21 May
2025
21 May
'25
10:33 p.m.
On 5/21/25 02:07, Bengt Gördén wrote:
I have been practicing music all my conscious life.
I started playing piano along with the radio at age two. Started formal
lessons at three.
The first song I remember singing loudly and obsessively (with my little
sister) was the Beatles song "She Loves You" - I think that "Yeah, yeah
yeah!" chorus was designed for kids!
My father was basically unmusical but not averse to
it. He probably
enjoyed that I enjoyed it. My mother did not show much interest in
music except for a few (about 10-20) singles from the 60s. I played at
her 50th, 60th and 70th birthdays and she seemed happy and content
with the way it sounded. I get a pretty high score on the Barcelona
Music Reward Questionnaire. Maybe there is something further back in
my family or I'm just a mutant.
What might make me raise my eyebrows in the referenced study is that
there are >9000 twins. According to statistics, there are about 45000
twins aged 37-64. A little more than 20% of all twins of that age in
Sweden participated in the study.
It seems to me that makes it a very big study. Excellent!
I also wonder what impact culture and environment might have. Do places
like Sweden and northern Europe, marked by times of extended winter
darkness, encourage people to do music at home, more than south European
cultures in warmer climates and more sunlight? I think family singing
and storytelling were done a lot more in the days when everyone was
stuck indoors and outside entertainment wasn't available. Think of the
famous Welsh choirs, grown in a population in which everyone sang.
--
David W. Jones
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