Today, I learned that:
Music has fascinated people in all times. I remember that when I was in elementary school, we practiced to sing the traditional songs for the major holidays as a choir. And although I have never had any good voice to sing, I thought that the experience of singing in a choir was quite thrilling.
Yesterday, I heard yet another podcast from Scientific American, which informed that a cancer center in the U.K. found that patients had significantly lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol after harmonizing for an hour. For more information, consult reference #1 below.
And then I also remembered news about how people singing in a choir entered into a state of synchronization even of their heartbeats. See more about that study from 2013 in references #2 and 3 below.
From there to the fantastic Swedish film “Så som i himmelen”, in English ‘As it is in heaven’, which competed for an Oscar in 2004, the connection was obvious. If you have seen it, you do not know what you are missing! See also reference #4 below.
And yet another film on the same theme is from 2012, ‘Song for Marion’, in which a cranky old man finally joins his dying wife in the joys of singing (reference #5 below).
Posters from today’s featured films about the excitement of choir singing
… That’s what I learned in school !
Refs.:
1: Choir Practice Could Lower Stress in Cancer Patients
2: Choir singers ‘synchronise their heartbeats’
3: Music structure determines heart rate variability of singers
What did you learn in School today? 