A Chopin a Day Keeps the Doctor Away

Can listening to Chopin’s music be good for our health? New research in music psychology and therapy shows that Chopin's tunes can evoke positive emotions, improve your psychological well-being, regulate emotion, and even reduce stress.

New studies into the power of Chopin's music emphasize aesthetic pleasure. The pleasurable sensation of listening to Chopin has a therapeutic effect in such states as heat stroke, sunstroke, chronic pain, unrest, depression, and schizophrenia.

A hypothetical “musical medicine cabinet” might contain Chopin’s Berceuse in D flat major Op. 57. It has been remarked that this piece has a relaxing and calming effect on the body.

The piece is employed in the Polish company’s brand building, but also indirectly contributes to a greater comfort of travellers, which can obviously be regarded in terms of well-being. 

Submerging yourself in Chopin’s music may leads to the experience of ‘flow’. According to psychologist Mihàly Csíkszentmihályi, in the state of ‘flow’, a given person engages in an activity so much as to ‘lose’ themselves in it.

This can be listening or performing music. This state helps such frequently critical situations as social isolation or unrest, feelings which most of us have recently associated with the covid-19 pandemic.

Well-being is a state of happiness and satisfaction, without a sensation of negative stress, and generally good physical and mental health.

Musical activities are a useful tool in achieving positive effects.

What mechanisms lie at the basis of optimal well-being? Positive psychology emphasizes the role of human resourcefulness and a person’s ‘good sides’, which translate into a meaningful, and simply said ’good life’.

It appears that well-being can be achieved by small steps. Positive emotions, which we all need to experience every day, play a large role in this process.  

In September 2010, the ‘Warsaw Autumn’ Festival of Contemporary Music saw a premiere of a piece by pianist Jarosław Kapuściński.  Where is Chopin? was an attempt to trace Chopin’s music in the minds and on the faces of listeners in various parts of the globe.

The 31-minute piece was inspired by Chopin’s cycle of Preludes Op. 28. It was accompanied by fascinating visuals. Three simultaneous monitors showed faces expressing various emotions.

These emotions were actual listener reactions to Chopin’s music, filmed at concerts given by Kapuściński in 12 cities: Tokyo, San Francisco, Wellington, Sydney, Seoul, Beijing, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Helsinki, Buenos Aires, Santiago, and Mexico City.

Affective contagion works relies on a listener recognizing their emotions expressed in music, and subsequently reacting to them empathically. So, if they are listening to ‘happy’ music, they feel happy, and if listening to music expressing sadness, they ‘catch’ sadness.

Visual imagery reveals itself in the form of ‘pictures’ appearing when listening to music. They mediate in evoking positive, but also negative emotions.

The music we listen to may also elicit specific memories coded in the so-called ‘episodic memory’. This type of memory stores information on specific events from a given person’s life.

The receiver usually has the impression that it is the music itself which releases autobiographical memories, which in turn evoke given emotions (e.g. happiness, sadness, or nostalgia).

Musical expectations arise from the tendency to anticipate the course of a musical piece. When listening, the music either abolishes or confirms the listener’s expectations, which in turn forms a basis for emotive reactions. 

This mechanism is specially strong when the receiver is well-acquainted with the piece and can foresee exactly its ‘future’. Here,  something extraordinary or surprising, for example in an original interpretation, can be a source of emotive response.

Considerable research shows that a confirmation of expectations usually translates into a feeling of fulfillment and peace, while the reverse may cause a feeling of astonishment, irritation, deception, uneasiness, but also, curiosity.

Here, the basis for emotive reaction is a reflective evaluation resting on aesthetic judgement. It is the most cognitively advanced process that explains how aesthetic emotions are evoked in music particularly as an artistic domain, since they occur at higher levels of cognitive function.

The BRECVEM(A) model extends from the least conscious and most bodily forms of affective reactions to basic emotions (e.g. happiness, sadness, and fear), to more complex emotions (e.g. pride, nostalgia), to emotions arising from an epistemic (i.e. knowledge-oriented) evaluation of aesthetic emotions (e.g. admiration, wonder, and awe).