The Mozart effect

Salzburg, the birthplace Mozart said was suffocatingly provincial, has exacted fine revenge on him for his derision – flogging tourists Mozart hip flasks, snow domes, bewigged fright dolls, chocolate balls in violin-shaped boxes. On his birthday, they gave away slices from a 308lb, four-layer chocolate cake in the Residenzplatz. Such is the fate of genius, especially when it offers music as bankable and an image so obliging as Mozart’s – to be chopped up to serve other people’s bank balances. Amadeus invented sachertorte, right?

Mozart has become mood music either. Classical music offers a bewildering range of expression, but it has been reduced commercially to very few, notably that of stupefying the stressed. But Mozart won’t only make you chill; he’ll also make you brill. Mozart for Babies cites a 1993 Californian experiment in which the IQs of 36 undergraduates temporarily rose after listening to a Mozart sonata. Successful businesses now thrive on the basis of this experiment’s questionable corollary (called the Mozart Effect) – that playing great music to small humans makes them more likely to grow into geniuses.

Later studies suggested that infant intelligence might be promoted by different music, but they are ignored. Parents want their spawn to emulate Mozart, who wrote and performed his Andante for Piano aged five. Thus products positing a link are lucrative. Hence the success of the Baby Einstein range of developmental aids. From this range, the Baby Mozart DVD is especially handy for child development: plonk your kid in front of it and go and do something more interesting than parenting, safe in the knowledge that their brains are expanding optimally. According to US satirical magazine the Onion, the top-selling educational baby DVDs are Don’t Worry, Mozart Will Watch the Kids and I Don’t Know What I’m Watching Because I’m a F..king Baby, Vol 2.

Perhaps, there is value in being bored. It throws children back on to their own resources, encourages them to develop that faculty Mozart and all geniuses had in abundance – imagination.

Questions
1. How would you summarize the text?
2. What phenomenon is the so-called Mozart Effect?
3. Is it true that classical music has a good effect on babies’ intelligence?

Key:
1. 250 years after Mozart’s death for utterly commercial purposes his name is used as a brand for several mass products while his music(in form of CDs and DVDs) is sold for halfwit parents who do believe that their children can get genius just by listening to it.
2. In a Californian experiment, in 1993, researchers found that the IQs of 36 undergraduates increased as they listened to Mozart’s music.
3. It is true according several studies (but not only Mozart :-)).