Music for the heart: "Preferably Bach and Mozart"

Lisa Vogel studied departmental journalism with a focus on medicine and biosciences at Ansbach University and deepened her journalistic knowledge in the master's degree in multimedia information and communication. This was followed by a traineeship in the editorial team. Since September 2020 she has been writing as a freelance journalist for

More posts by Lisa Vogel All content is checked by medical journalists.

Music can lower blood pressure. But not every composition is suitable. Organist and cardiologist Prof. Hans-Joachim Trappe explains in a interview which music is particularly beneficial for the heart.

Prof. Dr. med. Hans-Joachim Trappe

The internist and cardiologist Hans-Joachim Trappe is director of the medical university clinic at Marienhospital Herne and professor for cardiology and internal medicine at the Ruhr University. After several years of organ training, he has been active as an organist since 1969.

Prof. Trappe, do you like techno music?

(Laughs) me? No. This is too much noise for me. For me music has to be melodic, it has to be catchy. For me, that doesn't apply to techno. But opinions differ.

Whether techno or classical: what happens when we listen to music?

Music is a process that occurs primarily physically using sound waves. The sound waves are picked up by the ear, passed on via nerve cells and then put together in the brain to create an audible experience. And this process leaves its mark.

What exactly is going on?

The cerebral cortex, the cerebral cortex, learns to recognize sounds. For example, with Beethoven's fifth symphony - dadada dum - everyone has heard it before. When the notes sound in this sequence, you immediately know what is coming next.

So the music arises in the head. But it affects more than just our brain, for example our heart.

Exactly. Music is able to influence our autonomic nervous system, i.e. the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves and thus our cardiovascular system. But not every music can do that. Two studies have shown that classical music in particular has this effect. The study participants who listened to classical music had significantly lower blood pressure after the experiment than before. The music of ABBA or the Beatles didn't have that effect.

Why is that?

It has to do with the type of music. For example, not all classical music works equally well. Bach, Mozart and Italian composers had the best effects. Bach, for example, composed, let's say, very “mathematical” music. The music is uniform, melodic. Beethoven's music, on the other hand, is rather impulsive. Fast, slow, loud, quiet - always alternating. This has no positive effect on the cardiovascular system.

What happens when we listen to Bach?

Researchers have found that the vessels widened under the influence of a Bach cantata, a song, and the blood pressure fell as a result. Recently a work that compared Mozart with the Beatles was published. Here, too, it was clearly shown that blood pressure and pulse rate improved significantly under Mozart - not with the Beatles.

Music therapy could be a good means of providing supportive treatment for cardiac patients.

Classical music quasi throttles the circulation. This could potentially help patients with high blood pressure. Perhaps one could even save drugs. But so far this is only a guess. More research must follow to clarify this.

What would be the next step?

So far one has only investigated how music works in healthy people. The next step would be to see what happens when you sonicate people with high blood pressure. It definitely can't be said yet that people should throw away their pills and listen to Bach instead. That would be dangerous.

How much music do you have to listen to for the effect to occur?

In our study, we found that the effects of Bach’s music occurred after just 20 minutes - and then lasted for several hours. So even after the music was off, the blood pressure was still significantly lower. How often and regularly one should listen to the pieces remains to be investigated.

Do the classics work the same for everyone?

I believe that individual preferences also play an important role in the effect. They influence the perception - and thus also the effect. Forcing someone to listen to music they don't like is unlikely to have a positive effect.

If music can have a positive effect, is there also an effect in the other direction?

Yes, there are indications for that too. Especially with psychiatric illnesses. Music can have negative effects here. That's why you should be more careful here. But I am not a psychiatrist.

In order to make the power of music usable and accessible for everyone, you have now recorded the third “Heart Tones” CD for the German Heart Foundation.

Together with the trumpeter Markus Mester from the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, I recorded some pieces in Altenberg Cathedral. The large churches or cathedrals have a corresponding volume of sound. The sound can unfold wonderfully. When selecting the pieces, we focused on those composers who were found to have a positive effect in the studies. With the CD we want to make the music accessible to more people.

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