Gunter Kreutz

Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg · Department of Music

The great saxophonist Charlie Parker once proclaimed 'if you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn'. This quote has often been used to explain the hedonistic lifestyle of many jazz greats, but it also signals the reciprocal and inextricable relationship between music and wider social, cultural, and psychological variables. This link is comp...

Objectives: The effects of music interventions including active and receptive music therapy for people living with neurogenic disorders of consciousness (DOC) have been subject to empirical studies in the past. The aim of this systematic review was to find and analyse the current research about the effects of musical interventions on people with DO...

Previous research has identified families as hubs for musical development, but little is known about the reciprocal effects on familial dynamics. Here, we address the long-term associations between familial music and parental perceptions of their children’s personality. To these ends, we analysed a subset of data from the German Panel Analysis of I...

We investigated the associations between parent-child leisure activities and perceived relationships longitudinally during the transition from childhood to adolescence. The German Family Panel (pairfam) covering four biannual waves (N = 1,816 children; age range: 8–15 years; 48.4% female) between 2009 and 2015/16 served as our data base. Frequencie...

Empirical research of community‐based music interventions has advanced to investigate the individual, social, and educational implications of arts‐for‐wellbeing practices. Here, we present the motivations, aims, hypotheses, and implications of this complex field of inquiry. We describe examples of recent large‐scale investigations to reflect on the...

Background Unaddressed age-related hearing loss is highly prevalent among older adults, typified by negative consequences for speech-in-noise perception and psychosocial wellbeing. There is promising evidence that group singing may enhance speech-in-noise perception and psychosocial wellbeing. However, there is a lack of robust evidence, primarily...

Musicians create sound that is enjoyable to themselves and their audience, but this same sound also threatens their hearing health due to high sound pressure levels generated by their own and their fellow musicians’ instruments. Here we seek to identify musicians’ hearing health awareness in relation to their coping strategies. 370 professional and...

Objectives To investigate the association of musical activity with mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods A total of 3,666 participants reported their musical activity before and mental health indicators before and during the pandemic. Depression was assessed with the Patient Health Questionnaire, anxiety with the Generalized Anxiety...

Musical activities (MA) such as singing, playing instruments, and listening to music may be associated with health benefits. However, evidence from epidemiological studies is still limited. This study aims at describing the relation between MA and both sociodemographic and health-related factors in a cross-sectional approach. A total of 6717 adults...

Dieses Buch beleuchtet die Wirkungen von Musik auf Gesundheit, Wohlbefinden und Lebensqualität aus der Sicht interdisziplinärer, musikwissenschaftlicher und medizinischer Forschung. Hochrangige Expert*innen aus vielfältigen Fachgebieten stellen die wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen für medizinische, therapeutische, pädagogische und andere Anwendung vor...

Objective: Previous research suggests differential effects of participant-selected (PS) vs. researcher-selected (RS) music on emotional responses to music listening. This study investigates whether such selection strategies, as well as gender, influence (1) stress and (2) mood responses. Additionally, we examine the role of (3) stimulus-induced emo...

Singing and playing musical instruments is seen as beneficial for parent-child relationships. Using longitudinal data from the German Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics (Pairfam) we investigate the role of specific facets of parent-child relationships as predictors of family musical activity, namely Intimacy, that is, the...

We describe the protocol of a substudy, in which we assess the impact of repeated music interventions on longer-term and immediate stress in care home residents living with dementia and depressive symptoms. The substudy is part of the international cluster-randomized controlled trial Music Interventions for Dementia and Depression in ELderly care (...

Music empathizing (ME) and music systemizing (MS) are constructs representing cognitive styles that address different facets of interest in music listening. Here we investigate whether ME and MS are positively associated with feelings of reward in response to music listening (MR). We conducted an online-survey in which n = 202 (127 identifying as f...

Previous work suggests that musical training can enhance acculturation processes. This study examined this assumption among third-graders with migrant backgrounds within a longitudinal framework. A total of 54 children (31 females; 23 males; mean age: 8.85 years) were assigned to one of three groups in a quasi-randomized procedure: (a) music traini...

Music empathizing (ME) and music systemizing (MS) are constructs representing cognitive styles that address different facets of interest in music listening. Here we investigate whether ME and MS are positively associated with feelings of reward in response to music listening (MR). We conducted an online-survey in which n = 202 (127 identifying as f...

Abstract of an oral presentation at the virtual conference of the European Association of Psychosomatic Medicine (EAPM)

Background Various music interventions can evoke favorable behavioral responses or physiological reactions in people with disorders of consciousness (DOC), such as coma, unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS), and minimally conscious state (MCS). However, it appears that no study thus far has investigated the effects of music on the endocrine syst...

Recently, a large cluster-randomized controlled trial was designed—Music Interventions for Dementia and Depression in ELderly care (MIDDEL)—to assess the effectiveness of music interventions on depression in care home residents with dementia (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03496675). To understand the pathophysiological mechanisms, we observed the effect of...

Chronic lung diseases (CLD) are often associated with abnormal, ineffective breathing patterns. Some studies already suggest that nonpharmacological interventions can have positive effects on symptoms related to CLD. However, in the current state of research there is a lack of studies investigating the influence of music listening on breathing rate...

The value of ensemble music-making for wellbeing is addressed in this chapter, with an emphasis on amateur musicians. Previous research on musical development over the lifespan suggests that long-term engagement might be motivated by individual wellbeing benefits. Although negative health implications are also noted, amateur musicians report fewer...

Learning to play a musical instrument is associated with different, partially conflicting emotions. This paper describes the development and psychometric properties of the Emotions while Learning an Instrument Scale (ELIS). In a longitudinal study with 545 German elementary school children factorial structure and psychometric properties were evalua...

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creat ive Commo ns Attri bution-NonCo mmercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. Abstract Infants show remarkable skills for processing music in the first year of life. Su...

Music conveys expressive meaning, and it elicits affective and associative responses in listeners. Historical documents from the 19th century contain reflections about the perceived expression of and affective responses to music in a wide range of works, including symphonies and operas. Therefore, we asked what verbal descriptors found in contempor...

Previous studies suggest that music interventions and music therapy can enhance well-being, improve quality of life, and stimulate cognitive functions in people with disorders of consciousness (DOC), including coma, unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS), and minimally conscious state (MCS). This systematic review was designed to identify patterns...

This book chapter provides an overview of positive and negative effects of music activities on health. Moreover, the chapter shows possibilities in music and health research.

Warum singen wir so gerne miteinander? Sind Menschen glücklicher, die über Jahre und Jahrzehnte Mitglied in einem Chor sind? Ist Singen vielleicht sogar gesund? Singen ist weder aus der Evolution des Menschen noch aus seiner Entwicklung vom Säugling bis ins hohe Alter wegzudenken. Mehr noch: Gemeinsames Singen steigert das Wohlbefinden, stärkt Abwe...

Die in dem Kapitel dargestellte Studie untersucht im Rahmen des Verbundprojektes "MINUTE" ("Musikalische Interventionen für nachhaltige Eingliederung und kulturelle Teilhabe geflüchteter Kinder und Heranwachsender") die Effekte eines musikalischen Freizeitangebots für geflüchtete, junge Erwachsene auf Akkulturationsprozesse sowie gesundheitliche un...

Singing has been advocated as an efficient supplementary strategy in language teaching, but little is known about its effect on grammar learning. We conducted an intervention study (five lessons) with primary EFL learners (N = 57, mean age = 8.67, SD = 0.60) who were taught new vocabulary and grammar through either singing or speaking lyrics. The c...

People with disorders of consciousness require very long-term care and therapy. Music therapy interventions can improve the well-being and quality of life of such patients. Eleven music therapists with an average of 14.7 years of professional practice with patients in this group took part in semi-structured interviews on their strategies and experi...

Tanzen macht Spaß und ist gesund! Musikalische Rhythmen bewegen Körper, Geist und Seele und sorgen für mehr Wohlbefinden, Gesundheit und Lebensqualität. Tanzen mindert Stress, beugt chronischen Erkrankungen vor oder hilft, diese in Schach zu halten. Doch Tanzen bewirkt noch mehr: Tänzerinnen und Tänzer tragen seit jeher Schritt für Schritt zu einem...

Auditory stimulation training (AST) has been proposed as a potential treatment for children with specific language impairments (SLI). The current study was designed to test this assumption by using an AST with technically modulated musical material (ASTM) in a randomized control group design. A total of 101 preschool children (62 male, 39 females;...

Introduction: In older adults, dementia and depression are associated with individual distress and high societal costs. Music interventions such as group music therapy (GMT) and recreational choir singing (RCS) have shown promising effects, but their comparative effectiveness across clinical subgroups is unknown. This trial aims to determine effec...

There is growing evidence that singing can have a positive effect on language learning, but few studies have explored its benefit for children who have recently migrated to a new country. In the present study, recently migrated children (N = 35) received three 40-min sessions where all students learnt the lyrics of two songs designed to simulate la...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00153.].

Previous studies have suggested that there are complex psychobiological effects of amateur choral singing on well-being. Here, we investigate the influences of singing vs. non-singing on psychological and biological measurements, reflecting current positive and negative affect, perceived social connectedness, and physiological stress. We hypothesiz...

Background: Kreutz et al. (2008) developed the Music-Empathizing-Music-Systemizing (ME-MS) Inventory to extend Baron-Cohen's cognitive style theory to the domain of music. We sought to confirm the ME-MS construct in a German sample and to explore these individual differences in relation to music preferences. Methods: The German adaptation of the ME...

Background: Music listening is wide-spread in amateur sports. Ergometer exercise is one such activity which is often performed with loud music. Aim and Hypotheses: We investigated the effects of electronic music at different intensity levels on ergometer performance (physical performance, force on the pedal, pedaling frequency), perceived fatigue a...

Previous studies have identified links between attraction to negative emotion in music with the traits of absorption and rumination. However, no studies have examined the possible interdependencies and influences of these traits. We sought to determine whether a cognitive processing path that leads to attraction to sad music could be identified. We...

Background: There is only a limited number of studies on associations between musical activity and health issues. It seems that musical activity has physiological and psychological benefits, as well as effects on the mental capacity, but this has been studied only in a few clinical and epidemiological studies. One reason might be that no appropriat...

Musikhören, Singen, Tanzen und Musizieren auf Instrumenten beschäftigen Millionen von Menschen in ihrem Alltag. Selbstüberzeugungen zufolge dienen diese Aktivitäten in hohem Maße dem eigenen Wohlbefinden. Gegenstand dieses Kapitels sind Theorien, Modelle und empirische Befunde über grundlegende Zusammenhänge zwischen musikalischen Aktivitäten im La...

LUNDQVIST, CARLSSON, HILMERSSON, AND JUSLIN (2009) presented evidence of differential autonomic emotional responses to ‘‘happy’’ and ‘‘sad’’ music in healthy adult listeners. The present study sought to replicate and extend these findings by employing a similar research design and measurement instruments. Therefore, we used instrumental film music...

Patienten mit chronischen Erkrankungen wie Diabetes mellitus können vom Singen oder Spielen eines Musikinstruments in vielerlei Hinsicht profitieren. Allerdings müssen bei der Wahl des Musikinstruments, beim Planen des Unterrichts, von Proben oder einer Orchesterfreizeit einige Besonderheiten der Erkrankung berücksichtigt werden.

Musik wird seit langer Zeit psychotherapeutisch zur begleitenden Behandlung gesundheitlicher Probleme eingesetzt. Jüngere Forschungen weisen jedoch auf weiter reichende Implikationen musikalischer Aktivitäten wie Musikhören, Singen, Tanzen und Instrumentalspiel für die Gesundheitswissenschaften. Mit musikalischen Aktivitäten zur Steigerung von Wohl...

Der Anteil älterer Menschen an der Gesamtbevölkerung wird in den kommenden Jahren weiterhin erheblich wachsen. Dank des medizinischen Fortschritts hat sich die durchschnittliche Lebenserwartung im vergangenen Jahrhundert verdoppelt. Sie beträgt heute in Österreich für Männer fast 75 und für Frauen über 81 Jahre. Da die medizinische Versorgung nicht...

Con el propósito de ampliar la internacionalización de la educación superior, en junio de 2016, la Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes (UAA) y la Universidad de Oldenburg, Alemania firmaron un convenio de cooperación académica. Esto lo realizan el Departamento de Música de la UAA y el Instituto para la Música de la Universidad de Oldenburg, cuyo...

We investigated the effects of familiarity, level of musical expertise, musical tempo, and structural boundaries on the identification of familiar and unfamiliar tunes. Healthy Western listeners (N = 62; age range 14–64 years) judged their level of familiarity with a preselected set of melodies when the number of tones of a given melody was increas...

Extended music lessons have been suggested to reduce stress responses, and to increase well-being in primary school children. We investigated this assumption with regard to the provocation of aggressive behavior in primary school children (N = 34; 7–8 years of age). A computerized modified version of the Point-Subtraction Aggression Game (‘Stimulat...

It is unknown to what extent listeners in different Western countries share long-term representations of melodies as well as their genre associations, and whether such knowledge is modulated through music training. A group of German listeners (N = 40) rated their familiarity with 144 melody excerpts from different genres implicitly (melody structur...

Die Frage, welche Chancen und Herausforderungen musikalische Aktivitäten für Gesundheit und Wohlbefinden des Menschen bereithalten, beschäftigt Kultur- und Musikwissenschaftler, Ärzte und Biologen, Pädagogen und Musiktherapeuten gleichermaßen. Neue Disziplinen wie Musik in der Medizin, Musikmedizin, Musikermedizin, Musikphysiologie – um nur einige...

Es existieren zahlreiche Studien über zerebrale Korrelate des Musikhörens. Aus diesen Studien sind Implikationen für musiktherapeutische Anwendungsgebiete abzuleiten. Depression und Demenz sind zwei solcher Gebiete, die aus verschiedenen Gründen in den Fokus musikpsychologischer Wirkungsstudien geraten sind. Ungeachtet zahlreicher systematischer Be...

Dieses Buch stellt den Stand aktueller Forschungen in der Musikmedizin und die Wirkung von Musik auf Gesundheit, Wohlbefinden und Lebensqualität dar und bietet wissenschaftliche Grundlagen für therapeutische, pädagogische und andere Anwendungsgebiete. Die enthaltenen Themen sind aus allen Bereichen des Musiklebens abgeleitet: Musikmedizinische und...

Kausale Beziehungen zwischen musikalisch induzierten, kontextuellen Veränderungen mit der Folge verbesserten Wohlbefindens und Lebensqualität sind bislang eher spekulativer Natur. Wesentlich ist, dass dafür keine spezifischen, allein durch musikalisches Tun ausgelöste, psycho-physiologische Veränderungen nötig sind. Mit anderen Worten: Nachweise fü...

Systematische Übersichtsstudien in nichtklinischen Bereichen legen nahe, dass regelmäßiges gemeinsames Singen in Laienchören mit positiven körperlichen, geistigen und seelischen Rückwirkungen auf Sängerinnen und Sänger verbunden sein kann. Kulturelle und biologische Aspekte bedingen und ergänzen sich wechselseitig. So steht die Vielfalt gesangliche...

Die evolutionären Ursprünge des Tanzens sind unklar. Eine bereits prähistorische Verbindung zwischen Gesang, Tanz und Musizieren auf Perkussionsinstrumenten wird weithin angenommen. Bildliche Überlieferungen weisen nach, dass Tanz in sakralen und säkularen Formen seit Jahrtausenden in den frühen Hochkulturen praktiziert wurde und in zahlreichen Eth...

Music is a promising candidate for the enhancement of cultural integration through increased group cohesion and social support. This study assessed the impact of a music program on elementary school- aged migrants’ cultural orientation, as measured via the Frankfurt Acculturation Scale for Children (Frankenberg et al., 2013). The music program is a...

Every individual has a preferred musical tempo, which peaks slightly above 120 beats per minute and is subject to interindividual variation. The preferred tempo is believed to be associated with rhythmic body movements as well as motor cortex activity. However, a long-standing question is whether preferred tempo is determined biologically. To uncov...

Psychobiological effects of amateur choral singing were studied in a naturalistic controlled within-subjects trial. A mixed group of novice and experienced singers (N = 21) filled out brief ad hoc questionnaires of psychological wellbeing and gave samples of saliva for measuring levels of salivary oxytocin, cortisol, and dehydroepiandrosteron (DHEA...

We appreciate the opportunity to respond to the letter of Dr Engdahl1 regarding our article ‘Incidence and relative risk of hearing disorders in professional musicians’.2 Dr Engdahl raises the concern that the observed risk of musicians to suffer from noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is explained by detection bias. As NIHL and sensorineural hearin...

Psychobiological effects of amateur choral singing were studied in a naturalistic controlled within-subjects trial. A mixed group of novice and experienced singers (N = 21) filled out brief ad hoc questionnaires of psychological wellbeing and gave samples of saliva for measuring levels of salivary oxytocin, cortisol, and dehydroepiandrosteron (DHEA...

The present study addresses visual attention and processing speed in primary school children (N = 345; 7–8 years of age) who received either music (MC) or natural science training (NC) over a period of 18 months. Dependent variables were collected three times (T1–T3) and included measures for processing speed, visual attention and cognitive music a...

The study evaluated self-reported health-promoting behaviors and psychosocial well-being of undergraduate music students (n = 144) and was designed as an attempt to replicate and extend previous studies. The goals were (a) to differentiate those behaviors in undergraduate music students, and (b) to examine the influences of gender and instrument pl...

Warum singen wir so gerne miteinander? Sind Menschen glücklicher, die über Jahre und Jahrzehnte Mitglied in einem Chor sind? Ist Singen vielleicht sogar gesund? Singen ist weder aus der Evolution des Menschen noch aus seiner Entwicklung vom Säugling bis ins hohe Alter wegzudenken. Mehr noch: Gemeinsames Singen steigert das Wohlbefinden, stärkt Abwe...

Hearing disorders have been associated with occupational exposure to music. Musicians may benefit from non-amplified and low-intensity music, but may also have high risks of music-induced hearing loss. To compare the incidence of hearing loss (HL) and its subentities in professional musicians with that in the general population. We performed a hist...

Singing groups have been established in various hospitals as quasi-therapeutic social activities. The current study addresses the realization of these activities from the singing leaders' perspectives in these specific contexts. Standardized telephone interviews were conducted with 20 singing leaders (14 female). Transcriptions of records were vali...

Contemporary microtonal music poses considerable challenges to professional performers. Here, we investigate five renditions of Klaus Huber's "…Plainte…" for viola d'amore in third-tone tuning with respect to pitch accuracy at the acoustic level. The analysis also includes examining tones on open strings, which were played on the composer's instrum...

Contemporary microtonal music poses considerable challenges to professional performers. Here, we investigate five renditions of Klaus Huber’s “...Plainte...” for viola d’amore in third-tone tuning with respect to pitch accuracy at the acoustic level. The analysis also includes examining tones on open strings, which were played on the composer’s ins...

Instrumental music training has been shown to enhance cognitive processing beyond general intelligence. We examined this assumption with regard to working memory performance in primary school-aged children (N = 50; 7-8 years of age) within a longitudinal study design. Half of the children participated in an extended music education program with 45...

This study examined the effects of a school-based instrumental training program on the development of verbal and visual memory skills in primary school children. Participants either took part in a music program with weekly 45 min sessions of instrumental lessons in small groups at school, or they received extended natural science training. A third...

This chapter examines the influences of musical activities such as listening, singing, or dancing on the endocrine system. The underlying assumption is that psychological processes associated with musical experiences lead to changes in the hormonal systems of brain and body. It begins with a brief introduction to general questions of psychoneuroend...

Dancing has been associated with healing processes and care-giving since early times, but only in recent years has there been a growing and increased interest in the systematic research of its health benefits. The contributions of dancing to individuals' wellbeing and health can be appreciated from two perspectives. On the one hand, dance can be se...

Public health epidemiology aims at scientific descriptions of relationships between life conditions and public health in different groups of people. Such approaches suggest relationships between a given life condition and a specific public health problem. Thus, it can point at life conditions that may be of crucial importance to health. Epidemiolog...

Background: Amateur choral singing has been associated with a range of beneficial influences on perceived mental and physical well-being and health. However, it is unclear to what extent negative experiences exist that may be related to singing in choral societies. Aims: The main focus of this study was to explore negative experiences of longstandi...