Mozart Everyday Keeps the Doctor Away

Because Danai, my guest blogger from last week, commented on how classical music can help you physically I thought I would expand on that subject today. Music throughout the ages has been known to affect people in different ways. Even in today’s culture you will find yourself grinning, singing, or dancing to your favorite songs. You will also notice yourself grimace and slow down when you hear a song you don’t like. You could say you are motivated by your favorite beats.

So where does classical music fit into making you feel physically better? Well there have been many studies done on how classical music helps people who are recovering from surgery’s. When classical music is played while a person is sleeping you can see on the heart monitor that their heart has adjusted to keep its beat with the music’s beat. Normally doctors have prescribed slower paced classical songs so that the patient who is healing will have a slow steady pulse. The slower your pulse is the more relaxed you are, and the more relaxed you are the faster your body can heal from whatever has injured it.

Classical music is not just prescribed by doctors for those who are healing from a surgery though. Doctors prescribe it as a way of healing from many things, such as anxiety and depression. It is also prescribed to help people suffering from Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. While in the last two diseases it does not completely fix the muscle or memory loss of the patients it does lessen it a lot. 

So if you find yourself feeling a little bit out of sorts, or very overwhelmed, try listening to some classical music so you can relax and balance your emotions so you can more effectively accomplish what you are trying to do.

Classical Music and Food

Today, I was a guest blogger on a blog dealing with  living with Celiac Disease. Odd I know, but as my post discusses, classical music and food actually can be connected.

Classical music...important?

Classical music is the one universal language that is spoken throughout the entire world. Unlike pop and rap music today, classical music is complex and has the potential to speak to people on deep emotional levels, despite any language barriers there might be. Music of any kind is wonderful, but classical music can provoke intellectual thoughts and inspire new ideas in its listeners.

It is a branch of education that has been neglected because people do not see what a powerful tool it can be in communicating with others. Classical music can convey emotions from joy and happiness to anger and frustration. It also has the power to open parts of the mind that need musical stimulus and makes a person more well-rounded and balanced in all aspects of their life. People need to be taught how to appreciate and understand the complexity of the music or the wonderful potential is completely lost. 

-By guest blogger Danai Sirrine 

If Variety is the Spice of Life, Classical Music is a Bottle of Tabasco

Some people view classical music as just orchestra music, or music that has a violin or some other string instrument in it. While this is one form of classical music, classical composers do not just stick to writing for strings or for an Orchestra. There are Opera’s written in the classical style along with songs that you would play on your piano at home. There are also songs that are written to solo out an instrument and put them against a whole orchestra.


Beyond having variety in the types of instruments that play classical music, the music itself can have very different elements that make each song unique. Would anybody say that “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana is the same as Tchaikovsky's “Waltz of the Flowers?” Absolutely not. Both of these songs are classical music but composed and performed in two very different styles. There is variety in these songs that creates interest in the music and the story that it is trying to tell. The tone of both of these songs is different; the emotions behind these songs are very different; the songs create vastly different feelings to those who hear them. While all classical songs do share some attributes in common, there is a variety to them that gives a listener a sense of newness, excitement, and interest with each new song they hear.

It's a...LIVE!!

Each of us has a favorite singer or band, and we would love to go listen to them live, right? Of course we would love to listen to them live! But stop-let’s think about this. Why would we want to listen to them live when we already own their CD’s and know the lyrics to the songs they will be singing by heart? It’s the experience of being in the same room as that person. The experience of being able to listen to them live instead of through an iPod is amazing. You honestly feel like you understand better what the singer is trying to say with their words-you connect with them and their songs in a way you just can’t when you are listening to them through your iPod. The same thing happens with classical music.

In order to fully appreciate classical music you have to be willing to go to a concert and listen to it. This way you are able to connect with the music on a deeper, more personal level. The BYU Philharmonic Orchestra is having their concert in the De Jong concert hall, located in the Harris Fine Arts Center, on November 17, 2010. They will be playing a number of songs including the song Jupiter from the Planets suite, a suite which I have previously mentioned. Another concert that will be held the following night, in the same hall, will be performed by the Utah Symphony and they will be playing Bruckner Symphony No. 9, among other things. Both of these concerts promise to be educational to those of you who have never been to a classical music concert. Make sure you get tickets and go so you can experience classical music for yourself in its best setting-live performance.

"Motive"ating Music...

You listen to a piece of classical music and you just hear the same thing over and over and over again. Nothing is new; the composer just repeats himself. Music like that really doesn’t show creativity does it? It’s nothing like the I-IV-V-I chord progression used in most pop or rock songs since they have been around. Yes, it is true that classical music does have motives that repeat themselves, but it is no different than more popular forms of music.

For example you can find repeating motives in the classical music which is the background noise in your favorite movie. Have you ever tried to watch a movie with no musical background? The scenes lose so much intensity and interest when there is nothing there to provide that subtle musical layer of the mood that the director is trying to portray in the scene-whether it be love, hate, or just moving from place to place in the movie. And a lot of it is repetitive.

A movie that most people have seen is Lord of the Rings, and if you’ve watched this movie more than once then you know what music is used to portray each character. You know this by the sound of the melody found in the background music-which is made in the modern classical style. You could buy the sound track of the movie and know exactly who is in the part you are listening to and what is going on based on what you’re hearing. It is these repeating motives that give the music meaning and make it more than simple background noise. They help you connect to the characters and story line and help to create the atmosphere that it would be like if you were in the movie.

Even though a lot of music has very repetitive elements, it does not show a lack of creativity on the part of the composer. Especially in the case of classical music, it shows an understanding of the power of music.

You Can Call Me Mr. Angry Eyes!

Many people think that classical music is not worth their time because it does not represent what they are feeling. They feel that they can only find things that show how mad, sad, or happy they are in their favorite modern composer. While they can find many of their emotions in the popular music of today they truly can find these same emotions in classical music. You can experience mad  classical music if you listen to the piece “Night on Bald Mountain". You can experience sad classical music if you listen to “Adagietto from Symphony no. 5” written by Gutav Mahler. You can also experience happy classical music if you listen to "Symphony No. 6, 3rd Movement" by Beethoven. While each of these pieces depicts a different mood they are not the only moods to be found in classical music. Just like the composers of today write what they are feeling, classical composers write the emotions they are feeling and so you can find every emotion in classical music.

Classical music can relate to so many different emotions because of the wide variety of instruments the composers have to use. The reason these instruments help create different moods is because of how they are built and what notes they are playing. Emotion is also created by how the instruments play the notes given to them. There are two main ways of playing these notes. The first is smoothly-which gives you the chance to make sad, moody music. The second way of playing different notes is short, which is very good for extremely mad music but can also provide a happy bouncy feeling. These are a few reasons why classical music is able to represent people’s emotions.