# The Mozart effect...



## nikolas (Nov 5, 2009)

A new report now says that the Mozart effect is a fraud. For you hip urban professionals: playing Mozart for your designer baby will not improve his or her IQ or help him or her get into that exclusive pre-school. He or she will just have to get that advantage some other way. Of course, we're all better off for listening to Mozart purely for the pleasure of it. However, one wonders that if playing Mozart sonatas for little Hillary or Jason could boost her or his intelligence, what would happen if other composers were played in their developmental time?


LISZT EFFECT: The child speaks rapidly and extravagantly, but never really says anything important.

BRUCKNER EFFECT: Child speaks very slowly and repeats himself frequently. Gains reputation for profundity.

WAGNER EFFECT: The <strike>hild</strike> child becomes a megalomaniac. He may eventually marry his sister.

MAHLER EFFECT: The child continually screams -- at great length and volume -- that he's dying.

SCHOENBERG EFFECT: The child never repeats a word until he's used all the other words in his vocabulary. Sometimes talks backwards. Eventually, people stop listening to him. Child blames them for their inability to understand him.

IVES EFFECT: The child develops a remarkable ability to carry on several separate conversations at once.

GLASS EFFECT: The child tends to repeat himself over over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

STRAVINSKY EFFECT: The child is prone to savage, guttural and profane outbursts that often lead to fighting a pandemonium in school.

BRAHMS EFFECT: The child is able to speak beautifully as long as his sentences contain a multiple of three words (3,6,9,12 etc). However, his sentences containing 4 or 8 words are strangely uninspired.

CAGE EFFECT: The child says nothing for 4 minutes, 33 seconds. Preferred by 9 out of 10 classroom teachers.

LIGETI EFFECT: Child makes dozens of horrid sounds, and parts of sentences are sometimes minutes apart, he claims this is speech, child is also manically depressed and sickly

BEETHOVEN EFFECT: Child goes deaf at an early stage but can still talk surpirisingly fluently and well

RACHMANINOV EFFECT: Child has an unearthly attention to detail and speech is sometimes delayed

PAGANINI EFFECT: Child is insanely talented with any instrument

RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN EFFECT: Child continually screams "The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music!"

BACH EFFECT: Child is a math genius and loves to answer his own sentences

D SCARLATTI EFFECT: Child sometimes suffers from uncontrolled outbursts by screaming in harmonic voices

DONIZETTI EFFECT: Child can't help laughing and dancing while talking about tragic events in eloquent and compassionate terms. Deeply unsettling to peers and educators.

WILLIAMS EFFECT: Child starts breathing heavily and is seduced by the dark side, not necessarily in that order.

DEBUSSY EFFECT: Child murmurs and mumbles in a sensuous vocabulary that seems to go nowhere, with occasional spouts of fireworks and jazz puppetry.

BACH EFFECT: Child speaks in structurally perfect multiple voices, forwards, backwards, upside-down, augmented and diminished, solely for the glory of God. Also be prepared for a lot of grandchildren.

SCHUMANN EFFECT: Child speaks in poetry, then tries to drown himself.

ROSSINI EFFECT: Child will be lazy, an insatiable glutton, and an obnoxious critic... but still a lot of fun.

CHOPIN EFFECT: Child coughs constantly and has a strange predilection for silk gloves.

GERSHWIN EFFECT: Child tries to speak Ebonics, but is never quite convincing.

LULLY EFFECT: Please keep child away from sharp objects.

BERWALD EFFECT: Child develops a huge passion, works at it his whole life, then falls into complete obscurity.

MEYERBEER EFFECT: Everything child says is wildly popular, but no one can remember it afterward.

HOVHANESS EFFECT: Child grows to be very spiritual, attracted to Eastern religions, and develops pyromaniac tendencies. Also becomes rather verbose.

PROKOFIEV EFFECT: Child speaks wildly and brilliantly, with a huge vocabulary. But... was he being serious?

COWELL EFFECT: Child speaks in clusters of words.

PARTCH EFFECT: Child speaks only in words that he makes up.

ORFF EFFECT: Child delights in saying naughty things that no one notices because they are too busy arguing about the correct middle high German or Latin pronunciation.

THE SORABJI EFFECT: Child speaks eloquently for hours upon hours, but tries his best not to let anyone hear him.

THE RACHMANINOFF EFFECT: Child is perpetually gloomy, but loves to talk about aeroplanes and Mother Russia.

THE SCRIABIN EFFECT: Child has serious illusions of grandeur and may exclaim his own divinity from time to time.

THE MADGE EFFECT: Child makes up words and then tries to pass them off as real, sometimes convincingly.

THE SHOSTAKOVICH EFFECT: Child may try to humilate parents by speaking in codes and riddles.

THE LA MONTE YOUNG EFFECT: Child says and holds a single word for eternity - in fact, he says the word before and after it has been said.

OZZY OZSBOURNE EFFECT: Child develops an incomprehensible ability to scream words like "Crazy Train!", Also starts to think that Pizza and cigarrettes are good for him

VIVALDI EFFECT: Every time you talk to the child, you can't help but wonder if you've had that conversation before.

THE DON MCLEAN EFFECT: The baby will follow everything he says with a dignified silence.

PAT METHENY EFFECT: You have trouble identifying where one sentence stops and the other begins.

FRANZ SCHUBERT EFFECT: The child is the most intelligent in the class but never realizes because he copied all of Beethoven's answers.

Heh... Enjoy!


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## StrangeCat (Nov 5, 2009)

I must be an F*** Genius then if I can compose that style! o=< 

Yoko Kanno Effect: Child becomes familiar with all cultures around the world. The worldly child speaks six different languages!


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## Andy B (Nov 5, 2009)

That was just great Nikolas. 

If you wrote that, you should do something with it.......not quite sure what........but something. :? 

Andy.


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## nikolas (Nov 5, 2009)

I didn't write that. I did copy paste it though! :D


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## Andy B (Nov 5, 2009)

nikolas @ Thu Nov 05 said:


> I didn't write that. I did copy paste it though! :D



Ha, ha! Then I take my hat off to you.


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## RiffWraith (Nov 5, 2009)

StrangeCat @ Thu Nov 05 said:


> Yoko Kanno Effect: Child becomes familiar with all cultures around the world. The worldly child speaks six different languages!



Yoko Ono Effect: Child becomes familiar with how to break up one of the greatest musical groups Planet Earth has ever known. :?


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## chimuelo (Nov 5, 2009)

KENNY G. EFFECT _ Child is in a continuos state of Naussea and endlessley searches for Perry Como as if child was at Yosemite National Forest screaming...Where are you Smokey Bear.

I should thank Kenny G. for his maggot gagging gay love songs, and disgusting Christmas carrolings. I actually get my Christmas shopping over long before the Malls echo his Pied Piper Bull shit.


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## Hannes_F (Nov 5, 2009)

nikolas @ Thu Nov 05 said:


> A new report now says that the Mozart effect is a fraud.



Facts, please, links and literature.


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## StrangeCat (Nov 5, 2009)

Hannes_F @ Thu Nov 05 said:


> nikolas @ Thu Nov 05 said:
> 
> 
> > A new report now says that the Mozart effect is a fraud.
> ...



Hey hey that's not facts. That music does indeed wake up the mind of a child. Think of it as the same effect buddhist monks have when they meditate. Composing music that is perfect in harmony, melody, and structure will do that. I am sure Bach's Air on a G string would also fit and many other pieces, Brandenburg Concertos etc. Even playing the harp and listening to the harp would create the same effect. Hell the Harp can cure cancer! o-[][]-o


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## synergy543 (Nov 5, 2009)

Fact: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/health/chi-talk-baby-einsteinoct26,0,5157061.column (Refunds for Disney's Baby Einstein CDs) (inspired by the Mozart Effect)
If your kid is not as smart as you thought, then there is at least some consolation.

Nice copy job Nicholas!


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## Hannes_F (Nov 6, 2009)

StrangeCat @ Fri Nov 06 said:


> I am sure Bach's Air on a G string would also fit



BTW I can never understand why people (I mean the classical music world in general, not you) quote so much without thinking in certain cases. 

Bach's Air from the orchestral suite nr. 3 is a genius stroke ... but it is only the Air "on a G string" if the melody is entirely played on a violin G string which is the arrangement of the violinst August Wilhelmj in the late 19th century. Hear a vintage recording of this here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_on_a_G_String

As much as I love to hear and play that piece I would never perform it entirely on the G string since for me this is THE symbol of schmaltzy non-taste and totally rapes the music. Therefore I cannot believe that even intelligent people nearly always refer to this "G string" thing if they mean the original orchestral version. Bah!


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## Hannes_F (Nov 6, 2009)

Back to topic: Thank you for pointing me to the "Mozart effect". I never knew that what had been a clean scientific study later was commercialized and even patented! It is no wonder that if somebody hypes the small effect of passive listening on intelligence in that way this will backlash sooner or later ... even if the effect seems to be still there but only really small.

I think intelligence is way overrated in our society anyhow. These IQ tests go for a very special sub-fraction of the whole human scala. I know a guy that might have an IQ of 90 or so but made his first million after being self-employed for three years because he is street-smart.

What I am trying to say is that the cold intellect can really go into the way if you let it drive your life. Worst thing would be to reduce the horizon and forget that the really important domains of human mind are empathy, humanity, spirituality and wisdom opposed to knowledge or ability. It may sound a little strange but I happen to have an IQ that is higher than what sometimes is good for me and always sort of toned it down ... guess what ... by making music. And that harmonizing is where Mozart music (playing or active listening) excels imo.


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## StrangeCat (Nov 6, 2009)

Hannes_F @ Fri Nov 06 said:


> StrangeCat @ Fri Nov 06 said:
> 
> 
> > I am sure Bach's Air on a G string would also fit
> ...



I totally agree with you! And about intelligence. They love to market that stuff!


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## StrangeCat (Nov 6, 2009)

Lee Holdridge Effect: Child feels a great need to live like Arther and move into a castle like Camelot!


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