Music For Medical Recuperation

[Roehre]

The inference is that you didn't consider VW to be music?

Not, it isn't. These are sounds from heaven

[kea]

Honestly can't say because every time I'm feeling sick something else seems to work. Right now I'm in the midst of an illness for instance and after putting my music library on 'shuffle' and finding some often-helpful music to be ineffective (e.g. Mozart, field recordings, ten Holt, Kancheli, Bach, Ustvolskaya) I've found the most helpful music in centering and relaxing me to be that of, uh, Rebecca Saunders. Probably a suggestion that won't work for many other people, lol, (maybe FHG or S_A) I think partly it worked for me because it helped make some kind of order/narrative/line out of the explosions behind my closed eyes and the pain in my body, but partly it was just like, my intuition or something.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Rebecca Saunders is a great favourite of mine - it's possibly inappropriate to mention on this thread that when I heard a visible trace at the 2010 Huddersfield Festival, I posted here that this was how I hoped it would be like to die: surrounded by beautiful, strange new sounds before a peaceful diminuendo into extinction.


Like others, I found putting on Music impossible when grieving. I heard it all the time (fragments of Mahler's 9th & 10th and the slow movement of Beethoven's Fourth Symphony were constantly in my memory) but, Schubert's Nacht und Traume and An die Musik (Ferrier) aside, I could not summon the strength to will myself to disturb the fragile and precious beauty of the silence into which she had gone. Nearly a fortnight later, during a sleepless night, I put on Bryn Harrison's Vessels and just let the gentle sounds caress me.

And then, a few days later, a PM from Thropplenoggin brought my attention to the release of the Ferneyhough S4tet set from NEOS - and that helped me return to a personality closer to the one I recognized as myself - and that she would have done, too.

[EdgeleyRob]

The inference is that you didn't consider VW to be music?

It's more than just music.

[Nick Armstrong]

Came across this reference on the R3 website. Not sure if it's been posted here before; certainly not on this thread, to which it certainly seems germane.

Seems an apt preparation too, for the imminent 'music and the brain' weekend (I think I've summed it up correctly) - CORRECTION: the "why music" weekend....

Shostakovich: A Journey into Light

Presenter Stephen Johnson was diagnosed with serious clinical depression and this is his story. That depression almost proved fatal, and it's the music of Shostakovich which he says has helped him survive.

Yet Shostakovich is the composer of some of the darkest, most despairing music ever written. How can that music have something to say to Stephen and other people like him?

Stephen travels to Moscow and St Petersburg, the cities most closely associated with Shostakovich, to meet people who knew the man, and lived through the horror of the Stalinist regime.

He tries to put into perspective why the music speaks to a deeper human spirit, why people globally still relate to Shostakovich, and what his music means in a country still coming to terms with its past. This is Stephen's personal journey - A Journey into Light.



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[teamsaint]

The link doesnt seem to work on my kit, Cals.

Is this it?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007g7hp

[Nick Armstrong]

The link doesnt seem to work on my kit, Cals.

Is this it?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007g7hp

Yes indeedy, Teams. Broken link corrected, ta!

[EdgeleyRob]

I can sort of relate to DSCH helping with depression.
Probably over simplifying but I think there is an element of 'if I think I'm having a bad day'
In my darkest hours Riders to the Sea helped a lot

[richardfinegold]

I recall a similar story a few years ago about someone who created a Beethoven Society because they were also rescued from a severe depression by immersing themselves in his music.
It does make me wonder if enjoyment of music can change brain Neurotransmitters, resulting in elevations of Seratonin or Norepinephrine or Dopamine, the Central Nervous System Neurotransmitters most altered by Anti depressant medications.
I remember reading some articles about Positron Tomograhic Brain Scans done while subjects were listening to music, but the results were inconclusive

[doversoul1]

This weekend’s Why Music series may have something related to the subject.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2015/r3-at-wellcome-collection

referred here

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?13970-Why-Music

[Lat-Literal]

This weekend’s Why Music series may have something related to the subject.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2015/r3-at-wellcome-collection

referred here
http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...3970-Why-Music

Very interesting. Thank you. I am absolutely in favour of this series of programmes and am inclined to say "about time". Whether I will listen to a lot of them is doubtful. Detailed analysis can dilute the magic and it could be counter-productive to those in need. What I really hope is that medical professionals who too often work unquestioningly in the political framework required of them to further their own careers will be listening in droves and taking some of it on board. Sometimes I even wonder about discussion of music in that discussion of music can be a double edged sword. Mostly for a wide variety of reasons it enhances appreciation which can facilitate health but it also partially turns music into speech. There is something to be said for an individual relationship with music which, when speaking for itself, may actually feel like the ultimate connection with other people.

But when it comes to social and environmental health, I am a true believer in the power of music. I have sat down and counted the number of aural assaults I have encountered in daily life. Unnecessary or inappropriate constraints, demands, interference and controls, requirements to operate at speed and very routine but regular delays, inconsiderate racket, ordinary racket, deliberately goading racket, irrationality which impacts adversely because it suits the other's agendas. That's just the tip of the iceberg and I have heard and/or experienced them all. We all have, not that many will label in this way. It is basic common sense that music will take the edge off a lot of those oppressors and more.

The umbrella term would be "aggro". Some are more sensitive to it than others. I write as someone who is sensitive and has put up with an above average amount of it in my time. It is also recognised that many people have a lot of worse things in their lives. That BBC Radio 3 in the schedule you have provided should mention football is interesting. This writer is someone who would have had far less concern about being thrown into a hospital as a victim of a football hooligan than he would have had about some sort of senior manager alongside him on the terraces deciding to say something derogatory simply for the hell of it. That, I guess, is the power of sound. If there is that negative, then music can be the positive. Pills are fine for those who require them but they are a one-size-fits all whereas music is self-tailored. The former are there to calm and to prevent "over-think". In contrast, the latter, if well chosen, can help to accommodate what life can be. There is music that soothes and music that confronts individual perception, among many other things.

The latter is invariably planted by the powers-that-be. When my grandmother was chucked into a tower block flat at 80-something without any say in the matter, she had to walk up six flights of stairs when the lifts were out. Generally they weren't working because the youths there had urinated in them and disrupted the electrics. As the tabloids wanted - and as she was inclined to believe - it was all their fault. I did feel anxiety on her behalf and there was critique. I had enough knowledge and intelligence to see that the problem was systemic. But I think it took "Up In Heaven (Not Only Here)" by the Clash for me to feel that I wasn't carrying such feelings alone. To hear it encapsulated in music was a massive relief and that occurred having initially considered that scene destructive and feeling a need for soft. No tablet can do that sort of thing. It can't set you off on a journey of robust camaraderie and a common, almost universal, identification. Comparisons with the isolated and the victims of aggression were replaced by a sing-song against any referee.

The greatest act of aggression towards me in my adulthood - although not in my life - was the manner in which I was made redundant. I responded by sending to the Permanent Secretary a link to "My Old Man" by Ewan MacColl which like a wimp in jackboots he ignored before picking out a more lucrative post for himself. His new job description effectively said "bash the disabled". Well, I am almost at 53 as is mentioned in that song. My personal circumstances involving considerable sole responsibility towards older folk who are unquestionably emotionally strong are not easy. And my physical health has been seriously brought into question this year because of long-term coping mechanisms - all legal - that have been felt needed. GPs are persistently crass and attacking in order to further themselves in complying with Dad the Government. Sometimes I go against my own grain and think we should privatise the NHS. Imagine if you will one £100,000 a year plus love with four kids and nanny positively getting off in a surgery in saying that if additional problems occur the patient only has himself to blame. This occurs with her knowing the entire history because the patient told her ten years ago and she did nothing. Intimidated out, the new one decides that tablets are needed for all time, having been told that the country's health system has been the biggest aggressor of all since 1970 and that it should butt out except on purely physical matters. Whether it is the Clash or RVW, they do enhance health because they are a necessary antidote to the systemically sadistic and insane.

If music is potentially transforming in terms of emotions in the social environment, it is probably fair to say that it is merely an escapism from social circumstance and distraction from physical health issues. That is what is learnt in middle age, perhaps, but it still sounds great against the range of alternatives. Incidentally, I did think long and hard before writing this piece. There was the question of whether it could prompt negative reaction but I am increasingly blase about that point and feel that there are enough pals on here who who will take it simply for what it conveys. Then we all move on. But we have had the Brown pronouncement on mental health, the Clegg pronouncement on mental health and no doubt when the press stop talking about a pig's head we will have the Cameron pronouncement. None of these people have sufficient sensitivity to know anything about anything and they don't comprehend how their weasel words damage rather than help. I went swimming today and a week ago I walked the Downs. Both were nice. They showed me that I could get out of the house. With no thanks to the great and the not-so-good I am still breathing. Whatever my situation, to this day, I have sensitivities towards people who are vulnerable. I naturally think on getting off a bus with a guy on a motorized scooter with cerebral palsy that I really admire him. There was such a guy. As he drove passed me, I said to him he would get to the traffic lights faster than me and while he couldn't speak he laughed and may have appreciated someone speaking to him. It was, I hope, a mutually heartwarming moment. Music, humour, the countryside, by which I mean an outlook and involvement even if it is just walking - these are the lifeblood. People from the youngest age should be told and told again. As a footnote, Nordoff-Robbins. I know they get support from McCartney etc. Still, support them if not financially then in your emotions. Thanks.