The riddle of the Mozart Effect

Natural Health, Jan-Feb, 1998 by Don Campbell

To many listeners, Mozart's music seems to impart balance. If it indeed imparts energetic balance -- and we do know that it, like all sound, changes the energy of our bodies in specific ways -- then Mozart's music is doing what many systems of healing strive to do. Whether through acupuncture, herbal medicines, dietary planning, or assorted other measures, many systems of healthcare seek to help the patient find energetic balance. Mozart's music may be energy-balancing extraordinaire. It's not too fast, or too slow. Somehow it's "just right."

The rhythms of music, we know, affect the rhythms of the autonomic nervous system, which regulates a vast biological landscape within our bodies. We can understand, therefore, how important the simplicity and clarity of Mozart's music may be to our emotional and physical bodies.

I liken the effects of different music to the effects of different foods, which also have the power to alter energy patterns and change our physiology, for both good and bad. A hot Mexican meal, or a sweet dessert, each will affect us -- temperamentally and physically -- much differently than a spinach salad. With foods, a steady diet of the most delicious and sensuous is not necessarily the best for us. Sometimes it's the simple tastes that serve us best on a regular basis. We may crave the taste of a steak dinner or a hot fudge sundae, but brown rice primavera might be the most nutritionally beneficial.

So it may be with music. We are likely fed well by a variety of music, but some forms are more likely to bring order and stability to our emotions. Tomatis is convinced that Mozart's music is exceptional at bringing harmony to body and mind. Gerard Depardieu, whose speech difficulties were healed by listening to Mozart, actually listened to Mozart that had been "filtered." It had certain frequencies taken out and others amplified according to Depardieu's specific needs. Some people do not hear certain frequencies as well as they should and they end up with "deficiencies" in these frequencies. By "feeding" the patient these frequencies, the deficiencies are corrected. Tomatis uses Mozart because it filters better than any other kind of music. You could liken the filtered frequencies to "sonic vitamins," or "sound nutrients." They were the specific frequencies, or vibrational nutrition, that Depardieu required. Tomatis has found that Mozart, better than any other kind of music, is a nutritionally balanced musical meal and it is easier to filter out needed frequencies from his compositions than from other composers.'

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the child prodigy who wrote operas, symphonies, piano concertos, piano sonatas, and music for organ, clarinet, and other instruments by the time he was twelve years old -- and who would seem to have known he was going to die young (in his mid-thirties) -- may have left the world a library of the most delicious healing sound yet discovered.

DON CAMPBELL is a trained classical musician, composer, and author of ground-breaking books an music and healing.