Music as Medicine: The History of Music Therapy since Antiquity

These books are companion volumes on the transformation, healing and well-being that may be brought about through music. Both books are the result of conferences on the history of medicine held in 1997, and each assembles a wide-ranging commentary on the therapeutic powers which have been ascribed to music, though they do so from complementary points of view. As the sub-title suggests 'Music as Medicine' focuses on the history of these therapeutic powers as they were known and used, either in reordering individuals or reordering the cosmos, from Antiquity to the 20th century. (It may be surprising to recall that Juliette Alvin, a professional cellist, formed the first music therapy organization in Britain, only as recently as 1958). The book is arranged chronologically in sections, beginning with the ancient literate tradition and the healing role of music in Antiquity, the Jewish/Muslim traditions, India and even, briefly, China before concentrating on the Western European tradition to the present day. Each section begins with an editorial overview which sets out the themes underlying the conceptualisation and explanation of music's therapeutic properties for the following chapters. Thus a history of the aims and techniques involved emerges clearly in terms of the history of human thought, with examination of music theorists such as Boethius and Ficino, famous cases of healing from David and Saul to Hugo van der Goes, and specific healing contexts such as love-sickness and tarantism (which provides almost the only example of musical notation to the found in either book). The final chapter brings us right up to date with information on the music therapy profession in modern Britain, with a useful list of dates and courses now available. By contrast 'Music in Cultural Contexts' focuses on the well-being that can be experienced as a result of participating in any type of musical or artistic performance taking place in contrasting cultures around the world. The chapters do not, perhaps come together to make such a coherent whole as in its companion volume described above, but they do include some wonderfully evocative descriptions of musical sounds and landscapes in the Bolivian Andes, as well as experiences of African music in ngoma healing and of music and trance in Tumbuka healing. Other chapters in the book include the use of music in 19th century German psychiatry, the treatment of erotic melancholy in the modern West, the influence of music and healing in Islam on Western medicine, dancing to kalela drums in Africa, and the attraction and curative properties of the inflected voice. As the editor observes, it seems that many traditional practices of healing and self-expression through music are inevitably bound up with histories of European global expansion, as for example, in the impact of mining on communities in the Andes and in Africa. She also points to the contrast between the use of drums for healing in Africa and the use of string instruments which can produce harmonies, in Europe. The final chapter explores music and medicine as sister disciplines through looking at the structure and contents of 'Music and Medicine', published in 1948, which, as its editors Dorothy Schullian and Max Schoen claimed, was the first scholarly attempt to address the historical and scientific aspects of music therapy from Antiquity to the present.

These two volumes provide much information and food for thought on the power of music to effect change, whatever its musical means, context and intentions. In doing so they also reflect the changes that have taken place in human consciousness, and underline the dramatic growth in the interdependence of music and medicine which has taken place largely since World War II.