We all know that music has the power to move us, to trigger a staggering range of emotions, tell stories, calm us, make us dance, make us cry - but how, exactly, does music do it? A special performance called "Beethoven and Your Brain" explored that question earlier this week in front of a sell-out audience at the Royal Conservatory's Koerner Hall in Toronto. The event was billed as a "first-of-its-kind partnership" between an orchestra, a conductor and a neuroscientist.
The neuroscientist was Daniel Levitin, a psychologist at McGill University and author of the bestsellers This is Your Brain on Music and The World in Six Songs. He was joined onstage by the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony and its conductor, Edwin Outwater. Together they took the audience a guided tour of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, perhaps the best-known work in the Western musical canon. Audience members were given electronic "clickers" with which they could respond to Levitin's questions and voice their own reactions to what was being played; the results were displayed on a giant screen in real time.
Everyone knows the symphony's famous opening - the "da da da dummm" - but most of us, in all likelihood, haven't stopped to think about how Beethoven's repeated use of that motif works its magic on us so effectively. It's not just that the dramatic notes grab our attention, Levitin says; it's the way the composer employs it again and again, but in different guises, varying the key and the tempo and even the instruments that produce it. (The orchestra, at Outwater's command, played key snippets of the symphony to highlight specific examples.) Interestingly, this repetition works even if the listener has no idea what's going on, Levitin says. The reason, he argues, is that our brains are hard-wired to seek out such patterns, wherever they may occur.
For more visit:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/cu...beethoven.html
Well I am no brain expert, but all I know is listening to his music on my mp3 player at the signing on points at the job centre, whilst they talk utter rubbish is a good thing...
The neuroscientist was Daniel Levitin, a psychologist at McGill University and author of the bestsellers This is Your Brain on Music and The World in Six Songs. He was joined onstage by the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony and its conductor, Edwin Outwater. Together they took the audience a guided tour of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, perhaps the best-known work in the Western musical canon. Audience members were given electronic "clickers" with which they could respond to Levitin's questions and voice their own reactions to what was being played; the results were displayed on a giant screen in real time.
Everyone knows the symphony's famous opening - the "da da da dummm" - but most of us, in all likelihood, haven't stopped to think about how Beethoven's repeated use of that motif works its magic on us so effectively. It's not just that the dramatic notes grab our attention, Levitin says; it's the way the composer employs it again and again, but in different guises, varying the key and the tempo and even the instruments that produce it. (The orchestra, at Outwater's command, played key snippets of the symphony to highlight specific examples.) Interestingly, this repetition works even if the listener has no idea what's going on, Levitin says. The reason, he argues, is that our brains are hard-wired to seek out such patterns, wherever they may occur.
For more visit:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/cu...beethoven.html
Well I am no brain expert, but all I know is listening to his music on my mp3 player at the signing on points at the job centre, whilst they talk utter rubbish is a good thing...