Read on to find out why doctors and scientists love classical music...
Why do doctors and scientists love classical music?
Take a seat in any serious amateur orchestra or chamber group, and it is quite likely that your neighbouring musician will be a scientist of some kind. Doctors seem to be particularly motivated in this regard, and a search on Google will reveal many an orchestra led and organised by medics.
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And at a more elevated level still, some of the greatest scientists of their era have also found themselves drawn to the world of quavers and barlines. ‘If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician,’ wrote Albert Einstein. ‘I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.’
But why this connection between two apparently disparate disciplines, of art and science? To get the answer, I asked six leading scientists whose own lives happen to embrace both.
Maths, music and pattern recognition...
There may in fact be more in common between the two than first appears to be the case, says Michael Thorne, professor of maths (algebra) and former vice-chancellor of Anglia Ruskin University, and also a conductor. ‘Mathematics is largely about looking at patterns, pattern recognition and deciding what to do based on that information,’ he explains, ‘so there are similarities to reading and understanding music.’ Of course, each brain is unique, with its individual set of responses and reactions coloured by genetic make-up and the environment in which it is nurtured, but even in the small sample of scientists polled for this article, certain themes emerge.
Music as a creative outlet for scientists
While most of my interviewees grew up with classical music around them, Edgar Choueiri, professor of applied physics and aerospace engineering at Princeton University, was born in Tripoli, Lebanon, and did not hear his first classical concert until he was 11 years old. ‘I’ll never forget it,’ he recalls. ‘They played Telemann, then Bach. My jaw dropped. I was seduced by the quality of the sound of the violins and couldn’t believe humans could make anything that beautiful.’
Julian Close, formerly an applied physicist (transducers and sensors) at the National Physical Laboratory but now an international opera bass, also experiences a visceral reaction: ‘It gives a thrilling sensation as you listen. It can make your hair stand on end, the sheer drama of it.’ And Deborah Prentice, professor of social psychology and vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge, finds music equally and instinctively immersive: ‘Playing the piano is completely absorbing. I am in the moment. Music is in time. It is right now. That is incredibly compelling.’
Why scientists love classical music... a spiritual counterbalance to the scientific
But more than providing a creative outlet for scientists occupied with rational thought, music is actually complementary to scientific work, suggests Tom Heightman, a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and chief R&D officer of Adrestia Therapeutics. ‘There is something spiritual and emotional about music that can’t be captured in words,’ he says.
‘It is a wonderful counterbalance on a personal level.’ Martin Landray, professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Oxford, feels similarly: ‘Growing up, I always felt like a scientist (disciplined, methodical, deterministic), and music gave me a way of bringing out emotions and feeling the joy of rhythm and dance. I prefer Romantic music; clever, mathematical music doesn’t give me what I need from music.’ Heightman likens entering the ‘amazing and fascinating’ world of music with going ‘through the wardrobe’ just as the children do when they discover the land of Narnia in CS Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.
Structure and relaxation... music as the DNA double helix
Thorne points out the subtle connections and parallels between the scientific and musical worlds that entice him specifically as a scientist. ‘I find that music takes me into a completely new world,’ he says. ‘It gives me relaxation and delight in a different part of my intellect. There are structural messages that you have to hunt for in music, as in science, and that appeals to me.’
‘Some music is very structured,’ agrees Heightman. ‘When I think of the ascending motifs in Bach’s First Cello Suite, it is reminiscent of the very ordered atomic structure of the double helix of DNA and the sequence of bases that tell the story of our genetics. There’s a direct parallel there. It’s like a benevolent cycle of inspiration between the two. Both hold a mysterious allure of exploration, of experimentation and continuous learning. There are always new discoveries to make and build into the way we think.’
How music can boost problem solving skills
Music’s special ability to balance and complement scientific thought can also boost scientists’ thinking and problem-solving skills. ‘This is very much the case,’ says Heightman. ‘Very often on a project, we spend days with our heads in books or poring over data on the screen but we won’t achieve the necessary insight. It’s when we step away and allow the sub-conscious mind to wander that the connections get made – in an unstructured way. Then the “eureka” moment suddenly pops out. I think that is the most profound impact that recreational music has on my work. Having the recreational counterbalance allows the freedom of thought.’
Prentice agrees. ‘I’m a social psychologist, so I’m interested in human and group behaviour. Music for me can be like an experimental model. Producing music involves behaviour, so it is a model of how mind, body and action fit together. And then it is also a model of groups and how they function. I’ll very often think, “What am I trying to create with this group? Is this group like a symphony orchestra where they are going to get together and produce a collective sound? Or is it more like a string quartet where they are going to play at the same time but you will hear each individual voice?”’
What scientists can learn from musicians
Landray, who leads large-scale clinical trials to find new medical treatments, finds analogies to his experiments in the workings of an orchestra: ‘It is the conductor’s job to pull the very best from each individual and/or their sections to create the overall performance.’ ‘Drug discovery requires teams of scientists with a wide range of different expertise,’ adds Heightman. ‘Creatvity is most powerful at interfaces, when we make the boundaries between disciplines fluid – just like musicians playing different instruments challenge each other to push their boundaries of tone and expression.’
‘Scientists can learn from the way musicians practise too,’ suggests Landray. ‘Practice demands a level of discipline and can be lonely, hard work. Tricky bars need to be worked at over and over. The same is true for science. You sometimes come across a little nugget of the project that is hard. You think there is a way through it, but have to be able to solve it before you can expand out to the whole picture.’
Why scientists love classical music... how music can change lives
Quantifying whether music can make a real impact on scientific research is difficult. But detecting whether music can alter the course of a scientist’s working life is much more tangible. ‘My love of music changed my scientific career,’ shares Choueiri. ‘I was trained as a plasma physicist and my funded work was in this area. I now work on plasma propulsion for spacecraft for half my time, partly funded by NASA. The other half is spent researching spatial audio, driven by my love of music!
‘It all started because I asked myself why it was that when I played back my recordings at home it didn’t sound like a real orchestra. Of course, I wasn’t the first person to worry about this. After banging my head against the three most promising exploratory techniques in use at that time I chose to focus on one of them. It had a fundamental flaw that altered the tonal colour of the music – what we call “tonal distortion”. As an engineer and a scientist, I started to look into it and as a lover of music my dream was to perfect it so that I could reproduce the piece that started me on my quest: Bach’s Mass in B minor.’
That quest, explains Choueiri, was a hugely successful one: ‘Eventually I had a mathematical breakthrough. That has taken my scientific work in a completely different direction. The university decided to patent my invention: Bacch 3D Sound, in honour of JS Bach – also an acronym (Band Assemble Crosstalk Cancellation Heirarchy). It has been a great commercial success and is used in high-end stereo systems.’
Ditching science for music... embracing instinct and feeling
Close’s life also took a dramatic turn through music. After singing as an amateur five evenings a week while still working at the National Physical Laboratory, he decided to leave and enrol instead at music college. He is now an international opera singer, appearing frequently at the New York Met. ‘One summer, as an amateur, I sang a small role in La traviata and after it I felt bereft,’ he recalls. ‘I had been a level-headed scientist where everything is very conformed and regimented but now some emotions were unleashed. It is well documented that certain pitches literally resonate with the heart, body and mind and to generate them oneself is quite incredible. “Primal” is the word. At music college, physics was a bit of an impediment to my music making. I’d be focusing on the science of it all and drifted into micromanaging.’
The perils of overthinking resonate with Prentice’s experience of learning the opening of Beethoven’s ‘Waldstein’ Sonata too. ‘My teacher said, “Don’t force your hands together; just play, then fix it if it is off. There are things in life that you try to programme to be right and there are the things that you let go. That’s hugely important to me in my role at Cambridge. You can’t make Cambridge do anything. It’s already behaving. It is in action. It is doing. That idea of synchronising behaviour is something that I have thought about and used many times. Music is a set of ideas, concepts and activities – it is so many things; it’s my vocabulary.