When I was training, back in 2006, I remember having a conversation with another musician on the way to a gig. He asked me what happens in music therapy and I explained that it’s partly about the client having an opportunity to express themselves musically. He replied that he wasn’t sure about this, because in his experience it took him years of practice before he was able to express himself in music. It’s tempting to shrug this off as a misunderstanding. Either I failed to explain music therapy clearly enough, or he failed to grasp it, or both. The problem is that he’s also right. Expression in music requires some degree of instrumental or vocal control, and we can often feel as performers that we’ve failed to quite communicate exactly what it was we were trying to put across. To some degree this is always the case, especially in improvisation. There are always missed opportunities, fluffed notes, moments where the groove doesn’t quite sit, and even if there aren’t, to what extent are we expressing ourselves in the music we make?
Kenny Werner (in Effortless Mastery and in his masterclasses) talks about the ‘freedom from having to sound good’, and Nachmanovitch (in Improvisation in Art and Life) about the ‘judging spectre’. Both espouse ideas about improvisation which are about freeing oneself from judgement. This concept presents an alternative to my diligent colleague, striving for years towards the ideal of self-expression. In music therapy a phrase I’ve often heard is ‘innate musicality’, suggesting that we can connect with the musician in every human being if they are open to this. Nordoff and Robbins famously described the ‘music child’, that entity which can transcend other impediments and express something underlying and positive in any human being, no matter what obstacles might exist to other forms of connection. There is also a link to be made between preverbal parent-infant interaction and clinical improvisation. Music is within us from birth and predates language in our development, so in music therapy we are able to connect with something very early in human development, which has therapeutic advantages, enabling us to go where the talking therapist perhaps may not.
There is an aspect to music, however, which can sometimes be downplayed in the rationale for music therapy, that is, its sophistication and refinement. This is exemplified by Herman Hesse in The Glass Bead Game, where music is a core aspect of the training of students in the elite school where most of the novel is set. The Music Master is a guru-like figure and students of the Game are required to become adept in counterpoint to a high level, along with mathematics, as they strive towards perfection. Another more left-field novel, which explores music’s otherness is Thomas M. Disch’s On Wings of Song. Disch’s book, referencing the poem by Heine, describes a future dystopia where singing is discouraged, but where people prepared to risk it are able to use song as a means for achieving literal (and illegal) out-of-body experiences. Not everyone is able to do this, and the protagonist is a figure who struggles with his inability to harness this potential. Disch, a novelist of boundless pessimism, is using music as a metaphor for something else, a means of escape from an awful reality. But it’s an interesting metaphor, because it fits with a perception of music in our society, that it’s often something elitist, reserved only for the talented, those who are ‘musical’, whatever that might mean.
The requirements for admission onto music therapy training courses include, in part, a high level of musicianship. Why? In music therapy, who is doing the ‘expressing’? If the client can express themselves through music, why do they need a therapist to be proficient to degree level in musical performance on an instrument? This requirement implies that we may be doing some of the musical expressing on behalf of the client. But as music therapists we are also, often, trying to democratise music making, to encourage clients to believe in their own ability to be expressive, regardless of musical skill and experience. We are attempting to prise music out of the hands of the musical elite and make the experience of music making available to all. This is a tricky balancing act, because we can’t deny the role that musical elitism plays in our preparation for this role. We have to acknowledge that we are giving a hand up to our clients when they have less musical skill than we do, that we are doing something for them, as well as with them. (A case in point: Wigram in his book on improvisation techniques describes reflecting, the musical expression of the client’s overall presentation and affect, rather than a direct matching of their music. This is sometimes loosely referred to by music therapists as ‘playing the counter-transference’.) What we are doing and what level of expertise we draw on depends on the client and the context, of course, but our own musical history is always present. There are two sides to the coin: on the one side the potential envy of the client, on the other, the importance of our capacity to contain, reflect, draw out. Our musical skill, our musicality, is an important factor in therapy, and while it might contribute to the client’s ambivalence, we couldn’t do our job without it. The client can’t have it both ways, and neither can we.
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