Music and art as therapy
by Bob on March 9, 2007
People in general suffer from all sorts of maladies in life. These days they take pills, have all kinds of tests, some invasive, and perhaps feel terrible.
Recently, Dr. Michael Crawford has written on and had a research study at Imperial College, London, on the use of Music in treating and assuaging Schizophrenia.
Talwar N; Crawford MJ; Maratos A; Nur U; McDermott O; Procter S. (2006).
"Music Therapy for in-patients with schizophrenia: exploratory randomised controlled trial", British Journal of Psychiatry. 189: 405-409.
I had the pleasure of corresponding with Dr. Crawford on the topic and he tells me that the next project they will work on is the use of Art Therapy in treating psychosis.
One is reminded of Robert Burton's statements in the 1500s about music its use in curing/soothing mental illness in his "Anatomy of Melancholia".
cf. The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton, subsection 3, on and
after line 3480, "Music a Remedy":
But to leave all declamatory speeches in praise [3481]of divine music, I will confine myself to my proper subject: besides that excellent power it hath to expel many other diseases, it is a sovereign remedy against [3482] despair and melancholy, and will drive away the devil himself. Canus, a Rhodian fiddler, in [3483]Philostratus, when Apollonius was inquisitive to know what he could do with his pipe, told him, "That he would make a lover more enamoured, a religious man more devout." Ismenias the Theban, [3484]Chiron the centaur, is said to have cured this and many other diseases by music alone: as now they do those, saith [3485]Bodine, that are troubled with St. Vitus's Bedlam dance ...
One is also reminded of the counterpoint of a 1929 American musician's union advert, arguing against mechanically produced v. live music in theatres ! See these links courtesy of The Ad*Access Project, funded by the Duke Endowment "Library 2000" Fund at Duke University Library ...
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/adaccess/R/R02/R0206-150dpi.jpeg
http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess.R0206/
... and some of the text copied out below.
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Canned Music on Trial, 1929 advertisement by the American Federation of Musicians - The statement from this 1929 advertisement in the Pittsburgh Press, a newspaper, said, in part:
[picture of a can with a label saying 'Canned Music -- Big Noise Brand -- Guaranteed to produce no intellectual or emotional reaction whatever' ]
Canned Music On Trial. This is the case of Art vs. Mechanical Music in theatres. The defendant stands accused in front of the American people of attempted corruption of musical appreciation and discouragement of musical education. Theatres in many cities are offering synchronised mechanical music as a substitute for Real Music. If the theatre-going public accepts this vitiation of its entertainment program a deplorable decline in the Art of Music is inevitable. Musical authorities know that the soul of the Art is lost in mechanisation. It cannot be otherwise because the quality of music is dependent on the mood of the artist, upon the human contact, without which the essence of intellectual stimulation and emotional
rapture is lost.
Is Music Worth Saving? No great volume of evidence is required to answer this question. Music is a well-nigh universally beloved art. From the beginning of history, men have turned to musical expression to lighten the burdens of life, to make them happier. Aborigines, lowest in the scale of savagery, chant their song to tribal gods and play upon pipes and shark-skin drums. Musical development has kept pace with good taste and ethics throughout the ages, and has influenced the gentler nature of man more powerfully perhaps than any other factor. Has it remained for the Great Age of Science to snub the Art by setting up in its place a pale and feeble shadow of itself?
-- American Federation of Musicians (Comprising 140,000 musicians in the United States and Canada), Joseph N. Weber, President. Broadway, New York City."
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As a corollary, one also wonders if there might be a difference in outcomes for the population of patients with recorded music versus live music performed in situ with visual and aural stimulations.
The difference between praying, mantras, and music and the flow of art and beauty and finally health and happiness is all very minimal one imagines.
One hopes.