This has to be one of the most cordial and informative threads I have ever read on macrumors. I suppose it helps when the posters are as well informed and passionate about the subject as you guys seem to be. Thanks for all the info.
It's simply the "Mozart effect"; a positive and uplifting experience, said to be good for babies, dogs, and humans. And a MR thread. (Thank you for your kind post and words; I'm jesting, but only very slightly, while making a serious point as well). Actually, I have read about the effect of classical composers generally, and Mozart in particular, on babies, and I read a recent extraordinary article which discussed the effect of classical music on dogs; apparently it soothes them, while leaving them alert in a "positive" sense. Other forms of music (hip/hop, heavy metal and rap especially seem to have the opposite effect).
Two people who are close to me, a close friend and a relative, both have a child who is autistic; they have both experimented with classical music - again Mozart in particular, - whose sublime music seems to have a positive and soothing effect on the children.
I read somewhere (of course, now that I think of it I can't remember where) - where back at the time, each composer would even have a certain way he tuned the instruments.
It's funny too how music and our sense of hearing has changed since then - Phrases, modes, etc are still the same but the way we 'want' to hear it or the the way it 'sounds good' to us has changed over time, kind of like people still like Shakespeare, but his wording and style are so different from stuff written now, you know?
I've thought before how Beethoven and the rest would react if they heard their pieces performed nowadays..
I too have wondered about that; not just in the changes in instrumentation, orchestration, (even interpretation, which is often decreed by fashion); I imagine most of them would have been fascinated by the technology of vinyl/CD/MP3 - the idea that what they "heard" in their heads, and could only hear in real life with a rehearsing orchestra - could now be replayed at will, and tinkered and toyed with.
However, the others could at least hear their music as it was played in public, or could toy or play their own instrumental specialties; but poor Beethoven was profoundly deaf when he wrote his later symphonies. I can only imagine what went on in his head, unable to hear for himself the masterpieces that he had written; in a very real and tragic sense, it was "an imaginary construct".
Cheers
