Tea at Trianon: The Mozart Effect

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, July 5, 2024

The Mozart Effect

From Return to Order:

Some scientists refer to the phenomenon as “The Mozart Effect.” The name draws from a groundbreaking 1993 study led by F. H. Rauscher. It claimed that the participants listening to a Mozart sonata for ten minutes showed significantly better reasoning skills than those who spent the same amount of time listening to “relaxing music” or sitting in silence.

This conclusion was controversial, and even Dr. Rauscher “stressed that the Mozart effect is limited to spatial temporal reasoning and that there is no enhancement of general intelligence.” Even these limited effects, however, show that listening to classical music yields numerous benefits.

In the years since scientists discovered the Mozart Effect, many have tried to determine how it works on the human body. Benefits include increased respiration, decreases in muscle tension, narrowing and expanding blood vessels, releasing endorphins and increased heart rate. However, all of those factors are ultimately controlled by some part of the brain. (Read more.)