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Dear Martha, By Carlotta 05/7/02 06:07:18 AM

Date: 05/7/02 06:07:18 AM
Name: Carlotta
Email: Veritati@aol.com
Subject: Dear Martha,
Dear Martha,

Thank you for sharing the fascinating story about classical music in your home and your son's insistence on music, which seems like such an altogether natural demand.

Musical resonance--intensification of "sympathetic vibration." Societal cacophony and everyday dissonance of all sorts can easily drown out the harmonious chords that tend to otherwise resound through us.

Maybe you have also visited www.musictherapy.org, on the healing effects of music. I'm not familiar with this organization, but if the Interactive Metronome is helpful to children with an "arrhythmic" or a hyperactive tempo, this group's approach might also be beneficial.

I've never sought music as therapy, just as music, which is essential to my life. If it is therapy, then I've been self-medicating and blissing out on Chopin nocturnes, Beethoven sonatas and Mozart concertos for years.

My reservations about the "site" I "cite" relate not to music, but to the use of everything from the arts to animals as adjustment palliatives in the institutional wastelands that originally precipitated any need for therapy.

As long as vulnerable people are relegated to institutions such as schools, hospitals, nursing homes and other US economy profit centers, I think it would be wrong to deny the student-inmates or patient-inmates any possible salutary benefits of music, among other art forms.

Yet I'm reluctant, for example, to take my animals on trips to nursing homes, where elders can enjoy brief visits with them but in most cases cannot keep their own animal with them. They are invariably sad when they must say good-bye to the animal and their other visitors. Of course, nursing homes are not the country's only leper colonies, as the New York Times reported on April 29th in its front-page article on Seabrook Manor in Brooklyn, an adult "home for the mentally ill."

Like so many people's lives, my own is enriched by the immeasurable beauty of music and art, by nature in general and my animals in particular. I think it's wonderful that music has become an inseparable part of your son's life, not a curriculum lite music class that would end with a bell, and not a melodious one. How sad it is that the arts and so many other nonutilitarian elements of culture must be imported into the barren institutions that belie "American" civilization.

Carlotta

Music therapy, etc. By Martha 05/7/02 11:49:11 AM

Date: 05/7/02 11:49:11 AM
Name: Martha
Email: mulkie@rutchem.rutgers.edu
Subject: Music therapy, etc.
Thanks, Carlotta. Yes, I am very familiar with music therapy and music therapists. All music is, in a sense, therapeutic, but this is a special discipline, and certified music therapists tend to be few-and-far-between. To be a licensed music therapist, one must be proficient on two instruments (usually guitar and some keyboard), as well as have a decent singing voice. Music therapists tend to specialize in one area (stroke victims, children with developmental problems or speech delays, Alzheimer's, psychiatric disorders, etc.). People can have damage to both hemispheres of the brain, but still be able to respond or participate in music. Often people who have lost their speech due to a stroke are still able to sing. Music can address a lot of different problems, without the patient even being aware that he is receiving "therapy" (particularly useful when dealing with recalcitrant children!)

I myself have taught voice and music history for many years. But music therapy is quite a different discipline. These people will usually do whatever it takes to elicit a response from patients who may not respond to anything else, and they use every tool in their bag of tricks. Every special education school should have a music therapist on staff, but they seldom do -- partly because they are a rare breed, and also because there is a tendency not to regard music as an "academic" subject. Music may be seen as low priority by the school's administration, yet it may be the one thing that keeps the kids coming to school.

As you may have gathered, I have enormous respect for music therapists. And of course, when you homeschool, you can decide for yourself what is high priority in your child's curriculum.
Replying to:
Dear Martha,

Thank you for sharing the fascinating story about classical music in your home and your son's insistence on music, which seems like such an altogether natural demand.

Musical resonance--intensification of "sympathetic vibration." Societal cacophony and everyday dissonance of all sorts can easily drown out the harmonious chords that tend to otherwise resound through us.

Maybe you have also visited www.musictherapy.org, on the healing effects of music. I'm not familiar with this organization, but if the Interactive Metronome is helpful to children with an "arrhythmic" or a hyperactive tempo, this group's approach might also be beneficial.

I've never sought music as therapy, just as music, which is essential to my life. If it is therapy, then I've been self-medicating and blissing out on Chopin nocturnes, Beethoven sonatas and Mozart concertos for years.

My reservations about the "site" I "cite" relate not to music, but to the use of everything from the arts to animals as adjustment palliatives in the institutional wastelands that originally precipitated any need for therapy.

As long as vulnerable people are relegated to institutions such as schools, hospitals, nursing homes and other US economy profit centers, I think it would be wrong to deny the student-inmates or patient-inmates any possible salutary benefits of music, among other art forms.

Yet I'm reluctant, for example, to take my animals on trips to nursing homes, where elders can enjoy brief visits with them but in most cases cannot keep their own animal with them. They are invariably sad when they must say good-bye to the animal and their other visitors. Of course, nursing homes are not the country's only leper colonies, as the New York Times reported on April 29th in its front-page article on Seabrook Manor in Brooklyn, an adult "home for the mentally ill."

Like so many people's lives, my own is enriched by the immeasurable beauty of music and art, by nature in general and my animals in particular. I think it's wonderful that music has become an inseparable part of your son's life, not a curriculum lite music class that would end with a bell, and not a melodious one. How sad it is that the arts and so many other nonutilitarian elements of culture must be imported into the barren institutions that belie "American" civilization.

Carlotta