Category: Music Box
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The symbolic portrait of Mozart’s patron Dr. Ferdinand Dejean
Stephen Martin Durham, United Kingdom Figure 1. Dr Ferdinand Dejean. Oil on canvas. Unsigned. Probably by Jacobus Buys. 47 x 55 cm Dr. Ferdinand Dejean (1731-1797) grew up in the Bonn Court alongside Beethoven’s father and trained as a surgeon.1,2 For ten years he worked on Dutch East India Company ships from Persian Gulf…
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In Consultation: Rachmaninoff, his physician, and the genesis of a masterpiece
Vincent de Luise New Haven, Connecticut, United States “You need color to make music come alive. Without color, music is dead.” — Sergei Rachmaninoff Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) There are piano concertos and then there are Piano Concertos. While favorites include the Tchaikovsky First, Mozart’s Twenty-first, the Beethoven Fifth (“Emperor”), and the first concertos of Brahms…
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Song as a unit for physical activity: A-minor Proposal
Cillin CondonDublin, Ireland “Let us go singing as far as we go: the road will be less tedious.”— Virgil Physical inactivity is recognized as a significant risk factor for diseases such as stroke, diabetes, and cancer.1 Recommendations for adults include 150 minutes or more of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week, or at least 75…
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Mozart’s “effect” on us: A review of an aspect of music and cognition
Vincent de LuiseNew Haven, Connecticut, United States For decades, neuroscientists have explored whether there exists a causal relationship between listening to music and enhancement of cognitive ability. Does music make one smarter? Can listening to music lead to more memory and greater intellect? Does listening specifically to the music of Wolfgang Mozart improve cognitive ability?…
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Music and the brain
Rayda Joomun Mauritius “The piano keys are black and white but they sound like a million colours in your mind” – Maria Cristina Mena Music brings a smile to our faces. Yet this abstract entity has no conventional defining criteria. Proust acknowledged this: “Music helped me to descend into myself, to discover new things; the…
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Was the Mozart Effect evident before the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart?
Harishnath Ramachandran England, United Kingdom “Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.” – Plato Statue of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91) taken by Mrs. Sanju Ramachandran (Vienna 2009) The word music is derived from the Greek word “mousike”, meaning art of the muses. It is considered a form of…
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Medicine musica: the eighteenth-century rationalization of music and medicine
Daisy Fancourt London, United Kingdom Instruments de musique, 1770 Anne Vallayer-Coster Musée du Louvre, Paris Legends of music’s healing powers on both the mind and the body are estimated to go as far back as Paleolithic times, when music was believed to be a magic that could drive away the angry spirits that caused…
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Madness at the opera
It is ironic and tragic that Gaetano Donizetti, author of the most famous mad scenes in the history of opera, should himself have died in a state of utter madness from what has been described “as the most terrible of all brain diseases.”1 In two of his operas, Anna Bolena and Lucia di Lammermoor, the…
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Schubert, Schumann, and the Spirochete
Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828) Robert Schumann (1810 – 1856) Their names sound Germanic and are somewhat similar, as are their portraits. They wrote beautiful music and rank high among the great composers of the romantic era. To confuse their names would constitute an unforgivable crime, especially in the eye of music lovers. Yet in…
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Surgery, note by note: Marin Marais’ “Tableau de l’Opération de la Taille”
James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States How has medicine been depicted in music? Examples from the operatic stage come to mind: tuberculosis in Verdi’s La Traviata and Puccini’s La Bohème; madness or delirium in the mad scene in Donizetti’s Lucia Da Lammermoor and Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene in Verdi’s Macbeth. It is harder to find…