HISTORY OF MUSIC

IN HEALTH
INTRODUCTION TO MUSIC THERAPY
INSTRUCTOR: RACHAEL FINNERTY
[email protected]
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Be familiar with different time period’s use of music
for health
• Be familiar with historical content related to the
profession of music therapy
HISTORY OF USE OF MUSIC
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am18ZxKgi_g
EVIDENCE OF MUSIC OVER TIME
• oldest confirmed musical instrument: 45,000 yr-old bone flute, discovered in an
excavation site
(Southwest Germany)
• Flutes, rattles, whistles, and percussion instruments made from ivory or bones
(dating 30,000 years have
been found).
• Rock engravings as old as 16,000 years depict dancers, implying the presence of
music.
• Ancient set of wooden pipes dating about 4000 years of age found in Ireland—tuned
in octaves, (oldest
wooden instruments ever found in Europe (O’Dwyer, 2004)).
• The oldest still playable music instrument is a 9000-year-old flute found in
China (Zhang et al., 1999).
• First evidence of musical notation around 2500 B.C. (cuneiform tablets in the
Sumerian culture of ancient
Mesopotamia)
THE ROLE OF MUSIC
• Evidence of instruments over 40,000 years old
suggests music has served a meaningful purpose.

-Healing Traditions
-Battles
-Bonding
-Emotional Catharsis
PRELITERATE CULTURES
• Characterized by the lack of systems of
written communication.
• Can only speculate about the use of music
in health during these times.
• Densmore (1954) reports that healing songs by Native Americans are characterized
by irregular rhythms and different classes of songs and dances are associated with
different types of healing requirements for different illnesses.
• In certain preliterate societies it is postulated that healing songs originated
directly
from superhuman sources to the members of society (Merriam, 1964).
• The medicine man or woman or shaman made the decisions of treatment and
possessed the repertoire of appropriate songs.
• Questions remain if music was used to petition a superhuman spirit to heal, or if
the
healing power were in the music itself.
EARLY CIVILIZATIONS 5000 – 6000 YEARS AG0
• larger groups of people living in more or less permanent settlements who share
common customs and belief systems.
ANCIENT EGYPT 5000 BC

Medicine during the time period of the pharaonic dynasties, starting around 3000
B.C., is
among the oldest documented practices of medicine (Finger, 2000).
● Magical, religious and rational components of medicine existed side by side.
● However, a healer’s treatment philosophy would generally focus on only one.
● Egyptian priest/physicians referred to music as medicine for the soul, often
included
chants as part of medical practice
● In Babylonian culture during their high period (c. 1850 B.C.),music was often
included in
healing ceremonies to appease the gods (Davis, 2008) as illness was viewed as
punishment
from the gods.
ANCIENT GREECE 600BC
• music upon character and manners was
highly accepted.
• Music had force over thought, emotion
and physical health
• Healing shrines and temples had hymn
specialists
• Music was prescribed to the mentally ill
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1aAu
naw1GA
PYTHAGORUS CIRCA 500BC
• Considered music as a model for the harmonic proportions of the universe.
• Physics of music paralleled the physics of the universe.
• Proposed that, by listening to music, one could comprehend and retrace the outer
“physical”
harmony of the universe, which would lead to a state of inner “mental” harmony and
reestablish balance in the body and help to cure mental disorders.
• He had a marked preference for stringed instruments and warned his followers to
not listen to
flutes or cymbals because of their potentially unbalancing influence on the mind.
He was
credited in his time with curing illnesses of spirit, body and soul with specially
composed
music, drawing on the seven modes of the Greek modal scale system (Kahn, 2001;
Thaut,
2005).
PLATO CIRCA 400 BC
• Some repetition of pythagorean thought.
• He considered music higher than other arts.
• He emphasized the ethical and educational dimensions of music, which he
considered important in (especially for the young), to keep the soul clean and pure
(Pelosi, 2010).
• He called for a critical role of music in educating the youth in a well-ordered
society in
his famous work “The Republic”: “The overseers must be watchful against its
insensible corruption. They must throughout be watchful against innovations in
music...to counter the established order. . . For the modes of music are never
disturbed without unsettling of the most fundamental political and social
conventions” (Hamilton and Cairns, 1961, pp. 665–666).
ARISTOTLE (CIRCA 400BC) – A PUPIL OF PLATO
• His therapeutic concept of music was based on the notion that music can create in
more modern terms emotional catharsis in mental states that need release from
unhealthy inner tension or dysfunctional hyper-reactive mood states.
• He spoke about music’s ability to communicate emotional states: “Music directly
imitates passions or states of the soul. . .when one listens to music that imitates
a
certain passion, he becomes imbued with the same passion; and if over a long
period of time he habitually listens to music that rouses immoral passions, his
whole character will be shaped to an immoral form” (Grout, 1988, pp. 7–8).
“FIRST” GREEK PHYSICIAN TO ESTABLISH
MEDICINE IN ROME
• Asclepiades of Bythnia (124–40 B.C.)
• First physician in history who created a health and disease theory resembling
what is known
today as molecular medicine.
• A pioneer in the humane treatment of patients with mental disorders, who were
traditionally
treated harshly because they were considered cursed or possessed by evil spirits.
• Reported to move patients out of dark confinements and use work therapy, healthy
diet,
massages, and music therapy (Yapijakis, 2009).
• He referred to the special effects of Greek modal scales for healing, for example
the Phrygian
mode—which would correspond to the medieval and modern Dorian mode—to encourage
changes from somber and melancholic states (Gonzalez, 2012).
CAELIUS AURELIANUS - 500 AD
• lived in North Africa in the Roman province of Numidia,(Today Algeria).
• In one of his works, Medicinales Responsiones, he recommends massage, bed rest,
heat, dietary alterations and music against physical pain, e.g., sciatica.
• He also warns against the indiscriminate use of music, since this could cause
madness
THE MIDDLE AGES (C.500 – 1450 AD)
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Greek theories still dominated the practice of

medicine (and, music in medicine).
The theory of the four humors—black bile, yellow
bile, phlegm, blood - Illnesses were thought to be
caused by imbalances between those four elements.

Saint Basil believed music to be a positive vehicle

for sacred emotion.

Hymns were considered effective against certain

unspecified respiratory diseases.
BOETHIUS (MIDDLE AGES) CIRCA 480-524
ROMAN CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHER
• Formulated the structure of medieval music: Book - De Institutione Musica.
• Subdivided the study and practice of music into three hierarchical levels.
• Highest level he called musica mundana, referring back to the ancient
philosophical concepts of proportions of the
celestial bodies found in the physical proportions of musical acoustics. This
concept of musical science, credited to
Pythagoras, considers music mostly a mathematical concept of harmony in proportions
and numbers.
• Second level is called musica humana: music as a reflection of harmony of the
human body and spiritual harmony.
• Lowest level, musica instrumentalis: audible music and is performed by singers
and instrumentalists, who,
however, are ex- cluded from a true understanding of musical science and are of
servile rank to scholars exploring
the other two levels (Chadwick, 1981).
• Boethius also makes reference to the curative power of music, albeit mostly in
connection with morality and
character: “Music is part of us, and either ennobles’ or degrades our behavior”
(Schrade, 1947, p. 188).
MUSIC & EDUCATION
• The sixth century is also the time when music made its official entry into one
of the most influential medieval treatises on education as part of the
quadrivium (mathematics, geometry, astronomy, music), which together
with the more practical disciplines of the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, logic)
dominated classical learning for centuries.
THE RENAISSANCE (1300 –
1600)
• Advances in anatomy, physiology &
clinical medicine marked the beginning
of the scientific approach to medicine.
• Treatment of disease still based on 4
humors
• Physicians prescribed music as a
preventative medicine.
BAROQUE PERIOD 1580-1750
- MEDICINE CONTINUES TO BE INFORMED BY THE FOUR HUMORS

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Athanasius Kircher circa (1684) German Jesuit scholar and polymath: Book(Phonurgia
Nova),laid out the foundation for a therapeutic music style that he called in
German
Iatromusik.
Iatromusik: bring the concepts of musica mundana and musica humana together.
The therapeutic mechanism of Iatromusik is based on vibrations. The vibrating air
sets
the “corpuscles” of the body into vibration. The bad humors of the body (black and
yellow
bile) are shaken lose by the vibrations and can escape through the pores of the
skin.
Transmitted manuscripts of Iatromusik show a variety of melodic themes with figured
bass—typical for the Baroque style—on which the musician should improvise, choosing
different types of tempi, rhythms, dynamics, expressions, and durations for the
total
improvisation to match appropriately the music to specific states of illness
(Russell, 1979).
ERNST ANTON NICOLAI (CIRCA 1745)
- GERMAN PHYSICIAN
●

Emphasized the psychological-affective effects of music on the human mind.

These psychological experiences will exert physiological effects on the rest of the
body.

Mind-body dualism, (in reverse from Kircher’s body–mind trajectory to a mind-body

effect).

Music works therapeutically primarily on the psyche, which in turn will affect the
physiological
state of the body.
RICHARD BROCKLESBY (CIRCA 1749)
- LONDON PHYSICIAN
• Ordering the passions can be an important therapeutic tool to treat mania and
other
acute mental disorders. He also included Plato’s (and the Pythagorean and
Aristotelian) appeal to the power of music to build character and moral values.
18TH CENTURY WRITINGS ABOUT MT

Columbian magazine,
1789, unknown author
“Music Physically
Considered”

Discusses principles
currently applied in MT

Ie) importance of a
trained practitioner
MODERN MEDICINE (1800S – NOW)
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Scientific Methodology
What happened to music in medicine?
Big Pharma
Evidence Based Practice
Re-Active opposed to Pro-Active
19C ACCOUNTS
OF MUSIC IN
EDUCATION &
MEDICINE

• Articles in music journals, medical journals,

psychiatric periodicals, & medical dissertations
( music to treat physical & mental health )
• 1832 + – music programs in schools for the
blind / with disabilities
• 1874 – physician James Whittaker – Article Music
as Medicine ( music affects the physical,
psychological, & sociocultural
ADVANCES IN STUDYING THE BRAIN
• computerized tomography (CT) – or computerized axial tomography (CAT) –
EMI(Electric and Music Industry) Laboratories in 1972
• MRI ( magnetic resonance imaging ) Clinical use 1980’s
• fMRI (Functional magnetic resonance imaging) Clinical use 1990’s
• EEG (Electroencephalography) (1930’s )
• Neurotransmitter / hormones
SUMMARY
• Music has historically been recorded as an important contributor to health
and wellbeing
• Music has historically been used by ‘medical practitioners’
• Even in the dawn of modern medicine, writings continued to support the
health benefits of music, even though it was no long considered a part of
modern medicine practice.
• New research tools have provided further evidence for the health benefits of
music, allowing experiences to be less antedotal and more in alignment with
modern medicine.