to henry stein

• Behaviors and music by bylowk@gosaints.com, 2/5/98
  • The Mozart Effect by Henry Stein, 2/6/98
    
    

henry, I happened across this board, and found a title called, "Mozart Effect." As I am an accomplished pianist and composer, I was curious and stopped to read. I don't know who Adler is, and I don't think I want to. But I will say, that one cannot reduce music to a "behavioral stimulus." Music is an entity unto itself, it's a language. It's more difficult to become accomplished in music than it is to become profficient in a spoken language, or molecular biology. (I am a biologist, who studied French, Spanish, and Hebrew, and became accomplished in them all.) Music, is a science. It involves intricate meters, and myriads of frequencies all intertwined in each other. There's scales upon scales upon scales that can be written separately, or with each other, to create an endless symphony. You might as well try to analyze the behavioral effects of medicine. It would be ludicrous to do so, and which "style," (practice), would you pick? There is no such thing as a behavioral response to music...as if people were plants or something and people and music could be paralleled to the "ultraviolet radiation/carbohydrate production" response. People will do what people will do. There are mean people who listen to rock music, and there are nice people who listen to rock music. There are mean people who listen to classical music, and nice people who listen to classical music.

• Music...From MTAT to Mice by John Fentress: fentress@is.dal.ca, 4/28/98