Music makes audiences breathe together, and sweat
NewsFrom the New Scientist:
Wolfgang Tschacher at the University of Bern in Switzerland and his colleagues monitored 132 people who were separated into three groups to watch different concerts of the same symphonies – Ludwig van Beethoven’s Op. 104 in C minor, Brett Dean’s Epitaphs and Johannes Brahms’s Op. 111 in G major – while wearing body sensors.
Various measurements became more synchronised during the concerts, such as the participants’ heart rates, breathing speeds and their skin conductance, which measures how much someone is sweating based on their skin’s varying electrical properties.
Why would it affect how we sweat?
Read on here.
Wow, Beethoven’s op 104 a Symphony? It’s his String Quintet. The same with Brahms.
“…different concerts of the same symphonies – Ludwig van Beethoven’s Op. 104 in C minor, Brett Dean’s Epitaphs and Johannes Brahms’s Op. 111 in G major – while wearing body sensors.” Whatever professional credentials are claimed by the purveyors of this study, at the very outset there is a major flaw in its methodology: none of the three pieces in the quote are symphonies. And so it goes, my friends, if only because in this instance the obvious demands to be stated.
The three pieces listed are String Quintets, not symphonies.
“Symphonies?” At least they didn’t say “songs”.
For current “scientists”, any piece of “classical” music that is longer than five minutes must be a “symphony”. At least they knew the word. If you expect them to know its meaning as well, you are much too demanding.