Kathryn Brickell Music is proud to offer violin lessons to our students in Brooklyn. We will be posting informative articles relating to violin instruction and violin lessons.
The following article is about music and eating.
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Music and Eating
If you have ever watched a movie or read a novel set in the Middle Ages, then you are probably familiar with the scene in which a group of musicians plays pleasant music to accompany mealtime in a large reception-area-like dining hall. And if you have ever been to a restaurant, then you are probably familiar with the practice of listening to music (either live or recorded) while you eat. In short, you are probably aware of the ancient and eternal link between eating and music. There are two reasons that I can think of for why this link exists. (1) Eating is a social event insofar as it allows two or more people to share a particular experience that of eating; and music is a social event insofar as it does the same. Therefore, music and eating go together naturally, just like television and eating or conversation and eating. (2) Perhaps the presence of music in dining areas reflects a certain belief about the effects of music on the digestive process. It is known that medieval scholars held the belief that soothing music had a positive effect on the digestive process. This belief is probably not unheard of today. Probably, the link between music and eating can be understood by a fusion of (1) and (2). And a third kind of more pessimistic belief that became apparent to me upon revision: that eating is a savage and inhuman type of behavior, akin to sleeping in its savagery, and in order to make it socially acceptable in a sophisticated sense it requires a fade of music or conversation or television to hide behind.