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Tuesday May 5, 2026
“Music is true. An octave is a mathematical reality. So is a 5th. So is a major 7th chord… It’s a truth. The laws of physics apply to music, and music follows that. So it really lifts us out of this subjective, opinionated human position and drops us into the cosmic picture just like that.”
– James Taylor
PREFACE
Welcome Everybody!
The term “musical genius” is often associated with the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In 1993 researchers from the California University of Irvine suggested that if you listened to his music some of that genius might just “rub off” on you. Their study indicated that students who listened to specific Mozart piano concertos for ten minutes could increase their spatial-temporal reasoning. Although it was only a temporary increase lasting from ten to fifteen minutes.
“…acting as a kind of tune-up for the mind!”
However, it may have more to do with the genius of music rather than the genius of Mozart. Additional research indicates that it was the music itself, not specifically the composer, that was responsible for this phenomenon. It seemed almost as if the mathematical structure of music inherently served as a mechanism for increasing cerebral efficiency, essentially acting as a kind of tune-up for the mind! At some level, the brain appeared to be hard-wired into the mathematics of music.
CONSIDERATION #239 – The Mozart Effect
You might be asking yourself how something so complicated can sound so beautiful? When you listen to a traditional fugue, such as Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, the music takes on an almost divine nature. This is intentional. This is mathematical. This music is not subjective, it is objective; mathematically designed to bring about the proper response. It is the reason test scores in math have been reported to increase when students study music or even listen to specific music written by specific composers such as Bach and Mozart.
“…it merges the mathematics of music with the mathematics of mind…”
Often called The Mozart Effect, it merges the mathematics of music with the mathematics of mind to maximize brain efficiency in a way that can be empirically demonstrated through higher test scores.
“It’s true – music really does make students smarter, and this study proves it…
We’ve all heard of the ‘Mozart effect’ on children – and now, this study appears to confirm a strong relationship between music lessons and high performance in other subjects.
Last year, a music educator set out to disprove any relationship between students’ musical and academic achievement… And the results of his study ended up doing just the opposite…
Bergee’s study, co-authored with Weingarten and published in Journal of Research in Music Education concluded that music lessons really did make students better mathematicians and readers.
‘Based on the findings, the point we tried to make is that there might be general learning processes that underlie all academic achievement, no matter what the area is,’ Bergee said…”
– Maddy Shaw Roberts (It’s True – Music Really Doses Make Students Smarter, and This Study Proves It)
Additional studies indicated not only a higher state of mental efficiency in these students, but an overall improvement in their creativity and quality of life as well.
“A study not dissimilar from Bergee and Weingarten’s, published in October last year, found that children who play a musical instrument have a better memory and attention span – as well as greater creativity and a better quality of life.
Neuroscientist and violinist Dr Leonie Kausel, who worked on the study, said: ‘I think parents should not only enrol their children [in music classes] because they expect that this will help them boost their cognitive functions. But also, because it is an activity that, even when very demanding, will provide them with joy and the possibility to learn a universal language.”
– Maddy Shaw Roberts (It’s True – Music Really Doses Make Students Smarter, and This Study Proves It)
This research is also now backed up by formative institutions such as the American Psychological Association.
WASHINGTON — “High schoolers who take music courses score significantly better on exams in certain other subjects, including math and science, than their nonmusical peers, according to a study published by the American Psychological Association...
‘It is believed that students who spend school time in music classes, rather than in further developing their skills in math, science and English classes, will underperform in those disciplines. Our research suggests that, in fact, the more they study music, the better they do in those subjects.’”
– American Psychological Association (Music Students Score Better in Math, Science, English Than Nonmusical Peers)
It seems self-evident that music affects human beings in a multitude of ways involving their empirical, rational, and spiritual consciousness. So, it should really not be a surprise to discover that it affects our brain as well.
POSTSCRIPT
There have now been enough studies that not only establish a connection between music and various academic skills related to language and math, but also give us insight into understanding the reasons for those connections.
“It turns out that there is much evidence that supports the positive effects of music on one’s ability to do math. Most research shows that when children are trained in music at a young age, they tend to improve in their math skills. The surprising thing in this research is not that music as a whole is enhancing math skills. It is certain aspects of music that are affecting mathematics ability in a big way…
The result of this study posed another important question. How does this type of music that emphasized sequential skills, rhythmn and pitch manage to improve children’s ability to do math? It turned out that there are two distinguished types of reasoning, spatial temporal (ST) reasoning and Language analytical (LA) reasoning. LA reasoning would be involved in solving equations and obtaining a quantitative result. ST reasoning would be utilized in activities like chess when one needs to think ahead several moves...
The Mozart effect gained its name after the discovery that listening to Mozart’s compositions, which is very sequential, produces a short-termed enhancement of spatial-temporal reasoning. Some key reasoning features used in spatial temporal reasoning are
1. The transformation and relating of mental images in space and time
2. Symmetries of the inherent cortical firing patterns used to compare physical and mental images and
3. Natural temporal sequences of those inherent cortical patterns.
The same people who conducted the Mozart effect experiment also suggested that spatial-temporal reasoning is crucial in math. The areas of math that require ST reasoning are geometry and certain aspects of calculus, which require transformations of images in space and time. In higher mathematics, the ability to write mathematical proofs is also associated with ST reasoning because proof writing is a task that requires intuitive sense of natural sequences and the ability to think ahead several steps.”
– Cindy Zhan (The Correlation Between Music and Math: A Neurobiology Perspective)
Modern researchers are now beginning to understand why music was considered to be equal to mathematics, geometry, and astronomy by the ancient Greeks. In fact, music was not only equal to these other disciplines, it was the prerequisite for understanding them. Mathematics, geometry, and astronomy could all be comprehended and explained through the discipline of music.
Next week we will consider the peak of Western counterpoint known as the Baroque period of Western music…
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