Music and Healing

Music can soothe, ease pain and shape mourning, yet it rarely cures disease on its own.

Related

MedievalContemporaryAdagioVoice

The question

Can music heal? It can soothe, ease pain and give shape to public mourning, but it rarely cures disease by itself. The question is not whether it works, but where, by whom and for whom.

Historical arc

Medieval monasteries used chant to regulate breath and time, and Hildegard wrote bodily discomfort into prayer. In southern Italy the tarantella was danced as a cure for a spider bite, with rhythm and sweat given purgative meaning. Hospitals and salons used music as a sedative in the nineteenth century. Music therapy became a profession in the twentieth, used clinically for pain, anxiety and communication. Recordings and headphones made self-treatment a daily habit.

Key cases

Barber's Adagio for Strings recurs in public mourning, its slow steps giving grief an order. Martucci's Tarantella imitates dance therapy with an accelerating six-eight pulse. Hildegard's O Virtus Sapientiae draws attention into the words through a single melodic line. Mourning, dance and prayer, one case each.

What to listen for

Hear how the Adagio rises and falls. Hear whether the Tarantella pulse keeps speeding up. Hear whether the chant's range is narrow enough for a congregation to join.

Related

Healing crosses Medieval and Contemporary. The slow tempo is explained under Adagio, and the human medium is the Voice.

Sources

• Peregrine Horden, Music as Medicine (Ashgate) — historical claims checked, not quoted
• Grove Music Online, entry "Music therapy" — definitions checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.