| Author |
Comment |
cyn38
Registered
User
Posts: 58
(7/21/01 3:11:32
am)
Reply
|
Music Making and
Wellness
I was going to put this information under Hannah's thread wherein
she asked for advice regarding music therapy. It's worthy of it's
own topic, though, and branches out from her
needs...
Probably everyone at this site is aware by now that
I am a nurse. I work in a major pediatric hospital as the charge
nurse of an operating room. It's work that I love, and it gives me
time for all my musical adventures
I
was doing some medical reading the other day and happened across
this:
"Research has proven that exposure to music at an early
age can profoundly affect a child's development. Now, new studies
show benefits for senior citizens as well - with music helping to
improve their health and well-being. Research shows that teaching
healthy elderly people to play music decreases their anxiety,
depression and loneliness.
Almost everything is involved in
musical skill - physical coordination, mental concentration, memory
skills, visual and aural ability. The entire brain is involved in
making music. Every one of those black dots on a page of music is a
set of instructions to a group of muscles. When an older person
takes up an instrument, they cannot fail to improve their lives.
They may never get to Carnegie Hall, but they cannot fail. Age is
not a barrier to learning and learning keeps the mind and muscles
alert.
It has also been found that learning a musical
instrument has changed older men and women's auditory physiology,
making listening to music even more enjoyable. Psychologists have
studied what happens when an ordinary person sits down at the piano,
or picks up a violin or clarinet (and I'll add cello to the
list)--and they are amazed at what happens. When a musician reaches
a fast passage, the number of individual motor actions running in
the brain indicates that the process of performing the music is
automatic. This activity "exercises" the brain. Sounds can also
positively change your brain. Some hospitals have patients in
critical care units listen to classical music. One doctor reports
that a half hour of music produced the same effects as TEN
MILLIGRAMS OF VALIUM!
Music has the power to lower your pulse
and blood pressure and can bring down anxiety."
I use music
every day in my nursing. I work with children, and the most
effective tool I have is music. As we take a child into surgery,
they are understandably frightened, even when thoroughly prepared. I
let my teenage patients choose a CD to listen to as they go to sleep
(they LOVE that), and I rock and sing to my little ones. Yes, I know
the Barney song, and just about every other child's song you can
imagine. It works like a dream. They sing with me, or just listen,
and within seconds they're asleep and we're on with the
case.
Music is power!
--cyn
cynsymphony@aol.com Edited by: cyn38
at: 7/21/01 4:14:29 am
|
RebeccaCello
Registered User
Posts: 101
(7/21/01 5:02:51 am)
Reply
|
Re: Music Making
and Wellness
There was an article in the BBC Music magazine a while back that
argued that listening to Mozart can increase your I.Q.!!!
I
|
Nicholas
Anderson
Registered
User
Posts: 90
(7/22/01 2:29:43
pm)
Reply
|
Re: Music Making
and Wellness
Dear Cyn,
It's good to read your compassionate and nurturing
comments. You bring a lot of sensitivity to your interactions, and
are obviously very good at what you do.
I totally agree about
teaching the cello to older people. In addition to my high-achieving
younger cello students, who are doing things like being principal in
the youth orchestra or earning top scores in the state school music
ratings (NYSSMA), I always make room for a couple of adults,
including "seniors," with whom I love to work. I'm now teaching the
most wonderful 80-year-old man, who played cello in high school but
then put it aside for decades, (though he still has his cello from
those earlier years - a beautiful old German one!). We have a
terrific time, and it's a great friendship as well as musical growth
experience. Back when I was in California, I started a woman in her
mid-70's on the cello, and we had several productive and delightful
years of lessons. She even did one of my whole weekend cello
seminars! (Along with the professionals, teachers, amateurs and
students of all ages.) I really love older people, and find that
they add a very special dimension to my life.
Apropos of what
you were saying about the "music therapy" aspect of all this, I was
thinking of posting the following on that previous thread, but
decided otherwise; however, you've provided a better opportunity.
There's a branch of this that fascinates me, because I feel it's one
of the most important and also most neglected uses of music in a
healing sense. A few years ago I found out about a program in which
music is used to help people who are dying - as part of the
death-bed vigil, or at the very moment of death. We all know about
hospice, Kubler-Ross, etc., but this is an extension of that, and of
music therapy, as a kind of spiritual context for the actual
transition. The procedure is called "Music Thanatology," and was
developed by a musician named Therese Schroeder-Sheker. It's easiest
if I quote from the introduction to an article she
wrote:
"'Infirmary music' was an intimate expression of
French monastic medicine in eleventh century Cluny, and anticipated
the holism of modern hospice and palliative-medical movements by
almost 800 years. Today, while no longer an expression of any
specific institutional religion, music-thanatology ('thanatos' means
'death') is nevertheless concerned with the possibility of a blessed
death and the gift that conscious dying can bring to the fullness of
life.
"Therese Schroeder-Sheker began tending the dying with
music 21 years ago. She defines 'music-thanatology' as 'a palliative
medical modality employing prescriptive music to tend the complex
physical and spiritual needs of the dying.' As founder of the
Chalice of Repose Project in Missoula, Montana, she works with
music-thanatology interns to integrate and model contemplative and
clinical values in daily practice. During the past year and a half,
18 music-thanatology interns have attended more than 320 death-bed
vigils in hospitals, hospices, geriatric homes, and private home
settings. Their work has been particularly effective for people
dying of cancer and other slow degenerative diseases, respiratory
illnesses, AIDS, end-stage dementia and Alzheimer's.
"A
critical recent development involves patients about to be removed
from mechanical life-support systems. While the medical ethical
issues of euthanasia and patient autonomy engender serious debates,
Chalice workers offer patients, their loved ones, and health-care
providers alike an important healing option at the end of
life."
Also, this quote from her actual article:
"In
its clinical focus, it includes all of the characteristics of music
therapy, but differs from it because it is solely concerned with the
complex needs of the dying. The dying person is most often weakened,
sometimes even comatose, and should not 'spend' energy making new
connections. In music-thanatology, the patient only receives. *The
entire surface of the skin can become an extension of the ear,* thus
enabling the patient to absorb infirmary music, creating the
possibility for even deeper emotional, mental and spiritual
reception.... The sole focus is to help the person move toward
completion and *to unbind* from anything that prevents, impedes, or
clouds a tranquil passage. Each person receives the music
differently, and on a variety of levels: physically, emotionally,
mentally or spiritually. Music-thanatology is a contemplative
practice with clinical applications."
It seems that they play
only very soothing music, live rather than recorded, and mainly
voice or harp. It's not designed to be stimulating or like a concert
in any way, but the music is very carefully chosen for specific
therapeutic effects. I would think the cello would be a natural for
a situation like this, and it's something that I'd be extremely
interested in being a part of someday; I've only been unable to
manage it so far due to my heavy schedule of concerts and
teaching.
To me, this brilliant and creative use of music is
particularly valuable because as a culture, human beings are
terrified of death, and will do almost anything to distance
themselves from it, even though it's something that every single one
of us will have to face. It's true that we don't choose the day of
our birth or the day of our death. It may be that changing the
nature of our relationship with death and its entire process would
benefit us enormously, both in a personal and cultural sense. I'm
reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Emerson: "A man of
thought is willing to die, willing to live; I suppose because he has
seen the thread on which the beads are strung, and perceived that it
reaches up and down, existing quite independently of the present
illusions. A man of affairs is afraid to die, is pestered with
terrors, because he has not this vision. Yet the first cannot
explain it to the second."
In any case, I'm not saying all
this to belabor the obvious; but because even though everyone
*should* be aware of Music Thanatology, I'm not sure how many
actually are.
-Nick
|
Dimitri
Vee
Registered
User
Posts: 19
(7/22/01 4:52:57
pm)
Reply
|
.. but is it the
"music" or the underlying message ?
Hi everybody,
Just to say that it's impossible not to agree
with the
previous posters on the effect of music on wellness
in general. How many many times has music held our
hand in
times of emotional need.
But the contrary is also
true...there is music that can infuriate,
upset, enrage,
depress...
( I can see it now.. a misled amateur thanatologist
putting
on acid rock thereby hastening the patient's demise..!
)
It seems that music is just the neutral medium ( let's
not
get into McLuhan now ) over which powerful messages
that
act directly on our subconscious can be sent... so long as
you know the "language".
Do you think this "language" is
unique ? Has anybody been
in a situation where an audience was
totally untouched because
the musical "language" was unknown ?
Have you ever performed
a piece without understanding the
"language"..?
( sorry for the interrogation ... I want to
know .. I want to KNOW !)
cheers to
all
Dimitri
|
Anna
List
Registered
User
Posts: 58
(7/22/01 7:06:43
pm)
Reply
|
Listening to
Mozart and my IQ...
So that's why I'm such a genius...
How about the Rolling
Stones?
Anna
|
RebeccaCello
Registered User
Posts: 102
(7/23/01 1:49:21 am)
Reply
|
Savants
There was a documentary on tv earlier this year about savants (as
in Rainman) that featured a young bloke of about twenty who despite
being autistic, totally blind and having such severe learning
difficulties that he could barely count up to 8 was an amazing
pianist. He made his debut at the Barbican at the age of 9!!!!!!Did
anyone see it?
|
cyn38
Registered
User
Posts: 59
(7/23/01 10:13:17
am)
Reply
|
Re:
Savants
Didn't see the show, Rebecca, but your mention of savants just
brought something to mind.
We have an older gentleman in our
symphony chorus who is a true savant. He must be on the functionally
higher end of most autistics. He holds a job as a janitor, has a
family, is extremely responsibile, and a genuine genius.
One
night after a particularly wonderful concert at the Grand Teton
Music Festival, (wherein we'd performed Beethoven 9 with Eiji Oue),
Peter and I took opportunity to stand outside the concert hall,
which is on the slope of the Teton Mountains. We looked at the stars
together and visited about his earliest musical
beginnings.
His mother was a gifted pianist, and desired to
share music with him from his infancy. Music seemed to soothe him,
and she found that in his otherwise troubled days and nights, he
would calm immediately with classical music. She would stack several
classical LP's on the phonograph in his room and put him in his
crib. He was thereby immersed in literally hours of music at a time.
He recounts listening and remembering every note he heard, and
crying when the music went off. To this day, there isn't music you
can mention to him that he can't begin singing the main theme
to.
He's got photographic memory, too. Because I'm on the
board of directors, I'm aware that he doesn't have enough money to
purchase his music (it's an option, not a requirement), so when we
recently did the Verdi Requiem, I purchased music for Peter. I
didn't just get the chorus parts however, I bought him the full
orchestral score identical to the one Keith (Lockhart) uses. Peter
was in heaven. He knew the score as well as Keith. That may have
been the best, most appreciated gift I've ever given in my life
The music this man possesses in his little finger, outshines
everything I've spent my life working for. I'm happy we're friends
and am grateful for the gentle influence of this man.
--cyn
cynsymphony@aol.com |
RebeccaCello
Registered User
Posts: 104
(7/24/01 10:39:19 am)
Reply
|
Amazing
That's amazing, so does he only need to hear a piece of music once
to remember it forever? A scientist featured in the programme I saw
about savants believed that they pocessed their abilities because
the language part of their brain was impaired. He argued that often
people who suffer damage to this part of the brain can develope
extraordinary abilities in art, maths or music. The young pianist
was mindblowing; he only needed to hear a piece of music once in
order to play it!!!!! The programme also centered on a young artist
(whose name I can't remember either) who could draw absolutely
anything. This may not sound very impressive but they tested him by
taking him on a ten minute helicopter ride over London and when they
landed he sat down and drew everything that was contained within the
ten mile radius...perfectly!!!!!At the age of 8 he had been taken to
see the professer of the Royal College of art who had accessed him
as being the most talented person he had ever met!!!!!!
Also,
speaking of genius's apparently Jackie duPre could play anything and
when she was in Russia she mastered the balalika within minutes in
her first attempt.
| |
Internet Cello
Society Forums
Email This To a Friend
Topic Commands (Moderator
only)