Via Salon today is a review of a book by Daniel Levitin, This is Your Brain on Music. It is an interesting sounding book about how music is essentially hard wired into humans.

Among the interesting observations Levitin makes is that:

“When a song begins, Levitin says, the cerebellum, which keeps time in the brain, “synchronizes” itself to the beat. Part of the pleasure we find in music is the result of something like a guessing game that the brain then plays with itself as the beat continues. The cerebellum attempts to predict where beats will occur. Music sounds exciting when our brains guess the right beat, but a song becomes really interesting when it violates the expectation in some surprising way.”

But the part that may be most interesting to arts folks in the music field deals with the vogue trend of getting kids to listen to Mozart in the womb. The music is actually recognized, though it doesn’t make the child smarter. The impulse to have kids listen to music if you want to imprint an appreciation for a certain type throughout their lives isn’t far off the mark.

“Studies suggest that we start listening to and remembering music in the womb…Humans prefer music of their own culture when they’re toddlers, but it’s in our teens that we choose the specific sort of music that we’ll love forever. These years, Levitin explains, are emotional times, “and we tend to remember things that have an emotional component because our amygdala and neurotransmitters act in concert to ‘tag’ the memories as something important.”… Consequently it’s in our teens that we’re most receptive to new kinds of music (in much the same way it’s easier to learn a new language when you’re young than when you’re old).”

So there you have it. Symphony outreach programs should be structured to allow teenagers to make out to classical music or engage in some other activity rife with emotional opportunities and they will be well disposed toward the music for life. Though if we have learned anything from A Clockwork Orange, it is that a teen’s love of classical music doesn’t guarantee a well-adjusted member of society.

While I don’t expect symphonies would ever sanction “Make Out to Mahler” sessions, having outreaches in a comfortable environment might go some distance toward engendering positive feelings for classical music. Unfortunately, this probably rules out school auditoria and intimidating symphony halls. The concert hall lobby next to the coffee bar might be nice though.