What is music therapy?

Music therapy, as its term itself indicates, refers to the implementation of music as a therapeutic means. The ways in which this can be done are multiple, as well as the context and the subject with which one works.

The therapeutic effects of music have been known for a long time. Music, in its expressive aspect, is present within primitive peoples, in many cases singing, percussion, and later the creation of instruments are a fundamental part of their culture. Music is often part of rituals and involves a deeper and more spiritual mode of communication.

A distinction is made between receptive and active music therapies. The former emphasizes musical listening as a therapeutic mode and the latter on production.

According to art therapist Jean Pierre Klein, the healing powers of listening to music were praised as early as the 19th century. This had the potential to excite emotions or produce tranquility. The effect of music on babies and already during pregnancy, for example, is known. And in cases of highly aroused patients, it can function as a means of inducing calm.

According to this author, there are therapies such as that of sound engineer J. Jost who create a program in which they prescribe different types of music seeking a specific effect on the subject. Three short excerpts from different works are prescribed in each session. The first corresponds to the state in which the subject is, in order to produce a certain catharsis. The second work by neutralizing that emotion, and the third guides you in the desired direction.

Active music therapy, according to the Benenzon model, can be applied individually or in groups and incorporates different ways of producing sounds in an expressive and communicative way. Body percussions, incorporation of language, instrumental percussions, improvisations, etc. are alternated. Music is thus transformed into a communicative production that does not require the verbal, sinking into deeper roots and allowing the emotional world to emerge. In patients with serious language impairment, for example, it is an extremely rich pathway for expression and bond creation.

Through music, a bond and bond with the other is established. Question and answer, without the need to speak. And this exchange in itself has therapeutic effects.

Voice work is also interesting in this context. Vocalization is an expressive mode that transports us to the baby's first moments in the world. The crying, the guttural sounds, the experimentation that the infant goes through prior to the acquisition of language. It implies reconnecting with this communicational possibility, which also appeals to the other as receiver and interpreter of that message.

Music has been part of human culture since ancient times. To give it a place from a therapeutic point of view is to recognize it as a fundamental production and creation for human existence, giving it back the participation that corresponds to it.

If we conceive of health as integral, this includes creative and spiritual development, it includes what is part of our humanity, expressive resources that ontogenetically and phylogenetically form part of our existence from the beginning.

Music thus becomes a link, a link, a transforming, subjectivizing tool. Subtle production and perception that communicates beyond words and that connect us with our cultural heritage, making us part of something collective, while allowing us to individualize ourselves, express ourselves subjectively.

 

 

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