Some scientists claim there isn’t; tests show no effect. Well, that doesn’t prove something doesn’t exist. It might only prove you designed a crappy experiment.

Plenty of robust studies show there is indeed an effect and it’s a very good one.

The “Mozart Effect”, if you don’t know, is the supposition that playing nice music, with the right frequencies buried in it, is very stimulating to a child’s brain and can enhance growth and learning. Seems almost common sense, doesn’t it. Not to some people!

I’m looking at a copy of the book by Don Campbell. Per the usual American hubris (conceit), he states that all this was given impetus and cred by researches of Frances H Rauscher PhD, at Center for Neurobiology of Learning in Irvine, California.

These Americans are often decades behind the rest of us and believe they invented everything. Or if they didn’t, then it’s not worth knowing anyway.

The truth is all this was discovered starting in the 1950s in France, with the work of Alfred Tomatis MD. He’s been called the Einstein of Sound and the Sherlock Holmes of sonic detection. Tomatis was the developer of the “electronic ear” concept.

His biggest discovery was not the Mozart Effect but a physiological curiosity, which is that the voice does not contain frequencies which the ear cannot hear. If the ear does not pick up the sound, that sound will be missing from the quality of the voice.

Tomatis worked with artists, singers etc. who had voice problems and was able to solve many of these by adding the missing frequencies and playing these to the patient. From his headquarters in Paris he worked with a wide range of people, from  musicians to children with psychological and learning difficulties.

His great book The Conscious Ear is a great read. Notable among the contents is the critical role that the sound of the mother’s voice plays in response from the fetus in utero, then later the newborn infant.

As Tomatis pointes out, in the womb the child hears only through fluid. That means low frequency sounds. Fluid persists in the outer ear for about ten days after birth and then clears. From then on the infant hears through air, with only the inner ear retaining its fluid conduction.

By experimenting with filters and altering the sound of the mother’s voice to be like it sounded in the womb, children could often be healed, who were suffering psychological difficulties. Tomatis likens the resulting sound to be like the noise of the African bush, with distant calls, echoes, stealthy rustlings, and the lapping of waves.

Of course all this was too much for reactionary colleagues and he had to face a lot of derision. But now the French Academy of Medicine recognizes and celebrates the “Tomatis Effect”, referring to the way the voice contains only the sounds the ear can detect.

But it is the effect of ambient music that Tomatis is best known for (ironic, since it’s way from his most important discovery). He’s quoted as saying that the frequency of 5,000 Hertz is the equivalent of two good cups of coffee (caffeine) in stimulating the brain. It so happens that the frequency of 5,000 Hertz is very abundant in Mozart’s music.

The classic reference, if you want to hear it for yourself, is the “Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major” (K. 448).

Rauscher’s experiments at the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory in Irvine showed there was a real effect. Undergraduates from the psychology department, tested before and after the “dose” of music showed an average rise of 8 – 9 points of the spatial IQ test (part of the Stanford-Binet intelligence test).

The improvement was unquestionably real but only lasted 15 minutes or so. Nevertheless, within hours of the results being published, all the music stores in one US city had sold out of Mozart recordings.

Is It Just Mozart?

No. But on subsequent tests of  spatial function by the Irvine group, Mozart was outstripped the others in results. Compared to Philip Glass, the voice, dance music or just plain silence, Mozart hit a score of 62%, while the best of the others (silence) was 11%. Strong stuff!

But let’s not forget the work of Georgi Lozanov in this context. He developed Suggestopedy, a brilliant learning environment management system. Lozanov found the slow baroque was especially important in learning retention. If you doubt his results, let me share with you that he was able to successfully teach students over 1,000 new foreign language words, in a day. And, no, they didn’t forget within a week; in fact over two years later they still scored in the 80^th percentile.

It is perhaps strange that Lozanov championed slow, gentle music, whereas the bright music of Mozart has become more famous. Of course different intellectual enhancement is associated with each: memory learning from Lozanov’s slow Baroque and spatial skills and reasoning from Mozart.

For me, I could not read or work with Mozart in the background. But I find the peaceful gentleness of slow Baroque especially conducive to creativity and intellectual work.

Experiment for yourself and see what you find. For an example of slow baroque, try the first two minutes of this piece by Locatelli (the Baroque era was in the late 16th – early 17^th century). It’s his concerto grosso in G-minor, Op 1. No. 12 (just ignore the flamboyant tits – if you can!)

Locatelli is better (richer and certainly better melodies) than Vivaldi, I think; just not as famous.

And the bosomy picture is “A young woman playing a viola da gamba” by Gerrit Van Honthorst.