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

Looking Backand Gazing Foward:

A Few Words from Don Campbell

The Speech of Angels and Atoms

A Healing Breeze of Sound

Sound Beginnings

The Mozart Effect

Sound Listening

The Anatomy of Sound, Hearing, and Listening

Sound Healing

The Healing Properties of Sound and Music

Sound Voice

Your Original Healing Instrument

Sound Medicine

Using Music for Therapy and Rehabilitation

Sound Images

Orchestrating the Mind and Body

Sound Intellect

Enhancing Learning and Creativity with Music

Sound Spirit

The Bridge Between Life and Death

The Eternal Song

Miracle Stories of Treatment and Cure

The Mozart Effect was first published in 1997. The book was the result of years of research, study, and hands-on experiencea true labor of love, passion, and belief in the awesome power of music. Nonetheless, even I was not prepared for the amazing response engendered by the books appearancea response that has been enormously gratifying and exciting. Since the books initial publication I have traveled from big cities to small towns; I have visited schools, community centers, and major corporations; I have spoken with people of all ages and backgroundsfrom toddlers to golden-agerssharing in the wonder of the Mozart Effect. The Mozart Effect has been published around the world, in more than fifteen countries, and it has contributed to a global movement as the ears of the world have begun to explore sounds potential in newly integrated and creative ways.

Another happy by-product of this books worldwide popularity is that much creative and heretofore unknown research supporting the Mozart Effect theory has come to the publics attention. The nave assumption that musicany musicsomehow makes us smarter has been replaced by the more sophisticated understanding and acceptance of musics powerful effect on multiple levels of neurological and physical responses. Classrooms, hospitals, and homes are being utilized as environments in which music can make dynamic changes in emotional, physical, and mental atmospheres. Teachers and health professionals alike are adapting the suggestions in this book for use in their own environments; researchers have been motivated to look at new ways in which the ear can be stimulated and educated.

Recently, the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in Great Britain published an important paper on the Mozart Effect, which reported that it appears Mozarts music affects the electrical impulses in the brain. Twenty-three out of twenty-nine patients with severe epilepsy showed reduced epileptic activity while listening to Mozarts music. And many other studies in health and education are currently looking at the importance of auditory stimulation and how it affects multiple systems in the body.

For three years, The Mozart Effect music albums have continuously been among the top-ranked classical selections on the Billboard bestseller charts. Around the country, schools are integrating more music into their curricula, and major corporations are inaugurating programs to keep and/or expand music education in our schools. Even symphony orchestras have gotten into the actmany actively educate their audiences about how to listen to great music in order to reap multiple benefits (beyond the obvious one of listening pleasure!).

In my most recent book, The Mozart Effect for Children , I explored the overwhelming new evidence of musics essential role in language development, physical movement, and higher brain functioning. Our children are our most precious resource, and music must be acknowledged as a fundamental, primary component of learning and processing multiple patterns of visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and emotional information.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a prodigy, a child star who saw, spoke, and listened to the world in creative patterns. His music creates a unique effect on the listener; it has a sense of order and clarity without being overly sentimental or emotional. Whether it is before study, after surgery, or in the midst of a meal, auditory stimulation can re-orchestrate the moment. As we learn more about this phenomenon, the techniques for listening to sound are changing, and the Mozart Effect is finally understood to be far more than a simple way to temporarily improve ones concentration.

From time immemorial, music has always been an important element of the human experience. But it is enormously gratifying to know that music is finally, rightfully, finding its central place in societynot merely as a form of entertainment or fine performance art but as a fundamental nutrient for physical well-being, mental development, stress release, and emotional expression.

Don Campbell

March 2001

W hat is this magical medium that moves, enchants, energizes, and heals us?

In an instant, music can uplift our soul. It awakens within us the spirit of prayer, compassion, and love. It clears our minds and has been known to make us smarter.

Music can dance and sing our blues away. It conjures up memories of lost lovers or deceased friends. It lets the child in us play, the monk in us pray, the cowgirl in us line dance, the hero in us surmount all obstacles. It helps the stroke patient find language and expression.

Music is a holy place, a cathedral so majestic that we can sense the magnificence of the universe, and also a hovel so simple and private that none of us can plumb its deepest secrets.

Music helps plants grow, drives our neighbors to distraction, lulls children to sleep, and marches men to war.

Music can drum out evil spirits, sing the praises of the Virgin Mary, invoke the Buddha of Universal Salvation, enchant leaders and nations, captivate and soothe, resurrect and transform.

Yet it is more than all these things. It is the sounds of earth and sky, of tides and storms. It is the echo of a train in the distance, the pounding reverberations of a carpenter at work. From the first cry of life to the last sigh of death, from the beating of our hearts to the soaring of our imaginations, we are enveloped by sound and vibration every moment of our lives. It is the primal breath of creation itself, the speech of angels and atoms, the stuff of which life and dreams, souls and stars, are ultimately fashioned.

S omething was terribly out of kilter. The comfortably brisk mountain air did nothing to soothe the pounding in my skull, and from my front porch overlooking the sharp, iron-shaped mountains in Boulder, I could hardly distinguish the white light of the pale March sky from the flashes of light in the right side of my head.

A bump on the head had brought on these symptoms, but instead of abating over time, they had grown worse. I could barely see with my right eye, and the lid began to droop. My headaches became so severe that I had to take naps in the afternoon, yet at night I could barely sleep. Relaxation was impossible; every fiber of my being was awake with pain. During classes I taught, I found that because of the sensations in my head I could no longer reach the top register in my voice. Since my lifes work was as a composer, a musician, and an authority on the healing aspects of sound, tone, and music, I was especially sensitive to all thisand fearful.