Updated version about the increase in electrical activity in Beethoven's brain
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Concert Pianist Classical Composer Conductor
How the reduction of audio imput made Beethoven smarter
The creation of a symphony at the intellectual level of Beethoven or Shubert involves processing huge amounts of variables. The composer's capacity to process variables determines how complex the symphony is, how polished it is and ultimately how great the composition is. Each time a composer creates a symphony, they usually increase their capacity to process variables by about 10 - 15%. With Beethoven, there is normal increase in processing variables from Symphony #1 to Symphony #2. At this point his hearing was good. Symphony #3 is different. Instead of the usual increase, Beethoven trippled his capacity to process variables between Symphony #2 and Symphony #3, effectively becoming three times smarter in a relatively short period of time. While composing the third symphony he wrote a dramatic statement about how he was going deaf.
The process of composing a symphony creates a large amount of electrical activity in the brain. Think of this electrical activity as a small fire. Cutting off the auditory imput is like throwing gasoline on the fire. Woosh! Oliver Sax wrote about patients who became suddenly deaf. One of them could hear a symphony orchestra in a cacophony of disorganized sound. Another could hear 50 trumpets playing incoherently and the noise wouldn't stop. Alvarado Pasqual-Leone, Professor of Neurology at Harvard, did brain cap studies measuring the level of electrical activity in the brains of patients who had a sudden cut off of auditory imput. He observed massive levels of electrical activity in the section of the brain that processes sound. They were only studying people who suddenly went deaf. They didn't study people who had only a reductioin of auditory imput. Beethoven was not deaf when he wrote his third symphony. He was hard of hearing. His hearing became progressively worse over a 20 year period. He wasn't deaf until he was in his early 50's.
Considering all these facts, I concluded, in late 2001, that the amount of electrical activity in the section of the brain processes sound can be inflated by a reduction of audio imput. I decided to used my findings to make myself smarter while I was composing my Symphony #6. At the critical stages of creating the symphony I used techniques that resulted in me experiencing a reduction of auditory imput. I stayed in my apartment 24 hours a day wearing ear plugs. My apartment was almost completely silent, except for the occasional NYC traffic noise from 15 stories down. The experiment worked and I did it several more times over a couple of years. In all of those sessions, there was so much elecrical activity in my brain that I couldn't sleep at all because the symphony was composing itself weather I liked it or not. In one 24 hour peroid, the first movement grew from 2 minutes of material to 8 minutes of material. By inflating the amount of electrical activity in the section of the brain that processes sound, I was able to create a symphony that is much more complex and more polished than any of my other works. Symphony Venezia is both a work of art and a scientific experiment.
