Mozart's Piano Sonata Research Articles

Effects of music on cognitive behavioral impairments in both sex of adult rats exposed prenatally to valproic acid

AbstractBackgroundAutism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairment in reciprocal social interactions, deficits in communication, and restrictive and repetitive behaviors and interests. In previous studies, music has been identified as an intervention therapy for children with ASD.ObjectivesThe present study evaluated the effects of music on cognitive behavioral impairments in both sexes of adult rats exposed prenatally to Valproic acid.MethodsFor induction of autism, pregnant female rats were pretreated with either saline or VPA (600 mg/kg.i.p.) at gestational day (GD) 12.5. Male and female offspring were divided into Saline.Non‐Music, VPA.Non‐Music, Saline.Music, and VPA.Music groups. The adult rats in the music groups were exposed to Mozart's piano sonata K.448 for 30 days (4 h/day), from postnatal day (PND) 60 to 90. Social interaction and Morris water maze (MWM) tasks were tested at PND 90.ResultsOur results revealed that prenatal exposure to VPA decreased sociability and social memory performance in both sexes of adult rats. Moreover, prenatal exposure to VPA created learning and memory impairments in both sexes of adult rats in the MWM task. Music intervention improved sociability in both sexes of VPA‐exposed rats and social memory in both sexes of VPA‐exposed rats, especially in females. Furthermore, our results revealed that music ameliorated learning impairments in VPA‐exposed female rats in the MWM task. In addition, music improved spatial memory impairments in VPA‐exposed rats of both sexes, especially in females, which needs more investigation in molecular and histological fields in future studies.ConclusionMusic intervention improved sociability and social memory in adult VPA‐exposed rats, especially in female animals. Furthermore, music improved memory impairments in VPA‐exposed rats of both sexes. It seems that music had a better influence on female rats. However, future studies need more investigations in molecular and histological fields.

Music alleviates cognitive impairments in an animal model of autism.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by core symptoms including impairment in social communication and restrictive and repetitive behaviors and interests. Music has emerged in the past decade as an intervention therapy for children with ASD. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effects of music on cognition impairments in the valproic acid (VPA) rat model of autism. The VPA was administered for animal modeling of autism on embryonic day 12.5 (E12.5) (600 mg/kg). Male and female pups were sub divided into four main groups (Saline.Non-music, VPA.Non-music, Saline.Music, and VPA.Music). The rats in the music groups were exposed to Mozart's piano sonata K.448 for 30 days (4h/day), from postnatal day (PND) 21 to 50. Autistic-like behaviors were tested using a social interaction, the Morris water maze (MWM), and a passive avoidance tasks at the end of the PND 50. Our results demonstrated that VPA-exposed rat pups had significantly lower sociability and social memory performance compared with the saline-exposed rats in both sexes. VPA-exposed rat pups exhibited learning and memory impairments in the MWM and passive avoidance tasks. Our results demonstrated that music improved sociability in VPA-exposed rats, especially in males. Furthermore, our findings revealed that music improved learning impairments in VPA-exposed male rats in MWM task. In addition, music improved spatial memory impairments in VPA-exposed rats of both sexes. We also found that music improved passive avoidance memory impairments in VPA-exposed rats of both sexes, especially in females. More investigation in future studies are needed.

Research Academy on “Munich” Mozart Piano Sonatas – Orpheus Institute – 3-13.07.2023: Report and Questionings about the Practice of Ornamenting and Improvising on Early Keyboards as a 21st Century Pianist

Research Academy on “Munich” Mozart Piano Sonatas – Orpheus Institute – 3-13.07.2023: Report and Questionings about the Practice of Ornamenting and Improvising on Early Keyboards as a 21st Century Pianist

An Analytical Dataset of Approaches to V in Mozart

Tonal functions—tonic, pre-dominant, and dominant—are a standard feature of North American music theory. The pre-dominant (PD) encompasses the largest number of chords, varying in quality and scale degrees; unlike the tonic and dominant functions, it is primarily defined by its syntactical role, preceding the arrival of the dominant. While Western harmony textbooks consistently organize PD chords according to a regulative syntax (e.g., IV goes to ii), they differ on its rationale and are rarely explicit about the repertoire(s) on which it is based. Furthermore, while the PD is thought to be an essential element of cadential closure, the role of PDs at various formal locations is underexplored, be it in textbooks or corpus studies. To facilitate exploration of these claims for future research, we analyzed all 22 sonata-allegro movements from the Mozart piano sonatas and generated a new dataset containing every occurrence of V (including the Cad6/4), the three chords preceding each V, and their formal location.

Karawitans’ musician brain adaptation: standardized low-resolution electromagnetic tomography study

<span lang="EN-US">The rapid advancement of music studies has resulted in a plethora of multidisciplinary participants. Rather than distinguishing between musicians and non-musicians’ brain activity, the current study indicated differences in brain activity while musicians listened to music based on their musical experience. In Go/NoGo response task reaction times, it showed that effects between treatments and visits were different across periods of cognitive function tests. The cognitive function at post-listening assessment out-performed the pre-listening in terms of reaction times (531.94 (±24.70) msec for post-listening assessment; and 557.13 (±37.15) msec for pre-listening assessment. The results of using electroencephalography (EEG) recording in an experimental manner with Karawitan musicians (N=20) revealed that listening to unknown cultural music, Mozart's Piano Sonata in C Major, and western music resulted in increased brain activity. Furthermore, while Karawitan musicians were listening to Mozart's Piano Sonata in C Major, the major brain activity occurred in the frontal lobe. This outcome will elicit additional consideration of music's integration, such as neuroscience of music.</span>

Differential Background Music as Attentional Resources Interacting with Cognitive Control.

We examined the effects of background music on cognitive task performances using different musical arrangements from an excerpt of Mozart's Piano Sonata K.448. The participants were 126 university students: 70 music majors and 56 nonmusic majors. Three types of musical arrangements were used as background conditions: rhythm-only, melody, and original music conditions. Participants were asked to perform cognitive tasks in the presence of each music condition. The participants' percentage of completed items and accuracy on these tasks were compared for music and nonmusic majors, controlling for the effect of perceived level of arousal and their performance during no background music. Whether a participant's perceptions of background music predicted their cognitive performance was also analyzed. We found that music majors demonstrated decreased task performance for the original background condition, while nonmusic majors demonstrated no significant differences in performance across the arrangements. When pitch or rhythm information was modified, emotional valence and arousal were perceived differently. Perception of the complexity of the background music depending on the arrangement type differed between music majors and nonmusic majors. While the perceived complexity significantly predicted nonmusic majors' cognitive performance, its predictive effect was not found in music majors. The findings imply that perceptions of musical arrangements in terms of expectancy and complexity can be critical factors in determining how arrangements affect concurrent cognitive activity, while suggesting that music itself is not a facilitating or detrimental factor for cognitive performance.

Explicit presentations of topological categories of gestures

Thanks to Mazzola's notion of gestures on topological categories we can appreciate how the notion of gesture transcends its manifestation as the movement of the body's limbs and takes a more abstract form that blends diagrammatic (discrete gesturality) and bodily aspects (continuous gesturality). These two aspects are strongly related to two main branches of mathematical music theory, namely, a discrete branch and a continuous branch. The discrete branch corresponds to the diagrams of transformational theory, that is, to networks in musical analysis. The continuous branch corresponds to the movement of the musical performer's body. Informally, a gesture on a topological category is a diagram of continuous paths of morphisms in the category. This definition amounts to that of topological category of gestures, whose structure we study in this article. Specifically, we study the presentation of topological categories of gestures as suitable categories of topological functors and as suitable categories of sequences, and the explicit presentation of morphisms of a typical topological category of gestures. In particular, we present an exhaustive study, not included in previous publications, of the topological category of continuous paths of an arbitrary digraph. This article can be regarded as a continuation of a previous publication, in a previous issue of this journal, on the presentation of spaces of gestures as function spaces. We include an application of the theory to the variations in Mozart's Piano Sonata K. 331. We provide an Online Supplement, in which we include some technical passages.

Perception of Musical Tension in Cochlear Implant Listeners.

Despite the difficulties experienced by cochlear implant (CI) users in perceiving pitch and harmony, it is not uncommon to see CI users listening to music, or even playing an instrument. Listening to music is a complex process that relies not only on low-level percepts, such as pitch or timbre, but also on emotional reactions or the ability to perceive musical sequences as patterns of tension and release. CI users engaged in musical activities might experience some of these higher-level musical features. The goal of this study is to evaluate CI users' ability to perceive musical tension. Nine CI listeners (CIL) and nine normal-hearing listeners (NHL) were asked to rate musical tension on a continuous visual analog slider during music listening. The subjects listened to a 4 min recording of Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 4 (K282) performed by an experienced pianist. In addition to the original piece, four modified versions were also tested to identify which features might influence the responses to the music in the two groups. In each version, one musical feature of the piece was altered: tone pitch, intensity, rhythm, or tempo. Surprisingly, CIL and NHL rated overall musical tension in a very similar way in the original piece. However, the results from the different modifications revealed that while NHL ratings were strongly affected by music with random pitch tones (but preserved intensity and timing information), CIL ratings were not. Rating judgments of both groups were similarly affected by modifications of rhythm and tempo. Our study indicates that CI users can understand higher-level musical aspects as indexed by musical tension ratings. The results suggest that although most CI users have difficulties perceiving pitch, additional music cues, such as tempo and dynamics might contribute positively to their experience of music.

Verbatim repetition and musical engagement.

The topics of musical similarity and variation have received considerable attention both from a psychological perspective (Deliege, 2007) and from a musicological perspective (Sisman, 1993; Zbikowski, 2002). Less well studied has been its correlate, exact repetition. A recent book (Margulis, 2013a) attempts to remedy that oversight, synthesizing work from a number of fields to outline a theory about the enduring appeal of musical repetition. Recent empirical work has suggested that repetition can shift listeners' attention to higher-level attributes of the musical stimulus (Margulis, 2012) and elicit more enjoyment from listeners and higher ratings of intentional artistry (Margulis, 2013b).An interesting borderline case between the poles of repetition and variation is performer nuance. Even when the notation is identical among different iterations of a principal theme, performers often change expressive inflections, altering dynamics and microtiming on each rendition. For example, the famous theme in Chopin's Polonaise in A major, Op. 40/1 recurs several times across the course of the piece. Pianists make many nuanced changes from rendition to rendition. For example, a pianist can withhold volume during the penultimate rendition to make the unleashing of maximal volume during the final rendition even more impressive.A skeptic might inquire whether these differences are intentional; perhaps performers simply lack the cognitive or motor control to execute sequences with a high degree of expressive fidelity. Gabrielsson (1987) examined pianists' expressive timing as they performed the first movement of Mozart's Piano Sonata in A, K. 331. Figure 1 captures the percentage deviation from notated durational values in performances by two pianists of the theme on its first statement (solid line) and then on its subsequent repeat (dotted line). The dotted line cleaves closely to the solid line for both pianists; their second performance of the theme was quite expressively faithful to their first. Shaffer (1984) also provides evidence that performers are capable of reproducing expressive elements. That study measured expressive timing characteristics during two performances of a Chopin Etude recorded two years apart by the same pianist. The second performance replicated the first in remarkable detail.Performers are able to replicate expressive inflections from one performance to another, so it seems likely that the deviations they make are expressively intentional. The question of what motivates these expressive choices is a fascinating topic of ongoing research (cf. Juslin & Timmers, 2010). An associated issue is the effect of these replications and deviations on listeners. Are they able explicitly or implicitly to register changes in performer nuance across renditions? How much deviation is required before a listener registers it? Do they prefer performances where repetitions are mostly exact, or performances where subtle variations have been introduced? What are the consequences of exact versus varied repetition for other aspects of musical listening and attention?Repetition, unsurprisingly, tends to enhance memory for melodies. Deutsch (1979) tested people's memory for a short atonal melody after it had been presented in one of several ways: a single time, repeated such that the second statement was an exact repetition of the first, or repeated such that the second statement involved an octave transposition. Performance on the memory task was best when the participants had heard the melody repeated exactly, but even a transposed repetition improved performance better than did a single presentation. Gardiner, Kaminska, Dixon, and Java (1996) showed that repetition increased both remember and know responses for music in an unfamiliar style, and remember but not know responses for music in a familiar style.Studies have shown that memory for the verbatim aspects of speech-the exact words and sounds used to convey the thoughts- decays rapidly and is replaced by memory for the gist, the basic content of the utterance (Gernsbacher, 1985; Reyna & Brainerd, 1995). …

Mozart Piano Sonatas as a Nonpharmacological Adjunct to Facilitate Sedation Vacation in Critically Ill Patients

Critically ill patients frequently receive sedatives in order to treat agitation in the ICU; however, adverse outcomes are linked with long-term use. The aim of this pilot study was to evaluate the effectiveness of music listening in facilitating sedation vacations. This study was conducted in neurotrauma ICUs where 50 adult critically ill patients were randomized into a music (n 1⁄4 25) or no music (n 1⁄4 25) group. The music group had a greater decline in heart rate (P 1⁄4 .042) but not in respiratory rate (P 1⁄4 .081) or systolic blood pressure (P 1⁄4 .653) when compared with the control group. There was no statistically significant change in sedation scores between groups (P 1⁄4 .567); however, patients in the music group were more likely to remain off sedation infusions (64% vs 52%). Music listening may be a cost-effective, nonpharmacological intervention to reduce agitation in critically ill patients.

Mozart Piano Sonatas as a Nonpharmacological Adjunct to Facilitate Sedation Vacation in Critically Ill Patients

Mozart Piano Sonatas as a Nonpharmacological Adjunct to Facilitate Sedation Vacation in Critically Ill Patients

The Mozart Effect & Epilepsy

The Mozart Effect & Epilepsy

A Mozart bonanza

One of the most recent contributions to Mozart literature is John Irving's book Understanding Mozart's piano sonatas (Aldershot, 2010), in which the keyboard sonatas are approached from various angles, including analysis, the study of autographs, the comparison of editions and the evaluation of sound recordings. The book centres on the closer proximity that existed in Mozart's time between composition and performance; Irving advocates recapturing this connection in modern approaches to the works. In fact, the study can be read as a direct challenge to a performing tradition that grew up around Mozart's solo keyboard works in the 19th century and survives to the present, in which the spheres of composition and performance are firmly separated. This tradition was founded on the ‘work concept’ as formulated by Lydia Goehr, whereby in about 1800 musical works began to achieve iconic status, enshrined in a text (Understanding Mozart's piano sonatas, p.7). Performance entailed fidelity to those texts, as embodied in ‘authentic’ editions; it imposed restraint in the handling of dynamics, pedalling and ornamentation, and propagated the all-encompassing legato that one's piano teachers always insisted on, fortified by the ‘editorial tendency’ to ‘smother’ Mozart's sonatas ‘beneath legato slurs’ (Understanding Mozart's piano sonatas, p. 68). According to Irving, perceiving Mozart's keyboard works in such a way that is unfettered by the strictures of the ‘work concept’ means above all reviving the art of embellishment. It also seems to mean performing Mozart's keyboard works on restored instruments or replicas connected with the late 18th century, thus reviving the issues of performance practice that informed Mozart's own approaches as both player and composer. Irving discusses two recordings amongst the group of twelve discs being reviewed here, Robert Levin's Mozart: Piano Sonatas K279, K280 & K281, vol.1 (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 82876 84237 2, rec 2005, 55′) and Tom Beghin's Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Sonatas K331 (Alla Turca), K570, Fantasia K397, Adagio K540 (Et’cetera KTC 4015, rec 2005, 72′).

Schenkerian Analysis by Computer: A Proof of Concept

A system for automatically deriving a Schenkerian reduction of an extract of tonal music is described. Schenkerian theory is formalized in a quasi-grammatical manner, expressing a reduction as a binary-tree structure. Computer software which operates in the manner of a chart parser using this grammar has been implemented, capable of deriving a matrix of reduction possibilities, in polynomial time, from a representation of the score. A full reduction of the extract can be discovered by selecting a tree from this matrix. The number of possible valid reductions for even short extracts is found to be extremely large, so criteria are required to distinguish good reductions from bad ones. To find such criteria, themes from five Mozart piano sonatas are analysed and samples of ‘good’ reductions (defined by reference to pre-existing analyses of these themes) are compared with randomly sampled reductions. Nine criteria are thereby derived, which can be applied in the process of parsing and selecting a reduction. The results are promising, but the process is still too computationally expensive—only extracts of a few bars in length can be reduced—and more extensive testing is required before the system can be properly claimed to perform automatic Schenkerian analysis.

The Double Articulation of Schubert: Reflections on Der Doppelganger

To present a discussion of Der Doppelgänger, the thirteenth song from Schubert's Schwanengesang, might seem a redundant enterprise. Richard Kramer comments of its sixty-three sparsely textured bars that “no other song has provoked quite as much hermeneutical exercise.”1 Yet it is precisely this status as a shibboleth of analytical literature that makes the song inexhaustible as a source for reflection, both upon the business of representing words in music and upon the business of representing music in words. The starting point for this essay is a simple fascination with the song's miraculously economical text. For two decades, it has served me as a favorite example in teaching, and (as with all pieces that become one's favorites) it has seemed more profound each time a student or a class has led me through it. Part of its appeal, pedagogically speaking, lies in its brevity and the consistency of its texture. As with other much-analyzed pieces, such as the first prelude of the Wohltemperirtes Clavier, or the first movement of Mozart's Piano Sonata K.331, it is relatively easy to talk of structural concerns, since there is so little detail at the local level. However, these contingent features are also markers of more general issues. Perhaps because of its apparent simplicity, it has been taken by many listeners (including me) to communicate something more deeply essential concerning the potential of music to carry meaning. The sense of surprise, on hearing this song, that anything so compact can yet be so powerful and intense, impels the listener toward attempting to account for this.2 It is a text that demands interpretation.

The Mozart Effect: Evidence for the Arousal Hypothesis

This study investigated the effect of music listening for performance on a 25-question portion of the analytical section of the Graduate Record Exam by 72 undergraduate students (M age 21.9 yr.). Five levels of an auditory condition were based on Mozart Piano Sonata No. 3 (K. 281), Movement I (Allegro); a rhythm excerpt; a melody excerpt; traffic sounds; and silence. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the stimuli. After a 5-min., 43-sec. (length of the first Allegro movement) listening period, participants answered the questions. Analysis indicated participants achieved significantly higher mean scores after all auditory conditions than those in the silent condition. No statistically significant pairwise mean difference appeared between scores for the auditory conditions. Findings were interpreted in terms of an arousal framework, suggesting the higher means in all auditory conditions may reflect immediate exposure to auditory stimuli.

Growing Oranges on Mozart's Apple Tree: "Inner Form" and Aesthetic Judgment

Music theorists often presume that the sections of a musical masterwork match organically, enhancing unity and value. This "inner form" should be distinguished from coherence associated with inter-opus constraints, such as conventional forms. Studies indicate that violating inter-opus constraints hardly affects listeners' aesthetic judgments. Here we examine how violating inner form affects such judgments. Musically trained and untrained listeners heard the intact opening movements of Mozart's piano sonatas, K. 280 and 332, as well as hybrids mixing sections from these two movements while maintaining overall form and tonal structure. Participants rated originals and hybrids on aesthetically relevant scales (e.g., liking, coherence, interest), after a single hearing and following extended exposure. Results show no significant preference for originals, even after repeated hearings. Music training tended to enhance preference for hybrid over original. Thus, inner form and its supposed organic unity, presumed tenets of musical genius, may not affect listeners' evaluation.

Commentary on Samuel Ng’s review of Peter H. Smith’s Expressive Forms in Brahms’s Instrumental Music: Structure and Meaning in His Werther Quartet

[1] I would like to address an analytic idea proposed by Samuel Ng in his review of Peter Smith's monograph on Brahms's Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor. In his discussion of opening of first movement, Ng takes issue with Smith's reading of G-major chord in bar 21 as dominant. Instead, he says that appearance of this chord comes as an unexpected surprise. Not only does he call it the first striking harmonic event of piece, but he also later describes it as truly expressive gesture that eludes virtually any structural explanation. Furthermore, he suggests that G chord appearing two bars later (bar 23) is more natural continuation. Ng attempts to find an integral relationship between form and content, and to reveal structural intricacies that may well embody expressive connotations. His analytic reading of opening theme is, however, surely incorrect. Not only is G-major chord in bar 21 long-expected dominant, but it is G chord that offers unexpected surprise. I wish to address this issue not just in order to present yet another alternative reading, but because correct interpretation of opening of this Brahms Piano Quartet evokes an important Classical tonal procedure that both Smith and Ng overlook in their analyses.[2] One of striking features at beginning of Brahms Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor is quadrupled B that appears in bar 11, after half cadence on dominant. It transposes four-octave C at start of piece down a whole step, and ushers in return of opening theme in key of B-flat minor. Before examining tonal structure of antecedent part of Quartet (bars 1-31), I would like to discuss convention of this opening gesture.[3] The opening theme of Brahms is modeled after Classical construction of two parallel phrases in which second repeats opening at a different pitch level. The most usual procedure is to repeat second phrase a whole step above initial statement. In Mozart's Piano Sonata in D, K. 576, for example, rising arpeggio of opening theme announced in D major is answered by another statement of arpeggiated theme in E minor (Example 1). In order to avoid parallel fifths and octaves in voice-leading from I to II, a dominant chord appearing at end of opening phrase serves as a voice-leading corrective. The beginning of Brahms's Symphony No. 2, op. 73, has a similar construction, but here a B-minor chord, resulting from a 5-6 contrapuntal motion, breaks up potential parallels between two statements of opening theme in D major and E minor (Example 2).Example 1. Mozart, Piano Sonata in D, K. 576, i (bars 1-6)(click to enlarge and see rest)Example 2. Brahms, Symphony no. 2 in D, i (bars 1-11)(click to enlarge and see rest)[4] While parallel construction of two phrases on adjacent ascending steps appears rather frequently in major mode, reverse situation, of answering a phrase down by step, occurs much less often. In fact, in major, an answering phrase on VII is not possible if it remains in its normal form as a diminished triad. In order to enable such a repetition, must be chromatically altered to , transforming VII into a major triad.(1) The beginning of Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata presents such a procedure; following opening theme's initial statement in tonic C major, it appears four bars later in B-flat major. Example 3 shows how a contrapuntal 5-6 motion breaks up potential parallels in stepwise motion from I to VII. At foreground level, intervening chord in this contrapuntal progression is tonicized by an applied chord.[5] The initial statement of opening theme at beginning of Waldstein would appear to lead to its repeated statement in B-flat. However, first four bars are repeated over bars 5-8, and a descending chromatic bass results. …

Overture for growth hormone: Requiem for interleukin-6?*

Music has been used for therapeutic purposes since the beginning of cultural history. However, despite numerous descriptions of beneficial effects, the precise mechanisms by which music may improve human well-being remain unclear. We conducted a randomized study in ten critically ill patients to identify mechanisms of music-induced relaxation using a special selection of slow movements of Mozart's piano sonatas. These sonatas were analyzed for compositional elements of relaxation. We measured circulatory variables, brain electrical activity, serum levels of stress hormones and cytokines, requirements for sedative drugs, and level of sedation before and at the end of a 1-hr therapeutic session. Compared with controls, we found that music application significantly reduced the amount of sedative drugs needed to achieve a comparable degree of sedation. Simultaneously, among those receiving the music intervention, plasma concentrations of growth hormone increased, whereas those of interleukin-6 and epinephrine decreased. The reduction in systemic stress hormone levels was associated with a significantly lower blood pressure and heart rate. Based on the effects of slow movements of Mozart's piano sonatas, we propose a neurohumoral pathway by which music might exert its sedative action. This model includes an interaction of the hypothalamic-pituitary axis with the adrenal medulla via mediators of the unspecific immune system

Melodies of the Mind: Mozart in 1778

Although much has been written about Mozart's relationship with his father Leopold, this paper focuses on his relationship with his mother, Anna Maria. While on a journey with Mozart to Paris in 1778, Anna Marie became ill and died on July 3. Mozart's Piano Sonata in A Minor, K. 310, composed that summer, is invoked to illustrate how his mental life is represented in his music. Conceptualizing music itself as a point of entry into affective processes, the paper suggests that the formal properties of Mozart's A Minor Piano Sonata open for the listener an aural road to the unconscious on which music and psychoanalysis inform one another.