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Background: Music listening can improve acquisition of new knowledge. Purpose: The purpose of the study was to evaluate the emotional and cognitive effects of a knowledge concert on the attending audience. Methodology: The audience was asked to complete a Visual Analogue Scale (10 cm) before and after listening to the concert, along five variables: Arousal, Degree of happiness, Degree of worry, Daily worries and Benevolence. Follow-up qualitative interviews gathered narratives from the participants. Findings: 228 concert attendees took part in the study by completing the questionnaires (51 percent of the whole audience). Statistically significant changes were observed in the outcome measures for: Arousal (p=0.002), Daily worries (p

Purpose: Interest in the health relevance of music has been growing rapidly, yet few studies have addressed the protective role of music for music professionals themselves. In the current study, we investigated music professionals’ (music teachers, music therapists, musicians and academics) health, particularly their uses of music as a resource for their psychological health. Design: An online survey (N = 504) for music professionals was conducted across four Nordic countries. Participants responded to questions on music as a resource for psychological health and assessed their general levels of health and health behaviors. Their self-reported health was compared to similar prior data from the general Danish population (N = 14,022). Findings: Music professionals demonstrated high levels of self-reported health and health behaviors and approved of the idea of music as a resource for their psychological health. The most important psychological function of music for them was that music provided affective experiences. Music also provided feelings of belonging and supported mood regulation, but did not really offer relaxation or help to concentrate. Music teachers and therapists reported significantly higher use of music as a personal resource for psychological health than musicians and academics. Value: The results provide new insights into music playing a dual role – professional and personal resource – for different types of music professionals. The findings have relevance for how to address music in the training of musicians and create grounds for dialogue about the role of music for music professionals in comparison to laymen.

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Background: Anecdote suggests that listening to music can help to distract from worries about ongoing life problems. Purpose: In this study we examine the phenomenon and ask, to what extent does music listening alleviate worry, and under what circumstances? Our focus was on the immediate temporary effects. Methodology: We performed four pilot experiments with audiences comprised of different ages and backgrounds of musical experience. As part of these experiments, we constructed a visual analogue scale (VAS) to assess “daily worry” together with the three other dimensions of tiredness-arousal, sadness-happy and anxiety-calmness. Participants were asked to listen to live classical music and to fill out the VAS before and after assessments. The experiments enabled us to examine the similarities and differences among audiences of different ages and music experience with regard to the capacity for music to distract them from their worries, what we term ‘worry distraction’. Findings: In the different listening situations, the self-rating of daily worries decreases after listening to live, high-quality professional performances of classical music. In our experiments, previous experience of classical music does not have a significant effect on decreased worry while listening. University level education in general, however, is associated with an increased effect. This prompts a discussion regarding the role education plays as a determinant for health – including the relationship between experiences of music in relation to health. Originality: It is striking that live classical music could affect daily worries of people across different age groups evaluated with our simple and easily distributed Visual Analogue Scale. This could therefore be recommended for evaluations in other contexts.