To each her own.
Does your Spot have a favorite radio station?
Does she wish you'd turn it up or down, or off?
A growing body of research suggests that animals react to music as uniquely as humans. It can soothe or infuriate the soul, even lure one into an animalistic mood, as it were.
Our toy poodle Cocoa likes opera, especially if it goes above a soprano G. Once it reaches high C she's in ecstasy and can't resist howling along. At least I think it's ecstasy, but there's a fine line between ecstasy and agony, and I'm no scientist.
A similar phenomenon can at times also be experienced in the concert hall with humans, but again, I'm not naming names, and no one's complaining yet.
If pets had accurate horoscopes, I might be able to be more scientific about it, but my last dog took the most rejuventating naps to Simon & Garfunkel, and reacted to Paul Simon's musical evolution after their breakup by taking to the streets as the needle hit vinyl for "diamonds on the souls of her shoes..." Yet Garfunkel's later solo opuses (opi?) left him indifferent, and I suppose I can't blame him, but what a voice!
We don't have time to go into cats or goldfish, the subject of a later series of inquiries, as a more pressing question beckons:
What sort of musical proclivities do cows have?
For years, the Musical, Medical and Zoological Institute, founded in Holland in 2001 by Dr. Emile Aimervache, and spurred on by a generous grant from the International Milk Consortium, debated this very question at bi-annual conventions, to much derision and ridicule I might add, until the following video from the French countryside in 2011 vindicated them. Subsequently and precipitously, a Musicology/Animal Psychology Certificate Program was jointly launched by Oxford and L'École de Musique de Paris.
While much of Europe was simultaneously amusé and nonplussed, the Indian press expressed unconcealed, almost smug satisfaction that the West was finally warming to the souls of cows. Eager not to be surpassed by their Western counterparts, the National Sitar Ensemble, urged on by no less than President Pranab Mukherjee himself, began to explore the notion aggressively on a large herd of cows in the environs of New Delhi, with a variety of raga modes, at various times of the day and night... The research is ongoing.
In the meantime, enjoy this brief video:
THE EASIEST WAY TO GET TICKETS TO THE PHIL is online
(there are no online fees, and tax is included.)
You may also get tickets at our Box Office (5 Market Square, Pinehurst, open weekdays 10am-4pm), by calling the ever-friendly Sherry at 910-687-0287.
General admission tickets (seats pre-assigned) – cash or check only – are available by visiting any of our outside vendors around our local communities:
Heavenly Pines Fine Jewelry, 5 Dowd Circle, Pinehurst
Artist League of the Sandhills, 129 Exchange St, Aberdeen
Arts Council of Moore County, 482 E Connecticut Ave, Southern Pines
Nature’s Own, 95 Bell Avenue, S. Pines
Sandhills Winery, 1057 7 Lakes Dr, West End
The Country Bookshop, 140 NW Broad St, Southern Pines
The Given Outpost, 95 Cherokee Road, Given Outpost, Pinehurst