The Mozart Effect: Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind, and Unlock the Creative Spirit - Softcover

Campbell, Don

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060937203 ISBN 13: 9780060937201

Publisher: Quill, 2001

Synopsis

Anyone who has ever seen a two-year-old start bouncing to a beat knows that music speaks to us on a very deep level. But it took celebrated teacher and music visionary Don Campbell to show us just how deep, with his landmark book The Mozart Effect.

Stimulating, authoritative, and often lyrical, The Mozart Effect has a simple but life-changing message: music is medicine for the body, the mind, and the soul. Campbell shows how modern science has begun to confirm this ancient wisdom, finding evidence that listening to certain types of music can improve the quality of life in almost every respect. Here are dramatic accounts of how music is used to deal with everything from anxiety to cancer, high blood pressure, chronic pain, dyslexia, and even mental illness.

Always clear and compelling, Campbell recommends more than two dozen specific, easy-to-follow exercises to raise your spatial IQ, "sound away" pain, boost creativity, and make the spirit sing!

About this title

Review:

With a subtitle of Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind, and Unlock the Creative Spirit, the casual reader might jokingly ask if the book could also improve chances for world peace, bring free and open elections to third world countries, and give your wash whiter whites and brighter brights. Don Campbell's premise is, however, reasonably straightforward: he asserts that the kind of noise to which one is exposed can have important effects on mental and bodily health. As a trial, try protecting your hearing for a few days from the continuous barrage of noise in a typical urban environment; it really does seem to improve one's attitude and fatigue levels.

Where Campbell's ideas become more provocative is in the realm of music. Supported by much anecdotal evidence, he proposes that Classical music with a big "C" (the music of Mozart's period) can reach out to those who are mentally isolated from their fellows, like the autistic, and can help infants react and think better. (Will prenatal music classes be the next big trend for yuppie babies?) In addition, the music of Mozart contributes to the improved functioning of the higher cerebellar functions, including the ability to deal with logical and mathematical concepts, while contemporary rock actually decreases mental acuity.

About the Author:

Listen to Don Campbell's credentials.

A Texas native, Don Campbell studied with Nadia Boulanger at the Fontainebleau Conservatory of Music in France and has worked with Jean Houston, Leonard Bernstein and other musicians, healers and mind/body researchers.

Over the years, his quest to harness the healing and creative powers of sound and music has taken him to 40 countries, including Haiti, Russia, Israel, Greece, Tibet, Indonesia and Thailand, where he has studied indigenous culture, taught and worked with children and young adults, and given his own performances. He has taught and performed in most of the capitals of Europe and lived in Japan for several years, serving as music critic for a Tokyo newspaper.

He founded the Institute of Music, Health and Education in 1988, and is known to the public through frequent television and radio appearances and international lecture tours. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

About this edition

• Publisher: Quill
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0060937203
• ISBN 13: 9780060937201
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352