The “stuff of life”

"What we play is life, my whole life, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to blow that horn," Louis Armstrong

There’s an interesting interview with Simon Procter on the Live Music Now website, in which he discusses music therapy as a career choice. Simon, as most of you will be aware, is one of the Directors of Music Services at Nordoff Robbins. In the interview he expounds very eloquently about the kind of things music therapists do, how they might overlap with community musicians, what their special skills are, how they are trained, the kind of people they might work with. It’s very clear, concise and informative, helpful advice for someone who might have had experience of working for Live Music Now as a community musician or performer and is interested in how they might develop their career along a new path, perhaps inspired by their experiences. Not surprisingly he gives the NR training course a bit of a plug. There are other trainings available, but these are easy enough to find online for anyone interested, and he’s in the business of promoting his own course, which seems fair.

Then, in response to the question “How does the NR approach differ from other training courses?”, he says this:

The Nordoff Robbins approach is ‘music-centred’ rather than psychoanalytic or behavioural. We take musicians and teach them to work musically with people. We emphasise musical outcomes for clients: we see music and musical experience as the stuff of life, not just as symbolic of something else.

Here we have two false dichotomies: one is that music therapy must be either ‘music-centred’ or psychoanalytic/behavioural, the other that music is either ‘the stuff of life’ or ‘just symbolic of something else’. Perhaps these are both expressing the same idea in slightly different ways. Procter isn’t here advancing a theory or using the sort of language that is required for an academic article, so perhaps we shouldn’t be too picky. However, he is speaking to prospective music therapy trainees, so it’s important that the language is clear, and not misleading. Of course, ‘music-centred’ is a well-worn phrase in relation to NR, but this doesn’t mean it can’t be challenged (despite the scare quotes).

First, a declaration of personal interest: I went to Guildhall, where I also do some teaching now. Trainees there are also taught how to ‘work musically with people’. As for an ‘emphasis on musical outcomes’, I would say that these are seen as a means to an end, that being the well-being of the client. I strongly doubt that anyone would contest this at NR, at any stage in the history of the institution. Perhaps they might say that musical outcomes and general well-being go hand-in-hand, but surely not that a musical outcome supersedes the client’s well-being. I would also assert that this could happen, having worked in schools where the end product of the school concert does not always take into account the emotional processes of the students, who might very well be put under pressure or stress in order to achieve musical aims. I could also elucidate on the stresses and strains of the professional musician. Involvement with music doesn’t automatically link to wellness.

What does he mean by music being ‘the stuff of life’? Perhaps that music is an intrinsic part of life, a medium that expresses things about being alive, without any need for interpretation or translation into another medium. This seems a fair statement to make, but other things might also be ‘the stuff of life’: human relationships, for example. In which case, psychodynamic processes (leaving behavioural approaches to one side) would also be ‘the stuff of life’, concerned as they are with the development of the individual in relation to others. Being musical would not preclude a thing from being subject to psychodynamic interpretation or understanding. Putting it simply, music could be ‘the stuff of life’ and ‘symbolic of something else’ (as opposed to ‘just…’). Furthermore this focus on being ‘symbolic’ is leaving out quite a bit of psychoanalytic theory as it might apply to music. Attachment theory, Stern’s affect attunement and Winnicott’s theories about play and creativity are not only, or even mainly, about things being ‘symbolic’ of other things. They describe processes of development through relationships, and, as we know, relationships can be expressed musically (would any NR therapist refute that?). One could assert, indeed, that music is relationship, rather than being symbolic of it: the relationship between tones, between rhythms in time, and between the people taking part.

You don’t have to use psychodynamic methods of thinking and interpretation, but they don’t deflect you from a musical focus. There is nothing non-music-centred about psychodynamic thinking as applied to music therapy. Thus, it can be music-centred and psychodynamically informed. Throw out psychodynamic thinking (or behavioural approaches) if you like, but to present it as having a focus which is not music-centred could be misleading, particularly to potential trainees, who might not know much about different approaches, and may also be keen to hold onto their identity as musicians. These sorts of concerns might also be relevant when communicating with people about music therapy in other contexts, such as when discussing it with other professionals or service users. The rhetoric of a phrase like the ‘stuff of life’ attempts to romanticise an approach in a way which seems to be more about obscuration than elucidation. Of course music is the ‘stuff of life’, and so is everything else.