Listening to Mozart can help you recall words, but Mahler hampers performance, study finds

A study into the so-called 'Mozart effect' concluded the phrases of the composer's music have similarities to English sentence structure

There have been decades debate about whether listening to Mozart can improve cognitive abilities
There have been decades debate about whether listening to Mozart can improve cognitive abilities Credit: Getty Images

Listening to Mozart can improve your verbal memory and performance before a test, but the compositions of Mahler have the opposite effect, a study has found.

Researchers sought to examine the so-called ‘Mozart effect’ by using a one-minute clip of the Austrian composer’s Kleine Nachtmusik to see whether it could help listeners to recall words. 

It follows decades of debate about the phenomenon, first coined by a 1993 study which claimed Mozart’s music could improve an individual’s IQ. 

Since then, his classical compositions have been variously credited for a perplexingly diverse array of benefits - from reducing stress in dogs to slashing the risk of seizures in epilepsy patients. 

Now, a study led by Professor Christiane Lange-Kuettner and Stella Rohloff from London Metropolitan University has found the music of Mahler can conjure equally bizarre responses from listeners. 

Eighty-four participants split across three groups were given a test to memorise a set of words, before which one group listened to a one-minute clip of Mozart’s Kleine Nachtmusik, one listened to Mahler’s Adagietto, while the third waited in silence.

They were assigned a mixture of words linked with positive and negative feelings, along with neutral words.

It was found that, across positive, negative and neutral words, participants who had listened to the Mozart clip displayed better word recall. 

This was the case regardless of the ethnicity or happiness levels of participants, the study said. 

Unfortunately for Mahler enthusiasts, his music appeared to have a detrimental effect on the verbal memory of those who were asked to listen to it.  

Researchers believe the key to the improved memory lies in the parallels between the sentence structure of the English language and the way the phrases of Mozart's music were composed.

Professor Lange-Kuettner, who is a senior lecturer in psychology at London Metropolitan University, said: “Our results showed that listening to Mozart can improve short term memory. 

"We used sonograms and spectrograms – visual representations of sound and frequency, respectively – to examine the structures of the different types of music. 

"Mozart’s music is full of self-contained and bounded phrases, similar to the typical structures of words and sentences. We believe this contributes to the positive effects that his music has on word recall.

“Mahler’s music, by contrast, flows in a way that is very similar to how we hear a foreign language being spoken, or how babies hear language that they do not yet understand. 

"The clearly delineated phrase structure in the Mozart piece may have supported word memory trace, while the flowing stream of the Mahler music would have blurred it.”

The research is published in the Advanced Research in Psychology journal.

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