter the neurological, physiological and psychological effects of life in the fast lane. This disc draws upon clinical evidence about music’s effect on the mind and body to provide the melodic mix.
Musical diets can reduce time perception, reduce overeating physiologically, and create a heartbeat-effect (80 beats per minute) that synchronizes the listener’s rhythms to the pulse of relaxation. These pieces have been selected to transmit the electrical impulses that can slow your nervous system signals and ease your brain waves into alpha frequencies that clear your mind or the delta range of sleep. Slow tempo, rich tones, flowing rhythms, graceful and graduated melodies, predictable form, and steady dynamics all work to relax your mind and body as they mix with Mozart’s musical genius to bring peace and joy to your soul. This music is IQ boosting so it will enhance your abstract reasoning and pattern recognition skills. Alpha wave music will help you concentrate, read, write, analyze, study and remember. Beta wave music that will make you think faster, complete multi-tasks, brainstorm and beat mental burnout. The following pieces are listed on the CD: “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik in G Major, K. 525,” “Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581 Larghetto,” “Concerto for Flute and Orchestra in G Major, K. 313,” “Piano and Violin Sonata in B-flat major, K. 454 Andante,” “Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra in B-Flat Major, K. 191” “Andante ma Adagio, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 21 in C Major,” “K. 467, Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra in A major, K. 622,” “String Quartet in B-flat K. 589 Larghetto,” “Concerto for Horn and Orchestra No. 2 in E-flat major, K. 417 Andante,” and “Piano Sonata in B-flat major, K. 570 Adagio.”
Moser, Steven Roger. Beyond the Mozart effect: age related cognitive functioning in instrumental music. Ph. D. diss.,The University of Southern Mississippi 2003.
Availableonline@ wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/preview_all/3084208.
The purpose of this study was to identify differences in the cognitive functioning of healthy older wind and percussion instrumental musicians, compared with the normative data for measure and demographic variables. A convenient sample was used, consisting of 120 instrumental musicians, fifty five years and older, active in selected community band organizations in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Washington D. C. Test measures included the Mini Mental State Examination, Trailmaking Tests A and B and the Satisfaction with Life Scale. Data was collected and scored by the researcher in accordance with the guidelines developed by the instruments’ authors. Variables under study were analyzed and the results were presented to correspond to the following issues: the relationship between music participation and cognitive performance; the relationship of cognitive performance and music participation to demographic variables; and the relationship among life satisfaction scores, music participation and cognitive performance. The results indicated that the participants in this study demonstrated higher cognitive functioning when compared to the normative means for this age group on global cognition, psychomotor function, memory recall, and executive function. Though other factors may have influenced cognitive functioning for this sample, the strength of the demographic observation coupled with the highly successful test results indicated a strong, perhaps untested link between the lifestyle of amateur instrumental musicians and health cognitive aging.
While causality cannot be inferred from this study design, the study revealed three important finds: (1) The older adult instrumental music sample performed better than the general population in global cognitive functioning and memory recall skills. (2) The older adult instrumental music sample performed better than the general population in executive functioning and psychomotor functioning. (3) The older adult instrumental music sample were generally satisfied with life.
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. The Great Sonatas for Piano and Violin, Six Variations in G Minor K. 360. Waltar Klien, piano, Arthur Grumiawx, violinist; {Baarn}, Netherlands: Philips, 1985.
This violin sonata was clearly still in its infancy when Mozart produced his clavier sonatas with violin accompaniment. Twelve years elapsed before he carried its development a stage further and wrote what he called, in a letter of February 14, 1778 to his father, “Clavier duetti mit Violin”. According to Jurgen Hunkemoller, Mozart became in these years the “pacemaker” in the development of the violin sonata into the “Sonata for Violin and Clavier”. A few sonatas by his contemporaries (Fernando Pellegrini, Luigi Boccherini, and Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach) led up to the threshold of this new development, but Mozart must get the credit of being the first, in his Paris and Mannehim sonatas, to end the preponderance of the piano and put both instrument on an equal footing. In a letter to his father he acknowledges that he modeled them on certain “Duetti” by Joseph Schuster, not lost, but very popular in Mannheim in their day.
Very representative of the lively dialogue between the two instruments in this sonata cycle is the “G major Sonata, K. 301”. In the first movement the main theme is first enunciated by the violin and immediately taken up by the piano, the violin now taking the accompaniment, in a perfect exchange of roles. While in the rondo of the second movement the violin takes over the melody from the piano. It is noteworthy also that in these sonatas Mozart made effective use of the various registers, bowing effects and tonal qualities of the violin, so that this new style of writing, this dialogue between equal partners, brought in its wake developments also in the techniques of violin playing.
Although none of the piano sonatas of the same period has less than three movements, Mozart follows Johann Christian Bach and Joseph Schuster in giving only two movements to most of these Mannheim and Paris sonatas for violin and clavier. In terms of creative expression, there are links between the two sets of works. For example, a perfect counterpart to the slightly later “Piano Sonata in A minor, K. 310” is the “E Minor Violin Sonatas, K. 304”, in which the twenty-two year old composer transcends, by a powerfully subjective expressionism, the limitations of his courtly and artificial form. Could it be that harrowing personal experiences, even before the death of his mother, cast their shadow over these two sonatas?
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. Music for piano, four hands Mozart. Schubert. New York: Sony Classical CD 1992.
Program notes are included by Philip Ramey in English with French and German translations. The Mozart authority Alfred Einstein has rightly described K. 448 as “…gallant from beginning to end…” with “the form and the thematic material of an ideal sinfonia for an opera buffa; no cloud obscures its gaiety.” Defending this Sonata against the often heard charge of its purpose being primarily to entertain, Einstein stated “…the art with which two parts are made completely equal, the play of the dialogue, the delicacy and refinement of the figuration, the feeling for sonority in the combination and exploitation of the different registers of the two instruments.” All of these things exhibit such mastery that this is at the same time one of the most profound and most mature of all Mozart’s compositions.
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. Mozart: Heart of the Concerto. Stradivari, Marca Registrada. THE VOX MUSIC GROUP, 1992.
The following works are included in this CD: “Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488”, “Piano Concerto No. 26 in D Major, K. 537”, “Horn Concerto in E-flat Major, K. 417,” “Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218”, “Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, K. 219”, “Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622”, “Bassoon Concerto in B-flat Major, K. 191”, “Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467”.
Arthur Hutchings has written, “…of the great concertos, this is the sunniest…” Certainly, it is one of the most limpid and spontaneously melodic of all that Mozart wrote. Many critics, among them Prof. Dr. Freidrich Blume, have noted the operatic thinking (influenced by Figar) in its structure, enhancing both its remarkable freedom of form and lyricism. The scoring is for strings; one flute, two clarinets (Mozart used these for the first time here in a piano concerto), two bassoons, and two horns. The trumpets and tympani are omitted. In concert, Mozart improvised his own cadenzas, as was the custom of the times; however, in the autograph score of this concerto, he has written out the cadenza. Rumor and speculation have it that the cadenza was written for one of Mozart’s pupils.
Myss, Caroline Ph. D. Anatony of the spirit. Three Rivers Press. New York: 1996.
Anatomy of the Spirit is the boldest presentation to date of energy medicine by one of its premier practitioners, internationally acclaimed medical intuitive Caroline Myss, one of the “hottest new voice in the alternative health/spirituality scene” (Publishers Weekly). Based on fifteen years of research into energy medicine, Dr. Myss’s work show how every illness corresponds to a pattern of emotional and psychological stresses, beliefs, and attitudes that have influenced corresponding areas of the human body. Anatomy of the Spirit also presents Dr. Myss’s breakthrough model of the body’s seven centers of spiritual and physical power, in which she synthesizes the ancient wisdom of three spiritual traditions—the Hindu charkas, the Christian sacraments, and the Kabbalah’s Tree of Life—to demonstrate the seven stages through which everyone must pass in the search for higher consciousness and spiritual maturity. With this model, Dr. Myss shows how you can develop your own latent powers of intuition as simultaneously cultivate your personal power and spiritual growth.
Myss, Caroline Ph. D. Sacred Contracts: Awaking your divine potential. Three Rivers Press. New York:
2002 – 2003.
Medical intuitive Caroline Myss has found that when people don’t understand their purpose in life the result can be depression, anxiety, fatigue, and eventual physical ill—in short, a spiritual malaise of epidemic proportions. Myss’s experience of working with people led her to develop an insightful and ingenious process for deciphering your own Sacred Contract—or higher purpose—using a new theory of archetypes that builds on the words of Jung, Plato, and many other contemporary thinkers. Myss examines the lives of the spiritual master and prophets—Abraham, Jesus Buddha, and Muhammad—who archetypal journey illustrates the four stages of a Sacred Contract and provide clues for discovering your own. Myss explains how you can identify your particular spiritual energies, or archetypes—the gatekeepers of your higher purpose—and use them to help you find out what you are here on earth to learn and who you are meant to meet. Exploring your Sacred Contract will shine light on the purpose and meaning of your life. Both visionary and practical, Sacred Contracts is a bold, powerful work of spiritual wisdom. Without a doubt, your most intriguing challenge in life is to recognize your spiritual commitments and live them to the fullest.
Nantais, Kristin, Marie. “Spatial temporal skills and exposure of music: is there an effect and if so, why?” Masters theses, University of Windsor {Canada}, 1997. Available online @http://wwwlib.umi.com/ dissertations/previewall/MQ30979.
The present study sought to replicate and extend the “Mozart Effect” described by Rauscher, Shaw and Ky (1993, 1995). Rauscher, et al. reported an increase in scores on a spatial-temporal task following 10 minutes of listening to a Mozart sonata. An effect that was not evident in control conditions. In experiment one, they replicated the Mozart Effect in a highly controlled environment and found that participants performed better on a spatial-temporal task after listening to Mozart than after sitting in silence. En Experiment two, they found the same effect when a composition by Schubert was substituted for the Mozart sonata.
In Experiment three, performance was equivalent across conditions when they replaced the silence (control) condition of Experiment one with 10 minutes of a narrated short story. Moreover, performance on the spatial task was a function of listener’s preference for the Mozart rather than the story. These findings imply that the Mozart Effect can be explained by the participant’s motivation and emotional state.
Nantais, Kristin Marie and Glenn E. Schellenburg. “The Mozart effect: an artifact of preference.” Psychological Science: A Journal of American Psychological Society, Vol. 10, No. 4 July 1999.
The Mozart effect reported by Frances J. Rauscher, Gordon L. Shaw and Kathering N. Ky indicated the enhancement of spatial-temporal abilities after listening to Mozart’s music. Their experiment was replicated and extended. In one experiment, performance on a spatial-temporal task was better after participants listened to a piece composed by Mozart or Schubert compared to when they sat in silence. In a second experiment, the advantage for the music condition disappeared when the control condition consisted of a narrated story instead of silence. Rather, performance was a function of the listener’s preference (music or story), with better performance following the preferred condition. Although listening to music composed by Mozart might contribute to improved performance on a subsequently presented spatial-temporal task, our results provide no evidence that the improvement differs from that observed with other engaging auditory stimuli that are equally pleasing to participants.
Nelson, Thomas. The holy Bible, New King James Version. Thomas Nelson Inc. 1994
A new translation has been necessary in the New King James Version. This principle of complete equivalence seeks to preserve all of the information in the text while presenting it in good literary form. Dynamic equivalence is a recent procedure in Bible translation, commonly resulting in paraphrasing where a more literal rendering is needed to reflect a specific and vital sense. Complete equivalence translates fully in order to provide an English text that is both accurate and readable. The format of the New King James Version is designed to enhance the vividness and devotional quality of the Holy Scriptures. Words or phrases in italics indicate expressions in the original language, which require clarification by additional English words, as also done throughout the history of the King James Bible. Verse numbers in bold type indicate the beginning of a paragraph. Oblique type in the New Testament indicates a quotation from the Old Testament. Poetry is structured as contemporary verse to reflect the poetic form and beauty of the passage in the original language. The covenant name of God was usually translated from the Hebrew as “LORD” or “GOD” (using capital letters as shown) in the King James Old Testament. This tradition is maintained. In the present edition the name is capitalized whenever the covenant name is quoted in the New Testament from a passage in the Old Testament.
Newhan, Paul. The Singing Cure: an introduction to voice movement therapy. Boston: Shambhala, 1994.
Voice movement therapy is a new technique of expressive arts therapy in which the voice is understood to be a link between body and mind. This is a supremely powerful tool for improving self-image and for opening up whole new worlds of self-expression and creativity. This is the first book to present a comprehensive overview of the technique. Its founder, Paul Newhan, details its history and reveals its usefulness for performers, therapists and all those interested in liberating their capacity for self-expression. The chapters are divided into the following categories: (1) Origins—Voice, Music, Language,
(2) Psychotherapy and the Medicinal Wonder of Words, (3) The Pioneering Foundations of a Singing Cure, (4) Scientific Principles of Vocal sSound, (5) Practical Elements of Vocal Liberation, (6) Liberated Voice, (7) From Song to Speech—The Muscle Beneath the Skin, (8) Case Studies and (9) Notes.
Ostrander, Sheila. Superlearning 2000 by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, with Nancy Ostrander. New York, N. Y.:Delacorte Press, 1994.
New techniques to help you expand memory, enhance creativity and master any skill you put your mind to—without stress! Superlearning 2000 is the fast, fun and innovative learning technique that enable you to master any skill or subject—from computers to athletics to conversational French—in a fraction of traditional learning time.
Hailed by the Fortune 500 as the mental technology of the future and proven by super achievers around the world, this revolutionary program will unlock your limitless potential, put you on the fast track to new opportunities and change the way you think about learning forever. Discover: the surprising subliminal message that can help dramatically increase grade and test scores. Learn the simple hand movement that produces instant help if you are stuck on an exam plus a thinking enhancement exercise to practice directly before making a decision. It includes descriptions of an audiotape that calms a hyperactive or overstressed child and the breathing technique that relieves stress, energizes and increases your thinking capacity are included. Learn the truth about the “Mozart” connection for increasing intelligence. Ostrander provides a complete listing of the classical and contemporary music that heightens concentration, enhances memory, and relieves stress. There are breath-holding games that bring more oxygen to the brain, which adds 5 to10 IQ points to test scores.
Ottoway. Hugh. Mozart. Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1980.
A dated source that keeps in mind the needs of the general reader who has been ‘caught’ by Mozart’s music but is not familiar with musical terminology. Music examples have been kept to a minimum and if absolutely necessary. Ottoway has presented a much romanticized life story unromantically, but without detracting from the phenomenon that is Mozart’s creativity. The people, places and historical setting have been treated in a realistic manner. Both in the text and in some of the pictures, the sentimental tradition has been recognized. For factual detail, Ottoway has used common sources such as Anderson, Deutsch, Einstein, Schenk etc. while incorporating earlier and more recent ones. The prevailing pattern is chronological with life and works considered together. The chapters are organized into the following categories: (1) Salzburg and the Mozart Family, (2) The Child Prodigy, (3.) Mozart’s Early Compositions, (4) A New Order in Salzburg, (5) The Developing Composer, (6) Vienna: Mozart Turns Freelance, (7) Mozart and Haydn, (8) Operatic Masterpieces, (9) Piano Concertos and String Quintets, (10) Poverty and Riches (11) The Last Twelve Months, (12) Mozart and Ourselves, (13) Notes, (14) Chronology, (15) Glossary, (16) Bibliography, (17) Acknowledgements and (18) index.
Pearsall, Paul Ph. D. The Beethoven factor: the new positive psychology of hardiness, happiness, healing and hope.
Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc. Charlottesville, Va. 2003.
Positive psychology confirms that rather than shrinking from adversity, we must become engaged by it and thrive through it.
Dr. Paul Pearsalll, bestselling author and a leading figure in the field of positive psychology, calls this proven phenomenon of converting stress into personal discovery and transformation Stress-Induced Growth, and say it is the essential element to unlock your life’ full potential. In The Beethoven Factor, Pearsall introduces you to the people he calls thriver, individuals who face life’s unavoidable challenges head-on and grow stronger and more vital as a result. Included are the amazing and inspiring stories of these so-called thrivers, including composer Ludwig von Beethoven who wrote his best-loved symphonies despite total deafness, and the author himself who overcame stage IV cancer. The Beethoven Factor gives you the tools to uncover your own “thrivability” and begin experiencing the richness, beauty, and true pleasure of living.
Rauscher, Frances H., Gordon L. Shaw and Katherin Ky. “Listening to Mozart enhances spatial-temporal reasoning: towards a Neurophsiological basis.” Neuroscience Letters 185 1995 p.44-47.
Motivated by predictions off a structured neuronal model of the cortex, they performed a behavioral experiment, which showed that listening to a Mozart piano sonata produced significant short-term enhancement of spatial-temporal reasoning in college students. Here we present results from an experiment, which replicates these findings and shows that (1) ‘repetitive’ music does not enhance reasoning: (2) a taped short story does not enhance reasoning, and (3) short-term memory is not enhanced. They proposed experiments designed to explore the neurophysiological bases of this causal enhancement of spatial-temporal reasoning by music. They are beginning to search for quantitative measures of further higher cognitive effects of music.
These studies were supported by the National Association of Music Merchants, the Orange County Philharmonic Society, the Ralph and Leona Gerard Foundation, The Seaver Institute, Walter Cruttenden and Associates, the National Piano Foundation, and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
Rauscher, Frances H., and Bob Aaron. “Music, Mindpower and “The Mozart Effect”: Research to visit IWU, Jan. 1999, Available online @ http://www.iwu.edu/~iwunews/newsrlse/news033.html
The 102nd Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in 1994 was the setting for Rauscher who was then a member of a University of California, Irvine, and research team—to unveil many of the group’s finding, which documented a clear link between music and intelligence. Rauscher, an assistant professor of childhood development at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, wrote in the September/October 1996 edition of Early Childhood News: “In 1993, they completed a pilot study in which 10 three-year-old children were given music training—either singing or keyboard lessons. The scores of every child improved significantly (46%) on the Object Assembly Task, a section of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-revised (WPPSI-R) that measure spatial reasoning. “In a second experiment,” she added, “we found that the spatial reasoning performance of preschool children who received eight months of music lessons far exceeded that of a demographically comparable group of preschool children who did not receive music lessons.” The link between music and spatial reasoning is important since spatial reasoning skills are part of the abstract functions like solving problems in math and engineering. In an Education Week interview last April, Rauscher explained the impact of music on the brain’s wiring this way: “What we think music is doing is stabilizing the neural connections necessary for this kind of spatial-temporal ability.” The research conducted by Rauscher and her colleagues has gained widespread new media attention from the likes of the NBC New magazine, Dateline; USA Today; CBS New Correspondent Charles Osgood; Broadcaster Paul Harvey; Associated Press; and countless radio and television stations coast-to-coast.
Rauscher, Frances H., and Gordon L. Shaw. “Key components of the Mozart effect.” Perceptual and Motor Skills, Vol. 86, No. 3, June 1998.
The results of studies intended to replicate the enhancement of spatial-temporal reasoning following exposure to 10 minutes of Mozart’s “Sonata for two Pianos in D Major” (K. 448) have been varied.
While some studies have replicated the effect, others have not. We suggest that researchers’ diverse choice of dependent measures may account for theses varied results. This paper provides a neurophysiological context for the enhancement and considers theoretical and experimental factors, including the choice of dependent measure, the presentation order of the conditions, the selection of the musical compositions and the inclusion of a distractor task, that may contribute to the various finds. It is recommended that researchers exploring the Mozart Effect carefully consider the question of task validity and experimental design. Other factors such as the subject’s age, musical training, reverence for the exposure condition and aptitude for the task may also play a role. Researchers investigating the influence of musicality of the effect should employ a very precise operation definition of musical training to avoid problems of interpretation by subjects. Finally, it seems important to apply a conservative interpretation to the meaning of this data. Although it is likely that music-induced enhancement of spatial-temporal reasoning can increase over time, more work is needed before substantial practical application can be derived.
Reimar, Bennett. “Facing the risks of the ‘Mozart Effect’.” Phi Delta Kappan; Dec. 99 Vol. 81 Issue: 4. Available Online @ http://web5.epnet.com/DeliveryPrintSave.asp?tb=1@ugsid+9537B8F8-5CFB-4663-A5…
This paper examines the study and teaching of music in the United States plus the establishment of singing in the schools. It includes various discussions on the vulnerability of musical values in addition to music stimulating various emotional responses. This paper is divided into the following categories: (1) Musical and Other Purposes of Music Education, (2) Vulnerability of Musical Values, (3) Possible Implications,
(4) Reconciling Musical and Other Purposes, (5) Notes. This article is reprinted with permissions from Music Educators Journal July 1999. Copyright 1999 by MENC-The National Association for Music Education.
Reimar, Bennett. “Facing the risks of the ‘Mozart effect’.” Music Educators Journal, July 99, Vol. 86 Issue: 1.
Bennett Reimer argues that music educators must protect the integrity of music education from alternative, non-music agendas. The spirit of music education can be found in the day-to-day actions of every music teacher. The development of this spirit can be traced to the influence of recognized authorities in our profession. These authorities have guided our profession with distinction through their words and actions. The purpose of this series is to offer distinguished senior members of our profession the “Grand Master,” the opportunity to write about some aspect of music education based on their perspective as lifelong leaders in the field. The ultimate intent is to provide the entire readership with an encounter with those who have been and, we hope, will continue to be an integral part of our profession.
The second article in this series is written by Bennett Reimer, the John W. Beanie Professor of Music Emeritus at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where he formerly was chair of the Department of Music education and founder and director of the Center for the Study of Education and the Musical Experience. He has been the author or editor of 12 books and more than one hundred articles, chapters and reviews. His writing, teaching and lecturing have addressed a variety of topics, including philosophy of music education, curriculum theory, research theory, multicultural issues, musical intelligences, interdisciplinary arts principles, teacher education, international music education issues, and application of cognitive psychology to music learning. Reimer, who first entered music education as a band director, has participated in many national and international initiatives, including the MENC Goals and Objectives project, the MENC task force that wrote the National Standard for Music Education, and MENC’s ongoing Vision 20/20 project. He has lectured and presented keynote addresses all over the world.
Riordan, Mary. “Curriculum Notes from Notre Dame Academy.” Winter 2003. Available online @ http://www.pzharvard.edu/Research/REAP.htm.
Three areas were found in which a substantial number of students have demonstrated a clear, casual link between education as an art form and the achievement in arts and academic areas. The following conclusions about these three areas in which reliable causal links were found. (1) Listening to music and spatial-temporal reasoning. A medium-sized causal relationship found between listening to music and temporary improvement in spatial-temporal reasoning. Such a finding is of little importance to education because the effect is temporary and spatial reasoning is related psychologically and perhaps even neurologically. (2) Learning to play music and spatial reasoning. A large causal relationship between learning to play music and spatial-temporal reasoning: when standard music notation was learned as well the effect was greater. The value for education is greater here: the effect works for all populations because it costs little since it is based on standard music curriculum and influences many students. Whether spatial skills benefited students is dependent upon whether they were taught spatially. (3) Classroom drama and verbal skills. Causal links were found between classroom drama and a variety of verbal tasks. A medium sized causal relationship was found between classroom drama and oral understanding/recall of stories, reading readiness, oral language and writing. A large causal relationship was found between classroom drama and written understanding/recall of stories, plus the causal relationship between classroom drama and vocabulary was small and could not be generalized. Drama helped children’s skills with respect to the texts enacted and helped build verbal skills that transfer to new materials. Such an effect has great value for education because verbal skill is highly valued, drama techniques cost little in terms of effort and expense, and a high proportion of students are influenced by such curriculum changes. For over 50 years, Notre Dame academy has been committed to arts education for its own sake. Notre Dame includes a fine art curricular offering, freshman arts program, an interdisciplinary approach to coursework, plus the Senior Project, and the music, dance and theater programs. The Academy gives witness to the fact that the arts are an essential part of a well-grounded education.
Rufino, Vincent Joseph. “Mozart from ‘A’ to ‘Z’: an interdisciplinary study of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart” Ph. D. diss. Drew University 2002. Available online@ http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/preview_all/ 3064191.
Since Mozart’s death, biographers have explored every aspect of the composer’s life. The first attempt at writing a Mozart biography was the Nekrolog by Freidrich Schlichtegroll in the spring of 1792. This document contained information gleaned from Mozart’s sister, Nannerl, friends, acquaintances, and colleagues who knew him. Knowing the vast amount of literary resources already in print, Rufino approached the topic as a Mozart primer, covering historical, psychological, familial and musical aspects of his life. Rufino explains each topic for the layman, not the Mozartian scholar. Each chapter is complete by itself and no attempt is made to present the chapter in chronological order. Instead the chapters are organized alphabetically so the reader need not read the chapters consecutively. There is no attempt to harmonically analyze Mozart’s music, although there are chapters concerning his music. Compositions are discussed by where they appeared historically in the canon and how their composition affected Mozart’s other works in the same genre. Rightfully, the four longest chapters are about Mozart’s father, mother, sister and wife. These four people had the strongest influence on Wolfgang’s life, especially his father, Leopold, who predeceased Wolfgang by only four years. Because of the correspondence between Wolfgang and the members of his family, posterity has a wealth of information concerning the composer. From Wolfgang’s first attempts at music, Leopold suspected that his son was destined to be extraordinary. Consequently, Leopold insured that all letters, manuscripts, scores and drafts were carefully preserved. In his will, he provided for the collection of Mozartiana to be passed on to Nannerl who preserved them for several years. Eventually, much of the collection found its way into the hands of Mozart’s widow, Constanze, who use them to support herself and her two children. She is responsible for the publishing of most of her husband’s music. She distributed information and the letter about her late husband to authors of magazine articles and biographies. Utilizing most of the existing letters, it was her second husband, Georg Nissen, who wrote the third biography about Mozart in 1827. The writing in the dissertation is as current as modern day communication allows.
Web sites consulted were up and running at the time of the citation. Some chapters have a “new take on an old subject” while other chapters such as Umlauf might be obscure to most readers. Rufino hopes to engage the reader and pique interest in the life and times of the greatest composer of the Western World, Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart.
Rusin, Dave. Mathematics and Music. Available online @ http://www.math.niu.edu/~uses-math/music/index.html
This is a collection of information about the interplay between music and mathematics. Rusin has collected a bibliography of many research articles relating to music and math. One of the most publicized links between music and academic subjects (including Mathematics) is the “Mozart Effect”: the claim that exposure to certain types of music—especially exposure to early classical music very early in life can lead to improved performance on test scores, including tests of spatial visualization, abstract reasoning, and so on. Rusin is extremely skeptical of proposed “scientific truths” that are discussed in the absence of thorough experimentation, analysis and corroboration. He is particularly dubious of truths expounded by those who stand to profit from their popularization.
Schubert, Franz. Music for piano four hands Mozart and Schubert.. New York: Sony Classical 1992.
Franz Schubert wrote a large amount of music for piano duet (four hands at one piano), but little if any of it has ever been widely known to the concert going public. This is because Schubert composed most of his four-hand music purely to entertain his musical friends who gathered at Viennese homes for evenings that became known as “Schubertiads.” Expertly crafted so that no hand impedes the others, these pieces were created more for performances than audiences and seldom appear on recital programs. Written early in 1828, the last year of Schubert’s life, the “F minor Fantasia” termed by one authority the “crowning glory” of Schubert’s piano duets is an intense and emotionally dark hued piece. Cast in four dissimilar sections closing with a fugue, the Fantasia is especially notable for its polyphonic foundation and integration of the normal four-movement sonata design.
Sadie, Stanley. Wolfgang Amade Mozart: essays on his life and his music. Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1996.
Stanley Sadie is the editor of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 1980) and related dictionaries. He has been a music critic for The Times editor of The Musical Times and has published three books on Mozart. He is on the advisory board of the new Kochel catalogue and has been President of the International Musicological Society since 1992. The present volume arose from the Royal Musical Association Mozart Bicentenary Conference, held in the Purcell Room of the South Bank Concert Halls in London of August of 1991.
That conference, the largest and most international ever held by the Association, and its first to be open to the general public, included nearly 50 research communications, by scholars from Australia, Austria, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States. The 25 essays in this book are, broadly speaking, based on papers delivered at the conference, most of them reworked to some degree in the transfer from verbal delivery to the printed page or in the light of continuing research. Many other scholars also spoke at the conference. Their contributions either represented work in progress, or were committed to publication elsewhere, or were too dependent upon musical or visual exemplification to be appropriate for formal publication, or were part of a round-table discussion. The chapters are divided into the following categories: (1) Composer and Context, (2) Instrumental music, and (3) Mozart and the Theatre. Also included is an index of Mozart’s works by Kochel numbers by genre, in addition to a general index.
Shaw. G. “Music Math Connection.” Early Childhood Connection. MIND Institute, Ca. Available online @ gshaw@uci.edu.
The purpose of this paper is to make this causal connection clear and intuitive. They start by reviewing the past 15 year history of the research establishing the causal connection between music and children’s innate spatial-temporal (ST) reasoning (making a mental image and thinking ahead in space and time as in chess, or music or math). A key new step presented here that clearly and intuitively connects music and math is a mapping of the standard music score onto ST patterns, which we propose will allow very young children to readily start playing piano keyboard. This summarizes the present research milestones showing both how music helps us to understand how we think, reason and create, and how it can enhance these higher brain function through our innate ST abilities. This paper is divided into the following categories: (1) why mastering or understanding math is so crucial, (2) spatial-temporal math complements language based math, (3) music ST math program: revolution in math education, (4) music-math causal connection research, (5) music ST math education. (6) math and math connection: why it works.
Shaw, Gordon L. “The Mozart Effect.” Epilepsy and Behavior 2. Elsevier Science 2001. p. 611 – 612.
Available online @ gshaw@uci.edu.
In his article, “Review of the Mozart Effect,” John Hughes concentrated on his seminal experiments showing decreased neuropathological activity during exposure of epilepsy patients to a Mozart Sonata (K. 448) and on his extensive computer analyses of many pieces of music to try to account for the Mozart effect phenomena. Shaw gives a complementary broader scope of the relevant cortical theory, behavioral experiments and brain imaging studies all adding further insight into this discovery of large scientific as well as large general interest. This allows an overview of topics of clinical relevance. Based on the Mountcastle (2, 3) columnar organization principle, the trion model (4 – 6) yields an innate internal cortical language represented by spatial-temporal memory firing patterns. The brain’s innate ability to relate (through symmetry operation) these memory patterns is proposed to be the unifying physiological mechanism of higher brain function. The finding by Leng, et al. that the structure of the trion memory patterns and their symmetry relationships were those of recognizable human styles of music astonished them. It led to the prediction (4) in 1991 that “music was a window into higher brain” and the specific music could causally enhance spatial-temporal reasoning. Spatial temporal reasoning involves maintaining, transforming and comparing mental images in space and time using symmetry operations, for example, in chess. This theory led to a wide range of experiments supporting this prediction.
Shaw, Gordon L. “Keeping Mozart in Mind.” San Diego: Academic 2000. Available online @
http://www.mindinstitute.net/MIND3/research/research-book.php
This article presents the latest scientific finding of the effects of music on reasoning and learning, and the real story behind the “Mozart Effect” research. Since the original findings were presented in 1993, the “Mozart Effect” phenomenon has been widely discussed in both the scientific community and the general media. It is based on the principle observation that study participants improved their scores on spatial-temporal tests after listening to one of Mozart’s piano sonatas. Spatial-temporal agility is an important guide to mathematical ability and aptitude. That original study has prompted further interest in research to explore the relationship between music, intelligence and learning. Gordon Shaw shows how music can help us understand how the brain works and how music may enhance how we think, reason and create. He includes information about his original research, plus the latest findings about the effect of music from his own research and that of other scientists around the world. Keeping Mozart in Mind is written in a style that makes this information accessible to not only researchers and clinicians, but also educators and parents. The book is accompanied by a CD-ROM demonstration of STAR (Spatial-Temporal Animation Reasoning), an interactive software program than was used in combination with piano lessons in a recent study to help teach difficult math concepts to young children plus a recording of the first movement of Mozart’s “Sonata for Two Pianos in D major, K. 448”, the sonata that induces the “Mozart effect.”
Shaw, Gordon L. Ph. D. Keeping Mozart in Mind . Academic Press, 2000.
Keeping Mozart in Mind presents the latest scientific proof that music can enhance learning, including the real story behind the “Mozart Effect” research. This landmark study showed that college student improved their scores on spatial-temporal tests after listening to Mozart’s “Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major” (a recording accompanies this book). Spatial-temporal reasoning is an important guide to mathematical aptitude. Since these findings were first announced in 1993, the Mozart effect phenomenon has received worldwide attention in both the scientific community and the popular media. Shaw shares the details of his original research and present the latest series of dramatic findings about the effect of music on intelligence and learning. One of the studies described found that piano keyboard training enhanced spatial-temporal reasoning in preschool age children. Another showed that second-graders improved their ability to learn math concepts when exposed to piano lessons and the S.T.A.R. In addition to providing readers with the latest research results, Shaw explains the technical aspects of how music enhances learning, and looks at the future of music as influences upon higher brain function.
Steele, Kenneth M. “The ‘Mozart Effect’: an example of the scientific method in operation.” Psychology Teacher
Network. November – December, 2001.
This article is divided into the following categories: (1) original finding, (2) why did the effect become famous? (3) how to approach research results, (4) reply of Rauscher and Shaw (1998), (5) replications by Steel and colleagues, (6) requiem for the Mozart effect.
Swartz, Luke “The Mozart Effect”: Does Mozart make you smarter?” Academic Home Page. Oct. 2004.
Available online @ http://xenon.stanford.edu/~lswartz/
There are dozens of musical variables that could be studied in an attempt to explain what music provides a similar effect. Still Gordon Shaw seems to think that the selection of the Mozart sonata’s first movement was a fortuitous one. Shaw believes that there is something extremely special about this Mozart Sonata, and in particular the first movement. He thinks that this first movement offers a ‘gold mine’ in learning about higher brain function. Shaw believes that “the brain’s response to this music is like the Rosetta Stone” for decoding the neurophysiological structure of the brain. It is clear that the media and popular culture have inflated the various finding far beyond their original intent. Only certain kinds of spatial reasoning have shown improvement, and even that is fleeting at best.
Taylor, Dale B. Ph. D. MT-BC. Biomedical foundation of music as therapy. MMB Music Inc. 1997
Dr. Taylor’s much anticipated work begins together perspectives on music as therapy from a biomedical point of view. This is an in-depth, well researched text that provides a clear and fascinating look at neurophysiology, auditory function and music perception as it applies to such key clinical areas as stress and pain management, recovery of physical and communication skills and cognition. Dr. Taylor has captured the essence of interdisciplinary music/brain research as it applies to music therapy and draws some interesting conclusions to the often-asked question “why does music therapy work?”
This reference source describes the long historical partnership between music and medicine from the time of the ancient Greeks right up to the mid 1980s. It was reviewed by Pratt and Jones (1985) with skillfully selected highlights focused on specific scholarly authors. Numerous research investigators and authors have contributed to modern understanding of the biological basis for music behavior and associated influence that music has on human neurophysiological functions.
Thompson, William Forde, Glenn E. Schellenberg, and Gabriela Husain. “Arousal, Mood and the Mozart Effect.”
Psychological Science. Vol. 12, Issue: 3 May 2001.
The “Mozart Effect” refers to claims that people perform better on tests of spatial abilities after listening to music composed by Mozart. They examined whether the Mozart Effect is a consequence of between-condition difference in arousal and mood. The participants completed a test of spatial abilities after listening to music or sitting in silence. The music was a Mozart sonata (a pleasant and energetic piece) for some participants and an Albinoni adagio (a slow, sad piece) for others. They also measured enjoyment, arousal, and mood. Performance on the spatial task was better following the music than the silence condition, but only for participants who heard Mozart. The two music selections also induced differential responding on the enjoyment, arousal and mood measure. Moreover, when such differences were held constant by statistical means, the Mozart effect disappeared. These finding provide compelling evidence that the Mozart effect is an artifact of arousal and mood.
Todd, Larry R., and Peter Williams. Perspectives on Mozart performance. New York: Cambridge University Press
1991.
Musicians set out to convey authority in both scholarship and performance, recognizing that music is conceptual and perceptual and thus not gainfully divisible into separate, competitive disciplines. The present volume, the inaugural issue in the new Cambridge Studies in Performance Practice, seeks to explore only a few facets of Mozart’s music in performance. Inevitably, the paths of several of the essays lead us back to the eighteenth century, to discover the roots of Mozart’s approach to performance and to examine critically such issues as the role of ornamentation (Badura-Skoda, Neumann), improvisation (Komlos), cadenzas (Melkus, Wolff) and Mozart’s conception and application of tempos in a pre-metronomic age (Marty). Two studies consider Mozart’s approach to string writing, and the influence of his father’s remarkably popular Violinschule (Schroder, Stowell). One (Williams) considers Mozart’s use of the chromatic fourth and performance styles associated as Beethoven and Schubert who followed Mozart. And finally, the later Mozart Rezeptionsgeschichte is considered through an examination of Mendelssohn’s considerable effects as performer, a contribution that reinforced the canonization of Mozart as a classical master.
Vollerno, Michael. “Nurturing the body and mind in physical education with Mozart.” Yale – New Haven
Teacher’s Institute 2004. Available online@ http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/2001/6/01.06.07.x.html
To harmonize an encouraging learning environment along with stimulating learning, research has found that music joins these two with ease. Music may excite and strengthen these complex patterns in some way and prime the brain for the performance of other higher brain functions. Other benefits of a more general sense include the enhancement of self-confidence, growth in physical co-ordination and poise and increase in the ability to concentrate. Alfred Tomatis, a French physician who devoted his career to the physiological effect of sound, wrote “Mozart has a liberating curative, even healing power. With him we become what we are.”
Don Campbell has stated that playing recording music your child enjoys can create positive physiological effect, including decreased heart rate, less rapid breathing and lower levels of the stress hormone called cortisol. Music can also distract your child from his/.her stressful environment and create a private room of sound that can enclose healing warmth. By aligning physically and emotionally with serene rhythms of Mozart and other classical music, your child may also be able to speed up recovery. The discussions are divided into the following categories: (1) Introduction to the Mozart Effect, (2) studies regarding the Mozart Effect, (3) changing auditory sounds into neural messages, (4) neural communications, (5) how neural transmitters effect learning, (6) approaches to promote the brain’s arousal systems, (7) enriching the learning environment, (8) effects of musical scores on emotions and mood that stimulate the learning environment, (9) educational relevance. This approach of student nurturing the body and mind can be presented through physical activities that will explain brain functions and the learning process. Selecting physical activities that include vocabulary words relating to the neural connections and the brain, along with selected music that promotes arousal. In this way educators, can present a nurturing atmosphere second to none. The educational process must continue to investigate new learning strategies so that educators can review innovative teaching approaches and utilize them to their field of expertise. If compelling evidence encourages the use of music throughout educational subjects, then it is imperative to share its value. The majority of educators lack knowledge about the brain and how neurotransmitter levels can be increased through music; therefore they lack the ability to articulate the possible connection of music and the value of the “Mozart Effect.” This study presents new teaching strategies that incorporate music that creates a real paradigm shift of expanded learning. Educators with this new insight of brain research can augment their field of expertise. Not only physical educators will be able to present music in their classroom, but all educators else as well. By constructing a learning environment that can support learning, educators will nurture a child’s growth.
Walters, Barbara Parsons. “The Mozart effect” a listening experience with developmental mathematics students at a
Community college.” Ph. D. diss.: University of Kentucky, 2003. Available online @ http://www.com/
Dissertations/preview_all/3082710
International academic exams have increased the need for educational assessment and innovative strategies. This paper explains a descriptive research project that examines music listening as a potential factor in the improvement of competency test results in algebra by community college students who need developmental courses. In the two-semester project (Fall 2000 and Spring 2002), survey questionnaire results and student record provide student profile data concerning both mathematics and musical backgrounds of those students. The researcher compares minimal competency exam results of music listening participants with non-participants. Inspired by the work of Dr. Gordon Shaw, University of California, Irvine, and Dr. Fran Rauscher of the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, the study addresses a current pedagogical controversy called “the Mozart Effect.” This effect is defined as an enhancement of performance or change in neurophysiological activity associated with listening to the music by composer, Wolfgang Mozart or, according to Shaw, as the ability of a Mozart sonata, under the right circumstances, to improve the listener’s mathematical and reasoning abilities. The researcher examined other musical activities with developmental mathematics students at Ashland Community College in an effort to find a feasible environment for description. Those involved a keyboard project using Pachelbel’s Canon in D, listening to “Kenny G” or utilizing a “Tune Room”, and a Celtic Dance activity. Results indicate that listening to music during an exam does not improve competency test results. However, other factors such as building a sense of community or learning to play an instrument show greater potential for improvement in mathematics test results. The best hope for scientific proof of such probably lies in brain research.
Watson, Andrew. Healing Music. Bridport, Doreset, England: Prism Press; Garden City Park, N. Y. 1987
This source of reference is both practical and descriptive. The general focus is an overview of holistic health, visualizations coupled with practical self-help exercises. Neville Drury is a writer / editor in the areas of mind and body therapies. He contributed the first two chapters, which deal with the concept of ‘healing music’ and basic principles of holistic health. Appendixes feature descriptive information on albums suitable as aids to healing and creative visualization. He also includes reviews of some of the leading musicians in the genre.
Also included in this part of the book are listings of specific pieces of music that correlate with the elements. This source of reference also includes illustrations of the chakra system and how it relates to the spectrum colors of the rainbow and the C Major scale.
Wilson, Thomas L. and Tina L. Brown. “Re-examination of the effect of Mozart’s music on spatial-task
Performance.” Journal of Psychology. Vol. 131, No. 4 July 1997.
The spatial reasoning of 22 college undergraduates who had listened to Mozart’s music was empirically documented. Each participant performed a pencil-and–paper maze task after a ten-minute presentation of each of three listening conditions: a piano concerto by Mozart, repetitive relaxation music, and silence. Mazes varied in complexity of solution and size. Limited support for the previously obtained enhancing effect of listening to Mozart’s music was revealed in measures of performance accuracy on this spatial task Before generalizations can be made, the effect must be replicated to a greater extent.
Weinberger, Norman M. “The Impact of the arts on learning.” MuSICA Research Notes V Vii, 1,2, Spring 2000.
Available online @ http://www.music-research.org/Publications/researchnotes/V7I2500.html#autistic
The ultimate challenge for American education is to place all children on pathways toward success in school and in life. Through engagement with the arts, young people can better begin lifelong journeys of developing their capabilities and contributing to the world around them ‘Champions of Change: The impact of the Arts of Learning’ also shows that the arts can play a vital role in learning how to learn, an essential ability for fostering achievement and growth throughout their lives. It provides new and important findings of actual learning experiences involving the arts. It presents these research finding, complete with groundbreaking data and analysis, as articulated by leading American educational researchers. Perhaps what makes their finding so significant is that they all address ways that our nations’ educational goals may be realized through enhanced arts learning. As these researchers have confirmed, young people can be better prepared for the 21st century through quality learning experiences in and through the arts.
Weinberger, Norman M. “Creating Creativity with Music.” MuSICA Research Notes: Vol. V, Issue: 2 Spring 1998.
Available online @ http://www.musica.usi.edu/mrn/V512S98html
Creativity, while highly desirable is popularly regarded as an elusive, subjective characteristic. Within music, it is reflected largely in compositions. However, creativity can be measure objectively and its involvement of music is not limited to composing. Accumulating findings indicate that musical training enhances intellectual creativity in general. The findings to date provide solid support for the claim that music increases creativity. Moreover, it appears that active music making is more effective than passive music experience. But it must be realized that there is not nearly enough research on this issue. Detailed and systematic studies of the types and amount of music education for groups of all ages need to be undertaken. In addition, a broader range of measure of creativity should be used to fully explore this critical dimension of the intellect because the creative potential can be increased is of great importance.
Weinberger, Norman M. “The Mozart effect: a small part of the big picture.” MuSICA Research Notes Vol VII,
Issue: 1, Winter 2000. Available online @ http://www.music-research.org/Publications/researchnotes/
V711W00.html.
Studies have shown that music learning and practice also benefit many mental and behavioral processes, including cognitive development, language learning, reading ability, creativity, motor skills, plus personal and social adjustment. In contrast to these effects of continual involvement in music, merely brief exposure to some music of Mozart is thought by the public to increase intelligence. Although this “Mozart Effect” has generated a lot of excitement, it is also the most misunderstood aspect of music research. This article reviews the Mozart Effect and explains why it is only a very small part of the very large field of music research. As the Mozart Effect actually does not increase general intelligence and last only a few minutes, it does not provide a substitute for music study and practice.
Substantial, long lasting effects require deeper and more sustained involvement in music study and music making. (the relevant articles can be found directly at the MuSICA web site (http://www.musica.usi.edu) by going to the MRN cumulative Subject Index and selecting “Benefits of Music.” These effects appear to result from a considerable investment of time and guided study of music. Such exciting findings show that we now on the brink of beginning to understand the full importance of music for mental processes and behavior.
Weinberger, Norman M. “The nonmusical outcomes of music education.” MuSICA Research Notes Vol. 11,
Issue: 2, Fall 1995.
From a theoretical point of view, the research in this paper will help the reader understand mental and personal development and the roles of music in human life. From a practical point of view, the argument that music and arts education are mere “frills” finds no objective support. Quite the contrary. Because education is probably the best and most important way to help children develop to their full intellectual and personal potentials, it is incumbent upon us all to first support the discovery and then support the application of knowledge that promotes these goals. The conclusion that music and art education are an important and effective part of this formula can no longer be doubted even if it can still be ignored.
Weinberger, Norman M. ”To the Point.” MuSICA Research Notes V VII, I I, Winter 2000. Available online @
http://www.music-research.org/Publications/researchnotes/V711W00.html
The Mozart Effect is more important for researchers than for any practical application. Long-term benefits from music are best achieved by intensive study and music making. Music is wrongly considered to be mere entertainment and often regarded as an educational frill. However, research has shown that humans are born with musical capabilities, so music is part of human nature. This is particularly evident in research that has shown how the human brain processes music. Recently, neuroscientists have discovered an area in the brain that is devoted to reading music scores.
Weinberger, Norman M. “Understanding Music’s Emotional Power.” MuSICA Research Notes: V V, 1 2
Spring 1998. Available online @ http://www.musica. Uci. Edu/mrn/V512S98.html
Music has the enormous power to cause emotion to well up within us. These compelling, often overwhelming, feelings, emerging seemingly from nowhere, color our moods, affect our perceptions, and can alter our behavior. The mystery of this power of music is yielding to scientific investigation. Recent studies point to the interaction of two factors through which music operates: how much we like a piece, which might be expected, and the magnitude of its arousal potential. Researchers doubt that any normal brain is immune to music’s ability to rapidly and seemingly inevitably tap the, still mysterious, deep well of our emotions. A simple summary is that music seems to evoke emotions by doing two different things:
(1) it produces a feeling of liking or disliking, (2) it produces a level of excitement or arousal. Neither of these two factors is itself sufficient to result in a particular emotion. But somehow they work together in the brain to yield actual emotions.
Weinberger, Norman M. “ Music and the Brain.” Scientific American.com October 25, 2004.
Available online @ http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=0007D716-71A1-1179-Af8683414B7…
Overall findings to date indicate that music has a biological basis and that the brain has a functional organization for music. It seems fairly clear, even at this early stage of inquiry, that many brain regions participate in specific aspect of music processing, whether supporting perception (such as apprehending a melody) or evoking emotional reactions. Musicians appear to have additional specializations, particularly hyper-development of some brain structures. These effects demonstrate that learning retunes the brain, increasing both responses of individual cells and the number of cells that react strongly to sound that become important to an individual. As research on music and the brain continues, we can anticipate a greater understanding not only about music and its reason for existence but also about how multifaceted it really is.
Zatorre, Robert J. Isabelle Peretz. The Biological Foundation of Music. New York Academy of Sciences, 2001.
The objective of this conference, The Biological Foundations of Music, from which the present collection of papers is derived, was to demonstrate the potential dynamism and richness of this emerging discipline of the neuroscience of music cognition. The conference was held in May 2000 in New York City and was initiated and sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences. Major scientists from six countries, working in a variety of interrelated disciplines and pursuing sustained investigations in the field of music research, were invited to present their work. Most responded enthusiastically and addressed issues crucial to a better understanding of the neural substrates underlying musical functions. Their presentations were grouped under six major categories, selected because they are interdisciplinary and are the object of intensive current research activities and continued theoretical development.