Classical Music: Therapy for Body and Mind?

 The eighth in a series.

You can only imagine how fatigued and grumpy PAN used to feel after a busy day of chasing nymphs all around the Greek countryside, typically with little success. We have to wonder if the music of his pan pipes soothed the savage beast…or, in his case, beasts.  

There is a growing body of thought that music can and does improve the health and mood of people. Consider the following:

A group of neuroscientists determined in a 2010 study that music, as defined as “an abstract stimulus,” can arouse feelings of euphoria and craving, similar to tangible rewards that involve the striatal dopaminergic system. 

This happens during anticipation and experience of peak emotional responses to music, according MRI readings. Their conclusion: “Our results help to explain why music is of such high value across all human societies.”

New research shows that even sad music can lift a person’s mood, while other studies suggest music can boost happiness and reduce anxiety. Recent research conducted by Durham University in the UK and the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, published in PLOS ONE produced this conclusion.

The research involved three waves of surveys with more than 2400 people in the UK and Finland. It focused on the emotions and memorable experiences associated with listening to sad songs. The majority of experiences reported by participants were positive.

"The results help us to pinpoint the ways people regulate their mood with the help of music, as well as how music rehabilitation and music therapy might tap into these processes of comfort, relief, and enjoyment" said lead author Tuomas Eerolas, Ph.D. a professor of music cognition at Durham university in a press release.  

Other research has focused on the joys that upbeat music can bring. A 2013 study in the Journal of Positive Psychology found that people who listened regularly to upbeat music could improve their moods and boost their happiness in just two weeks. 

In the study, participants were instructed to try to improve their mood with music, but they only succeeded when they listed to upbeat music by Copland as opposed to some of the more somber pieces composed by Stravinsky. 

And a happier mood brings benefits beyond feeling good. In a press release, lead study author Yuna Ferguson from the University of Missouri noted that happiness has been linked to better physical health, higher income, and greater relationship satisfaction. 

The restorative benefits of music go well beyond changing the mood of people. One study determined that music helped people who had just come out of cardiac surgery in Sweden. Soft and relaxing new-age music was show to help reduce the stress levels of patients in the recovery area of the hospital following surgery. 

Another study showed that patients awaiting surgery often suffer from fear and anxiety, which can be prevented by anxiolytic drugs. Relaxing music was shown to be an effective alternative to these drugs, with fewer adverse side effects. 

Music also has the power to help us manage pain. A study on this subject was conducted with people suffering from Fibromyalgia - a poorly understood chronic pain syndrome. The music intervention consisted of listening to music once a day for 4 consecutive weeks. The treatment group reported a significant reduction in pain and depression at week 4 compared to the control group who did not listen to music. 

It is not clear why music may reduce pain, though it appears that music's impact on dopamine release may play a role. Of course, stress and pain are closely linked, so the positive impact music has on reducing stress may also partially explain its positive impact on pain management. 

Music may also improve the function of the human immune system. Researchers at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, PA studied how music impacted levels of IgA - ad important antibody for the human immune system's first line of defense against disease. 

The musical duel of Pan and Apollo.

Undergraduate students have their salivary IgA levels measured before and after 30 minutes of listening to one of four programs: A tone click, a radio broadcast, a recording of soothing music or silence. The lucky kids exposed to the soothing music had significantly greater increases in IgA that the others. 

It's likely PAN did not understand the science behind the positive effects music had on both people and deities alike. After all, in his famous musical competition with Apollo, the ending was not so happy for him - but Apollo had one heck of a good time strumming his golden lyre.

Is Classical Music Still Relevant in Today’s World?

 The seventh in a series.

PAN

Pan can relate to problems with relevance and, shall we say, attractiveness. Since antiquity he’s been broadly rejected by many because of his odd looks, mischievous behavior and unsolicited advances, especially from the somewhat intolerant nymph community.

Does classical music face the prospect of wholesale rejection from modern day audiences?,

People have long believed that listening to classical music can boost intelligence, improve test scores, reduce anxiety and help battle depression. In the early 1990s a study was conducted that claimed listening to Mozart improved “special intelligence,” popularly interpreted as an increase in general IQ.

Beyond its potential value as a therapeutic tool, does classical music as an art form still hold an appeal for broad audiences today?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

"Classical music is alive and well," says George Trudeau, Director of the Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State. "What has changed is there are more avenues than ever before for classical performance and public education, including public radio, the Internet, and other digital technologies."

Despite widespread predictions of precipitous declines in audiences attending live classical music performances, a study from the National Endowment for the Arts in January of 2015 showed a nominal decrease of 2.8 percentage points of US adults attending a live classical music from 11.6% to 8.8% from 2002 to 2012.

But that still means 9 out of 10 US adults did not attend a classical music event in recent years.

Trudeau continued "Classical music infuses our daily lives," he adds, "through commercials, films, public life, and popular culture, to motivate, set moods, and inspire other artistic expressions, and the entire genre is now only a download away."

There are some programs that are boosting accessibility to classical music, including The Metropolitan Opera’s HD cinema presentations, where people can show up in casual clothes and experience opera close to home, on more than 2,000 screens in 70 countries around the globe.

Lawrence Kramer

The reasons to enjoy classical music may be a blinding glimpse of the obvious. Lawrence Kramer who wrote “Why Classical Music Still Matters” back in 2007 told the NY Times that classical music “is addressed to someone who has a certain independence of mind.” It “almost posits for its audience a certain degree of Western identity, which includes that sense of individual capacity to think, to sense, to imagine.”

But there are still many strongly held perceptions that hold potential audiences back from listening to and attending classical music performances.

The BBC Proms – an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually in London – has taken the challenge head-on. Founded in 1895, each season consists of more than 70 concerts in venues such as Royal Albert Hall and chamber concerts at Cadogan Hall.

The BBC just published “The 11 obstacles to liking classical music (and why they are all in your mind).”

Their website states “Nowadays, the snobs who dismiss classical music as elitist or irrelevant outnumber the classical music snobs themselves. There's something in classical music for everyone, and there's no better time to find out for yourself. It's Proms season, so let us puncture some enduring myths and misconceptions when it comes to watching and enjoying classical music.”

The top five obstacles cited, and BBC Proms solutions included:

1.    Concerts go on for too long: Their answer is that most Proms concerts are broken into manageable chunks, complete with intervals. Some shows offer shorter works, and one even offers DJ Mr. Switch remixing snippets of canonical works.

2.    Concerts are too expensive: Proms concert admission is priced as low as £6 for standing room tickets at Royal Albert Hall in London, with 1,350 available for each concert.

3.    It’s Elitist: As the BBC states “It's a misconception that all classical concerts are black-tie or boater-worthy events. Unless you're at an exclusive festival like Glyndebourne, this isn't the case. At the Proms, anyone can walk in on the day wearing anything they like.”

4.    There are too many rules: The BBC notes “There are a few points of etiquette. It never used to be the case, but you shouldn't clap between symphonic movements (just follow the rest of the audience if you're not sure) and don't make noise during the music. But really the only rule worth observing is to be respectful of those around you.” And continues “Some Proms concerts are designed to be more informal; last year's Radio 1 Ibiza Prom was a full-on rave.”

5.    The Music is not for me: The BBC answer - Classical music is only as off-putting as you want to make it, and there's no reason why most of it can't be enjoyed on the most basic level. There are few things closer to pure pleasure than Elgar's Cello Concerto, as close to unadulterated joy as Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, or as heavenly as most big vocal works by Bach. So think about it like this: Do you identity as a curious music fan? The Proms offer a wide selection music from across many centuries, right up to the present day. You will find much that you'll love.

Leave it to the BBC to provide these clever retorts to the issues many may have with classical music. There may be some valuable lessons to be learned by symphony orchestras and other classical music performers on this side of the Atlantic.

We suspect PAN may be paying close attention to the way the BBC Proms concert series is overcoming perceived issues with an alternative and more attractive perspective with nay-sayers. Hope springs eternal for those who are persistent, especially in matters of sharing cultural excellence and love. And there may be hope yet for our friend PAN. 

 

Can Music We Don't Really Like Bring Us Together?

The sixth in a series

Music, like food, is rooted in biology, and it is like breathing, all pervasive. But are certain aspects of our reactions to music universal as human beings? And is there some way that it can help bring us together across cultural divides?

When PAN wandered the mountains of ancient Greece, did the shepherds tending their flocks, or even the wood-nymphs (including Syrinx) take to his panpipe music at their first listen? 

Modern science tells us that music is a fundamental part of our evolution, as humans probably sang before they spoke in syntactically guided sentences. Music is strongly linked to motivation and human social contact. While only a few people may be able to play music, almost all of us can at least sing or hum a tune.

A team of researchers from McGill University Montreal, Technische Universität Berlin, and the University of Montreal arrived at this conclusion after traveling deep into the rainforest to play music to a very isolated group of people, the Mbenzélé Pygmies, who live without access to radio, television or the internet.

They then compared how the Mbenzélé responded both to their own music and to unfamiliar Western music, with the way that a group of Canadians responded to the same pieces.

The researchers explain, in a recent article in Frontiers in Psychology, that although the groups felt quite differently about whether specific pieces of music made them feel good or bad, their subjective and physiological responses to how exciting or calming they found the music to be appeared to be universal.

Dr. Hauke Egermann

The researchers arrived at this conclusion by playing 19 short musical excerpts  (11 western and 8 Pygmy) of between about 30 and 90 seconds to forty Pygmies in the Congo and then to forty Canadians in Montreal.

"Our major discovery is that listeners from very different groups both responded to how exciting or calming they felt the music to be in similar ways," says Hauke Egermann, who is currently based at the Technische Universität in Berlin.

Can people learn to love music they don’t like?

We all can readily identify music we hate. But can we intentionally transform our visceral response to different types of music?

Researchers at Australia's University of Melbourne say that the more dissonance (which they describe as "perceived roughness, harshness, unpleasantness, or difficulty in listening to the sound") that we hear in music, the less we enjoy said music.

However, the more we're exposed to a certain kind of music — either through intentional engagement or simple osmosis in whatever culture we're immersed in — the more we like that music.

The team played both "pure tones" and various chords for participants -- a mixed group of trained musicians studying at the school's conservatory and members of the general public -- and had them rate the sounds for perceived dissonance, and for familiarity, on a five-point scale.

Trained musicians, perhaps predictably, were more sensitive to dissonance than lay listeners. But they also found that when listeners hadn't previously encountered a certain chord, they found it nearly impossible to hear the individual notes that comprised it. Where this ability was lacking, the chords sounded dissonant, and thus, unpleasant.

Sarah Wilson

The ability to identify tones and thus enjoy harmonies was positively correlated with musical training. Said study co-author Sarah Wilson "This showed us that even the ability to hear a musical pitch (or note) is learned." 

From a practical standpoint, the results seem to suggest that we can train ourselves to better appreciate music. This includes the unfamiliar traditions, (assuming this is not just a clever way of promoting the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music) is great news for those who've been wanting to get into jazz or other musical genres.

This is reason enough for inquisitive people to "sample" classical music in non-traditional venues or based on various forms of popular culture such as motion pictures, themed programs or Broadway musicals. There may be a great opportunity to grow audiences for classical music, based on the way we all process music in our brains.

We're sure PAN will be right in the mix, as he tries to use these new scientific insights in his romantics efforts in the woods and fields of Arcadia.