Testing Mozart - A film about the “Mozart Effect”
Testing Mozart is a 60 minute film about the "Mozart Effect", the power of Mozart's music to fight disease and increase the mental ability of its listeners. It is common knowledge that cows give more milk and tomatoes grow bigger when played Mozart, but what about humans. In this journey into the world's of music and medicine, Testing Mozart will examine the latest scientific discoveries that shed new light on the influence of Mozart's work on the brain. This documentary by the prize winning director Frederick Baker, will help explain why Mozart is so special and receiving so much attention in 2006. In this way a broad range of viewers, who would not usually watch films about classical music, will be introduced to Mozart and attracted to hearing more of his works, during the rest of Mozart year. *** Basic Film Structure The film will be divided into three main sections. 1 - The introduction to the Mozart Effect and its proponents. Don Cambell will introduce his teacher and initiator of the Mozart effect the acclaimed French music therapist Dr Tomatis in France. Gerard Depardieu will tell how he has been helped by the Tomatis method. There will be footage of Mozart’s music being used in a Tomatis school. Dr Fran Rauscher and Dr Shaw will tell of their ground breaking 1993 experiments with Mozart. We will hear a performance of the Sonata for Two Pianos in D-Major K448 ,that is used in all tests. In Colorado Don Campbell will show how he blends different pieces of Mozart, to produce his huge range of „Mozart effect“ tapes and books. We see one of his „Infotainment“ adverts for his Mozart Effect books and CD’s. 2 - In this section the battle between the believers and the skeptics will be played out. Michael Linton and Dr Chais from Harvard University calls Campbell an illusionist in the US tradition of quacks like Barnum. Linton will point to the disease suffered by Mozart and musicians who play Mozart. Filming with the Mozarteum in Salzburg and interviewing the Amadeus String Quartet in London. We will ask weather playing Mozart regularly means musicians are more alert, happier and healthier? Filming in Salzburg and Vienna - letters and anecdotes from Mozart’s father and friends will confirm that Mozart was actually of very bad health, and prone to frequent colds. His children where also of a fragile disposition. With things looking bad for the Mozart effect, Dr Rauscher will introduce her newest research. This time on rats, where she has proved that rats exposed to Mozart learn to find their way through mazes quicker than rats who lived in silence. Dr Li In Harvard they have even found that there are biological changes in the brains exposed to Mozart. The film will then travel to visit Alzheimer’s and Epilepsy patients who are being played Mozart to ease their symptoms, with very real results. 3 - With Mozart’s music clearly having a positive effect in some circumstances, the viewers will see the film reach its climax with a dramatic twist climax. British doctors and musicologists are backing composer James McConnel in his thesis that, Mozart suffered from a rare nervous disorder known as Tourette’s syndrome. As a sufferer of the disease McConnel has discovered parallels between his own twitching symptoms and Mozart’s often eccentric behavior. But rather than hampering him this disease can actually seen as a positive force fuelling the rush of Mozart’s composition. In short, Mozart played and composed to balance himself against the nervous twitches that beset him since he was 6 years old. In his early year Mozart wrote wonderfully ordered music to fight against his nervous episodes. In his final years Mozart let the Tourette’s out. This is best shown in the famous „Papageno“ Aria from the Magic Flute, where Mozarts chose no longer to hide his affliction. In this sense it is possible that in the case of Tourette’s, Mozart employed his own „Mozart Effect“. *** Frederick Baker has won several prizes for his music films, most recently a „Golden Prague“ Music Documentary prize in for the film „Imagine, IMAGINE“ (BBC/ ORF 2003).
