To say that Mozart’s music is alive and well in the United States at the turn of the millennium is an understatement. His symphonies, overtures, and concerti are performed by professional, community, school and university orchestras on a daily basis. His well known operas are frequently heard in hundreds of opera houses. The same can be said for his contributions to the solo and chamber repertoire.
What this paper will discuss is not the wonderful health and reception of his music, but rather a few ways in which his music - and very name - has been used to achieve non-musical goals. The progression from hard research to unsubstantiated musical “healing” to name-based marketing will be clearly seen. His music has been a catalyst for research that concludes that listening to Mozart aids a certain kind of intelligence. Then this research has been an inspiration for a popular book that states that listening to Mozart and others can increase one’s overall health and well being. Taking it a step further is a small industry that creates compact discs of Mozart’s music with claims of increased mental acuity. Finally, corporations have associated Mozart’s music with various products that have little to do with music.
Gordon Shaw’s Research and Book
The initial portion of this paper - the part dealing with the most sound research - is based on the studies and publications of Dr. Gordon Shaw, a researcher and professor emeritus at the University of California at Irvine. In his book, Keeping Mozart in Mind, [1] he presents his findings and details what he believes to be correct - and incorrect - uses of his research.
Shaw’s main research in the last two decades has been learning about the brain and developing models of how the it functions. Much of his work has been in understanding complex aspects such as the brain’s memory storage capacity, columnar organization principals, neural languages, and various trion models.
In 1988, Shaw and his graduate student Xiaodan Leng thought there might be some correspondence between the brain’s workings and music. To examine this, they took computer-generated graphical representations of brain activity and superimposed it onto music notation. What happened was unexpected: different brain sequences corresponded with different styles of music. Shaw’s reaction was “I realized that in our quest to understand how we think, reason, and create, we could use music as a window into the higher brain function. This has been the dominant focus of our lab ever since.” [2]
An important next step was when Shaw hired Dr. Frances Rauscher as a post-doctoral researcher. Rauscher’s parents were both music professors at the Manhattan School of Music. She started cello when she was three, and pursued a career as a professional musician until she was 24. She then returned to school to pursue her graduate degrees in psychology.
It was Shaw and Rauscher who created the initial experiment that has led to so much notoriety. In the early 1990's, the researchers took 36 students at the University of California at Irvine and gave them standard, spatial reasoning tasks. Then the students were divided into three groups, listening for ten minutes to the Mozart Sonata in D Major for 2 pianos (K.448), a relaxation tape, or silence. Afterwards, each group was tested on spatial tasks from the Stanford-Binet intelligence tests.
The results were dramatic. The students who listened to the Mozart Sonata had greatly improved scores on spatial-temporal reasoning tasks. This led a major conclusion by Shaw and the others: “The scientific significance of our results was that it was the first proof of a causal enhancement of reasoning from music.”
The researchers guarded the results carefully, not wanting any advance notice of the upcoming publication of the research. On October 13, 1993, the British Journal Nature was released. To say that this article gathered interest is a gross understatement. Shaw was inundated with calls. Two days later, the International Herald Tribune published an article entitled “Mozart’s Notes Make Good Brain Food” which began
"Can it be that the music of Mozart is not only exalting but can also improve intelligence? An experiment on students at the University of California at Irvine suggests that listening to 10 minutes of Mozart’s piano music improves performance in intelligence tests taken immediately afterward." [3]
The “Mozart effect” was born.
Further research followed. Shaw and the others designed a follow-up experiment to be performed the next year. The study was refined to a spatial-temporal reasoning test called “paper folding and cutting.” Students were asked to look at folded piece of paper that had some cuts on it, and then predict what the unfolded paper would look like. The concept is actually similar to how children fold paper and then cut out paper dolls or snowflakes.
79 students were subjects for five days. All students tried to decipher the same 16 paper cuttings on the first day. On the second through fourth days, they were divided into three groups who continued with more paper cuttings after listening to one of the following: the same Mozart piano sonata, silence, a mix of varied stimuli (Philip Glass’ Music with Changing Parts, an audio story, and a British trance-like dance piece.) Again, the results were spectacular. The students who listened to Mozart had improved spatial-temporal reasoning skills, while those who listened to the other stimuli did not show a noticeable increase. Detailed analysis also determined that the largest increase of spatial-temporal reasoning for the Mozart group came from those students who did the poorest on the initial test.
On the fifth day the experiment went in a slightly different direction - one that measured the students’ ability to recall a complex short-term memorization example. The group that had listened to mixed stimuli was divided into two groups, one that now listened to the Mozart sonata while the other listened to silence. There was no statistical difference between the two groups in their memorization scores. This proved to the researchers that listening to the Mozart Sonata improved only the student’s spatial-temporal ability and not overall brain function.
Even with the increased spatial-temporal scores of the students who listened to Mozart, the improvement lasted for only a few minutes. But the groundwork was laid, and it had Mozart’s name attached to it.
By now, Shaw had two experiments that suggested that listening to this particular Mozart sonata for two pianos led to increased spatial-temporal ability. What is this specific kind of brain activity? Let us look to Shaw’s book a definition. Spatial-Temporal reasoning is “thinking using pictures that evolve in space and time, [which is] especially important in math and science.” By comparison, spatial recognition tasks are “involved in recognizing, marching, copying, or classifying visual objects.” He provides examples of the two. For spatial-temporal, there is a picture of a camel divided into four pieces for the reader to put together. For spatial recognition, the reader is asked to look at five geometric figures and choose the two that are the same.
Subsequent studies by these researchers has led to other conclusions. Three-year olds demonstrated long term retention of spatial-temporal skills after receiving six months of musical training (30 minutes of group singing or 15 minutes of private keyboard a day.) Another study showed that piano keyboard training has a much greater effect of spatial-temporal skill than singing or computer training. And more recently there have been very preliminary studies to suggest correlations between music listening and Alzheimer’s patients, stroke patients, and with rats’ abilities to negotiate a maze.
It must be added that attempts to replicate Shaw’s research have been inconsistent. Several studies have not reproduced Shaw’s findings, and at least one has. [4] {Note: since this was written, Shaw's research has been replicated at least 12 times, 7 of which were from independent laboratories.}
Some Problems with the Shaw’s Research
In order to properly consider this research in the overview presented in this paper, one must look at several important points. The first is an examination of how the particular piece, the Mozart Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K.448, was chosen. Shaw mentions that some recent studies have demonstrated correlations between music training and spatial reasoning ability, and this coincides with certain aspects of his own brain research. But why was Mozart used for this experiment?
Mozart was chosen for largely anecdotal reasons. The researchers believed that Mozart must have had an extremely well-developed portion of the brain that dealt with spatial-temporal reasoning - the areas of brain research they were involved with. They point to Mozart’s great ability to compose as a child, and the stories of him conceiving an entire work in his head before ever writing a note on paper. [5] So, the composer used in this research had to be Mozart, according to the researchers. Could Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky or even Stockhausen have worked as well? We do not know.
The choice of the specific music was left to Frances Rauscher. She describes her process:
We [Frances and her husband] picked the Mozart Sonata because it is composed of a limited number of musical motives which appear in symmetry a number of times. It’s an extremely organized composition. The fact that it’s a two piano sonata make it even more appealing, because there are more opportunities for the motives to evolve from one piano to the next. Basically, we listened to tons of compositions, and this one seemed the most appropriate - cerebral. [6]
It is difficult to evaluate Rauscher’s decision using musical terms because of the non-musical language she uses. The “symmetry” that she describes seems to me to be the very clear metric structure of the work. Especially in the beginning of the first movement, there is a four-measure hypermetric structure. This means that musical events occur at very regular and predictable intervals in time. (Waltzes and much pop music do the same thing.) Her description of the work as “extremely organized” might refer to musical form - which is order of the melodies and keys. The first movement is in sonata form, but this is hardly unusual for music of this period. Indeed, the form of this movement is similar to hundreds, if not thousands, of other works. The one musical term that Rauscher uses is a “limited number of musical motives.” Although it is impossible to know the exact motives she was referring to, it seems clear to me that this movement has more motives than most works of the same era - probably more than most sonata-form first movements by Mozart. A work that would clearly have “a limited number of musical motives” would be a Bach fugue.
Does this mean that this work is predictable? Perhaps, inasmuch as many works by Mozart and Haydn are predictable because they follow each composer’s established style.
There is a well-known article by Leonard Meyer that addresses this specific issue. In Some Remarks on Value and Greatness in Music, [7] he theorizes that value in music occurs when an expectation is created, but not fulfilled. This might happen when a composition seems to lead to a certain note, but another note is given instead. Or when a cadence is expected and the music delays that cadence for a moment or two, or cadences to a different chord. For Meyer, predictability diminishes value.
If we apply this theory to the Mozart sonata of the experiment, then perhaps the work is predictable and might have less value or greatness. To me, it seems that this movement unfolds in a very expected way. And the four-measure hypermetric structure at the start of the movement creates a level of expectation that verges on the commonplace.
By contrast, in a recently published paper of mine, I analyzed another first movement by Mozart, from the Gran Partita for twelve winds and string bass. [8] My analysis concluded that much of its interest and quality is because of the metric variety. The way Mozart avoids predictability in this work seems very different from what I believe is the “symmetry” that Rauscher hears in the two-piano sonata. Might the metric predictability for much of the first movement of the piano work resonate with the brain’s spatial-temporal region? This might be an important area for further study.
There are more unanswered questions pertaining to this movement and Shaw’s research:
1. Is there something in acoustics of two pianos that activates certain parts of the brain? What about a piece for one piano, a string quartet, an orchestra, or vocalists?
2. Is the key of D major important? Would this piece show similar experimental results if it were in F major or C minor?
3. What factor does the tempo play? Is there something in the consistent Allegro con spirito presentation that connects to the brain. What if the tempo were considerably faster or slower, or had extensive rubato?
Finally, is there something in the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that stimulates certain parts of the brain more so than with other composers? The researchers believed this might be the case when they chose the composer from Salzburg, but there is certainly no evidence to make this case with even the slightest amount of certainty. Would Beethoven’s music have caused similar results? How about Bach? Bach’s music has many of the characteristics that Rauscher liked in the Mozart sonata, namely the symmetry, organization and motivic economy. Shaw addressed this in a 1999 article when he said “choosing Mozart was just a hunch. There’s not proof other kinds of music won’t do some of things, too.” [9]
There is obviously much we do not know about how music effects the brain. What Shaw tells us has been summarized above. Unfortunately, there have been many generalizations and leaps of faith as to the favorable aspects of listening to Mozart (and other music) that have not been adequately proven. Therefore, the term “Mozart effect” can actually be misleading if it is used to represent speculations not based on sound research. But, as we shall see, this has not stopped others from making these speculations.
The “Mozart Effect©” - The Registered Trademark of Don Campbell, Inc.
With the belief that music can make someone smarter, it is no surprise that many Americans have “jumped on the bandwagon” and touted the beneficial effects of listening to Mozart and other music. When the “Mozart effect” is coupled with the public’s desire for increased intelligence and various forms of healing, the conditions are ripe for entrepreneurs and marketers to use this promise - especially paired with the name Mozart - for quick financial gains.
Don Campbell is an author and a great advocate in the healing power of music. He is a trained musician and former student of Nadia Boulanger in Paris. In 1988, he founded the Institute for Music, Health, and Education in Boulder, Colorado. Campbell’s most significant contribution to the literature on the connection between music, increased intelligence and healing is his 1997 book, The Mozart Effect©. [10]
In his book, Campbell claims music can...
It is my contention that Campbell has taken the research of Gordon Shaw and drawn conclusions that are well beyond what the scientific studies have shown. For example, Campbell presents a very brief summary of Shaw’s research and then adds “in plain English, [listening to Mozart] can improve your concentration, enhance your ability to make intuitive leaps, and, not incidentally, shave a few strokes off your golf game!” [11]
Can this last statement be substantiated? Campbell’s assertion that listening to Mozart can improve one’s concentration was not part of Shaw’s research. The original research dealt with spatial-temporal reasoning, and while it may be accurate to say that listening to the Mozart Sonata for Two Pianos in D major did temporarily increase one’s ability in this area, it does not seem to follow that the generalization to “improve your concentration” can logically be made. The same can be said for enhancing one’s “ability to make intuitive leaps.” Even the humor in shaving “a few strokes off your golf game” seems to reinforce the lack of seriousness in these remarks.
Some of Campbell’s ideas sound very attractive, especially to those who have been looking for ways of improving certain aspects of their lives. But he offers only anecdotal evidence that there is a causal relationship between certain musics and specific types of healing or other benefits. Admittedly, he states that these tendencies are general, and “can be significantly modified by the listener’s condition, diet, environment, and posture.” [12] Even with this caveat, he still outlines some of the broad benefits he claims different types of music can bring about. Just a few of these are:
Slower Baroque Music - Listening to Bach, Handel, Vivaldi or Corelli can create a sense of stability, order, predictability and safety.
Romantic Music - Listening to Schubert, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Chopin or Liszt emphasizes expression and feeling, and often creates feelings of individualism, nationalism or mysticism.
Impressionist Music - listening to Debussy, Faure, or Ravel for fifteen minutes, followed by some stretching, can unlock creative impulses and connect one with the unconscious.
To the skeptical reader, of which I am one, the above statements seem to make generalizations not based on the actual music. Is there really something in Handel’s slow music that creates safety? What is different in his fast music, or in Beethoven’s or Brahm’s music? What is there about listening to Schubert that creates feelings of mysticism? Can’t all music inspire feelings of mysticism?
In addition to his book, Campbell has created a series of cassette tapes and compact discs that supposedly can accomplish certain goals.
The Mozart Effect©
Certainly there is nothing wrong with taking an idea and marketing it. And I do not mean to disparage Campbell’s motives, because I am sure he totally believes in what he does and in the power of music. What is troubling to me is how the titles of these recordings seem to assert that the music will bring about specific changes when there has been no proof beyond anecdotal evidence and enthusiastic beliefs that a causal relationship exists. It seems that Gordon Shaw’s highly defined conclusions - based on research with some very clear parameters - has been extended to generalizations well beyond the scope of that research. Although he does not refer to Campbell by name, this type of stretch is a concern for Shaw, who cites “numerous misuses of our research.” [13]
Finally, Campbell has taken this so called “Mozart effect” and trademarked the name. When Campbell refers to the Mozart Effect©, the letter E is capitalized and the trademark symbol follows; when Shaw uses the these words, there is a small case E in the word “effect.”
There are other attempts to utilize the supposed Mozart effect that are especially problematic. Two states have created legislation to make their children smarter by listening to Mozart. Florida has mandated that classical music be played in licensed daycare centers to enhance the reasoning abilities of children. Georgia now gives compact discs of classical music to the parents of newborn infants. Officials in these two states say that they based the legislation on Shaw’s research, but Shaw never spoke to them. Shaw reiterates that his research is at an early state, that much more research is necessary, and that it is wrong to legislate such actions. [14]
Other Commercial Attempts to Capitalize on the Mozart effect and Mozart’s Name
Don Campbell is not the only person to come up with commercially marketed compact discs that connect to the Mozart effect (small E) research. [15] Some of the other titles available are:
These compact discs are partly a tribute to Mozart’s great music and partly a desire for a magical formula to make people smarter. And, as we are about to see, there has also been an exploitation of Mozart’s name for commercial gain in a number of endeavors.
Mozart’s name and music gained worldwide notoriety in 1984 with the movie, Amadeus. This film received 11 Academy Award nominations and won the awards for best picture, leading actor, director, screenplay adaptation, costume design, sound, and makeup. (Perhaps Mozart should have won posthumously for original score!) One has to speculate that Amadeus brought Mozart to people who never would have been exposed to his music or his (albeit fictionalized) character. Mozart became a household name and his music gained a new audience. [16]
In 1991, there were many commemorations of the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s death. One of the most ambition undertakings was done by Lincoln Center in New York City. Between January, 1991 and August, 1992, Mozart’s entire output was performed. A result of this was a book entitled The Mozart Repertory, edited by Neal Zaslaw and Fiona Morgan Fein. [17] This has turned into an alternative to the famous Köchel catalog.
Another 1991 product was by the Dutch company, Philips, who put out the Complete Mozart Edition, a set of 180 compact discs. Within the first year of its release, this $2000 set had sold 30,000 copies, which is 10,000 more than Philips expected. [18] The set can still be purchased, and there is even a shorter version available.
The Lincoln Center and Philips celebrations were certainly reputable and presented Mozart with great integrity. They honored the music and the listener. The music was presented to stand on its own merits, without undue publicity, sensationalism, or hype.
At the same time, Mozart was being promoted with quasi-supermarket tabloid status. A report in the USA Today in 1990 states:
In fact, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s death in Vienna at age 34 nearly 200 years ago started a bigger posthumous cult than any other musician in history, even Elvis Presley or Jim Morrison [19]
Aside from getting Mozart’s age wrong - he was 35 when he died - the author of this article correctly portrays the way in which many follow this supremely talented composer. With this popular-culture status, it not surprising that many companies have marketed the name Mozart. If Mozart is put on a compact disc, it will conceivably sell because people are acquainted with the name and have the belief that his music is great.
Let us look at the titles of some compact discs that have used the appeal of the name Mozart perhaps more than the content of his music.
One wonders if there is really anything different in the music from one of these CDs to the next. Mozart at Candlelight may have slower movements than Mozart for Your Morning Workout, but beyond this, the music is the same. What is different is how it has been marketed. Any one of these CDs could just have easily been called “Mozart Excerpts,” “Selections by Mozart,” or even “Mozart’s Greatest Hits.” In other words, how many different names can we give to a CD that has the Overture to the Marriage of Figaro, the Turkish Rondo, the first movement from the 40th Symphony and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik? The answer is found in the number of companies that want to capitalize on Mozart’s name because they know it can be turned into a profit.
I have been very careful to make a distinction between the name of Mozart and the music of Mozart. It is my speculation that many of the buyers of these mass-marketed CDs know the name Mozart but might not be able to tell the difference between the works of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven or Brahms. Just as in a political election or purchasing just about any commercial product, name recognition is of utmost importance. [20]
How recognizable a name is Mozart? In a 1999, ABC News polled 506 adults. They were asked “who do you feel in the greatest figure in the last thousand years, from anywhere in the world, specifically in the field of music?” Mozart finished first with 15%. (The remaining persons in the top five were Beethoven 12%, Elvis Presley 8%, Bach 5% and The Beatles 3%.) [21] A 1992 poll asked “which person in the past thousand years do you admire the most?” Mozart received less than one percent, but was the only musician listed in the responses. [22]
Conclusion
In conclusion, the amount and variety of ways that Mozart’s name is in front of the American public is astounding. Some view Mozart through his music in the form of concerts, recordings and biographies. Others take an idea associated with his music and then keep the name Mozart as their research or speculations moves away from the music. Finally there are those who use the name recognition of Mozart for commercial purposes.
Notes
[1] . Shaw, Gordon. Keeping Mozart in Mind. San Diego: Academic Press, 2000.
[2] . Ibid., p.xiv
[3] . “Mozart’s Notes Makes Good Brain Food,” International Herald Tribune, October 15, 1993. Quoted in Shaw, Keeping Mozart in Mind, p. 4.
[4] . Some of the studies that have failed to replicate the Mozart effect research are: Newman, Joan; Rosenbach, John; Burns, Kathryn; Latimer, Bruce; Matocha, Helen; and Vogt, Elaine. “An experimental test of ‘the Mozart effect’: does listening to his music improve spatial ability?” Perceptual and Motor Skills 81/3 (December 1995): p.1379-88. Wilson, Thomas, and Brown, Tina. “Reexamnination of the Effect of Mozart’s Music on Spatial-Task Performance.” (The Journal of Psychology 131 (1997): p. 365-370. Steele, Kenneth; Bass, Karen; and Crook, Melissa. “The mystery of the Mozart effect: failure to replicate.” Psychological Science 10 (July 1999): p.366-369.
A possible explanation why the replication studies did not work is found in: Rauscher, Frances, and Shaw, Gordon. “Key components of the Mozart effect.” Perceptual and Motor Skills 86/3 (June 1998): p. 835-841.
Continued failure to replicate the original results, even after following the above article (Rauscher and Shaw, 1998) is found in: Steele, Kenneth; Brown, Joshua; and Stoeker, Jaimily. “Failure to confirm the Rauscher and Shaw description of recovery of the Mozart effect.” Perceptual and Motor Skills 88/3 (June 1999); : p. 843-848.
Successful replication of the original results were reported in: Rideout, Bruce; Dougherty, Shannon; and Wernert, Lisa. “Effect of music on spatial performance: A test of generality.” Perceptual and Motor Skills 86/2 (April 1998): p. 512-514.
A defense of Rauscher’s and Shaw’s defense (Rauscher and Shaw, 1998) is found in: Rideout, Bruce. “Performance suppression from control procedures is not the basis of the Mozart effect.” Perceptual and Motor Skills 89/3 (December 1999): p. 890.
[5] . Recent musicological research has called this into question. It appears that the composer had many sketch pads that he destroyed, leading to the mistaken conclusion that he never needed to “work out” a composition.
[6] . Shaw, Keeping Mozart in Mind, p.160.
[7] . Meyer, Leonard. The Arts, and Ideas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. Chapter 2: “Some Remarks on Value and Greatness in Music.”
[8] . Nelson, David. “Heightened Rhythmic Activity in a ‘Monothematic’ Exposition by Mozart - The First Movement of Serenade, K.361/370a.” Journal of Band Research 35/2 Spring, 2000): 47 - 74.
[9] . “The Mozart Effect - Classical Music is Packaged as a Cure for What Ails You.”The Times-Picayune (New Orleans), October 27, 1999, p. E1.
[10] . Campbell, Don, The Mozart Effect©. New York: Avon Books, 1997.
[11] . Ibid., p. 16
[12] . Ibid., p. 79.
[13] .Shaw, Keeping Mozart in Mind, p. xx.
[14] . Ibid.
[15] . The titles of the compact discs was taken from a search of the Amazon.com website (www.amazon.com) on April 30, 2000.
[16] . Mozart was not the only character in the movie to gain name recognition. An 1997 article on WebTV and its better known competitor, Microsoft, was entitled the “Salieri Syndrome.” Upside, February, 1997, p. 88-98.
[17] . Zaslaw, Neal, and Fein, Fiona Morgan. The Mozart Repertory. Ithaca, New York: Cornall University Press, 1991.
[18] . Hoos, William. “Mozart set passes 30,000 mark; $2,000 box exceeds expectations.” Billboard, November 2, 1991, p.76.
[19] . “Mozart Still Has ‘em Reeling,” USA Today, December 14, 1990.
[20] . Mozart’s name has been given to other types of products as well. In 1993, CommercialWare released “Mozart,” a database software program for retail companies to track catalog inventory. (Starbucks started using it in 1998.) In 1994, Oak Technology introduced the “Mozart OTI-601" single-chip IDE stereo sound system for PC computers.
[21] . ABC News Poll, Roper Center at the University of Connecticut, 1999.
[22] . Time Magazine and Cable News Network Poll, Roper Center at the University of Connecticut. 1992.