The Mozart Effect
From scientific find to fad In 1993, the journal Nature published a report that 36 university students took part in an experiment involving a series of mental tasks: before each task, they were given ten minutes of silence, or ten minutes of a recording of relaxation instructions, or ten minutes of Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos, K448. It was found that those who listened to the Mozart performed best, though the effect only lasted about 15 minutes.
This modest finding stirred marketing firms into something of a frenzy, perhaps encouraged by Mozart’s enhanced profile after Milosˇ Forman’s film Amadeus, followed by the composer’s 1991 bicentenary celebrations. It was claimed that if you exposed your young child to Mozart, they would absorb something of the legendary child prodigy’s genius and intelligence. The author Don Campbell went so far as to trademark the phrase ‘Mozart Effect’ in 1997, and penned parenting and selfhelp books which purported to show how to harness classical music’s power to enhance the cognitive abilities of both child and adult.