Would you play pigs the Beatles (Piggies) or Black Sabbath (War Pigs)?
Classical music, it's just so useful. One day it's bringing youngsters together, the next day it's frightening them away. It's played to babies to make them better at thinking, and played to adults on the pretext that it will stop them thinking. And now, apparently, it's being played to pigs to make them better pigs - well, fatter ones, at any rate, which to my mind amounts to the same thing.
This latest addition to the soon-to-be-completed "101 ways to make classical music useful" is the brainchild of Vietnamese pig farmer Nguyen Chi Cong. With 22 years in the trade, Mr Cong is convinced that playing his livestock twice-daily doses of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert over the last six years has made his pigs happier and heavier, suggesting that the music's soothing effects are responsible.
At the time all this music was written, of course, no one said anything about it being soothing. Intended more as the food of love (or to nourish other spiritual needs), if you'd told Beethoven that you liked his symphonies because they aided digestion, he'd probably have called you a Schwein and punched you in the mouth.
But you can hardly blame a pig for its philistinism (no more than you could blame Beethoven for being pig-headed), and in these days when everything must be put to some use in order to justify its existence, it's gratifying to know that I might one day find some Chopin in my pork chops. So what musical pearls would you cast before these swine?
