Music therapy: applications and evidence

Music Therapy

In the reading of "sound and symbol," the writer was extremely expressive in his opinions of the significance of tone and its quality. Zuckerkandl (1956) stated:

Melodies consist of tones. Tones are events in the external world, natural phenomena, and parts in the great whole of external nature, to investigate the general laws and connections of which is the task of natural science, especially of physics. Acoustics is the branch of physics that is concerned with tones as natural phenomena. Vibration and frequency, wave and waveforms, medium and manner of propagation, and the special and general natural laws that these phenomena obey these are the things concerning which acoustics formulates questions.

Here Zuckerkandl points out some valid points. When one considers music and its construction, one should understand the bigger picture. To actually see the science of it all, to consider the components in a scientific sense bring in all together. Zuckerkandl refers to tone and acoustics in the sense of physics and there expression consisting in natural law. I agree with the idea of the structure being science based, thinking in these terms allows one to give reasoning to its history and presence.

What our senses show us is a part of the outside world and, as such, belongs in the closed context of physical nature. The nonphysical- thoughts exist only in a consciousness, in an inner world, my own or that of some other living creature; it can never be the object of direct sensory perception (Zuckerkandl, 1956).

Not only is it significant to realize that perceptions differ from individual to individual as stated above it is important to try not to generalize perceptions from self to all individuals. To generalize these perceptions take way there underlying nature state of being. (Zuckerkandl, 1956) also state that nothing in the physical event corresponds to the tone as a musical event. I believe that this instills the importance of looking at them individually, to try to avoid the compulsion to group them together, they occur separate of each other but coexist in the same moment. Actually it could be likened to a partnership, they are not the same and my have different qualities but they work together to create something amazing.

When we hear a melody, we hear things that have no counterpart in physical nature" (Zuckerkandl, 1956). When one hears a melody, it is simply not a sound that can be duplicated in our natural surroundings. A melody is created by man not born of nature. There is an actual thought process behind it. One cannot stand among the trees listening to the breezes rustle through leaves and expect to hear a melody from one of Beethoven's works.

Music has often been interpreted as a language. Since it is of the essence of a language to say something, the question arose: What does music say? The usual answer was: As the words of language have factual meaning, the tones of music have emotional meaning; music is the language of feeling. According to this conception, the musical meaning of our Beethoven melody would lie in its expressing the feeling of joy, with power far exceeding that of Schiller's poem and of all words. The key to understanding the process that makes the tones of this melody a melody at all, a piece of music, we found not in the relation of the tones to any particular feeling but in the relation of the tone e to the tone d (Zuckerkandl, 1956).

Music and the "life" behind it is so interpretational. The more that I read the writings of Zuckerkandl I realize the significance of something as small as a tone. To truly understand how one piece of music can be interpreted in numerous ways by different people. One piece of music or even a small melody can invoke a conglomerate of emotions, from one person to another. There are pieces of music that can bring you to tears or feelings of pure elation.

Music therapy has the implications of being quite significant. However, I see there being a few problems in the structure of the theory. If it is so possible for there to be so many different interpretations in music, then it is only fair to say what music would work in therapy. Zuckerkandl also refers to how psychology and music are so far apart from each other; he reports that they look at the physical word from different points-of-view. Considering this allows one to see that here in itself is a flaw in the whole ideology of it all. How can you use something in a field for which you feel there is no significant, or correlation? There has to be a way to bring the two ideals together to make one working "machine." There also needs to be a clear understanding of the significance of music in therapy and how the effects of music can be used to benefit a "living organism.