Schweine kleine Nachtmusik

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...

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