Listening to Beethoven at work could well be a route to bettering your productivity
Today would have been Ludwig van Beethoven’s 245th birthday. Two centuries on from his death, the melancholic German composer’s music is still very much alive, not only in the concert hall, but in digital and social media. The complete works of Beethoven can be dipped into liberally via Spotify and today, to mark the great man’s birthday, Google has launched one of its famous ‘doodles’ on its homepage.
Beethoven was a creative genius, that is beyond doubt, but the perfect notes that define his oeuvre did not come to him easily. The original manuscripts of his work are full of crossings out and scribbles and he wouldn’t leave his room for weeks on end as he fought to find the next right note. Even for Beethoven, concentration was hard to maintain and inspiration was difficult to find, so what chance do us mere mortals have?
Struggles
Well, the music that Beethoven and composers of his ilk struggled so heartily to create can be of help to us. Research has proved time and again that classical music betters concentration. In a study for Applied Ergonomics ‘ Music – an aid to productivity’ a series of experiments into the relationship between the playing of background music during the performance of repetitive work were carried out.
Beethoven’s frenetic crossings out on the original manuscripts of his work
The results of the study were telling and gave strong support to the notion that economic benefits flow from the use of music in industry by acting to speed up productivity.The study also found that music raises efficiency even when in competition with, say, unfavourable conditions produced by machine noise in a factory.
Mood
It is also beyond doubt that music lifts the mood of employees. Teresa Lesiuk of the University of Windsor in Canada in her study ‘The effect of music listening on work performance’ measured the effect music had on the quality of work done by systems developers. Lesiuk found that listening to music prompted a positive mood change and enhanced perceptions. Not only this, but it actually took the developers longer to complete tasks after the music was removed.
Is the use of classical music in the workplace, particularly in industry, the key to solving the UK’s lagging productivity problem? Is Beethoven a weapon to use against the threat of an economic slow-down? Well, the evidence suggests music could well help and, after all, when is listening to Beethoven a bad thing?
So in the spirit of Beethoven’s birthday and in the interests of bettering your productivity, here is Leonard Bernstein’s take on the 9th Symphony. Happy Birthday Maestro!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a97EG7Mqp8g
Music an aid to productivity: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0003687072901019
The effect of music listening on work performance: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/business/LESIUKarticle2005.pdf
Robert joined the HRreview editorial team in October 2015. After graduating from the University of Salford in 2009 with a BA in Politics, Robert has spent several years working in print and online journalism in Manchester and London. In the past he has been part of editorial teams at Flux Magazine, Mondo*Arc Magazine and The Marine Professional.
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