Foundation for the Future of Classical Music

‘So she has an axe to grind. But it’s an axe worth grinding. Her contention is that, at least in Britain and the US, the “serious” arts have been hijacked and effectively warped by activists determined to politicise them’. (Richard Morrison, The Times) Out tomorrow.

In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity.

📚 Au Japon, des gens vont désormais en boîte de nuit… pour s’asseoir silencieusement et lire un livre pendant qu’un DJ joue de la musique d'ambience. Le concept s’appelle JUCY BOOK RAVE et se déroule notamment dans un club souterrain de Shimokitazawa, à Tokyo. Ici, pas besoin de danser ni de hurler pour parler à la personne située à 30 centimètres de vous. Les participants viennent avec un livre, s’installent dans la pénombre et lisent pendant que la musique accompagne leur soirée.

It should be an embarrassment to the entire conservative movement that a self-proclaimed socialist did this instead of them.

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A visual comparison of the past and present.

In left-wing ideology, the only allowable explanation for that lack of proportional representation is racism. What is always left out is the skills gap. You cannot engineer racial proportionality without a radical sacrifice of talent and skills. We can do everything we can to close the academic skills gap, but we should not paper it over in favor of racial preferences.

Went down the rabbit hole on this. Your brain treats a physical book like a landscape. It builds a spatial map of the text, the same way it maps trails, rooms, and city blocks. When you scroll on a phone, that map breaks apart. Seven large-scale research reviews and direct brain scans confirm what you already feel. A 2023 study in PLOS ONE attached brain-activity sensors to children’s heads while they read the same text on paper and on screen. Paper reading produced fast brain waves, the pattern linked to focused attention. Screen reading shifted the brain into slow waves, the pattern linked to mind wandering and daydreaming. Same kids. Same words. Measurably different brain states. A separate 2022 study from Showa University in Japan scanned the front of the brain, the area that manages focus and comprehension, during phone versus paper reading. Smartphones sent that region into overdrive, meaning the brain was straining just to keep up with basic processing. Paper reading produced a moderate load that triggered natural deep breathing, which helped regulate brain function and sustain focus. The phone suppressed that breathing pattern entirely. Since 2017, researchers have published seven major reviews combining hundreds of individual studies. Six of seven reached the same conclusion: people understand less on screens. A 2018 review of 54 studies and 170,000+ participants, literally titled “Don’t throw away your printed books,” found paper outperformed screens across the board for non-fiction. A 2024 follow-up with 49 more studies confirmed it. The gap has grown steadily every year since 2001. Being a “digital native” doesn’t help. The best explanation is how your brain tracks where you are. Your short-term memory can only juggle about 7 things at once. A physical book gives you constant location cues: the weight shifting from right hand to left, where a paragraph sits on the page, how thick the remaining pages feel. Your brain hands off the “where am I in this text?” job to those physical signals, leaving more room for actually understanding what you’re reading. On a phone, every screen looks identical. Your brain has to track position and process meaning at the same time, and something gives. A Norwegian eye-tracking study analyzing 25,000+ individual eye movements found screen readers processed text more shallowly. The students had no idea they were reading differently. In 2019, nearly 200 reading scientists from 30+ countries signed an open letter warning that screen reading was degrading deep comprehension. Since then, Scandinavian countries, among the most digitized school systems on Earth, have started putting physical books back in classrooms.

Researchers at UC Irvine took saliva samples from a choir before and after performing Beethoven. One antibody, the most abundant in your entire body, spiked 240%. That antibody is called secretory immunoglobulin A. Mouthful of a name, but it does a simple job: it coats your throat, gut, and airways and acts as your body’s first barrier against every cold, flu, and respiratory virus you breathe in. Your body makes more of it than all other antibody types combined. The 2000 study found this antibody rose 150% during rehearsals and 240% during the live performance. A separate 2004 study from the University of Frankfurt tested what happens when choir members just listen to the same music instead of singing it. The antibody barely moved. And their mood actually got worse. Marathon runners show the exact opposite. A study of 98 competitive runners found this same antibody dropped 21 to 31% after the race. 17% came down with colds or throat infections within two weeks. Cross-country runners tracked over a full season saw it fall to 40% of their starting level by November. Running was suppressing the same antibody that singing was tripling. It works through the vagus nerve, the longest nerve in your body. It runs from your brain down through your chest to your gut and controls your “rest and digest” mode. When you sing, your vocal cords physically vibrate against it where it wraps around your voice box. You’re also breathing from deep in your belly with long, slow exhales, which tells your nervous system to calm down. Your stress hormones drop. Your immune system responds. A 2016 study from the Royal College of Music and Imperial College London tested 193 cancer patients and carers across five choirs in South Wales. One hour of group singing lowered cortisol (the body’s main stress hormone) and raised five different immune signaling proteins. The people with the worst depression scores improved the most. You don’t need to be good at it. The boost comes from the physical act, the vibration and the breathing, not the melody. Trained soprano or shower singer, your body responds the same way. One caveat: that 240% number came from a live performance, where adrenaline and emotional intensity were at their peak. Singing along to the radio probably produces a smaller spike. And these are temporary boosts, not permanent changes. But the 193 cancer patients in the 2016 study weren’t performing Beethoven on stage. They were just singing together for an hour in community choirs.

Do you agree with Pinker's supercilious claim (in his book How the Mind Works) that Western classical music has no survival value or adaptive function and can therefore be described as "auditory cheesecake" lacking aesthetic or intellectual value?