Jeje... Gotta love this quote from Michael Linton's article:

"Music academics are no better. The annual meeting of the American Musicological Society is full of displays of one-upmanship, conceit, and subtle and not-so-subtle public back-stabbing and professional murder. And our greatest musicians, the star virtuosi, are more than infrequently notorious for their cruelty, faithlessness, arrogance, selfishness, and stupidity. And in all of these areas, Mozart’s music only makes matters worse. ..."

The Mozart Effect

http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=3116

On 3 May, 2008, at 9:51 AM, victor wrote:

Stravinsky was the way in for me too... firebird, petrouchka and
le sacre...then everything else. Great Music.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave Seidel" <dave@superluminal.com>
To: <csound@lists.bath.ac.uk>
Sent: Saturday, May 03, 2008 2:36 PM
Subject: [Csnd] Re: Re: Re: Mozart effect

Agreed.  This music is very much bound to a particular (Euro-centric) musical tradition.  I might accept the idea that if a person had a background in this music (meaning: some training or education, or at least immersion) that listening to it might have some beneficial effects, because then the listener had some cognitive and perceptual preparation. But if you are from a completely different musical culture, I don't expect it would mean very much at all, and might even be perceived as cacophonous (no offense to cacophony).

I'm not sure if this is part of the "theory", but if there's an assumption that Mozart is *objectively* or *inherently* beneficial to one's neurology, then that seems to me to be pretty arrogant.  (This criticism is not aimed at you, David, just trying to put the idea in a more objective or culture-neutral context.)

Personally, as someone who grew up in the States and heard both classical and folk music all the time growing up, it was years before I was able to listen music from the classical era with any interest at all -- it just left me cold.  For me, Stravinsky was the way in, and I worked both backward and forward from that.

- Dave

Pedro Ferreira wrote:

I think that _teaching_ music to kids is a great way of stimulating

their intelligence and the development of their abilities, but I find

it hard to believe that the simple fact that they just _listen_ to

music will make them smarter. Maybe your intelligence actually

increases (for a limited amount of time) in response to sound

frequencies: you can stimulate it artificially by other known means,

though with no permanent results. However, all the hype around this

effect seems to be a huge load of BS (actually, the "Mozart effect" is

widely known as a classical example of a scientific myth).

In any case, teach your kids the practice of listening to good music

:). It won't hurt them for sure...

Cheers,

Pedro

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