Mozart doesn't make you clever
German government decides to tackle the myth of the 'Mozart effect'.
Passively listening to Mozart — or indeed any other music you enjoy — does not make you smarter. But more studies should be done to find out whether music lessons could raise your child's IQ in the long term, concludes a report analysing all the scientific literature on music and intelligence, which was published last week by the German research ministry.
Comments
I didn't know what to make of the claims of a 'Mozart Effect'. Although I'm a big classical fan, like Glenn Gould, Maria Callas and many others I find Mozart very thin and dull. But saying so can evince a reaction very like the one you encounter when challenging religion - not 'you're wrong' but 'how dare you!'. Gould actually once said in an interview that he didn't tell a particular famous conductor of his distaste for Mozart because 'it is difficult to tell someone that they have been worshipping the wrong god'.
I said I didn't know what to make of the claim, because in the course of getting a maths degree I almost always listened to Bach while working. I didn't think it made me smarter, but it created an atmosphere of cool, perfectly patterned logicality ideally suited to what I was doing. There are many examples of music being used successfully as therapy, and perhaps attributing changes of intelligence to such uses is simply a flaw in the experimental method, or a misinterpretation of its results.
Posted by: Vronsky | April 18, 2007 12:45 PM