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An epiphany came when he was 24 and acting in a soap opera, “The Doctors.” In one scene Mr. Baldwin’s character enters a hotel room and turns on the radio before he is to be killed. The casting director, Roger Sturtevant, happened to be on the set.

“Music comes on, this evocative music,” Mr. Baldwin said. “And I turn to Roger, and he was laughing.” “What’s so funny,” Mr. Baldwin asked. “He looked at me like I was a complete idiot. And he just said. ‘It’s Berlioz’s ‘Symphonie Fantastique,’ ‘The March to the Scaffold.’ Everybody knows that.’ And I didn’t know that, and I felt like an idiot that I didn’t know that. And that was the beginning.”

Mr. Baldwin said he started listening to classical music on the radio in his car as he looked for work in Los Angeles. “When you’re job hunting in L.A., you could be driving three, four hours a day,” he said. If he pulled up to a studio before the piece was over, he would call the station to find out what it was. Sometimes he would wait for the end and show up late. He began collecting records.

“I never turned back,” he said.

You can read more about Alec Baldwin and what’s he’s doing with (for) classical music here.

Maybe Mozart is good for premature babies, but not for me? If I listen will my energy level be lower?

A group of Israeli doctors have plunged into this long-running debate with a small study that found the soothing sounds of the 18th century composer may help premature babies grow faster.

Doctors at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center measured the energy expenditure of 20 infants born pre-term while listening to Mozart in their incubator. They compared that figure with the amount of energy they expended without the music. But the scientists did not test a control group to measure the energy used by babies who didn’t listen to Mozart at all.

Among the babies in the study, the findings showed Mozart lowered the quantity of energy they used, meaning the babies may be able to increase their weight faster.

RTWT

Of course there was also this:

Dr. Arthur Eidelman, a retired former head of pediatrics at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek hospital who did not participate in the research, praised the new study but did not credit Mozart for the positive results.

“What’s unique about Mozart is it’s rhythmical, the range of decibel level is minimal,” Eidelman said. “One could almost make the case that appropriate rap music may do the same thing if you have it within the right range of volume.”