We want to wish all of our readers a Happy Purim and a Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Remember March is “Music in Our Schools Month” so start your day right by listening to Classical music which has the power to improve your mood, make you smarter, help you work faster with more accuracy, improves health and healing, grows healthier plants in fewer days, increases sales in stores, soothes your mind and preventing crime. If school cafeterias and school buses played Classical Music, the students would be calmer and more focused without violent tendencies.
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 April 2011 newsletter!
Article for March 2011: “How to Become One of Your Own Heroes” by Dr. Madeline Frank. All of us know that heroes come in all shapes and sizes. What is your definition of a hero? The dictionary definition of a hero is a person of “distinguished courage or ability, admired for brave deeds and noble qualities.” If one of your medical students asked you a question “about the need to evaluate new born babies” would you immediately “jot down five points and rush off to the Obstetrics department to try them out”?
Loose Lips Sink Ships – Things That Can Get Educators in Legal Hot Water! (Feb.2011) by Susan Fitzell from the Teachers.net, Vol.8 No.2. All teachers and other professionals should read this important article by Susan Fitzell.
Madeline’s One Minute Musical Radio Show for March 2011
How did Classical music play a part of Leopold Godowsky, Jr. and Leopold Mannes’s work and what instruments did they play? Click here for Your Radio Show:
https://www.madelinefrankviola.com/madelines-one-minute-radio-show/
Question of the Month: Who were Leopold Godowsky, Jr. and Leopold Mannes?
Leopold Godowsky, Jr. (b. May 27, 1900 – d. February 18, 1983) and Leopold Mannes (b. December 26, 1899 in New York City -d. August 11, 1964) invented color film called Kodachrome in 1935. Both were excellent musician who began studying violin and piano at an early age and continued to play and concertize throughout their lives. Godowsky and Mannes were from musical families.
Leopold Godowsky, Jr. was the son of the world famous 20th Century pianist and composer Leopold Godowsky and they later played concerts together. Leopold Mannes’s was the son of David and Clara Damrosch Mannes professional musicians and the founders of the Mannes School of Music. As teenagers Leopold Godowsky, Jr. and Leopold Mannes went to see the 1918 film “Old Navy” which was advertised as a color film. Both teenagers were disappointed with the poor quality of the color. “They went home and built their own movie camera and projector.”
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2456.htm
They used 3 lenses covered with filters of “orange-red, green and blue-violet.”
They continued working on their invention while attended university. Mannes went to Harvard studying piano and won a Pulitzer Music scholarship. He also studied physics and later composition in Italy under a Guggenheim Fellowship. Meanwhile, Godowsky went to UCLA to study piano, physics, and chemistry. While in California he played solo and first violin for the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and the LA Symphony Orchestra. In 1922 Godowsky came back home to play concerts.
In 1922 Mannes was traveling to Europe to play concerts when he met the senior partner of Kuhn, Loeb and Co. and told him about their color process for films. Kuhn and Loeb Investment firm decided to back Godowsky and Mannes work. In 1924 with Kuhn and Loeb’s financial backing they built their own laboratory and added more patents to protect their work. “In 1930 Eastman Kodak was so impressed with their results that they contracted them to move to Rochester and take advantage of Kodak’s research facilities.” In 1935 Godowsky, Mannes, and the research team at Kodak had developed the Kodachrome film.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Mannes
After inventing Kodachrome in 1935 both Godowsky and Mannes continued with their musical careers. Godowsky later married Frances Gershwin, a fine singer, artist, and sister of George and Ira Gershwin. She was the first to sing her brothers songs. They had 4 children.
In 2005 Mannes and Godowsky were inducted posthumously into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. On Dec. 30, 2010 the last Kodachrome film was processed after almost 75 years of service.
“Violist Advocates Community Outreach” (Dec. 2010) from the International Musician. Penny Anderson Brill, a violist in the Pittsburg Symphony Orchestra developed a wellness program “after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999.” After going “through a series of surgeries she wanted to experiment to see if music would make a difference in her treatment.” Brill says, “Music reduced my anxiety, gave me a sense of support, reduced the amount of anesthesia…needed during surgery, and speeded my recovery time. It helped my rehabilitation, it helped with attitude and it was a major source of support.” Since there is no music therapy program at the University of Pittsburg Medical Center, Brill has “developed a wellness program to introduce music therapy in Pittsburg’s mainstream hospitals, as well as” providing “music as a stress management tool for the members of the community.”
“Music Therapy Eases Patient’s Pain, Helps On Road to Recovery” (Feb. 2, 2011) by Evelyn Theiss fromThe Plain Dealer, Cleveland.Com. After a fall Gener Witts is in a wheel chair and wearing a neck brace. Two months prior to this Witts was singing bass in his church choir. “He’s in the hospital’s Spinal Cord Rehabilitation unit after a fall, which was followed by spinal surgery. He can’t walk, and it’s hard for him to breathe. But he’s going to sing. Witts looks at the sheet music for “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Not only will he sing this hymn, he will accompany himself on an auto chord, a mini keyboard.
“He is one of many patients in Northeast Ohio participating in music therapy for a variety of reasons — to alleviate pain, strengthen lung power, lower heart rate, and promote relaxation and sleep — so the body can heal faster. Witts is only in his second day of singing and playing the autochord, which strengthens his hands and wrists. He is accompanied in his singing by Carol Shively Mizes, a certified music therapist on staff at MetroHealth.” Witts, 77, said, “I never thought I’d be singing in the hospital.” For the first two days of his music therapy sessions he “described his pain as a 5 on a level of 1 to 10. Both days he left by saying the pain in his upper back was at 0.”
On Witt’s first music therapy session he held the note for 11 seconds and on his second day of music therapy he held the note for 17 seconds. “The studies — done between 2001 and 2010 — concluded that patients’ pain levels decreased when they participated in music therapy before and during their dressing changes.” The study results “were measurements of stress hormones, respiration and heart rates, and patients’ assessments of pain levels that’s a standard practice that helps doctors and nurses decide how much pain medication to administer.”
Dr. Richard Fratianne, director emeritus of MetroHealth’s burn unit, has retired from surgery, though not from teaching, and his work with burn patients continues.” He “is the force behind more studies that will provide medical evidence that music therapy reduces pain.Dr. Fratianne says, “There is no injury to the body that is as painful or devastating as a burn, and no medical procedure is as painful as cleaning the wounds of burn patients. There is constant anxiety for patients, too, because they know they will be facing that procedure, and that pain, two, three times a day. If music therapy can alleviate pain for burn patients, it certainly can work for all the other patients suffering pain.”
http://www.cleveland.com/healthfit/index.ssf/2011/01/music_therapy_eases_patients_p.html
Music therapy is added to the patient’s therapy to help them heal faster and help them feel less pain.
“Music from the Heart: When Gigging in Nursing Homes, Local 802 Musicians are Changing Lives”(January 2011) by Ann Wilmer from the Allegro Newspaper of Local 802 AFM. Local 802 musicians Conroy Warren and Richard Frank are sharing their gift of music at local nursing homes for residence to move ,dance ,sing with them, putting a spring in their step and a smile on their faces. Warren says, “I try to perform songs they need to hear, songs they want to hear, and things I want to share. If you are down, it will raise you up. Patriotic songs are vital to my presentation. Residents look forward to hearing them. I usually start with “America, the Beautiful” and end with “God Bless America”.” He always includes “songs they can sing –participation is part of the therapy.” Richard Frank says, “He makes the audience sing along. To encourage that, a big part of his routine is to take requests.” Local 802 Performance Trust Fund pays for these talent musicians to play at the nursing homes.
“Researchers Prescribe Choir Rehearsals for Parkinson’s Patients” (Jan. 31, 2011) from the DW-World.De Deutsche Welle. Gunter Kreutz, Professor of Musicology at the Carl Ossietzsky University in Oldenburg says, “Singing is not just of value for those already suffering from a disease. Those who have learned a musical instrument in their life, or who dance regularly are less prone to develop degenerative diseases of the brain like Alzheimer’s or dementia so there is some initial evidence that cultural activities in the long run can have significant health benefits and reduce health risks significantly.” He “will be publishing a volume on music, health and wellbeing in 2011 that will bring together research across the fields of music, psychology and music therapy for the first time”.
“Wolfgang Bossinger has been a music therapist in psychiatric hospitals in Germany for 25 years. Spurred on by the runaway success of a choir he formed in his own hospital in 2006, he decided to found Singing Hospitals in 2009.” Bossinger says, “Originally, music was something in all cultures where everybody was involved” and “research has shown that when people sing a mantra together, their hearts beat together. When people sing together it is not only emotional vibrating together it’s even the whole physiology – the bodies vibrate together. This is the really interesting thing that it touches us so deep that it’s like a resonance field vibrating together.”
Monika, a Parkinson patient has benefited by “being surrounded by music” and it ” has helped her do things she thought would never be possible.” Monica said, “When very rhythmic exciting music is being played, I can dance like I used to be able to – it is extraordinary. I don’t understand it, but I love it!”
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14805900,00.html
“Music Therapist Enriches the Lives of Special Needs Teens and Adults” (Feb. 1, 2011) by Jody Feinberg from the Patriot Ledger. Montague is a voice instructor and music therapist “who directs the South Shore Conservatory’s music and community partnership program”. Montague says, “We’re going to do a little warming up and get right to the singing. I wanted them to be able to come together and make music, and I knew they didn’t have an opportunity to do that.” She “loves music” and she believes everyone can experience its joy. Her singers have Down syndrome, developmental delays, physical impairments and Asperger’s syndrome.”
For more scientific evidence, medical evidence, test results, and true stories of the world’s scientists, medical doctors, and mathematicians who have studied and played musical instruments since they were children read“The Secret of Teaching Science & Math Through Music” by Madeline Frank, Ph.D. Click on the link:
https://www.madelinefrankviola.com/the-secret-of-teaching-science-and-math-through-music/
“Musical Notes On Math” teaches your child fractions and decimals, the fun way, through the rhythm of music, Winner of the Parent To Parent Adding Wisdom Award. For more information click on the following link:
https://www.madelinefrankviola.com/musical-notes-on-math/
For Tips on how to use “Musical Notes On Math” click on the following link:
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