Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

Music of Vivaldi Boosts Mental Vitality

March 13, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Vivaldi

The Mozart Effect—the notion that listening to certain pieces of classical music can boost one’s brainpower—was initially embraced, widely popularized, and then largely debunked. But like an operatic character who keeps singing robustly on her deathbed, it refuses to go quietly. Now, new research from the U.K. has found cognitive benefits from listening to one of the most popular pieces in the repertoire: Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. In an experiment, the work’s evocative Spring section, “particularly the well-recognized, vibrant, emotive and uplifting first movement, had the ... Read More

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Why Did Bach Go Blind?

February 26, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment

Among medical mysteries involving master musicians, it doesn’t quite match the still-mysterious death of Mozart at age 35. But precisely why Johann Sebastian Bach went totally blind less than four months before his death in 1750 remains an open question—as well as the portal to a poignant story. More than two-and-a-half centuries after the fact, a prominent Finnish ophthalmologist is offering what he calls a “plausible diagnosis” of the great composer: intractable secondary glaucoma, brought on by a botched eye operation. In a paper published in the journal Acta Ophthalmologica, ... Read More

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Positive Intentions, Joyful Music Key to Happiness

February 4, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: LDM/SHUTTERSTOCK)

Can you will yourself into feeling happier? Adding evidence to a centuries-old philosophical debate, newly published research suggests that indeed you can—with a little help from Aaron Copland. “Listening to positive music may be an effective way to improve happiness, particularly when it is combined with an intention to become happier,” write psychologists Yuna Ferguson and Kennon Sheldon. Their study suggests neither a determination to be happy nor uplifting music are sufficient alone: It’s the combination that seems to do the trick. Writing in the Journal of Positive ... Read More

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Your Preteen Hip-Hop Fan May Be Headed for Trouble

January 22, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Concerned that your 12-year-old is on the road to delinquency? Newly published research suggests an easy way to either assuage or confirm your fears: Check what’s on their iPod. “Music choice is a strong marker of later problem behavior,” a research team from Utrecht University in the Netherlands writes in the journal Pediatrics. Specifically, the scholars report, kids “with a strong early preference for music types that have been labeled as deviant—hip-hop, heavy metal, gothic, punk, and techno/hardhouse—were more engaged in minor delinquency in late adolescence” than ... Read More

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Playing Music May Lower Blood Pressure

January 21, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment

Want to lower your blood pressure? Pick up a musical instrument. That’s the implication of a pilot study from the Netherlands, which suggests playing music is beneficial to one’s cardiovascular system. “Our study suggests that active music making has some training effects that resemble those of physical exercise training,” researchers from the Leiden University Medical Center’s Department of Cardiology reports in the Netherlands Heart Journal. The researchers, including Cees Swenne, measured the cardiovascular health of 25 musicians and 28 non-musicians, all healthy young ... Read More

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The Caucasian King Of K-Pop

January 10, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Brad Moore (center) with his bandmates, Kim Hyung-Tae (left) and Jang Beom-Jun (PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES)

He was exhausted, his makeup itched, and his tight white pants were cutting off the circulation in his legs. Still, Brad Moore smiled and waved from the television-studio stage to the crowd of screaming, clapping Korean teenagers. Mainly, the 28-year-old drummer from Ohio was relieved that his eight weeks on a Korean music reality show were almost over. The fact that his band, Busker Busker, was poised to become a pop sensation didn’t hurt, either. Moore and his bandmates—guitarist and vocalist Jang Beom-Jun and bassist Kim Hyung-Tae, two young Koreans he’d met while teaching English ... Read More

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Live from New York, It’s Mozart and Strauss

January 4, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
A Metropolitan Opera production streams into San Luis Obispo, California (PHOTO: MICHAEL WILLER)

A smattering of applause rang out from the auditorium of the San Luis Obispo, California Performing Arts Center just past 10 o’clock one recent Saturday morning. The clapping grew louder for a few seconds and then trailed off, reflecting the hesitance of the 400 or so patrons on hand. It’s not that they felt ambivalent about maestro Maurizio Benini, who was making his way to the pit of the opera house to conduct The Elixir of Love. But he was in New York City, and their view inside Lincoln Center came from watching a live, high-definition simulcast on a huge screen. Is applause appropriate ... Read More

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Solo Rock Stars Die Young

December 19, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Amy Winehouse (PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK)

Do you dream of being a rock star? Do you hope to live a long life? If so, you’d better start prioritizing—or, at the very least, join a band. Because from Elvis Presley to Amy Winehouse, solo pop superstars are disproportionately likely to die young (although not necessarily at age 27). That’s one finding of a study just published in the British journal BMJ Open, which takes a close look at mortality among rock and pop icons of the past half-century. And just like the rest of us, it finds, famous musicians are more likely to die from substance abuse if they had troubled ... Read More

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Why Hipsters Hate On Lana Del Rey

December 19, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Lana Del Rey singing at a microphone

BY THE TIME SHE MADE HER WARBLED NATIONAL DEBUT on Saturday Night Live in early 2012, a thousand conspiracy theories had already bloomed about the singer Lana Del Rey. With looks reminiscent of a ’70s-era Bond girl, a backstory that includes a stint living in a trailer park, and a couple of lush-sounding, grainy-looking music videos, Del Rey had emerged in the summer of 2011 and quickly captivated the online tastemaking elite of the alternative-music scene. You can see her appeal to the indie crowd in this video for her song "Video Games:" http://youtu.be/cE6wxDqdOV0 But when it ... Read More

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The Benefits of Bonding with a Musical Instrument

December 10, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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Forging a deep, intense relationship, in which two meld into one, can be a difficult, emotionally draining process. But the end result is so worth it. Especially when that bond is between musician and instrument. That’s the conclusion of new research from Finland, which found musicians who consider their instrument an extension of themselves are more confident, and feel less performance anxiety. “Feeling united with the instrument indeed seems to be an advantageous relationship,” writes a research team led by Veerle Simoens of the University of Finland’s Cognitive Brain ... Read More

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