Shakespeare said music was the ‘food of love'. But music can also be a healing agent and cure the sick and the infirm. No wonder that music therapy is growing popular. We are aware that the influence of music on people has been as progressive in the evolutions, as man himself and is evolving from entertainment to a newer, more vital form and becomes music, the healer.
As a healer, music has been recognised only in the last 40 years, its influence on the sick and the distressed has always been recognized, but never developed or properly understood. Even today, its healing or therapeutic effect is little understood. One cannot say that the music, in itself, is therapeutic. Yet the fact remains that music can heal, both physically and mentally and hence its rapid rise to prominence in the field of medicine.
It is said that most beneficial use of music has been in the mental field. Its unique influence on the emotions of mentally ill has been proved, time and again says Dr Jim Lawrie, whom I met during my trip to west. For those suffering from a double personality or for those who have retreated from the world of reality as well as those, suffering from excessive feelings of inferiority, shyness or fear, music has the unusual ability of drawing them back to sanity with the old disturbed condition, cast off gradually, he said.
According to Dr Sarah Brewer, the first step in rehabilitating these patients is a number of individual sessions with the highly specialised "Music Therapist', who besides being a qualified doctor, has also specialised in "psychiatry and music". With a melancholic touch, she said some of the patients do not react at all, even after repeated sessions. They are the failures common to every branch of medicine. But quite often the passive listeners, becomes aggressive or highly excited, this situation becomes the fore-runner of recovery. Virtually it reveals, that he is entering the state of change, to eventually reach a healthy mental level.
In another sphere of medicine, music has been used to surmount fear and pain. The fear of the dental chair, which is almost universal, is eased through the soothing effects of music. According to doctors, music therapy has two aspects, one the music itself with the lessons, practice of techniques and the use of instruments, to use various moods and draw out the patient, from his own private world, and keep him threaded to reality. The second aspect is the human relationship, which develops in the course of the activity.
We became aware that the success of the music therapy depends to a great extent on the sensitivity of the patient to music and this sensitivity may be quite unrelated to the knowledge of music. We should understand clearly one thing, says Dr Judith Hall. The greatest achievement lies in the fact that music therapy may develop and often does develop, a new interest and ability in the patient, after his return to normal life. Is not music, one of the mysteries, which can bring, satisfaction and enrichment throughout the life?
(The writer is a well known music critic who has won awards both in India and abroad for propagation of classical arts and music)
