DO THE PROFANE MAKE PROFOUND MUSIC?
“I am a vulgar man. But I assure you, my music is not,” says Mozart’s character in the movie “Amadeus.” No one doubts the second part of that statement, but the first remains controversial. Some have suggested that Mozart suffered from Tourette’s Syndrome, characterized by verbal and/or motor “tic” outbursts. The Mozart-had-Tourette’s camp may be right, according to a study led by Melvin Lyon, research professor of biological sciences in USC College. Lyon’s team sifted sonatas by Mozart and four other composers for the musical versions of “T-patterns”: highly unlikely, repeating combinations of specific notes separated by a constant time interval. In addition to Mozart, the composers were Alexander Scriabin, known for his manic-depressive tendencies; Robert Schumann, almost certainly schizophrenic; and Johann Sebastian Bach and Franz Josef Haydn, both thought to be psychologically “normal.” Previous studies have shown that schizophrenic patients exhibit more frequent and complex T-patt
