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Winsights
No. 116 (March/April 2013)
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With this issue of Winsights (unavoidably late, for which we apologize), we resume our ever-deepening inquiry into the extraordinary effects music has upon us human beings, as part of our ongoing larger inquiry of how to improve and increase human intelligence and human performance and quality of experience. Here is an increasingly remarkable portion of possible solutions and answers, which we can use to advantage in the meanwhile.
Another Way Music Improves
Our Intelligence
by Win Wenger, Ph.D.

For the past few decades, I have been wondering why and how music has such great power over us.
Gradually, part of the answer
has been settling into place for me, and tonight, April 29, 2013, while listening to an
outstandingly good performance of Rachmaninoff's Fourth Piano Concerto,* enough of it crystallized in my mind, and I thought I might try to share this insight with you.
Music, like a major aspect of mathematics, is a study in relationships. Some music explores and manifests extraordinary
relationships. Some of that music, especially in the classical and
contemporary classical music,
is powerful enough to resonate, at least metaphorically if not literally, with key
elements of our being,
organizing our being toward higher forms of order. Key to that process is that organ
which enables us to perceive and respond successfully to relationships in our surroundings relationships between things, relationships between
people, relationships between people and things (tools and techniques). Thus,
music which has enough music
in it to engender much of this effect in our brains engenders all sorts of
circuitry in our brain to map
out these relationships.
"Neurons which fire together, wire together"
Donald O. Hebb, neurophysiologist and psychologist
Once called into being to
handle some particular relationship,
that circuit is there also to fulfill other functions, to help perceive other
relationships. Therefore, getting into richly musical music lays down a network of circuitry which improves our brain's capacity for handling other experiences as well.
Note: See additional information, answers and possible solutions as to how
music affects, and can be made to improve and increase, human
intelligence, performance and quality of experience, in these articles:
Another Avenue to Improving Intelligence
Music, Music, Music.
Note: Win Wenger has recently
accepted appointment to the faculty of the Denver (Colorado) School of
Music, to be available mostly with regard to methods of teaching and
learning in music, and to training intensives and special conferences.
Contact rob@flowmedia.tv for further
information.
Note: To hear some of the music composed and
performed by Project Renaissance's founder, Win Wenger, click here to listen:
In 900 Minutes, YOU Can Be Composing Very Fine Music in Your Own Genre
Improv Music by Win
Note: A book on the Improvitaping process? Wenger is
now preparing one, expected to be published before September 2013, with
not only further instructions but many of his detailed observations
made during the process, which may answer some broader questions about
the human mind and brain. Details on Project Renaissance publications
are in the Books section.
Note: Forthcoming? A new music recording label
from Project Renaissance, with high-quality pieces of music of all
kinds and genres, by a variety of mostly new composers and musicians,
those pieces created through or with the process of Improvitaping.
Inquire to Win Wenger
*There are a good many excellent recordings of this superb Rachmaninoff
piano concerto. One of these happens to be the one I was listening to
when these insights coalesced for methe one by Simon Trpceski
(piano), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Vasily Petrenko
(conductor).
Comments to:
Win Wenger
You may copy this brief —in
whole but not in part,
including its copyright — for use with people
whom you care about or wish to inform.
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©2013 Project Renaissance
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