October 2009 is the Third Anniversary of Madeline’s Monthly Article & Musical Tips and the Second Anniversary of Madeline’s One Minute Musical Radio Show. Many of the world’s scientists, medical doctors, mathematicians, authors, and teachers have studied and played musical instruments since they were children. These eminent individuals have integrated music into their thinking process. Classical music has the power to motivate, inspire, and to soothe pain.
If anyone has an experience they would like to share with our readers on the benefits of classical music please send it and it will be include it in the November 2009 newsletter https://www.madelinefrankviola.com/contact-madeline-frank/
Question of the Month: Who was Lillian Moller Gilbreth?
Lillian Moller Gilbreth, (B. May 24, 1878 in Oakland, Cal.-D. Jan.2, 1972 in Phoenix, Arizona) was an industrial engineer, efficiency expert, with a Ph.D. in the Psychology of Management at Brown University in 1915. She received her Bachelor’s degree in 1900 and her Master’s degree in 1902 in literature at the University of California at Berkley. Her Ph.D. dissertation “had already been published as a book, “The Psychology of Management” in 1914. She was the “First Lady of Engineering”, the inventor of “refrigerator door shelving” , “the foot-pedal operating bin”, a pianist, mother of 12 children, and a grandmother.
Her parents were William and Annie Delger Moller and she was the oldest of 9 children. Her father was a businessman and her mother was in poor health so she did not start in public school until she was nine years of age. As a child her life was filled with music. The Moller house was filled with many books for the children to read. Gilbreth, L. (1998). As I Remember. Georgia: Engineering & Management Press. Once she started public school “she progressed quickly and was academically successful in high school. Her passions at the time were literature and music, which she studied with composer John Metcalfe.”
http://www.answers.com/topic/lillian-gilbreth
On Oct. 19, 1904 she married Frank Gilbreth , a bricklayer, building contractor and management engineer, and they were a “husband and wife team of science and engineering”, efficiency experts studying their large family for ways of recording daily routines to learn how to save time and be more efficient. When he died in 1924 she continued her work for the next 48 years. http://www.answers.com/topic/lillian-gilbreth
Rhythm in music is the timing and as an efficiency expert she excelled at it! Her twelve children were also surrounded by music. In the books and films called “Cheaper by The Dozen” and “Belles On Their Toes” Lillian Moller Gilbreth and her family are forever immortalized.
Madeline’s Musical One Minute Radio Show for October 2009
How does Classical Music play a part of Lillian Moller Gilbreth’s life as an industrial engineer and efficiency expert and what musical instrument did she enjoy playing?
Click here for Your Radio Show:https://www.madelinefrankviola.com/madelines-one-minute-radio-show/
“Music As Medicine: Docs Use Tunes As Treatment” (June 1, 2009) by Bill Briggs from the msnbc.com. Dr. Ali Rezai, director of the Center for Neurological Restoration at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic says, “We’re in the infancy.” “During a surgery called deep brain stimulation — performed while patients with Parkinson’s disease are awake — Rezai and his team play classical compositions and measure the brain’s response to those notes.” Dr. Rezai says, “We know music can calm, influence creativity, can energize. That’s great. But music’s role in recovering from disease is being ever more appreciated.” Dr. Claudius Conrad, a senior surgical resident at Harvard Medical School and a talented pianist says, “Using music to help the ill has been employed for thousands of years, even though modern medicine is just starting to understand how it works.” He will “launch the first study of music’s impact on the sleep cycles of acute-care patients.” Dr. Conrad says, “Research has already shown that if you play a piece — like Mozart — at a certain slow beat, the listener will adapt their heart beat to the beat of the music.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30990170/#storyContinued
“How the Brain Responds to Music: Neurosurgeons Measure Neural Activity During Surgery as Patients Listen to Music” (June 1, 2009) by Emily Singer Technology Review by MIT, Cambridge, Mass. The results of this study will be known in 4 to 6 months.
http://beta.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/23599/
“Michael Ballam Says Music Offers Healing, Hope” (June 1, 2009) by Christine Young from theIntermountain Catholic in Salt Lake City. Michael Ballam has been using the power of music to aid healing in others for 52 years. He says, “I think music has a far greater power than just entertainment. Music lifts a religious service to a glorious place, it can add to a wonderful experience on the stage, and it can heal people. I began to see that at the age of 5, and I wanted to know more about that. So I began going to rest homes as a little kid, and then on for years. I am still going to rest homes. I have had some extraordinary experiences there. It makes me feel good, and like I was thanking Him for the gift he gives to all of us.” Ballam in 1993 founded the Utah Festival Opera and he is the general director. “It has become one of the nation’s major summer festivals, with growing national acclaim. Ballam has had an operatic and recital career spanning four decades across seven continents. A native of Logan, he has performed in the major concert halls of America, Europe, Asia, Russia, and the Middle East, with command performances at the Vatican and the White House.” Ballam says, “You have hit a home run.” He says, “Music also got through to a woman who had developed both Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. She was like a stone. She could not blink, walk, talk, or swallow. But she would move if someone sang to her. It was amazing. She needed organization in her brain. The music had the power to link things back together again because music has more order than anything in the universe. Its time has space held together, stopped and divided into equal parts. Music has great power.”
“The Music Instinct: Science and Song” PBS Special ( June 26, 2009) Performers Yo Yo Ma, cellist, Taylor & Bobby McFerrin, Evelyn Glennie , Marimba and many others.
To see the video go to: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/musicinstinct/
“Autism, Music, Mozart and More: Reiterated in Nova’s ‘Musical Minds’” (June 26, 2009) by Kathleen Tehrani from the Autism & Education Examiner, examiner.com. Norfolk. “Nova will be airing the program Musical Minds’ with Dr. Oliver Sacks, neurologist and acclaimed author, whose book Awakenings was made into a Oscar-nominated feature film starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, has encountered myriad patients who are struggling to cope with debilitating medical conditions. While their ailments vary, many have one thing in common: an appreciation for the therapeutic effects of music.” For a sneak preview of the program:
http://www.examiner.com/x-10971-Autism–Education-Examiner~y2009m6d26-Autism-Music-Mozart-and-more-Reiterated-in-Novas-Musical-Minds
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/musicminds/extra.html
Richard Kogan, M.D. : “Music and the Mind: George Gershwin” (March 18, 2008) from the Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings. Dr. Kogan is a psychiatrist and concert pianist. “He is a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City and is affiliated with Weill-
Cornell Medical School as director of its Human Sexuality Program.” He combines “his professional pursuits by giving lecture-performances that explore how the medical and psychiatric illnesses of the great composers influenced their creative output. Dr. Kogan has had an active career as both a concert pianist and a psychiatrist. He has been praised for his “exquisite playing” by the New York Times. The Boston Globe wrote: “Kogan has somehow managed to excel at the world’s two most demanding professions.” He has performed around the world as an orchestra soloist and recitalist and “won first prize in the Chopin Competition of the Kosciuszko Foundation.” In his chamber music concerts he has performed with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. He “is a graduate of Juilliard Pre-College, Harvard College, and Harvard Medical School.”
To hear his performance on U-Tube:
Richard Kogan performs Schumann/Liszt Widmung
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjhYDHke6-A&feature=related
“Harp Therapy for Cancer Patients” (Jan. 5, 2006) from the BBC News. Research shows that the sound of harp music eases pain while cancer patients are receiving chemotherapy. Harp therapist Bethan Hughes says, “As an international performer, we are so used to being trained classically but with harp therapy we’re trained in so many aspects – vibration frequency, resonance tones, and the medical and physical side of the strings and vibration levels of the harp. It definitely works. I’m actually using it with the UK and US troops on the front line and they’re finding that the stress levels and post-traumatic stress levels are lowered.” Barbara Wilson, nurse manager, says, “It helps the patient’s body relax whilst they’re undergoing the treatments they’re receiving.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/south_east/4582008.stm
Story of the Month: “The Ransom of Red Chief” by O. Henry, (William Sydney Porter) B. Sep. 11, 1862 in Greensboro, N.C. –D. June 5, 1910 in N.Y.C. O. Henry was a master story teller with surprise endings. Enjoy this remarkable story.
http://fiction.eserver.org/short/ransom_of_red_chief.html
“Therapists Find That Music Can Heal” (June 18, 2009) by Diana Rossetti from the CantonRep.com staff report.
Brenda Wise, a board-certified music therapist, comes to Meadow Wind Health Care in Massillon with her guitar to play for Robert Joy for one hour. “Parkinson’s disease changed Robert Joy’s life, drastically narrowing his horizons. The chronic, progressive disorder of the nervous system stole his mobility and makes communication difficult. He really lights up with the music he loves,” said Wise, who probes Joy’s particular interests and memories through conversations with him and his family… We do a lot of reminiscing because music has been such a large part of his life,” Wise said. “‘Sentimental Journey’ seems to renew old memories and kind of sums up our visits in a lot of ways.”
http://www.cantonrep.com/news/x931196554/Therapists-find-that-music-can-heal
“The ‘Accidental Pianist’” (June 11, 2009) from the Bennington Banner, VT. Dr. Tony Cicoria, orthopedic surgeon, several weeks after being struck by lightning he “developed an insatiable desire to listen to, and play, classical piano…. On January 29, 2008, Cicoria’s 56th birthday, nearly 14 years after his brush with death, he performed several of his compositions in his first concert performance. As a result of nearly losing his life, Tony Cicoria found his destiny.” His story is in Dr. Oliver Sacks’s book “Musicophilia”. Cicoria appeared on PBS ‘s “NOVA special called Musical Minds, . at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, June 30.”
“Power of Music Studied for Stroke Rehabilitation” (June 22, 2009) by Kathleen Blanchard RN from theCharlotte Health and Happiness Examiner, Examiner.com. New research shows positive effects of music for influencing “the cardiovascular system in a positive way that can help with stroke rehabilitation and heart disease.” The new study is lead by Luciano Bernardi, M.D., professor of Internal Medicine at Pavia University in Pavia, Italy. DR. Bernardi says, “It is not only the emotion that creates the cardiovascular changes, but this study suggests that also the opposite might be possible, that cardiovascular changes may be the substrate for emotions, likely in a bi-directional way. In some ways the cardiovascular system responds to music in predictable ways. The result would allow therapists to deliver exactly the right music to assist in rehabilitation efforts after stroke and to lower blood pressure for heart patients.”
Involved in the study were “twenty-four young men and women, age 24 to twenty six. Nine women were singers, and seven women had no musical training. The group was monitored to see what effect music had on blood flow and heart rate response.” The study group members “were attached to EKG machines. Monitors were used to measure blood flow to the head, and narrowing of blood vessels in the skin. The results showed that classical music raised and lowered blood pressure and heart rate, based on volume and tempo of the music. Music phrases lasting approximately ten seconds synchronized the basic rhythm of the heart. The predictable effect of music on the cardiovascular system found in the study could help heart and stroke patients through rehabilitation by modulating heart rate and blood pressure.”
“Music Therapist Comforts Hospital Patients” (July 10, 2009) by Vicky Eckenrode from the StarNewsOnline.com Michele Erich , a music therapist for over 20 years, and for 12 years she has worked at New Hanover Regional Medical Center as a “music therapist and child life specialist.” She carries with her a guitar and pinwheel. Her days are split “between the cancer center, the ICU and the pediatric floors. She might use a kaleidoscope to distract a child getting an IV line put in. Later, she could be playing soft music by a bed to comfort a dying patient and their family. Other days, she strums the guitar to relax cancer patients getting chemotherapy treatments.” She uses her music to sooth and heal.
“The Sounds of Learning: Studying the Impact of Music on Children with Autism” (July 20, 2009) from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Health Sciences.
A new 12 week study in the classroom “at the Help Group’s Village Glen School for children with autism” using the music education method of Orff-Szakacs approach. Molnar-Szakacs said. “The purpose of this work is to provide a means for awakening the potential in every child for being ‘musical’ — that is, to be able to understand and use music and movement as forms of expression and, through that, to develop a recognition and understanding of emotions. Participating in musical activities has the potential to scaffold and enhance all other learning and development, from timing and language to social skills. Beyond these more concrete intellectual benefits, the extraordinary power of music to trigger memories and emotions and join us together as an emotional, empathic and compassionate humanity are invaluable.”
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/554397/?sc=dwhn
This October if you have a question about the power of music for education and healing … what would your specific question be? Click on the link below and look on the left side to where it says ask Madeline a question: https://www.madelinefrankviola.com/
Evidence & Articles supporting the benefits of classical music in your daily life, in the Public School Classrooms, and while doing homework after school:
Mrs. I’s fourth grade reading, writing, and math class in the York County Public School District in Virginia. “During the summer of 2008, I taught students from all the schools in the county. About the middle of the term, I decided to start playing classical music while students worked independently. I noticed that students were more focused on tasks than they had been previously while doing independent work. They also talked to each other less. One day, when I forgot to turn on the music, a number of the students came up to me and reminded me to turn it on. At the end of the term, all the students had reached their academic goals in both subjects, (reading and math) and most had gone way beyond their goals. (Most of the student’s scores went up 15% to 36% higher.) I know that the atmosphere that was created by the classical music contributed a lot to this.” (Sep 24, 2008)
Mrs. S teaches 7th grade Math at Davis Middle School in Hampton, VA.: “Students perform better on tests and quizzes while listening to Mozart Symphonies in the background..” (Dec 1, 2008)
Mrs. C’s high school math class in Colorado: “The students asked for music in class. I told them I wouldplay only Mozart. At first they objected but soon decided they liked the music, because it made them feel better and able to focus more on their lessons. Consequently, not only did the grades get better, so did the discipline. Then the students began requesting Mozart. “
Mrs. G had her fifth grade students listening to classical music, played softly, while the children did creative writing assignments and when they did problem solving in math. It created a calm atmosphere conducive to problem solving and creative thinking as well as an appreciation of music that they might not have experienced. The results were so good that she incorporated this into her teaching for the last five years of her teaching career.
Mrs. JC had her fourth grade reading class of 22 students, listening to Mozart and other classical music during class for the entire school year .The children have consistently made 100’s on tests and work. These are just average students not exceptional.
Mrs. J has 3 children, ages 16, 12, and 8 who have been listening to Mozart and other classical music while doing their homework after school since March 05. She has seen them become more focused and relaxed, finishing homework quicker, with more accuracy which has led to higher grades.
Northside Middle School in Norfolk, Virginia is using classical music in halls and class rooms with very good success. “Classical Music Plays at Norfolk School”