Scientists say cellists have more stress than violinists
OrchestrasScientists at King’s College London believe they can accurately predict changes in musicians’ heart rates while playing.
The experiment collected data on the heart rates of musicians playing the Andante con moto from Schubert’s Trio No. 2. The findings published in Frontiers, reveal that:
- Pushing towards a climax led to a significant increase in heart rate.
- Playing loudly also increased heart rate, including more than playing faster.
- The players’ cardiac signals were remarkably correlated during passages where they played in tandem, despite playing different instruments with different physical demands.
- Difficult or risky passages also predicted heart rate changes – in particular for the cellist but less so for the violinist.
Now why is that?
Science for the sake of science. For the most part useless.
Because the cello is bigger.
(Damn, sometimes you just gotta wonder about scientists, I am nominating this article for the Ig Nobel Prize, it won’t win because it’s not dumb or funny enough, but it’s pretty dumb.)
Maybe it’s caused by having to deal with all those highly strung players
The picture is Emperor Naruhito of Japan playing the viola.
Captain Obvious…
Viola-envy Fred, yet again.
I’m a cellist with a daughter who is a violinist. Cello requires a different level of physical exertion to play because of its size. Both are equally difficult to play well, IMO, but the amount of pressure needed to get a sound out of a cello is different than violin.
Interesting.
Where do viola players fit in?
Oh, we violists are very relaxed during Schubert piano trios.
Cello players de-stress by telling copious amounts of viola jokes. Violas, thank you for your service!
Making such generalizations based on a single movement, a Schubert Trio Andante of all things, seems highly questionable to me. Was the culprit the particular instrument being played, the piece itself, the players’ cardiovascular fitness, or their technical level and quality of prior preparation?
A more accurate study would be to measure, for instance, heart rates of the entire Cello and Violin I sections of an orchestra playing Götterdämmerung. There, I suspect, you might get wildly different results.
Not that this should be a contest. I’m not really sure what such studies prove, anyway. But to suggest that cellists are more stressed than other instruments based on that one experiment alone seems frankly rather asinine. I can guarantee you that violinists are far from immune from stress, due both to the technical demands of the instrument as well as to certain psychological traits rather common to them, such as competitiveness and narcissism.
Why? Maybe because the cellist was more high strung by nature.
It would be extremely difficult to devise a finer example of junk science. You have a sample size of one violinist and one cellist. And then you draw conclusions from it. Can’t you find something better to post, Norman?
For non-musicians, this may be all very interesting and groundbreaking news. How come! Music stimulates the nervous system and heart function, because of bodily efforts and emotional engagement.
For professionals in the practice of concert life (REAL professionals that is, NOT retired, spiteful, embittered teachers at Respectable Institutions who can only look from behind the fence of their restricted territory into the live music zoo), this is a wide-open door and nothing unusual or even interesting. Being involved in concert life means STRESS and STRESS and again STRESS. Even composers, quietly working in their sound proof studio, surrounded by a plethora of silent scores, books and CD’s, with their PA and other women folk in other rooms, experience stress, especially when they cannot get a transition right, like [redacted] and [redacted] or forgot the range of the heckelphone.
And yes, the bigger the instrument, the more intense the stress levels. This explains the calm countenances of the piccolo and triangle players, and the hysteria of organists.
If someone here feels again the urge to reach-out for the thumb-down button, here is proof:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2AOVXQmYvc
… and I had warned!
It takes more physical effort to play the cello, and that is in addition to carrying the instrument before, during, and after a performance. A cellist has to work harder to project sound than a violinist or pianist. More effort equals greater effort of the heart to support it.
Even though violinists are more high strung?
Cellists experience more stress because they’re constantly wondering what the hell the violinists are going to do next.
Viola players carry the burden of heavy stress suppression because whatever they do, nobody is going to notice and still they got to get things right, otherwise they get the angry looks of the conductor again and the usual jokes in the locker room.
Cellists? Stress?
I recall the cellist who taught the “Low Strings Methods” class when I was a music education major.
Every statement was posed as a complaint and every question answered with a retort.
With a standard battery of five questions, cross referenced, the Voight-Kampf is the best way to identify the underperforming viola players.
Here’s your question, Phred: Why are you so jealous of viola players that you make these comments betraying your feelings of inadequacy?
Violists like …
Try playing a Bach obbligato on baroque oboe or proper baroque trumpet without holes and THEN you’ll know what stress is about!
Title says cellist and violinist, so let’s put a picture of a violist, they don’t do stress but they stress everyone else out
Did anyone try to fly with a cello? You have to purchase an extra seat and they still hassle you! Of course it’s more stressful. Ditto for tuba players!
Violinists don’t really care what and how they play
It’s obvious that cello is more physically demanding than violin. You’re supporting a much bigger instrument, and all the movements involved in playing are bigger. Double bass is even more physically demanding.
By that logic, piano should be the most physically demanding instrument since it’s the biggest
The average orchestral pipe organ is way bigger.
This is a study based on one trio. The title of your article should be “ SCIENTISTS SAY THAT CELLIST HAVE MORE STRESS THAN THAT VIOLINIST”. Not to be generalized.
Since when is physical exertion the same as stress? Of course the cellist‘s heartrate was higher, playing cello is physically more demanding, that doesn’t mean at all that playing the violin is less stressful.
Try the orchestra oboeists, they will always be the most stressed and slightly insane due to making their own reeds and the fixatives required.