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fMRI studies of chills triggered by favourite songs light up the nucleus accumbens — the brain's primary reward centre. Music is, neurologically, a survival-grade pleasure.
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The 'Lady Blunt' Stradivarius sold in 2011. Antonio Stradivari's instruments outperform modern ones in price but in blind tests — surprisingly — not always in sound.
For nearly a century, every restaurant singing it owed royalties. A 2016 court ruling pushed the song into public domain. Now nobody has to look around nervously before the candles.
Studies of infant brain activity show responses to tonal violations long before language. Musical perception appears to be a deep, pre-verbal cognitive ability.
The original 1993 paper measured adults, not babies, and showed a 15-minute spatial-task boost. Marketing did the rest. The science behind 'baby Mozart' is essentially nothing.
John Cage's organ piece 'As Slow As Possible' is being performed in a German church one chord at a time. Visitors travel for years just to hear the next change in note.
He couldn't hear the orchestra performing it or the audience applauding at the premiere. A singer had to turn him around to see the standing ovation behind his back.
Catalog number K.231 is a real Mozart canon, full of crude jokes and profanity. He wrote it for friends as drinking-party entertainment. Publishers hid it for two centuries.
In 1962 their audition tape was passed on by every major label. The man who turned them down spent the rest of his life trying to live it down.
The Hurrian Hymn was carved into stone in ancient Syria around 1400 BC. Modern musicians have reconstructed it — and the melody still sounds like music.
The whole six-minute structure existed only inside his head. He directed every overdub from memory, and the band recorded 180 vocal layers without a finished script.
The 'Red Special' that powered every Queen hit was hand-carved in 1963 from a 200-year-old hearth-mantle. The tremolo arm is part of an old bicycle saddlebag.
Sixteen real cannon-shots, in rhythm, are written into the score as instruments. Modern performances either use military artillery or pre-recorded blasts triggered by the conductor.
There is no key change, no contrast, no second theme — just one slow building crescendo. Ravel himself called it 'a piece without music.' Audiences either weep or walk out.
Rod Stewart's free 1994 New Year's Eve show on Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro fills the Guinness record. From space the crowd looked like a second shoreline.
Édouard-Léon Scott captured a human voice in 1860 — a woman singing 'Au Clair de la Lune.' Scientists finally decoded the squiggles in 2008.
After his death in 1741 he was forgotten so completely that his manuscripts were stored in a monastery library and ignored. They were rediscovered in 1926 by accident.
Four sons grew up to be famous in their own right: Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Christian, Wilhelm Friedemann and Johann Christoph. The Bach dynasty produced music for 200 years.
The two were friendly colleagues, not enemies. Salieri even taught Mozart's son. The famous rivalry comes from a 1830 play and the 1984 film Amadeus.
Found in a German cave in 2008, the bone-flute still produces clear notes. Neanderthals and early humans were already making music before they had farming or pottery.
The chill response — called frisson — depends on dense connections between auditory and emotional brain regions. People who feel it are wired differently from people who don't.
Right-handed guitars were all he could afford or find, so he restrung them and flipped them over. The reversed strings created his signature tone — no one has perfectly copied it since.
The researchers never claimed it made babies smarter. The media invented that. Decades of follow-up studies have failed to find any IQ boost from listening to Mozart.
A new song from one population reaches the next within months, then crosses entire oceans. The whales drop the old tune entirely once they learn the new one.
Hungarian pianist Domingos-Antonio Gomes registered the speed at 2015 in a Guinness attempt. The human ear can barely distinguish individual notes at that rate.