Aigen 2005 - Music-Centered Music Therapy - Livro Completo

This work is dedicated to all the members and supporters of the
Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Foundation.
Their generosity has facilitated the musical healing of countless people and also has enabled
the time for scholarly reflections on its meaning such as is embodied in this book.
Copyright © 2005. Barcelona Publishers. All rights reserved.
Aigen, K. (2005). Music-centered music therapy. Barcelona Publishers.

Created from ufmgbr on 2023-06-07 15:38:26.
Acknowledgments
A number of people gave selflessly of their time in reading drafts of this publication,
formulating comprehensive critiques, and engaging with me in working out the implications of
these critiques. My heartfelt appreciation goes to the following colleagues whose
contributions, although not apparent individually, were all essential to the completion of this
book: Gary Ansdell, Kenneth Bruscia, Barbara Hesser, Carolyn Kenny, Colin Lee, Clive
Robbins, Benedikte Scheiby, Lisa Summer, and Alan Turry. Ken’s consideration of multiple
drafts of this book and the time he spent in e-mail dialogue with me warrant an extra special
expression of gratitude.
An additional note of thanks to Gary, who, before this book was written, examined a much-
condensed version of chapter 5 and said, “I think there’s a book in here.” More than two years
later, I was still hard at the labor prompted by his offhand remark. And although she did not
comment directly on the present text, my (too infrequent) conversations with Rachel Verney
over the years have strongly influenced my opinions on the matters discussed herein, and I
would like to acknowledge her contributions. One final note of appreciation goes to Maria
Alvarez. Upon hearing the first lecture I formulated in which schema theory was applied to
music therapy, she asked if anyone had written about these apparently fruitful connections.
Maria’s question initiated a train of thought within me that culminated in a large portion of the
present book being devoted to these applications.
In this brief set of acknowledgments, it is important for me to cite my experience during the
past 23 years as both a student and faculty member in the music therapy program at New York
University. The values of this community—guided by Barbara Hesser since 1974—place
music in a central role. Gatherings of the community always incorporate music, and courses in
developing musicianship occupy a large part of the skills component of the program.
Moreover, Barbara gave me the freedom to develop and implement a graduate course that
focused on ideas in music philosophy, music psychology, music education, musicology, and
ethnomusicology that were relevant to music therapy. In many ways, this book is a direct
outgrowth of that course.
When explaining music therapy to people unfamiliar with it, I sometimes ask them to
envision their lives without music. This helps them to realize the richness of experience that
music uniquely brings and what it might offer to individuals with disabilities. It also illustrates
how sometimes we have to envision our lives without something in order to fully appreciate it.
Just as life without music is unimaginable, the profession of music therapy without
Barcelona Publishers is similarly unimaginable to me. At the risk of sounding overly
solicitous of my publisher, I must offer a special note of gratitude to Kenneth Bruscia of
Barcelona. One glance at the roster of books published by Barcelona will demonstrate how no
person has done more than Ken to support a vision of music therapy based on a commitment to
music, advanced levels of practice, keeping alive the pioneering efforts of visionary music
therapists, and fostering the connection between music therapy and important streams of
contemporary intellectual thought. I am proud and honored to have this work published as a
Barcelona book.

Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Tables
Figures
Preface
Part I: THE CONTEXT FOR MUSIC-CENTERED THEORY IN MUSIC

THERAPY
1. The Nature of Theory
2. Theory in Music Therapy
The Role of Theory in Contemporary Music Therapy
A Conceptual Framework for Music Therapy Theory
Metatheoretical Issues in Music Therapy
Part II: THE NATURE OF MUSIC-CENTERED THEORY AND PRACTICE

3. Origins and Foundations of Music-Centered Music Therapy
What is Music-Centered Music Therapy and How Has It Developed?
Music as a Medium: One Basis of Music-Centered Theory
Musicing as the Core of Music-Centered Practice
The Necessity of a Theory of Music as a Basis for Music-Centered Music Therapy
Can a Notion of Music Derived From Nonclinical Contexts Be the Basis for Music
Therapy?
4. Values Central to Musicing in Music-Centered Music Therapy
The Idea of Musical Values
Musicing Requires an Understanding of Silence
Musicing Requires Listening

Musicing Incorporates the Individual Within the Communal
Musicing Involves Surrender
Musicing Cultivates a Respect for Craft
Musicing Creates Connection
5. Rationales, Practices, and Implications of Music-Centered Music Therapy
The Client’s Experience in Music Is Primary

Musical Goals Are Clinical Goals
The Primary Focus Is Enhancing the Client’s Involvement in Music
The Convergence of Personal Process and Musical Development
The Intrinsic Rewards of Musical Participation
The Experience of the Musical Process Is the Therapy
Interventions Are Guided by Musical Properties
Music as an Autonomous Clinical Force
Musical Analysis Highlights Clinical Processes
Therapy Can Incorporate a Focus on Performance and Products
Verbal Processing Need Not Accompany Musical Experiences
The Therapeutic Relationship Is a Musical Relationship
Music-Centered Thinking Embraces Holism
An Alternative Perspective on Generalization
Generalization of Functioning Is Not a Necessary Criterion for Evaluating Music
Therapy
6. Music-Centered Thinking in Music Therapy Models
Analytical Music Therapy
Guided Imagery and Music
Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy
7. Music-Centered Thinking in Contemporary Music Therapy Frameworks
Aesthetic Music Therapy
Community Music Therapy
Culture-Centered Music Therapy
Part III: A PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC FOR MUSIC-CENTERED MUSIC

THERAPY THEORY
Introduction to Part III

8. Music Therapy and Schema Theory
Introduction to Schema Theory
Image Schemata in Music and Music Therapy
Time-as-Space, Force, and Motion in Music
Schema Theory and Areas of Benefit in Music Therapy
9. Zuckerkandl’s Dynamic Theory of Tone

Fundamental Aspects of Zuckerkandl’s Theory
Applications to Music Therapy
Objections to Zuckerkandl’s Ideas and Some Responses
10. The Status of Musical Force, Motion, and Space: Reconciling Schema Theory and
Zuckerkandl
Revisiting Schema Theory: The Ontological Status of Schemata
Reconciling Schema Theory and Zuckerkandl
Part IV: GENERAL MUSIC-CENTERED THEORY
Introduction to Part IV
11. Clinical Applications of Musical Force and Motion: Quickening and the Creation
of a Self
12. Music and Emotion in Music-Centered Thought
13. Musical Form, Development, and Transformation
Music and the Life Force
Music and Transformation
14. Melody, Container, Transition
The Connection Between Melody and Self-Identity
Transitional Music and Transitions in Life
Music and the Path of Human Life
Expanding Containers as Metaphor for Therapy and for Life
Afterword
References
Author Index
Subject Index
Tables
Table 1. Some Sources of Theory in Music Therapy
Table 2. Sources and Types of Theory in Music Therapy
Figures

Figure 1. Diagrams of Image Schemes
Figure 2. Pathways
Figure 3. Containers
Figure 1, Diagrams of Image Schemes, is from “Forces, Containers, and Paths: The Role of
Body-Derived Image Schemas in the Conceptualization of Music” by Janna Saslaw. Journal
of Music Theory, Fall 1996, Volume 40, Number 2. Copyright © 1996. Reproduced with
permission of Yale University, New Haven, CT.
Figure 2, Pathways, is from “Space, Motion, and Other Musical Metaphors” by Shaugn
O’Donnell in Perspectives on the Grateful Dead: Critical Writings, Robert G. Weiner,
Editor. Copyright © 1999 by Robert G. Weiner. Reproduced with permission of Greenwood
Publishing Group, Inc., Westport, CT.

The notion to which the Phaedo gives expression is that of homo musicus, of man as musician,
the being that requires music to realize itself fully. This dimension of our humanity has largely
been in shadow over the course of Western thought. It is time to bring it into the light.
—Victor Zuckerkandl
Man the Musician

Preface
While there have been a great deal of indigenous practices developed in music therapy during
the first 60 or more years of its modern history, the predominance of music therapy theory has
been drawn from a variety of external disciplines. Some of the more common sources of
imported theory have included neurological science, psychoanalysis, and behavioral learning
theory.
It is natural that music therapy theory based on these disciplines has developed more
quickly than has indigenous theory1 because theorists had the advantage of applying an already
existing and relatively complete explanatory system. However, regardless of whether
clinicians have based their practices on theories external to music therapy practice, or just
applied them as a post-hoc rationale, their origins in nonmusical areas of inquiry has meant
that the musical dimensions of music therapy practice have tended to be passed over,
minimized, or distorted.
In contrast to clinical approaches based on nonmusical theories—whether indigenous or
imported in origin—are music-centered music therapy approaches as exemplified in models
such as Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy (NRMT) and Guided Imagery and Music (GIM).
While these two forms of practice have experienced significant growth in their clinical
applications since their inception in the late 1950s and 1960s respectively, it is only within the
last 10 years or so that there have begun to be significant developments in the area of theory.
Because music plays such a central role in these forms of practice, they require theory that
places primary emphasis on musical processes, structures, interactions, and experiences. That
theory has lagged behind practice in music-centered work is a consequence of two conditions:
(1) it is easier to apply existing theory from the various health-related professions and adapt
the use of music to them than it is to apply existing theory about music and develop its
implications for the health concerns characteristic of music therapy work; (2) when the music-
centered work is based on concepts indigenous to music therapy, it faces the double challenge
of creating new theory while also developing the health implications of the human engagement
with music.
The present work began as a relatively brief foray into exploring the foundations and
implications of the term music-centered when applied to music therapy practice and theory.
Rather than as a specific approach or model, I conceived music-centered thought as an attitude
toward music and music therapy possessed in relative degrees among clinicians and theorists
from a variety of orientations and working within a variety of clinical models and treatment
milieus. Although the term music-centered had been present in the music therapy literature
since the mid-1980s, I recognized that it had yet to be defined to any degree nor had its various
implications been explored extensively. As a result, there was a concept being used in
professional discourse of which there were multiple, unspecified interpretations. Realizing
this, my initial intention was to stimulate the scholarly dialogue among music therapists
regarding the meaning of this term in order to build a consensus on its application.
Meanwhile, as books are wont to do, this one took on a life of its own, growing far beyond
my initial intentions for it. In addition to discussing the nature and origins of music-centered

thinking and practice in music therapy, it provides the general outlines of a music-centered
theory of music therapy that is intended to be applicable across a wide variety of treatment
domains and methods of working. Moreover, because of the metatheoretical claim that the
theory presented in the latter two parts of the book is music-centered, I also provide a
conceptual overview of theory in music therapy in order to justify this claim.
Book Structure
To accomplish these ends, the book is divided into four parts: Part I has as its focus
establishing the context for music-centered music therapy theory. Part II describes what music-
centered music therapy is, details its origins, and explores some of its applications in a number
of approaches to music therapy. Part III provides a philosophical foundation for music-
centered music therapy based in theories of. music and discusses how this demonstrates the
suitability of music-centered thinking for general theory in music therapy. Part IV sketches out
aspects of a general music-centered music therapy theory.
In part I, chapters 1 and 2 are devoted to providing some background on the nature of
science, the nature of theory, and clarifying a number of theoretical issues in music therapy.
Some readers might be tempted to dismiss the entire music-centered approach as one unworthy
of consideration in a profession that seeks to establish itself upon rational, publicly
accountable, and scientific foundations. Chapter 1 takes up a few central issues in the
philosophy of science for purposes of showing how the types of theories central to music-
centered practice are not inherently more or less scientific or rational than are theories in
other approaches to music therapy. Chapter 2 builds upon the material in chapter 1 in
discussing the multiple ways theory is actually used in music therapy, and it clarifies the
referents of a number of metatheoretical terms appearing in music therapy literature. The
discussion of general theory in chapter 2 forms the foundation for the proposal taken up in
parts III and IV that music-centered thinking is a fertile source for general theory in music
therapy.
In part II, chapters 3, 4, and 5 provide a general portrait of music-centered music therapy.
Although it is advice that an author should probably never give, I will say to those readers
who need no convincing that there are multiple views of scientific activity, and who have no
interest in discussions of metatheory and the role of theory, that you might begin your reading
with chapter 3. This will take you to the origins of music-centered thinking, the values that
underlie it, and its manifestation in the practices and beliefs of contemporary music therapists.
However, my overall argument that music-centered thinking can provide the foundation for
general theory in music therapy (presented in part III) will presuppose an understanding of the
material on theory in chapters 1 and 2.
Continuing in part II, chapters 6 and 7 offer an overview of the music-centered aspects of a
number of prominent music therapy models and contemporary conceptual frameworks. These
chapters serve two purposes: first, to show that music-centeredness is not the province of any
one particular approach in music therapy and that it is present in a variety of music therapy
approaches; second, to illustrate how the general beliefs and practices discussed in the prior
chapters are both supported theoretically and implemented specifically within particular

approaches. The strategy in this section is to be suggestive rather than comprehensive, and
there is no attempt to provide complete discussions of the music-centeredness of the different
models.
The position argued for in this book is that music-centered music therapy theory must have
a philosophical foundation in a theory of music. Providing just such a foundation is the
purpose of part III, in which two views of music are presented and applied to music therapy:
schema theory and Victor Zuckerkandl’s theory of music. In chapters 8 and 9, each theory is
explicated and has its implications for music therapy drawn. Chapter 10 focuses on resolving
some apparent contradictions between the two theories, thus establishing a coherent
foundation for music-centered practice that is stronger than one based on either theory alone.
Part IV presents the outline of a music-centered music therapy theory in a way that
simultaneously shows how this way of thinking can be used to create general theory in music
therapy applicable across treatment domains, methods of working, and conceptual
frameworks. A number of topics central to general theory are discussed from a music-centered
perspective. These include the nature of music and musical experience; the relationship among
music, human affect, and expression; the creation of meaning in music; and music and
transformation.
An approach to human understanding known as schema theory or metaphor theory has a
prominent role in parts III and IV. This body of theory originated in the work of the
philosopher Mark Johnson and the linguist George Lakoff (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Johnson,
1987; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999) and it has been increasingly influential in a wide variety of
scholarly areas, including music theory. Schema theory is used in three different ways in the
latter two parts of the book: (1) as mentioned previously, it provides part of the theory of
music upon which the music-centered music therapy theory developed herein rests; (2) its
overall view of human cognition and meaning-making provides the rationale for music-
centered theory as general theory in music therapy; (3) components of the theory will be used
to flesh out particular aspects of the music-centered theory proposed in part IV.
Origins of Music-Centered Thinking: Preliminary Observations

The notions central to music-centered music therapy have come from a variety of sources.
While the evolution of music-centered thought is discussed in more detail in chapter 3, 1
would like to sketch in broad strokes here some of the important historical origins and
conceptual supports for music-centered thought.

The idea of a music-centered music therapy, in which specific musical qualities and
experiences are the primary clinical factors, originated in the work of Paul Nordoff and Clive
Robbins (1965, 1971, 1977).2 Although they did not employ the term overtly, the practices and
beliefs central to their approach are all music-centered in the way the concept is construed in
the present work. Also important is the work of Helen Bonny (1978a, 1978b, 1980, 2002),
who has been similarly motivated to develop a music therapy approach where music served as
the primary clinical factor. Any exploration into the origins of music-centered music therapy
has to acknowledge the central role of Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy and Guided Imagery

and Music. And while many of Carolyn Kenny’s publications have dealt with general
questions of theory in music therapy, her study The Mythic Artery (1982) was a pioneering
effort that introduced some ideas central to the development of music-centered theory. Many
ideas receiving attention in contemporary music therapy literature were first presented in that
book.
Two central concepts in chapter 3 that support music-centered practice are drawn from the
writings of John Dewey (1934) and David Elliot (1995). Dewey’s ideas in particular have
been utilized previously in illuminating aspects of the Nordoff-Robbins approach (Aigen,
1995a; 1998). Chapter 5 includes a number of practices and beliefs that I describe as being
characteristic of music-centered approaches, although there are no published references or
surveys of practicing music therapists cited to support these claims. Instead, my approach has
been to approach the task of defining music-centered work in a conceptual way rather than a
purely empirical one. I have focused on articulating practices and beliefs of music therapists
that are conceptually consistent with the values, concepts, and theories that can serve as the
foundation for music-centered music therapy.
Many of the practices and beliefs in chapter 5 are common focuses of discussion among
music therapists. How common are they? That is impossible to say without some hard data. I
can say that I have been practicing music therapy for the past 20 years in three different
clinical settings, and I have presented work at universities and conferences in locations as
varied as Brazil, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and throughout Europe in Belgium,
Spain, Germany, Great Britain, Denmark, Italy, and Norway, all in addition to my work in the
United States. Wherever I have gone, I have encountered people who have an affinity for the
practices and beliefs that I am identifying as being part of a music-centered approach. That
these beliefs have widespread adherents is unquestionable to me; whether they belong under
the umbrella term music-centered will be determined, in part, by reactions to this book.
Issues in Defining Music-Centeredness

Through the work involved in completing this book, I have come to understand two ways in
which the term music-centered can be used. For some therapists, the term is an all-
encompassing label that summarizes central components of their work. Being music-centered
is something that they are—it is part of their identity. It is reflected in a clinical practice
characterized by a great deal of musical specificity in interventions and theory.
For other therapists, the term accurately describes aspects of their practice and thinking,
although they may have other beliefs that are equally if not more important to them that contrast
with or complement music-centered thinking. Being music-centered is something that they do
—it is a stance that one can move in and out of. It can be reflected in a clinical practice that
places music in a central role or that holds music and musical experience in great esteem, but
it may be implemented without the same degree of musical specificity as would characterize
the first group.
For individuals in the former group, it would not make sense, for example, to blend music-
centered principles and practices with psychodynamic concepts because they are conceptually

incompatible. For individuals in the latter group, this blending of constructs would either be
compatible or not, but this would not impede their ability to make use of both ways of thinking
for two reasons: (1) For some people, the judgment about compatibility is situationally
determined. Hence, such practitioners could choose, for example, to inhabit a music-centered
stance when it was clinically warranted and a psychodynamic stance when it was clinically
warranted. (2) Other ways of construing music-centered thinking can subsume psychodynamic
thinking so that psychodynamic processes and constructs are worked with in their musical
manifestations. Thus, for those who believe in this way, purely musical work can itself be a
form of psychodynamic therapy.
In the present text, I am not taking a stand on the more appropriate way to think about being
music-centered. This is an individual judgment for each practitioner to make. However, the
way that I use the term music-centered throughout the text as an adjective to describe models,
theories, practices, and therapists indicates that I recognize the possibility (although not the
necessity) of using the construct of music-centeredness as a formal identity and not just as
temporary stance that one can inhabit.
In the examples cited throughout the text, my purpose is not to characterize particular
individuals as being in or out of the music-centered tent. When looking at the totality of music-
centered beliefs and practices, practitioners who embrace the predominance of them will
probably feel comfortable describing themselves as music-centered music therapists; those
who embrace relatively fewer of them will probably not choose to identify themselves in this
way. Taking the latter choice, however, does not preclude one from employing and advocating
particular aspects of music-centered thinking.
Also, my intent is not to legislate what qualifies a belief or practice as music-centered. Just
as there are many ways of construing this term, there will be many gradations of music-
centeredness among practitioners. It is certainly possible that music therapists who do not
subscribe to the notion of being music-centered will employ beliefs or practices that I identify
in this way. To these practitioners, I would emphasize that I am not claiming that these
practices and beliefs are exclusive to music-centered thinking; it is certainly possible that they
can be subsumed under other types of theories or conceptual frameworks. However, if this
type of claim is made, I do believe that it is important to connect the belief or practice to other
essential aspects of the theory or framework.
For example, in a few places in the text I discuss the relationship between emotional
expression and music and I make the claim that in psychoanalytic music therapy approaches
music is most often considered a vehicle for emotional catharsis, emotional self-expression,
or the symbolic representation of individual emotions. I also talk about how a music-centered
approach can accommodate these uses of music but can also incorporate other uses of music in
a therapeutic context, such as the creation of an aesthetically pleasing musical product or the
creation of rhythmic groove.
Some music therapists of psychoanalytic or psychodynamic leanings may not accept my
characterization of their approach and assert that they use music in other ways as well. My
point is that it is an open question whether if by doing so they are (1) extending traditional
psychoanalytic thinking in a way that is conceptually consistent with its foundations, or (2)
incorporating music-centered thinking or practices into a fundamentally psychoanalytic

practice and thereby creating a more eclectic approach. If the creation of an aesthetic product
in therapy can be described in a way that is consistent with psychoanalytic theory, then I
would accept that conditions in the first scenario are being satisfied; if not, then I would assert
that the second scenario is a more apt description, in which case the focus on the creation of
an aesthetic product or musical groove could not legitimately be seen as an aspect of a
psychoanalytic approach to music therapy.
Qualifying Remarks
The overall focus of the present book is to provide a conceptual framework for existing
clinical practice and a general theoretical framework to support the elaboration of music-
centered music therapy theory. What I am not claiming is that the book is a comprehensive
cataloging of music-centered practices, interventions, or even authors, for that matter. I have
attempted to supply enough examples of music-centered practices to give a portrait of what
music-centered work looks like and to flesh out the skeletal framework provided by the
theoretical notions.
One point that I cannot emphasize strongly enough is that I am not advocating that all
aspects of music-centered thinking are applicable in all treatment contexts and for all music
therapy clients. The appropriate clinical stance for a therapist to take at any time is one that
can be implemented with integrity and that meets the client’s needs. This is a given. The
substance of this book is instead devoted to providing a rationale for music-centered practice,
both for therapists who adopt it as an overall framework as well as for those who choose to
inhabit it when clinically warranted.
Now it is time for a little self-disclosure on my part. It is important for the reader to know
that my own identity is that of being a music-centered practitioner. This book is not just a
scholarly exercise for me. It is instead an exploration into some of the ideas at the core of my
own professional and personal identity. Of course, this stance influences everything written in
this book and it is certainly important for readers to be cognizant of this theoretical
predilection.
The truth is, I think that the joy of listening to, composing, and creating music is at the heart
of all processes in music therapy. I believe that if music therapists got together and were really
honest with one another and with themselves, and had no other pragmatic reasons to dress up
professional discourse in nonmusical terminologies imported from the health professions, they
would all agree that this is the case. It is just that there are so many practical and social
reasons for not portraying music therapy work this way that we forget what it is in its true
nature.
Because of this deep commitment to the material, I believe that music-centered thinking is
not just a peripheral element in music therapy. Instead, it is something that can form the
foundation for effective therapy in a wide variety of clinical applications. I have seen how this
perspective can contribute significantly to the creation of meaningful experiences for clients. I
am therefore committed to presenting it in the broadest possible formulation so that it may
disseminate into as many domains of music therapy practice as is possible. This goal is

addressed in the present work by presenting music-centered thinking as the foundation for
general music therapy theory.

1By indigenous theory, I mean theory that has originated predominantly from music
therapy practice.

2Although,
as is discussed in chapter 3, some early music therapists placed great
emphasis on the inherent clinical value of music itself, the lack of investigation into the inner
processes and structures of music clearly differentiates these practitioners from music-
centered ones.

Part I
The Context for Music-Centered Theory in Music Therapy
Aigen, Kenneth. Music-Centered Music Therapy, Barcelona Publishers, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ufmgbr/detail.action?docID=4617358.
CHAPTER 1
The Nature of Theory
You may be wondering why, in a book on music-centered music therapy, it is necessary to

begin with an exploration into the nature of theory in science. The brief answer is that this
book assumes a metatheoretical perspective in exploring the characteristics of a class of
theory and associated practices in contemporary music therapy. In addition to being a
reflection on their individual relationships to music, the particular theories that music
therapists advocate for and subscribe to reflect their varying ideas about the nature of
scientific theory. An argument for any particular type of theory in music therapy is
simultaneously (if implicitly) an argument for a particular view on the nature and functions of
scientific theory. Thus, it is not possible to investigate a particular theory in music therapy
without considering its implicit view of theory in general.
As was already noted, the observation that music therapy practice leads to music therapy
theory is especially true of music-centered music therapy because it has not been based on
preexisting theory. Clinicians develop practices by working pragmatically to discover how
music can enhance the lives of their clients. Once this practice has become prominent or
successful enough, it attracts the attention of those whose job it is to both develop theory to
provide rational explanations for why the practice is effective, and to create general
guidelines that help transform the intuitive practices of pioneer music therapists into principles
that others can follow and use as the basis for their own work.
This state of affairs may be disturbing to those theorists who believe that practice that is not
based upon firmly validated scientific theory is irresponsible because its benefits cannot be
proven with the same level of certainty that, for example, the average medical treatment
receives. In this view, theory should determine practice.
However, other practitioners and theorists, the present writer included, have a different
view of the nature of science, seeing it as being defined more by its principles of systematic
inquiry rather than by adherence to specific practices that can vary according to time and
place. In this view, there is no problem with practice leading theory because it is recognized
that there are different ways of demonstrating the effectiveness of music therapy practices.
Hence, as the discussion of theory in part I demonstrates, to argue for and create music-
centered theory is not to be anti-intellectual or antiscientific when it comes to conceptualizing
about music therapy. Music-centered thought can be subject to the same level of intellectual
rigor and systematic investigation that typifies other types of music therapy theory.
The particular constellation of ideas covered in this book can be open to criticism, and has
been criticized, on the one hand from practitioners who adopt a psychotherapy treatment
framework and believe that the music-centered position is actually antitheoretical and remiss
in some ethical dimensions (Streeter, 1999), and from adherents of a strictly defined scientific
model of music therapy who believe that progress in music therapy is defined by the degree to
which theory is increasingly operationalized in either behavioral, neurological, or
physiological terms (Taylor, 1997).
My belief is that some of these differences reflect a narrow view on the professional
activity of music therapists on one hand, and on the nature of scientific theory on the other.
Thus, in starting this examination of music therapy theory, I would like to begin with a brief
look at the varying conceptions of scientific theory in order to show that the view described
herein is neither more nor less scientific, ethical, professional, or scholarly than are other
theories. In this way, I hope to ease the way for these ideas to be considered on their own
merit, rather than as surrogates for a debate about competing world views.
Let us consider some examples of scientific theories. First is the molecular theory of
gasses, which asserts that gaseous materials consist of solid molecules in motion. From this
theory is inferred the law that the temperature of a given volume of gas consists of its mean
molecular motion and that the temperature and volume exist in such a relation that a decrease
in volume increases the mean molecular motion and hence temperature. The properties of
gaseous materials are thereby accounted for.
Second is Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. This theory has a number of
components: (1) individuals in a species compete for resources; (2) survival favors certain
attributes; (3) individuals with these attributes flourish and pass them on to their offspring; and
(4) the characteristics of the individuals comprising a species will change overtime until a
new species is created. The contemporary diversity of life and the extinction of species are
accounted for in this theory.
And last, let us look at Freud’s theory of personality. He posited the existence of three
autonomous structures: the id, the ego, and the superego. Their activity is fueled by libido,
instinctual sexual energy that exists in a finite quantity and thus causes competition among the
three structures. The behavior of individuals is motivated by the need to reduce the tension
caused by instinctual needs that are not met. Various psychological mechanisms—such as
regression, repression, and projection—maintain one’s psychological equilibrium. These
structures and their mechanisms account for everyday behaviors as well as for pathological
ones, such as are exhibited in phobias and neuroses. The theory accounts for the diversity of
human thought, affect, and behavior, and it also places pathological and healthy functioning on
a continuum, as they are explained by the same structures and processes.
Theories in science share a variety of common properties, many of which are exhibited by
the three examples above. They offer explanations for observed phenomena by providing
causal mechanisms. They consist of referents and/or processes that are often unobservable.
They project known processes and properties onto the unknown, often through elaboration by a
model or analogy. Consider how (1) the aspect of Freud’s personality theory referring to the
competition for finite libido resembles the aspect of Darwin’s theory referring to the
competition for resources among individuals of a species; (2) Darwin’s theory itself is based
on theories of animal breeding oriented toward bringing out particular characteristics as are
done with pets and other domestic animals; (3) the original theories of atomic structure were
based on models of the solar system. Theories also offer guides to practical action. And last,
they simplify the multitude of complex phenomena to a single, common process thereby
revealing the underlying order of reality.
Theories also differ along a number of important dimensions. First, although some theories
allow for both prediction of future events and explanation of past events, other theories offer
only explanation. This is true in areas as diverse as geology, evolutionary biology, and much
of human psychology, all of which function better in explaining past events than in predicting
future ones. Second, some theories refer to entities actually thought to exist, while others
function more as heuristic or calculating devices. Third, while some theories can be verified
or disproved by observation, other theoretical constructs are more resistant to these actions.
There are a number of unresolved issues concerning scientific theory that are based on
these differences that have been debated in the philosophy of science. First, do theories have
to provide prediction as well as explanation to be considered scientific? Some believe that it
is a mistake to use the inability of a theory to make predictions a criterion that voids its
scientific status. For example, although the theory of evolution by natural selection has been
widely accepted for over 100 years, the theory is not able to predict which new life forms
will evolve in the future. Evolutionary theory is validated by things such as discoveries in
fossil records, not through the manipulation of independent variables in an experimental
design.
Thus, if we want to make predictive power a necessary property of scientific theory, it
would place in jeopardy the scientific status of many ideas that common sense indicates are
scientifically based. There is no consensus over this issue, which means that the lack of
predictive power on the part of particular theory is not an a priori indictment of its scientific
status. It may turn out that there are different rules for theories in different sciences, with the
prediction required in the physical sciences but not the biological or human science. Yet, if
there are different rules for practice in these areas, it then brings into question what the
different sciences have in common in order to group them together under the term science.
In music therapy, certain types of theory are argued for because they are operationalizable
in the form of testable predictions. While the ability of a theory to be operationalized can be a
virtue, the foregoing discussion suggests that the inability of a theory to do so in no way bears
specifically on its scientific status and, more broadly, on its overall practical value. While
there may be pragmatic social reasons for favoring the generating of testable theory, such
theory is no more inherently scientific than is theory that functions purely in an explanatory
capacity or as a guide to intervention.
Another important issue in examining the nature of theory concerns the ontological status of
theoretical entities. Do the structures, mechanisms, and processes referenced in theory really
exist, or are they merely calculating devices? The realist view of scientific theories holds that
theoretical entities actually do exist and that scientists posit them as actual entities, not as
calculating devices.
Supporting the realist view is that there are many instances in the history of science where
theories have referred to entities that were thought to be unobservable but were later observed
through technological advances. For example, the theory of the transmission of disease by
viruses was modeled on the transmission of disease by insects, although when their existence
was first proposed—prior to the invention of microscopes—viruses were thought to be too
small to be observed. Subsequent technological advances verified their existence.
The opposing position in the philosophy of science is known as fictionalism or
instrumentalism. It is based on the idea that theoretical identities do not really exist but are
merely useful heuristic devices or aids to thought. In this view, it does not make sense to ask
whether a theory accurately represents reality; instead, the only question to consider is how
well the theory leads to accurate predictions.
The fictionalist view seems to hold sway in periods of crisis in science. For example,
consider the astronomical system of Ptolemy, which was oriented to preserving two very
important classical ideas: that Earth was at the center of the universe and that all celestial
motion was circular. Ptolemy preserved appearances by hypothesizing the existence of
epicycles (circles on circles) to explain the observed facts of planetary motion. The Ptolemaic
system became quite cumbersome and complex, violating the sense of parsimony that functions
as a guide to scientists in choosing among competing theories. As the unreasonableness of the
Ptolemaic system became apparent, it was defended by adherents who said that it did not
represent reality as it was but was merely intended as a device to calculate planetary
positions. Eventually it was replaced by the work of Kepler, who demonstrated that planets
move in elliptical orbits.
A more contemporary example can be seen in physics, where the status of light has long
been debated. The fact that light exhibits qualities of both particle and wave phenomena has
caused some to argue that it does not make sense to determine what light really is, that one
should be more concerned with what properties it exhibits in different contexts. This is a
classical fictionalist stance as it represents an abandonment of the image of science as
portraying the nature of reality.
Closer to home for music therapists is the example of behavioral learning theory.
Behaviorism, in broad terms, is congruent with the fictionalist position regarding theory in
science. Radical behaviorism eschewed the need for explanation of any kind when it banished
the use of mental constructions to explain behavior. Mental explanations are considered to be
inherently unscientific because of their status as unobservable entities, although this ignores
the fact that the referents of all theories are theoretical by virtue of the fact that they are
unobservable.
The reason why I say that this strategy led to the abandonment of explanation is because
environmental reinforcers cannot logically be the cause of (and therefore the explanation for)
the behaviors they act upon because they follow them rather than precede them and a cause
cannot follow its effect. And one cannot say that the organism desires the reinforcement and
produces the target behavior to obtain the reinforcement because the invoking of a mental state
such as desire violates the behavioral program of eliminating volitional terms as causes of
behavior. Hence, the search for true explanation is abandoned and all that is sought is the
establishment of correlative relationships between behavior and reinforcement. The goal then
becomes prediction and control of behavior without an effort to understand or explain human
actions.
Philosophers of science have also traditionally disagreed over whether theories are ever
really validated or disproved. What does it mean to prove the correctness of a theory,
especially if the theory refers to unobservable entities or processes? If it means that it leads to
accurate predictions, then what about theories that do not allow for prediction? And one can
always formulate an alternative theory to account for observable data. The most one can hope
to do, then, is to show that a particular theory is false by demonstrating its inconsistency with
what is observed. In fact, some philosophers of science, such as Karl Popper, have argued that
theories are never proven, they are only falsified, and that the story of science is not one of a
series of validated theories but of a series of falsified ones.
This leads to questions about how theories replace one another and how we can best
characterize the progression of science. Is this a purely rational process, or do psychological,
social, historical, and other idiosyncratic factors come into play? This is the area of
investigation pioneered by Thomas Kuhn (1970), one of the most widely quoted and most
widely misunderstood scholars of the 20th century.
Kuhn was a historian of science particularly interested in the ways that theories replaced
each other. His historical investigations led him to the construct of the paradigm, which he
was the first to apply to the history of science and which he put forth as the mechanism by
which science progressed. There is a large debate among scholars about the actual meaning of
the term, and Kuhn himself used it in many different ways. But without getting into that debate
here, suffice it to say that Kuhn’s historical investigations led him to the conclusion that social
factors played a role in the replacement of one theory by a newer one and that the criteria
internalized by scientists for deciding among competing theories were not verbally
formalizable. For this, he was criticized as introducing nonrational elements into the activity
of science.3
This nonrational basis of science was seen both in the way that external factors guide
theory choice and in the fact that theories tend to become world views and thus affect the
perceptions and judgments of scientists in hidden ways. Let us consider how theories evolve
and function. Initially, observation and experience precede theory. For example, Linnaeus
classified all the various forms of life, and his work preceded, and made possible, that of
Darwin. Freud observed hysterias and created a personality theory to explain their function. In
music therapy, we play music and see our clients change, become more healthy, or function in
a way that is not possible for them outside of the musical interaction. We ask ourselves What
might explain this? and the answer is contained in our theory.
We then move into a stage of professional activity where observation and experience
coexist with theory. Our theory starts to help us decide where to focus our awareness. Our
observation and experience become affected by the theory we hold, and those things hold our
interest that figure into our theory in various ways. At this stage, theory and experience interact
with one another and the theory is modified by experience.
The third stage in this process occurs when observation and experience are determined by
theory in the sense that theory determines the nature of our perceptions. We begin to describe
and experience the world in terms of our theory. Its components become identified with our
thought processes so much that the separation is not so clear. We become more emotionally
involved with the reality and truth of our theory and tend to see only evidence that supports it,
while at the same time discounting contradicting evidence. Our theory becomes not only a tool
or conjecture, but also a world view.
This process can be understood in Kuhn’s (1970) terms. In the preparadigm period of a
discipline, multiple theories drawn from external disciplines compete for adherents.
Eventually, a single paradigm becomes established as one theory proves more compelling than
all the others. Unity is established, the discipline matures, and normal scientific activity is
enabled. As knowledge increases, various anomalies to the theory accumulate and eventually a
breaking point is reached. Newer theories appear as rivals to the established theory.
Adherents of the competing theories talk past each other because they have no common ground
for agreement. What is really in conflict are two different world views. The new theory
establishes a new paradigm that becomes dominant as adherents of the previous theory leave
the discipline, a process that can take many years.
As we bring the discussion into the area of music therapy, there is one important
consideration that is actually an issue for all the human sciences: Are they necessarily
multiparadigmatic? It is important to mention here that Kuhn felt that paradigms operated on
the level of the subdiscipline, not for a particular science on the whole. So it would not make
sense to seek to establish a single paradigm for all of music therapy practice because the
forms of practice are so diverse. However, it might be reasonable to seek to establish a
paradigm for music psychotherapy or music therapy in medicine, for example. But still, the
question remains: Are human sciences unlike physical sciences in that they necessarily operate
under competing paradigms simultaneously without one establishing dominance? Consider
psychology, for example: Psychoanalytic theory was followed by behavioral theory, which
was followed by humanistic theory, which led to the development of transpersonal theory. All
of these frameworks currently coexist without one having established pure dominance,
although they each have spheres of influence in which they dominate scholarly and clinical
activities.
Regardless of how one answers these questions, there are three points that will be of
relevance in the balance of this book. First, there are variable forms of theory that all have
supportable claims to being scientific. Philosophers disagree over the nature of theory, and
adherents for any type of theory in music therapy can find epistemological support for their
efforts. Second, it makes no sense to argue for a single paradigm or foundational theory for all
music therapy practice. If one believes in the multiparadig-matic nature of the human sciences,
then it is clear that different types of theories can coexist. And if one does not subscribe to the
multiparadigmatic model, it is still a misuse of the construct to argue for a single paradigm or
class of theory for an entire discipline. Last, theories are human constructions with pragmatic
functions.4 These functions are multiple, and they vary across the entire spectrum of music
therapists. It makes no sense to criticize certain forms of clinical theory as not being
susceptible to quantitative operationalization because this may not be a necessary feature
given their primary function.
In understanding the value of different kinds of theory in music therapy, it is necessary to

first understand the various roles that theory plays in contemporary music therapy practice.
One can then understand (and critique) a theory based upon the functions its adherents claim
for it, rather than on the basis of an abstract set of criteria that may not be relevant in that
particular case. Theories are human creations formulated to meet pragmatic human needs, and
they are better evaluated on their ability to meet these needs than on their formal or logical
structure. Chapter 2 begins with a discussion of the different purposes theory is put to in music
therapy.
3But Kuhn took great pains to demonstrate how the evolution of theory could still have a
rational basis even though it could not be reduced to decision processes based on formalized
rules, and he disavowed many of the critiques of science based on his ideas. His latter
scholarly efforts involved exploring the role of scientific exemplars in illustrating the
application of tacit forms of knowledge.
4But by saying this,
I do not mean to imply support for the fictionalist position. First,
regardless of whether theories reflect external realities, they are still products of the human
mind. Second, theory, in a general sense, has social uses other than accounting for the
phenomena it was created to explain.
CHAPTER 2
Theory in Music Therapy
The focus of the present chapter is to discuss and provide a conceptual framework for the
various ways theories are developed, presented, and applied in contemporary music therapy in
order to understand where music-centered theory fits. Hence, the discussion is a wide-ranging
one, addressing a number of topics of metatheoretical concern.
The first section is devoted to a discussion of the various roles theory has in music therapy.
When we consider these various uses of theory, we can better understand the unique
contributions music-centered theory can make to the development of music therapy. The
second section elaborates on a metatheoretical framework for categorizing the various types of
theories in music therapy based upon their originating context. The third and last section takes
up a number of issues relevant both to the conceptual scheme presented in the second section
and to the question of the nature of music-centered theory specifically.
THE ROLE OF THEORY IN CONTEMPORARY MUSIC THERAPY

Theory has a function for clinicians and qualitative researchers different from that of
researchers who use quantitative methods primarily and whose primary focus is the evaluation
of treatment methods. Because clinical theory can be resistant to being operationalized and
validated through traditional research procedures, the content and functions of clinical theory
are typically overlooked by researchers for whom theory functions primarily to provide
hypotheses for testing. Because the music-centered approach is predominantly (but not
exclusively) the province of clinicians, it is important to review some of the other functions of
theory in order to assess its value for its primary adherents.
Provide the Foundation for Treatment

Music therapy is a profession, and professional training programs, e.g., law, medicine,
teaching, architecture, are situated in academic settings. The practice of professions entails
embodied, tacit knowledge and formalized, explicit knowledge. Embodied knowledge is
knowledge embedded in our actions and is fundamentally unverbalizable or at least
unformalizable as a prescription for action in given circumstances. Explicit knowledge is
embedded in theories and concepts and clearly is formalizable. Theory provides the
explanation for why we do what we do and for why what we do works.
It may be that the presence of theory differentiates the professions from other spheres of
human activity. The knowledge of artists and craftsmen are embodied in their actions and in
the way that they manipulate their medium. The focus is on the end product of the work, and
the presence of a rational theory for how their ends are reached is not a necessary component
of what they do. On the other hand, while professionals as diverse as surgeons, architects, and
music therapists also possess the type of knowledge that is embedded in actions, professional
accountability demands that they also possess a rational theory that serves to explain their
actions.
However, this does not mean that the theory is couched within a formalized system of
contingencies and associated interventions or that it serves as a guide for action in the moment.
The idea that professionals, researchers, and even scientists are guided in their actions by the
implementation of a formalized calculus has been disputed by scholars such as Thomas Kuhn
(1977) and Donald Schon (1983). Those music therapists who advocate the idea that validated
theory (if such a thing exists) dictates treatment by providing concrete guidelines are
attributing to theory a function that is actually served by the tacit knowledge gained through a
variety of other means, such as through actual experience in practice and exposure to
exemplars. In the case of music therapy, this would include case studies that embody the
particular approach one is implementing. Thus, saying that there is an experiential component
to the professional knowledge of a music therapist does not render theory unnecessary any
more than acknowledging that theory is necessary implies that it provides a guide to
intervention.
Instead, theory provides a foundation for treatment through a variety of other functions: It
creates a post-hoc rationale for actions; it dictates the components of academic and
professional training programs by suggesting the skills necessary to practice in a given
domain; it creates a common language for discourse among practitioners in a domain; it
provides an overall world view, value system, and set of standard procedures that define
interventions in a given domain. In short, theory makes possible the professional education of
practitioners as it provides the rational basis for interventions. It is a necessary component of
the social structure that defines a profession and differentiates it from other forms of social
relationship. Theory functions as the supportive framework within which the professional
activity of the music therapist takes place. However, it can do all this without necessarily
providing a guide to action in the moment.
Advance and Disseminate the Skills and Knowledge of Practitioners

As was mentioned above, the clinician’s skills result from an interaction of two types of
knowledge: that which can be formalized in theory (intellectual knowledge) and that which is
embodied in action, or what Schön (1983) calls reflection-in-action. Theory can enhance our
intellectual understanding of what we do by expanding our consciousness and opening us to
new ways of experiencing the phenomena we encounter in our professional work. These new
conceptions can function in turn to develop and orient our clinical skills so that they can be
applied to greater effect.
Theory can encode intellectual knowledge so that it can be passed on to others.

Professional learning takes place in three ways: through active doing, by experiencing
exemplifications of active doing (case studies), and through reflection on doing. Reflection
can expand consciousness and awareness, it can provide a rationale for actions, and it can
offer a vehicle for moving from the specific to the general and from the general to the specific.
For example, consider what happens when we view exemplifications of clinical practice
such as are embodied in case studies. Most educators would agree that contact with exemplary
illustrations is essential in teaching students how to practice. Through case studies, we
internalize unformalizable aspects of knowledge that contribute to our tacit knowledge and
enhance our skills. But the full development of the professional requires the presence of
concepts, theories, guidelines, and other abstractions. These abstractions help us to formulate
general principals that can be applied in future clinical situations. So the process moves from
the specific (case study) to the general (the formulation of a principle or theoretical construct)
and then back to the specific (clients with whom we will apply the general principle in
particular and individual ways). Theory can mediate this transfer of knowledge.
Create Directions for Research

The advancement of formalized knowledge takes place through research and theory can be the
means by which certain forms of tacit knowledge necessary to clinical practice enter the realm
of formalized knowledge. In general, research has three purposes, all of which interface with
theory in some manner: description, generating theory, and testing theory. In descriptive
studies, theory can provide the overall rationale for a study as it helps to determine what
phenomena are of interest and how they might best be captured and described. Theory helps us
to develop the general topics and particular focus in research. Theory can also be a research
outcome, such as in the Grounded Theory method of qualitative research, which contains a
very specific manner of generating and organizing data and then building the data into theory. In
this approach, the theory does not provide the direction for the research as much as it
represents its end product.
Establish Links With Other Disciplines

Interdisciplinary communication occurs on the academic and professional level. In the sphere
of academia, music therapists can interface with others interested in music, such as
musicologists, ethnomusicologists, music educators, and music philosophers. These
communications allow music therapists to have an effect on all conceptions of music and music
practices, enriching understandings and experiences in other domains.
In the clinical domain, music therapists communicate with a multitude of other
professionals, such as other creative arts therapists, doctors, nurses, psychotherapists, social
workers, teachers, speech therapists, and occupational therapists. These collaborations are an
essential component of client care. And they also serve to educate others about music therapy,
particularly those in positions to affect the quantity and quality of the delivery of music therapy
services.
Theory plays an essential role in these collaborations. Music therapists establish links with
others through the use of concepts and theories common to both music therapy and the domain
of application represented by other professionals. Speaking a common language helps others
to understand music therapy. The use of theory also attests to the sophistication and maturity of
music therapy practice. It raises the esteem in which music therapy is held by others, which
provides a greater motivation for scholarly and professional collaborations.
A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR MUSIC THERAPY THEORY
Where Do We Locate Music Therapy Theory? Two Views From the Music-Centered
Perspective
In order to define and contextualize music-centered theory within music therapy, it is first
necessary to contextualize music therapy as a whole within the appropriate category of inquiry.
This is not so straightforward a task as it might seem, both because music therapy originates in
two different spheres of human activity (the arts and health care) and because the term music
therapy has a number of different referents. Thus, as the following discussion will illustrate,
any particular scheme offered will be a pragmatic construction of a highly fluid contemporary
situation.
Brynjulf Stige (2002) has done much important work to disentangle the various referents of
the term music therapy, and the discussion in this section owes a great deal to his analysis.
Building on Bruscia’s (1998a) work, he identifies four different domains of application: “folk
music therapy, music therapy as discipline, music therapy as profession, music therapy as
professional practice” (p. 192). Folk music therapy includes all the practices of
nontechnological and contemporary societies oriented to “promote health and well-being” (p.
192) through music that predate the founding of the modern profession of music therapy. As a
discipline, music therapy refers to “a branch of learning identified by field of study, a
tradition of inquiry, and a disciplined discourse” (p. 192). As a profession, music therapy is
“a vocation requiring training in some defined body of knowledge” (p. 192). And as
professional practice “music therapy is a doing, that is, an interactive process of making
music in the service of health and well-being” that does not include other types of vocational
responsibilities “such as research, teaching, writing, consultation, and supervision” (p. 193).
Stige also observes that within music therapy as professional practice there are many
practitioners whose work does not fit well into the meaning of the word therapy used to
indicate the curing of disease. As examples, he cites music therapists doing “health promotion
in child health centers, didactics and habilitation in community centers, palliative care in
hospices” (p. 193). Although he acknowledges that because the term music therapy is so
ubiquitous that any change is unlikely, he suggests that the term health musicology (p. 191)
better represents all of the practices currently undertaken in the name of music therapy.5
Theory is primarily relevant in the domains of the discipline and of professional practice.
Theory makes up a large part of the body of knowledge learned by music therapists and the
terms of theory constitute a large part of academic discourse and research activity. Theory
also provides the context of meaning for the actual practice of music therapy, whether it is
applied in a post-hoc manner or used as a guide for intervention. As Stige argues, the term
music therapy has (at least) four different referents, and theory is relevant in at least two of
these domains (if not more). Therefore, it is not possible to locate music therapy theory
generically without reference to the domain that one is taking as context.
However, there are even more fundamental questions to consider about music therapy,
taken as a whole, before we even approach the question of music therapy theory. One question
to consider is whether music therapy is more accurately considered a music profession and
discipline or a health service profession and discipline. I will use the situation in the United
States as a case study to illustrate the current paradoxes that exist in trying to categorize music
therapy as a discipline and as a practice.6 Remember that we are trying to locate music
therapy in general, prior to being able to locate music therapy theory and then music-centered
theory.
In the United States, most academic programs are in schools, programs, conservatories,
and/or departments of music, and all music therapy programs approved by the American
Music Therapy Association (AMTA) are required to be accredited or affirmed by the National
Association of Schools of Music. In addition, 45% of an undergraduate curriculum must be
devoted to musical foundations while 15% is devoted to clinical foundations. These facts
suggest that the discipline of music therapy is subsumed under the general category of music
studies, which includes disciplines such as music performance, music education, and music
composition, among others.
However, in answering the question What is music therapy? the AMTA says that it “is an
established health care and human service profession using music to improve quality of life by
optimizing health and wellness and addressing the needs of children and adults with
disabilities or illnesses” (AMTA, 2002, p. vi). This answer addresses aspects of the
profession and the professional practice of music therapists and seems to clearly situate the
profession within the realm of health professions occupied by doctors, nurses, medical
technicians, speech therapists, physical therapists, and occupational therapists.
What is to be made of this seemingly contradictory stance and how does it impact the
present discussion?
It appears that there is no single, objective description of the appropriate social or
scholarly category in which to locate music therapy, partly due to its hybrid nature, combining
skills and knowledge from the two domains of music and of health. In order to highlight how
the categories into which we separate scholarly inquiry are constructed by humans rather than
reflect inherent qualities of the external world, the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once
commented that “the universe is not divided into departments” (Kivy, 1989, p. 17). However,
colleges and universities are organized by departments, as are hospitals, clinics, schools,
prisons, and any other institution in which music therapists practice their craft. A university
must decide to locate its music therapy program in a school of music or in a school of applied
psychology; a hospital must decide whether the music therapy services should be in a
recreational or clinical department; and a professional association must decide if the
universities whose music therapy programs it approves should meet the standards of
accrediting bodies for music schools or for the counseling professions. The choices made by
these institutions reflect pragmatic, social, and historical concerns as much as they reflect the
actual practice of music therapy. Therefore, any attempt to locate either the discipline or
professional practice of music therapy will be a tentative one, subject to change and revision,
and certainly undertaken with specific and pragmatic purposes in mind. It cannot claim to be
universally true in all social and cultural contexts, and it certainly reflects varying conceptions
about the nature of music therapy practice.
My pragmatic purpose in the present book is to contextualize music-centered music therapy
theory, not to legislate a placement for music therapy as a whole. Toward this end, let us
consider a way of organizing the various sources of theory applied to music therapy:
Table 1
Some Sources of Theory in Music Therapy
BIOLOGY
Neurology
Physiology
PSYCHOLOGY
Behavioral Theory
Counseling
Psychotherapy/Psychoanalysis
Developmental Psychology
Personality Theory
Cognitive Psychology
SOCIOLOGY
ANTHROPOLOGY
Ritual & Religious Studies
PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy of Language
Aesthetics
Communication Theory
EDUCATION
MUSIC
Musicology
Ethnomusicology
Music Philosophy
Music Theory
Music Psychology
Music Education
Music Therapy
For purposes of understanding its body of theory, I have placed music therapy under the
general category of Music. Not everyone will agree with this placement, and I would like to
emphasize that this organization is a somewhat pragmatic and somewhat arbitrary one. For
example, although I have also placed them both in the Music category, an argument can be
made to place music philosophy under the general heading of Philosophy and music
psychology under the general heading of Psychology. It is a curiosity that while areas such as
music history and music education tend to be in the province of music departments rather than
departments of history or education, other areas, such as music philosophy or music
psychology, can be just as easily located in departments of philosophy or psychology,
respectively.
Although these different possibilities highlight the tentative nature of the present
classification, I still believe that categorizing music therapy in this way is superior to the
alternatives. Let us examine three alternatives to this choice. The argument that I will make is
that once we see the conceptual difficulties in these alternate classifications, the advantages of
categorizing music therapy as part of Music will be more apparent.
First, one can say that music therapy is in its essence a hybrid domain that belongs in none
of these areas proper, but instead warrants its own major category. There are two difficulties
with this position: a) One will have to support the notion that the hybrid nature of music
therapy is different enough from the hybrid nature of other domains, such as ethnomusicology
or music philosophy, to warrant such a major categorization, b) One will also have to argue
that music therapy is both sufficiently unified and broad enough to warrant such a major
categorization. My own sense is that none of these arguments can be made convincingly.
Second, one can argue that music therapy belongs in one of the other major categories, such
as Biology, Psychology, or Education. And it is certainly possible to select certain types and
areas of music therapy practice and make a plausible argument that these subdomains of music
therapy belong in one of these other major categories. However, the fact that the argument can
only be made for subdomains, and the fact that arguments can be made for the multiple
placement of different subdomains, both militate against music therapy, taken in a global sense,
being accurately subsumed into any of these other major categories.
Third, one can say that it is not possible to make any type of general statement about music
therapy theory so that it can be located in any one area. In this view, the domains of music
therapy practice and understanding are so diverse that they belong in multiple general
categories. However, this is, to me, an extreme argument that, taken to its logical end, suggests
that there is no single entity that we can legitimately call music therapy and that the different
domains of practice, such as music psychotherapy or music as medicine, have more in
common with the categories of medicine and psychotherapy respectively than with each other.
Thus, saying that music therapy demands multiple categorizations is really an argument against
the existence of music therapy.
For those practitioners for whom being music-centered is a formal identity, it would seem
more logical to locate music therapy within the overall category of music studies because
music therapy is considered more a specialized application of music than a specialized means
of conducting therapy. Theory and practice rest primarily on musical foundations, and the
musical experience is the primary clinical focus.
This position on the nature of music-centeredness expands the notion of what belongs to
music studies proper by including within it typical focuses of music therapy work. Moreover,
this position stems from the recognition that other subareas of music studies are creating
theories that are expanding it in a way that naturally makes it more accommodating to music
therapy. Some examples include ideas from the “New Musicology” as first described by
Ansdell (1997) and ideas from music education, such as those of Elliot (1995), described in
the present text. This position does not deny that music therapy has a health-related focus that
might differentiate it from, for example, music education. However, the health-related focus is
considered to lie within the musical focus rather than be something imposed from without or
layered onto the musical experience in an extrinsic fashion. The fact that there are inherent
aspects of involvement in music that promote health and self-development is a notion that can
draw together theories from diverse areas such as music therapy, music education, and
ethnomusicology. This is because each discipline, in its own way, is concerned with the
general value of music for human beings and the way in which music enhances human life.
For therapists for whom being music-centered is not a formal identity, but rather a position
that can be inhabited when warranted, it would seem to make sense to consider music therapy
as more of a hybrid domain whose explanatory entities should include musical ones, but which
should not be defined exclusively by such a reliance. This position seems more congruent with
the idea that music therapy is, in essence, a hybrid profession, and its theoretical foundations
must draw equally from musical and nonmusical domains to reflect this hybrid nature.
In sum, for the music-centeredness as identity theorist, music therapy theory necessarily
includes concepts from music studies and must be grounded in ideas about music and musical
experience. Ideas from other areas of human inquiry may be utilized, but in a way that
supplements the fundamentally musical theory, rather than supplants it or meets it on equal
footing. In contrast, for the music-centeredness as flexible stance theorist, music therapy
theory necessarily includes concepts from music studies and from other areas of inquiry, and
this must be done in a way such that neither domain dominates the other. However, both
perspectives share the recognition that music-centered practices require the type of theoretical
support provided by the various disciplines of music studies in Table 1.
In a previous publication (Aigen, 2003), I suggested a tripartite division through which to
categorize types of music therapy theory: recontextualized theory, bridging theory, and
indigenous theory. This continuum of theory type was differentiated by the degree to which the
theory was original and specific to music therapy. In Table 2, these theory types are presented
on the horizontal dimension while the theory sources from Table 1 are presented vertically. In
the cells of Table 2 are examples of publications that contain concepts that can be described
by the particular intersection of theory source and theory type in which they are located.
Articulating the types of theory can aid our conceptualization about them, but the
boundaries between them are soft rather than fixed. In this regard, I agree with Bruscia’s ideas
about the relationships among types of theory. He believes that it is possible to “provide clear
boundaries between the different types, without dichotomizing or polarizing them so that they
are mutually exclusive.… I do not believe that the entities that are separated by them have to
be in opposition; in fact they can even share qualities” (K. Bruscia, personal communication,
August 7, 2004). We can thus consider the different theory types as categories of knowledge
that overlap with one another.
In the previous presentation of this theory continuum, the three different labels described
particular theories and theoretical notions. I now consider them more as different ways of
applying ideas rather than as fixed descriptions. In other words, one can take a concept from a
domain such as psychotherapy or ethnomusicology and use it in a recontextualized, bridging,
or indigenous way. Its external origin does not preclude it from figuring in indigenous theory.
This is determined by how the idea is used.
Recontextualized theory seeks to describe and explain music therapy processes and
phenomena in the terms of other disciplines such as psychoanalysis, neurology, or behavioral
learning theory. Often, these types of expositions are reductionistic7 because the constructs
from other disciplines are treated as more fundamental than those drawn from music therapy.
Music therapy phenomena are considered to be sufficiently explained when they can be
completely recontextualized in imported terms. Very often, in this type of theory the claim is
put forward that there should be a single foundational theory upon which all music therapy
practices must be based. While I do not find the arguments for foundational or recontextualized
theory to be convincing, I refer the reader to Taylor (1997) for a well-developed,
contemporary argument of this type.8
Table 2
Sources and Types of Theory in Music Therapy
Here are examples of statements that reflect the use of recontextualized theory:
Music therapy works because music is an effective form of behavioral reinforcement.
Music therapy works because music allows for access to unconscious memories or
repressed trauma.
Music therapy works because of the activity of the neural mechanisms involved in the
processing of music.
In formulating professional communications, recontextualized theory seems to have its

greatest use if one’s primary audience is outside the music therapy profession, because none of
the concepts are music therapy-specific. There are no demands placed upon professionals
from other domains to grapple with concepts or experiences that may be unfamiliar to them.
Moreover, there may be pragmatic concerns for using this type of theory, such as the obtaining
of funding for music therapy programs, but its utility for music therapy audiences may be more
limited.9
Bridging Theory establishes connections between terms and constructs from different
disciplines. Explanatory constructs from other areas are combined with those specific to
music therapy. The external ideas can be used to form music- or music therapy-specific
constructs and the purpose is to illuminate through analogy without making the constructs of
one discipline more fundamental or important than any other. Here are some examples:
First, consider the interest of the present author in new musicology concepts and what their
application to music therapy can tell us about the connection between clinical and nonclinical
music-making (Aigen, 2002). For example, I have been exploring the concepts of vital drive
and participatory discrepancies (Keil, 1994a, 1994b, 1995), which have been used in the
analysis of interactions of jazz rhythm sections. I have noted that there are analogies between
how a jazz rhythm section supports a soloist and how a music therapist supports a client’s
expression. My belief is that studying the similarities and differences can enlighten us about
both processes.
Another contemporary example is Pavlicevic (1997), who discusses her notion of dynamic
form. She draws from philosophy and infant communication theory in creating her concept,10
but notes that dynamic form is present only in clinical applications of music. In both examples,
constructs are drawn from other disciplines that are then combined and applied in a unique
way to illuminate music therapy process. However, there is no attempt to reframe music
therapy processes completely within a construct borrowed from another domain as one would
do in recontextualized theory.
There are a few different reasons to employ bridging theory. As Pavlicevic (1997)
discusses, different disciplines offer unique perspectives on music therapy phenomena. And
while each is potentially enriching, none of them fits music therapy in a neat way. The use of
bridging theory recognizes this fact as it takes advantage of what other disciplines and other
thinkers have to offer, while retaining the freedom to adapt and supplement the ideas with
considerations unique to music therapy.
Bridging theories can be accessible both to music therapists and to professionals and
scholars from other disciplines. In terms of the latter, the use of language from other
disciplines helps to establish a common area of discourse between music therapy and other
professions. By supplementing the borrowed ideas with music therapy-specific constructs, one
can contribute to the advancement of music therapy theory, but in a way that maintains its
connections to other disciplines. I have also found that professionals and scholars from other
domains usually respond positively to bridging theory. The supplement to their own constructs
enlarges the domain of application of their constructs while simultaneously demonstrating the
sophistication of music therapy practitioners and the unique contributions that music therapy
can make to conceptions of music, human nature, and the understanding of cognitive and
affective processes in general.
Indigenous Theory is original and specific to music therapy. Its emphasis is based on the
idea that all disciplines begin by utilizing borrowed theory imported from other domains. As a
particular area of human inquiry matures, its practitioners create and employ indigenous theory
that is created primarily to explain the phenomena to which it is being applied. The underlying
rationale is that all domains of inquiry have unique qualities, and theory development
proceeds in a direction that allows it to increasingly account for the unique issues in that
domain. The Nordoff and Robbins (1977) concept of the music child is a good example of an
indigenous construct. It is put forward as a means of explaining the originators’ experiences
with hundreds of disabled children over a period of many years. It is not a modification of a
concept drawn from elsewhere, nor does it attempt to explain phenomena other than those that
gave rise to it. Because of its highly specific nature, and because its saliency often depends
upon a shared experiential base, indigenous theory is most appropriate when the primary
audience is other music therapists and the purpose is to advance theoretical developments at
the forefront of the profession (Aigen, 1991a).
I would like to make a few remarks to support the notion described earlier that it is the way
that a concept is applied that determines how it should be classified, rather than its domain of
origin, particularly when we are considering how indigenous theory can make use of already
existing concepts.
For example, one can make a plausible argument that the idea of the music child as
presented by Nordoff and Robbins (1977) is an application to disabled individuals of
Abraham Maslow’s concept of self-actualization. Yet, because of its exclusively musical
character and manifestation, the music child is a paradigmatic example of an indigenous,
music-centered construct, its connection to Maslow notwithstanding. It is indigenous not
because there are no elements in it that have originated elsewhere, but because those elements
are used to develop a specifically music-based concept of music therapy practice. In sum, a
strong argument can be made that it is the manner in which an idea is applied, and not just its
domain of origination, that determines whether it is best characterized as recontextualized,
bridging, or indigenous theory.11
METATHEORETICAL ISSUES IN MUSIC THERAPY

As music therapy theory continues to mature, theorists are applying a variety of conceptual
tools in commenting upon and influencing this development. In different publications, authors
are variously advocating for the development of indigenous, grounded, foundational, and
general theory in music therapy. At times, some of these terms are used interchangeably,
although they all have quite different meanings. The present section is offered to both bring
some clarity and consistency to the usage of these terms in discussions of music therapy theory
and to provide a more thorough understanding of music-centered theory by discussing where it
stands in relation to these other types of theory.
Indigenous and Music-Centered Theory

Historically, in music therapy clinical processes have been explained through theory imported
from disciplines such as psychoanalysis and behavioral learning theory. This use of
nonmusical imported theory has certain advantages: It allows for cross-disciplinary
communication; it builds upon on a preexisting knowledge base; and it can gain the esteem of
those in a position to help music therapists, such as medical doctors. However, there are
disadvantages as well: It subsumes experience in music therapy to categories of thought
developed to explain nonmusical phenomena; it may distort, inappropriately represent, or
cause us not to perceive important and unique defining characteristics of music therapy
practice because theory influences our perceptions like an unconscious filter or lens does; and
it inhibits theoretical development if one agrees with the results of Kuhn’s historical research
that indigenous theory advances a discipline while borrowed theory is a developmental stage
that a discipline moves past as it matures.
Some music therapists have advocated for indigenous theory that is developed primarily to
explain music therapy processes because of a belief that it is by developing such theory that
music therapy will develop as a profession (Aigen, 1991a). This is related to, but not identical
to, the music-centered theory that is the subject of the present book. Music therapists (the
present author included) have tended to identify indigenous and music-centered theory with
each other; although there are substantive reasons for doing so, the two concepts are not
identical and bear some differentiation.
Music therapists are not alone in identifying the quest for indigenous theory with theory that
holds the art form at the core of their practice. Sean McNiff (1981), writing as an expressive
arts therapist, appears not to differentiate the two tasks in his exploration of the general value
for humankind of contact with the arts: “To the extent that the literature on the arts in
psychotherapy subordinates itself to traditional principles of psychiatry as it is commonly
practiced, this literature is derivative and often unoriginal. What is needed today is a
theoretical and operational approach that comes more from the historical continuities of art”
(p. xi).
Gary Ansdell (1995) puts forth a similar point of view, both in supporting the creation of
music therapy-specific theory, and in identifying indigenous theory with music-centered

thinking, to an extent. In discussing the various sources of explanatory theory in music therapy,
he observes that
there is a difference between, on the one hand, acknowledging the influence of the ideas and
values of other treatment theories and, on the other, having a music therapy explaining itself
exclusively in terms of the concepts of another system. … The danger is always that the
focus of attention moves away from the musical component of the therapy and on to the
conceptual system of whatever approach is being used. (1995, p. 6).
Here, Ansdell is critical of recontextualized theory while recognizing the potential
contributions of bridging theory. In further discussing the work just cited, Ansdell (1999a) has
said that “the central message of my book was a challenge to explore a more indigenous model
for music therapy, arising out of a deepening investigation of the phenomenon of music but
certainly not ruling out other theoretical models” (p. 72).
While calling for greater attention to be paid to musicological understandings of music
therapy events, Ansdell also realizes that a purely musicological understanding is as deficient
as a purely psychological one because “an extra-musical theory tends to delete the ‘object’
(the music) whilst a musicological one deletes the ‘subject’ (the player or listener)” (1995, p.
6). In suggesting that music therapy could benefit from a theoretical perspective that is “unique
to the discipline” (1995, p. 6), Ansdell is overtly supporting the development of indigenous
theory. He quotes Leslie Bunt (1994) in this regard: “We could begin to develop a perspective
from within the evolving discipline of music therapy itself…. Perhaps by a deeper
understanding of music and musical processes we shall begin to become aware once again of
the central position of music within music therapy” (cited in Ansdell, 1995, p. 6).
While there is a conceptual distinction between indigenous theory and music-centered
theory, it is true that indigenous theory is often music-centered because the most common
elements that are inadequately addressed in theory borrowed from psychology, psychotherapy,
or neurology are the specific characteristics and functions of music. All other things being
equal, it is natural that theory created primarily from the practice of music therapy will
emphasize music to a greater extent than will theory imported from disciplines not primarily
concerned with the study of music. Again, as Ansdell (1995) so eloquently puts it: “We have
to look at what is unique to music in order to find out what is unique to music therapy” (p. x).
Michael Thaut (2000) also agrees that borrowing “theories and models from other
disciplines” (p. 6) inhibits the development of music therapy. By linking “the long-term
acceptability of its therapeutic methods with the viability of subfields of medicine and
psychology,” music therapy is “neglecting the pursuit of its own independent foundations” (p.
6). The most important negative consequence is that by predetermining the explanatory
mechanisms of music therapy to be those from imported domains, “the therapeutic effects of
music can be misunderstood and misinterpreted” and music therapy is thereby prevented from
developing “its own scientific and clinical foundations” (p. 6), leaving it in a secondary
position relative to other disciplines.
Foundational theoretical models in music therapy, Thaut asserts, should be based on
fundamental processes in musical behavior. In other words, music therapy theory should be
drawn from what is known about music in its nonclinical applications. A summary of Thaut’s
position on the role of music in music therapy research and theory asserts that “it is essential,
however, to know how to apply music and why it functions therapeutically because it is music,
and not because it is associated with another discipline’s theoretical model” (Clair, 2000, p.
46). Hence, Thaut also seems to believe that indigenous music therapy theory has to be based
primarily on known properties of music. Where Thaut and the present author part company is
in his equating of therapeutic with nonmusical and in his belief in traditionally defined
outcome research as the only way to develop the field of music therapy.
Ultimately, the question of whether indigenous music therapy necessarily has its foundation
in ideas about music depends on what one considers to be the proper academic or
professional home of music therapy, and how one defines indigenous. The position I am
advocating occupies what I perceive as a middle ground.
By asserting that music therapy belongs in the category of music studies, I am staking a
position more closely associated with the stronger sense of music-centeredness. In this
position, being music-centered means placing ideas about music at the core of music therapy
theory. While some commentators on metatheory might extend this position to one that asserts
that indigenous theory is necessarily music-centered (because music therapy practice is an
essentially musical discipline), I would not go as far. Instead, the strategy of considering the
label indigenous as one that describes how an idea is used rather than where it originates
makes room for the incorporation of ideas from nonmusical areas of inquiry into legitimate
indigenous theory. The publication by David Aldridge (1996) referenced in Table 2 is a good
example of such a type of indigenous theory. In this way of thinking, indigenous theory is not
necessarily music-centered.
In the alternative view that music therapy is, in its essence, a hybrid domain, then it may be
possible to say that indigenous music therapy theory cannot be music-centered, in the strong
sense of the term, because in this view there always must be an equal balance of music-related
theory and therapy-related theory in any true indigenous therapy. However, the weaker sense
of music-centeredness can be invoked if one asserts that being music-centered does not
preclude the use of nonmusical ideas as a foundational element in one’s practice of music
therapy, as long as they are demonstrated to be congruent with ideas about music. In sum, in
the hybrid view that incorporates the weaker sense of music-centeredness, indigenous theory
is not necessarily music-centered, but it is also not precluded from being music-centered.
Regardless of where one stands on this issue, it is important to consciously consider what
the most fruitful role is of knowledge from other areas in developing indigenous theory. Even
as someone who is most interested in indigenous theory, I do recognize that theories are not
deduced from data, they are inferred; that theories do not emerge in an intellectual vacuum;
and that theory creation results from a combination of prior knowledge, creative thought,
intuition, and familiarity with the domain of application. In a sense, we need a theory to create
a theory because without any theory we have no direction or rationale in gathering and
analyzing data. Without a theory, all facts or all observations are of equal value, and we have
no guidelines for assigning relative levels of importance to what we observe and experience.
Ideas from other disciplines have value in developing indigenous theory. They can serve as
the inspiration for indigenous theory by providing analogies, models, and metaphors for
indigenous theory through the use of concepts such as fields, forces, or energy. Ideas from
other realms can also expand our consciousness about what it is possible to conceive about
natural forces, the capacities of human beings, and our role in the world. Original theories in
music therapy have traditionally been inspired by such considerations, drawing from
disciplines as varied as physics, anthropology, and transpersonal psychology. Also, in rare
cases, theories from other areas of inquiry can offer specific mechanisms translatable to music
therapy, particularly when there is a natural congruence between the theory and the practice of
the music therapist doing the cross-disciplinary application.
Ideas from other disciplines can also serve as a bridge in the development of indigenous
theory. All ideas—even indigenous ones—come from somewhere. Everything we think is
influenced by what we read and by what we experience. In a way, it is not possible to create
indigenous theory without learning to think theoretically, and this is best done by learning
about existent theory and learning how to apply theory to concrete experience.
The development of the theorist and of theory is not so different from the development of
the artist. In the development of the artist, it is necessary to master what came before: Visual
artists still develop their own artistry by copying the works of great masters, and jazz
musicians still study the solos of great improvisers. Perhaps, in this way, the development of
an individual recapitulates the development of the community. In other words, music therapy,
as a discipline, first had to master ideas from other domains before the community of music
therapists could begin to develop indigenous theory. And individual music therapists can best
develop indigenous theory by first learning to understand imported theory. Ideas from other
disciplines have value in both the development of the profession and in the development of the
professional, even if their role is to eventually be transcended.
Mercédès Pavlicevic (2000) has discussed the relative values of indigenous and imported
theory. As was mentioned previously, she suggests that different disciplines offer different
perspectives on music therapy phenomena and that each perspective is potentially enriching in
a unique way. Nonetheless, she notes that none of the external perspectives fits music therapy
precisely. This leads her to be equally critical of music therapy theorists who borrow ideas
indiscriminately without considering whether there is a natural fit between the source of a
theory and the domain of its application, and of music therapists who, on principle, refuse to
borrow theory from other domains. This is because the borrowing of theory has distinct
advantages, in her view, such as helping to define common areas between music therapy and
other professions, and promoting discourse and collaboration by establishing a common
language among disparate disciplines.
In a sense, Pavlicevic attempts to step out of the indigenous versus imported theory debate
by saying that this is not the most important distinction between theories. Instead, we should
examine how close a theory is to the actual practice of music therapists, regardless of the
source of the idea, and we should value theory that is more adequate and loyal to practice than
that which is distant from it.
This is not a trivial concern. Music therapy clinicians have criticized the lack of relevance
of the theory that drives much research in music therapy (Aigen, 1991a), and therefore theory
drawn directly from practice can help to bridge this schism between researchers and
clinicians. Ultimately, Pavlicevic believes that meanings are created in relation to other
meanings and that we have an ethical obligation to examine how theories from outside music
therapy can enrich our understanding of music therapy, while at the same time examining the
ways in which meanings are constructed in the domain we want to borrow from in order to
ensure its relevance to music therapy.
Indigenous Theory and Grounded Theory

The term grounded theory names a specific qualitative research approach as developed by
Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (1967). It also refers to a general research practice shared
by many qualitative research approaches. A grounded theory is one that emerges from a
particular research study, as opposed to one that is drawn from any other source. Many
qualitative approaches assert that in undertaking research on a new phenomenon, it is more
advantageous to use the research process itself to generate a theory than to use a theory from
related literature to guide design, data gathering, and analysis. It is believed that theory that is
grounded in the data will more likely be relevant to the domain of application.
Grounded and indigenous theory are similar terms, although they are not identical. A
grounded theory is one that emerges from the analysis of the data gathered in a specific
research study. Once that theory is removed from its original context and applied in another
study to guide design, data gathering, and analysis, it is no longer a grounded theory. A
grounded theory is necessarily indigenous if it comes out of a particular study of music therapy
process. But a theory could be indigenous but not grounded if, for example, it is drawn from
existing music therapy literature. The judgment about the groundedness of a theory is always
made in reference to a specific study. The judgment about the indigenousness of a theory is
always made in reference to the discipline as a whole.
Foundational Theory and General Theory

Much music therapy theory is relevant primarily in the domain it was drawn from and to the
phenomena it was created to explain. For example, consider the ideas of Florence Tyson
(1981) or Mary Priestley (1975, 1994), both of whom are prominent music psychotherapy
theorists. It is not immediately apparent what direct relevance their ideas would have for
music therapists working toward special education goals.
Yet, some theorists want to establish foundational theory that would be applicable to all
music therapy practice regardless of method, approach, or client (Taylor, 1997; Thaut, 2000;
Madsen, Cotter, & Madsen, Jr., 1968). An outgrowth of this belief is the desire to make all
legitimate music therapy interventions consistent with this theory, such as in Thaut (2000).
This is frequently argued for in an attempt to make music therapy practice more scientific and
more accountable. However, this position can also be monopolistic in limiting practice to that
which is experimentally verifiable. In so doing, some music therapy approaches that bring
great client benefit would be precluded because they do not lend themselves to being
evaluated through experimental protocols. This could be because either the approach is too
highly individualized or the benefits cannot be operationally defined.
Traditionally, there have been competing claims for the one foundational perspective for
music therapy practice. All of these ideas are drawn from other domains, and all seem to have
built-in limitations.12 Behavioral science claims that all music is human behavior, that music
therapists are always studying behavior, and therefore that the mechanisms that explain music
therapy process are the mechanisms of behavioral learning theory (Madsen et al., 1968). Yet,
some music therapists consider active and receptive musical skills and sensitivities as a form
of intelligence in action, not as a form of behavior subject to explanation through behavioral
principles.
Those who advocate for the primacy of neurological science, such as Taylor (1997),13
argue that all musical activity takes place in the brain, so brain science is relevant for all
music therapy approaches. Also, they say that the activity of neurological structures and
chemical activities should eventually be able to explain music therapy processes. Yet, the fact
that “the neural mechanisms are the same whether a patellar reflex is elicited, a beautiful
sunset enjoyed, a symphony listened to, or the fragrance of a rose scented” (Gaston, 1964, p.l)
can just as easily be used as an argument for the irrelevance of neurological considerations in
understanding the mechanisms of music therapy.
Looking to brain science for an explanation of human experience is as mistaken as
examining the arrangement of circuits in a computer in order to understand how a word
processing program operates. Just because there is no software without the hardware does not
mean that understanding the hardware helps explain the software. These are different levels of
organization with epiphenomena on higher organizational levels that are not reducible to
phenomena on more fundamental levels.
Psychodynamic theorists believe that humans are necessarily influenced by their
unconscious, and therefore all theory—regardless of domain of application—has to account
for unconscious effects upon thought, affect, and behavior. The dynamics of the psyche must
therefore be included in any effort to explain music therapy process. Yet, psychodynamic
theory is only one personality theory among many; whatever claims it once had to hegemony
have long been invalidated.
As stated above, one of the primary problems with adhering to any single foundational
theory is that doing so tends to generate practices of exclusivity within the music therapy
profession. It is not only the neurologically based or behaviorally based approaches that are
prone to this tendency. For example, in certain countries music therapy has predominantly been
a practice of music psychotherapy. In contrast, other countries, such as the United States,
historically have accommodated areas of practice in rehabilitation, medicine, and special
education, to name a few. However, because music psychotherapy has been a dominant
framework in countries such as the United Kingdom where psychodynamic approaches
predominate, there is an increasing tendency to define legitimate and competent music therapy
practice in a theory-specific way. This leads to a state of affairs where, unless one uses
psychodynamic constructs and procedures, one is violating strictures of ethical and competent
practice. Hence, the only competent supervisors are those who are able to employ processes
such as the examination of countertransference in the supervisory work. Such tendencies to
make ethical imperatives out of theory-specific constructs will ultimately lead to an extremely
homogenous profession that is not best suited to offer the variety of approaches that the
diversity of music therapy clients demands. And this tendency is by no means the province of
any one particular group of music therapists.
Although the two terms general theory and foundational theory may appear
interchangeable, they have actually have been used in different ways in music therapy
literature. The drive to create theory of broad applicability is a central goal for many
scientific endeavors. Consider, for example, Einstein’s quest for a unified field theory to unite
gravitational and electromagnetic forces and Darwin’s theory of evolution put forth to explain
the variety of life forms on this planet. The development of broadly formulated theory can be
seen as establishing a balance between the general and the unique: It must be specific enough
to have meaning in particular, local contexts, and yet broad enough to have relevance in as
many contexts as possible.
Although I have not come across any distinction between the terms foundational theory and
general theory in philosophy of science literature, there does seem to be a differentiation
developing between how the terms are used in music therapy. Some authors, such as Taylor
(1997) and Thaut (2000), are using the former term, foundational, in describing how they
conceptualize broad-based theory, while others, such as Kenny (1996,1997, 1999), Smeijsters
(2003), and the present author, are demonstrating a preference for the term general.
Conceptually, foundational theory seems to stem from specific theoretical commitments that
have restrictive implications in limiting practice and conceptualization of practice. In
contradiction to the meaning of its name, foundational theory appears to function in a “from the
top down” mode that legislates which forms of practice have legitimacy. By setting itself up as
the basis for all practice, foundational theory can lead to a hegemony of specific approaches.
On the other hand, the impetus for authors advocating for general theory is to begin from
existing practice and theory and assimilate this diversity into a grand integration. This is more
of “from the bottom up” mode of working. This is not to say that advocates for general theory
do not have their own theoretical commitments. It is to say that the inclusiveness at the heart of
notions of general theory function to push theorists to constantly expand these commitments in
an accommodative way.
I would like to add three additional points about foundational theory. First, for those who
believe in the feasibility of foundational theory—something that I hope it is clear that I am
arguing against—it has to be acknowledged that the body of theory being described as music-
centered has claim equal to that of any other. It could be argued that the most prominent
commonality in all applications of music therapy is the presence of music, and therefore it is
the attributes of music itself which should be the foundation of all music therapy.
Second, I also hope that it is clear that no one has established convincing arguments for any
one domain to be foundational for all music therapy applications. This fact does not invalidate
any of them but instead demonstrates that the foundations should be considered complementary
rather than contradictory. This is the only perspective that will support diversity in practice
and avoid the creation of professional rivalries and schisms that deflect the attention of music
therapists from building a strong, diverse, and unified profession characterized by mutual
respect among practitioners from a variety of perspectives. Once we acknowledge that
paradigms are not discipline-wide entities but are meant to function with sub-areas of
application, and that there are varying ideas on the nature of science, therapy, and human well-
being, we have to acknowledge that society as a whole will benefit more from a music therapy
profession with great heterogeneity rather than one that is defined by adherence to a single
world view or value system.
Third, there is nothing wrong with using foundational theory, or more accurately, using
theory in a foundational way. For example, some practitioners in music therapy may have
particular psychodynamic beliefs that are foundational to their own practice, such as belief in
the phenomenon known as countertransference. It may be a foundational belief that this
phenomenon is always present and always influences a therapist’s perception of a client. The
problem arises when this particular belief is applied in a general way beyond its origins to
account for the actions of people for whom the theoretical phenomenon known as
countertransference either does not exist or is not relevant in their work.
Thus, we can understand that foundational and general theory can both serve a purpose, but
the view I am advocating for is that confusing the two leads individuals to use foundational
beliefs to perform what should be the role of general theory. It is the attempt to impose one’s
foundational beliefs upon the domain of music therapy as a whole through the guise of treating
them as if they are elements of general theory that can cause the problems and schisms in
music therapy described above.
Carolyn Kenny (1996) discusses the tension between the general and the unique in music
therapy. She observes that music therapists tend to value uniqueness for a number of reasons:
We want to emphasize the unique qualities of our profession in order to give us a raison
d’être; we want the experiences that we provide to clients to be unique in order to give them
something that they cannot find elsewhere; and we want clients to be their unique selves, to
find their true nature.
Kenny puts forward the exploration of consciousness as a primary means for freeing us
from the horns of the dilemma of balancing the unique and the general. The concept of
consciousness allows a multidimensionality of experience (uniqueness) to that which seems
common on the surface. Kenny presents open and flexible thoughts regarding the establishment
of general theory. Her view is neither dogmatic nor foundational in the sense of placing
particular concepts as primary. She presents a possible path for the establishment of general
theory that is appealing even for those who might otherwise tend to resist it.
In Kenny’s (1997) view, an open general theory could consist of the following
characteristics: considering representation in some form; considering a connection to the land
and to the natural world; acknowledging the therapist as an active, subjective being;
incorporating the role of values as opposed to explanatory constructs; holding a role for
collective identity; the inclusion of as broad a representation of music therapists as is
possible; and room for the opposite of generality, what Kenny calls “making special,” a
construct borrowed from the work of Ellen Dissanayake.
In considering these qualities, it is clear that the spirit and intent of Kenny’s thoughts on
general theory are opposite from the typical rationale for foundational theory. Kenny’s
motivation is inclusive, accommodating the variety of forms of existing practice into an
expansive vision. Whereas previous concepts of foundational theory proceeded from premises
of specific and narrowly defined domains of inquiry that could lead to exclusionary practices,
Kenny’s general theory would advance music therapy theory by highlighting links across
models, approaches, and diverse cultures: “In general theory, we would like to see general
principles which could help us to understand different methods, different populations, different
models” (Kenny, 1999, p. 128). The creation of general theory is presented as a necessary
developmental step for music therapy:
With general theory, we can endure as a field because we will have identified our unique
place in the scheme of things. We will have articulated our identity on our own terms, from
our own direct experience with clients and in research and in the gatherings of music
therapists, in partnership with other disciplines (Kenny, 1997, p. 17).
Kenny (1999) observes that species survive and evolve by becoming increasingly unique
and that the same is true for the development of individuals. She wants to define artistic and
creative expression in terms of its connection to this force, not in terms of the manifestation of
particular aesthetic elements. What is most general in music therapy is our common drive to
become as unique as we can as individuals.
This seemingly paradoxical realization is congruent with research findings in the study of
the early work of Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins (Aigen, 1998). Although I began that
research study looking for the pattern underlying the development of eight individuals, I
discovered instead that what defined the Nordoff-Robbins approach was the unique way that
music was used in each course of therapy to promote the individual paths of development of
the clients in that study. The spinning out of unique identities from a common force seems to
characterize the development of a piece of music as much as it does the development of an
individual. Therefore, the degree to which we can align the individual’s proclivity for self-
development with the forces that govern musical development would be an important part of
any general music therapy theory.
General Theory and Music-Centered Music Therapy

Part III of the present work presents a music-centered theory as a platform for general theory in
music therapy. At this point, I will mention some aspects of the former that make it a good
candidate for the latter. The values, beliefs, concepts, and practices of music-centered music
therapists are as important as is the theory generated from these elements. By seeing how
music-centered theory can be a good candidate for a legitimate general theory, the balance of
the present text can be read with this inclusive goal in mind.
First, as was noted previously, the use of music is certainly universal to every single
application and model of practice in music therapy. While this same claim was made for
behavioral, neurological, and psychodynamic music therapy, these claims are actually
dependent on subscribing to a particular belief system. No such commitment is necessary in
acknowledging the universality of musical processes in music therapy.
Second, in chapters 6 and 7, a number of examples of music-centered thinking are
presented from a wide variety of music therapy approaches and frameworks, such as
Analytical Music Therapy, Community Music Therapy, Aesthetic Music Therapy, Culture-
Centered Music Therapy, Guided Imagery and Music, and Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy.
Adherents of these approaches work in every single country in which music therapy is found,
with every type of person who receives music therapy services, in every type of setting in
which music therapy services are offered, with every manner of presenting music (live,
recorded, improvised, precomposed, receptive, active, etc.), with every possible style of
music, and with every type of musical activity (listening, playing, composing, recording, and
performing music). The presence of music-centered beliefs and practices in such a diverse
array of music therapy models, settings, and cultures, and its ability to highlight underlying
commonalities in these various contexts, suggests that it meets the primary criterion for a
general theory.
Last, the manner in which music-centered thinking is emerging as a reflection of existing
practice suggests that it is of broad and general significance. This is not a new approach nor is
it a new way of thinking in music therapy; it is instead an umbrella term under which to collect
a constellation of practices and beliefs characteristic of a significant number of practicing
music therapists. In this way, and in the focus on music, music-centered theory addresses the
complementary criteria of uniqueness and broad applicability that Kenny posits as being
essential to a true general theory.
The Indigenous and Music-Centered Aspects of the Theory Presented in the Present
Book
Parts III and IV of this book are devoted to presenting and developing a music-centered theory.
I would like to suggest how I see its status based on the preceding discussion, although, as was
discussed throughout the previous section, the ultimate status of this theory cannot be offered
without qualification as it ultimately depends on which of a variety of definitions one chooses
for terms such as music-centered, indigenous, and even music therapy.
Is it indigenous? My belief is that this theory is indigenous, for a few reasons. While there
are ideas in it drawn from other disciplines, I have not taken a complete theory and imposed it
upon music therapy practice. Instead, my strategy has been to piece together ideas from a
number of disciplines in a unique way and combine them with concerns indigenous to music
therapy practice. My perspective is that a music-centered theory should rest first and foremost
upon a conception of music, but that this conception of music can itself be informed by music
therapy practice, a strategy that supports the indigenous nature of the theory constructed that
way.
My overall strategy employs aspects of music theory from two quite disparate sources,
Victor Zuckerkandl’s theory and schema theory. However, there is no effort to alter music
therapy phenomena to have them conform to these other systems of thought, nor is there an
effort to reduce music therapy phenomena or to explain them away by reinterpreting them fully
through another conceptual scheme or level of analysis. Moreover, the music therapy
phenomena are taken as givens and the borrowed ideas are adjusted to accommodate for their
nature. Although a number of concepts in the theory originate in other domains, these
borrowed ideas are being used indigenously, and for this reason I consider it to be an
indigenous theory.
For the two different views of music-centeredness, there are different criteria to meet in an
indigenous theory. In the strong version of music-centeredness, a theory must of necessity be
music-centered to be indigenous, so for this person the judgment on the indigenous nature of a
theory is dependent on first deciding if it is music-centered, a question taken up below.
For the person subscribing to the weaker claim of music-centeredness, it is enough for the
theory to have a strong foundation in ideas about music; its nonmusical components do not
necessarily invalidate its indigenous nature, if these nonmusical components grow out of music
therapy practice. This position is very much related to and consistent with the hybrid view of
music therapy that holds that there must be musical and nonmusical elements in a theory for it
to be indigenous. From the hybrid view, the use of ideas from music studies and nonmusical
areas in the present study might actually be considered an eminently suitable example of
indigenous theory.
Is it music-centered? Again, I would answer a tentative yes to this question. It would be
odd indeed if, in a book entitled Music-Centered Music Therapy, the theory presented was
not itself music-centered. The real question concerns the way in which the nonmusic-based
elements in the theory are being used, and if their function in the theory either undermines its
music-centeredness or complements it.
The predominance of the theory is clearly music-centered. This can be seen in its
foundation on a conception of music, its placing of specifically musical values in a central
role, its employment of ideas from music philosophy such as musicing and the notion of music
as a medium of experience, and its ability to account for many music-centered practices and
beliefs.
The one element that might challenge its status as a music-centered theory is the manner in
which schema theory is used. This would not be a problem for those who believe in the idea
of music therapy as a hybrid domain that must of necessity have conceptually distinct musical
and therapeutic foundations. For these individuals, being music-centered is a belief that can
coexist with other nonmusical beliefs. Hence the employment of any nonmusical ideas such as
those embodied in schema theory would not necessarily challenge the overall music-
centeredness of the theory, as long as these nonmusical ideas were conceptually consistent
with the music-centered ones.
Thus, the final question concerns whether the theory is music-centered in the stronger sense
of the term, for individuals who believe that music therapy rests primarily on musical
foundations and that its clinical value can be found within its musical essence. Again, my
sense is that the present theory does pass this test of being music-centered in the strong sense,
although I recognize that this claim is really a matter of individual judgment.
My belief here stems from two aspects of schema theory. First, it is of paramount
importance that schema theory is coming into music therapy through music theory. This is more
than just a historical or social accident. The fact that schema theory has already proved its
value among music theorists should be taken into account in making the judgment that it can
be applied to music therapy in a way that is consistent with, and illuminating of, musical
processes and phenomena. It suggests that while schema theory was originally developed in
the sphere of linguistics, it could have just as easily been developed in music theory, or music
therapy for that matter.

Contrast this with the application of psychoanalytic interpretations in music. While
psychoanalytic constructs have been applied to both the composition and experiencing of
music, these investigations are generally conducted by psychoanalysts, are of interest to those
primarily interested in psychoanalytic thought, and generally do not appear to have been taken
up by music theorists as investigations that illuminate their fundamental questions about music.
Thus it would be harder to make the case that the historical application of psychoanalytical
principles in music therapy could be equally compatible with a music-centered music therapy
theory. The fact that schema theory is being used by music theorists suggests that its
application grows directly out of the conceptual concerns motivated by the desire to gain a
greater understanding of music and musical phenomena.
Second, schema theory is both a strategy of understanding as well as a specific body of
knowledge. As a strategy of understanding, it allows us to examine how we (music therapists
and clients) talk about the musical experiences constituting music therapy process in order to
gain insight into their clinical value. This strategy is open-ended in allowing theorists to focus
on the musical aspects of music therapy experiences with the aid of the tool of schema theory.
As a strategy, schema theory provides a way to gain insight into the nature of musical
experience.
Moreover, the way that music therapists already talk about music and music therapy will be
shown to be consistent with schema theory. In this way, it preserves the music as experienced
rather than forcing the distillation of musical experiences into essentially nonmusical modes of
experience. Because schema theory appears to be so well suited and so naturally
accommodating to musical experience, its application in music therapy does not appear to
undermine a music-centered approach to music therapy theory.
5Interestingly,
in her brief overview of music therapy applications, Florence Tyson
(1981) discussed an approach known as “psychiatric musicology” that applied “musicological
methods to the stylized music patterns of chronic, regressed patients” (p. 21).
6This is not to suggest that the situation in the United States can effectively represent the
rest of the world, but just that it illustrates a dilemma that may be similar in other places.
7There are different types of reductionistic practices in science, such as observational
reduction and theoretical reduction. In observational reduction, terms referring to observable
entities are replaced by terms from a more fundamental domain, such as would occur if
psychological states could be reduced to neurological states. Theoretical reduction consists of
the same process, with theoretical entities replacing observation terms. The idea that scientific
progress is marked by the reduction of one science to another, e.g., explaining biological
processes through chemical ones, or explaining psychological processes through biological
ones, is generally discredited among philosophers of science.
8However, Taylor would probably not agree that he is arguing for recontextualized
theory, as he is critical of music therapy approaches that “define this discipline through its
alignment with other intervention strategies that were not intended to include music” (1997, p.
4). However, in seeking a biomedical foundation for all music therapy practice, he does seem
to be placing nonindigenous constraints on music therapy theory, as when he claims that
“investigations of music/brain relationships provide the means for describing therapeutic
influences of music in terms that explain objectively a basic domain, a single theoretical
framework, that applies to all music therapy applications” and that “the point of primary
interest in the search for a universal domain of music therapy should be the brain” (p. 18).
9In his
critique of Marcus’s (1994) Foreword to an issue of Music Therapy, Taylor
(1997) seems to be in agreement with the observation that music-centered theory may be more
appropriate for an audience of music therapists while the biomedical theory of music therapy
he advocates might be rooted in more pragmatic concerns. Regarding music-centered
explanation, Taylor says that “if the only audience for such explanations was music therapists
and other musicians, this may be a viable philosophical basis upon which to proceed” (p. 6).
However, because music therapists are striving to work in medical settings and seek
compensation as health professionals, he believes that “it will be necessary to delineate a
clear and pervasive basis for music as therapy and to articulate it to other medical
professionals in language that is technically familiar, medically defensible, and theoretically
sound” (p. 6).
10Pavlicevic refers overtly to the work of Daniel Stern and, although it is not mentioned
directly, her concept seems equally influenced by the idea of forms of feeling as articulated by
the philosopher Susanne Langer (1942).
11The idea of characterizing theory by the way it used was suggested by Kenneth Bruscia.
12Aswas discussed previously, Thaut (2000) argues for the idea that all music therapy
theory has to originate in what is known about the “psychology, physiology, and neurology of
musical behavior” (p. 12). Because of his own metatheoretical commitments, Thaut omits
consideration of musical experience and of social disciplines such as ethnomusicology.
Additionally, this position precludes the development of indigenous theory as these external
disciplines are posited as being foundational to music therapy practice.
13Taylor’s (1997) views in this area appear somewhat contradictory. On one hand, he
says that his biomedical theory is not intended “to replace or discount any other theoretical or
philosophical position that may have been advanced concerning music therapy as a discipline”
(p. 121). Yet, in claiming his theory as the only legitimate foundation for all music therapy
practice, he would appear to be excluding forms of practice that are either not reducible to, or
inconsistent with, biomedical considerations. Thus, while Taylor would probably see his
theoretical position as more consistent with the way general theory is being described here,
my own view is that it is actually a form of foundational theory in that its universal adoption
would serve to dictate and limit practice.
Part II
The Nature of Music-Centered Theory and Practice
CHAPTER 3
Origins and Foundations of Music-Centered Music Therapy
WHAT IS MUSIC-CENTERED MUSIC THERAPY AND HOW HAS IT DEVELOPED?
A conceptual differentiation that is particularly related to the present discussion is represented

in the varying concepts of music in therapy and music as therapy. The term music as therapy
was first coined by Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins (1965). It appeared in the chosen label
for the work they were creating together as “the art of music as therapy” (1965, p. 15) and was
the first explicit reference to the music-centeredness of their belief system.14 Helen Bonny
(1978a) also employed the term music-as-therapy (p. 2) and held it up as an ideal to which
music therapists should aspire.
In his exploration of improvisational music therapy models, Kenneth Bruscia (1987)
explored the contrast between the ideas of music as therapy and music in therapy. He
observed that
when used as therapy, music serves as the primary stimulus or response medium for the
client’s therapeutic change…. In music as therapy, emphasis is given to the client relating
directly to the music, with the therapist aiding the process or relationship when
necessary…. [In contrast] when used in therapy, music is not the primary or sole
therapeutic agent but rather is used to facilitate therapeutic change through an interpersonal
relationship, or within another treatment modality, (p. 9)
Bruscia observed that all of the models that he studied used music both as therapy and in
therapy, although each model emphasized one of the clinical orientations over the other. The
criteria for determining the applicability of each approach reflected client needs in terms of
deficits in nonmusical areas such as “when the client is inaccessible to verbal intervention,”
as well as the ability of musical experience to be a self-contained therapeutic one, as “when
the client can achieve therapeutic growth directly through the music, and does not need to
verbally work through a personal relationship with the therapist” (p. 503).
The concept of music-centered music therapy is intended to be broader in its realm of
application than the construct of music as therapy as initially put forward by Bruscia.15
Bruscia’s conceptualization illuminated some of the differences in practice of approaches to

music therapy that used music improvisationally. The term music-centered is being offered as
one that is potentially applicable to theory, clinical practice, approaches to education and
training, and research.
And within the clinical realm, the term is not necessarily reserved for improvisational
approaches, something that should be apparent when considering how it is used by
practitioners of Guided Imagery and Music, an approach that uses composed music.16 That
much said, the more music-centered one’s practice is, the more likely one is to use music as
therapy rather than in therapy, so in this way it can be seen that there is a strong relationship
between the two ideas.
The difference between the two conceptualizations of music-centeredness and music as
therapy may be more clearly seen when we consider the types of explanation and theory that
can be appropriately generated under each label. Consider the case of a music therapist whose
purpose is to enhance a client’s physical well-being by improving his immune system response
solely through the practice of listening to specifically chosen recorded music. This is a good
example of music as therapy because no other interventions are offered other than the act of
music-listening, and the client is relating directly to the music. However, the framing of a
clinical rationale in an extramusical way on the physiological level is antithetical to the aspect
of music-centered thinking in which the musical experience is self-justifying and the primary
focus of the therapist’s efforts.
In his initial formulation, Bruscia did not directly address the idea of the locus of outcome
as being an important criterion in differentiating between music as therapy and music in
therapy. This changed in subsequent publications and in applying these concepts to the specific
domain of music psychotherapy. Bruscia (1998b) has further developed and refined these
ideas. He draws clear distinctions among the following four levels, which are presented in a
sequence from exclusively musical to exclusively verbal forms of practice: music as
psychotherapy, music-centered psychotherapy, music in psychotherapy, and verbal
psychotherapy with music.
He suggests that “music as psychotherapy” is an exclusively musical process, while
“music-centered psychotherapy” can use verbalization in conjunction with music experiences.
However, both levels represent what Bruscia calls transformative therapies and, as such, “the
musical outcome is the desired therapeutic outcome” (p. 4). Thus, he clearly posits locus of
outcome as a relevant criterion. Moreover, in transformative therapies “the musical process is
in fact the client’s personal process” (p. 4), something that is also considered to be a central
component of the notion of music-centered music therapy in the present text.
Thus, it is clear that the perspective on music-centered thinking in the present book is
congruent with Bruscia’s later formulations. In both ways of thinking, it is not just that the
music is the primary response mode of the client, but that musical expression and experience
are the actual domains the therapist seeks to act on rather than just act through.
Music-centered music therapy, as I am presenting it, neither requires nor precludes the use
of verbalization for analyzing or interpreting the music or musical experience. Moreover, it is
not inherently contradictory for a music-centered practitioner to use the therapeutic
relationship as an important vehicle in therapy, although, again, this is not required. Thus,
while there are strong conceptual connections between them, it is not possible to equate
music-centered music therapy with either music as psychotherapy or music-centered
psychotherapy. For the moment, it is an open question as to how the broader category of
transformative therapies—to which these latter two levels of practice belong—relates to the
idea of music-centered music therapy.
The term music-centered as a descriptor of theory and practice in music therapy first
appeared in the mid-1980s in the name of The Bonny Foundation: An Institute for Music-
Centered Therapies, which was founded by Helen Bonny, Barbara Hesser, and Carolyn
Kenny. Many of the published instances of this term in recent years are from publications on
Guided Imagery and Music—for example, Bonny (1989), Warja (1994), and Skaggs (1997).
Other uses can be found in work by Hesser (1992), who employed the term to describe some
of the intrinsic qualities of the American Association for Music Therapy (AAMT); Bruscia
(1998b), who differentiates music-centered psychotherapy from the three other levels of
engagement with music as described above; Aigen (1998), who uses the term as a descriptor
of the aspect of Nordoff-Robbins work that leads to an exclusive focus on the client’s musical
expressions; Aigen (1999), who is responding to Streeter’s (1999) call for a balance between
musical and psychological thinking in music therapy; Lee (2001), who details the various
aspects of a music-centered approach to clinical supervision; Lee (2003), whose work can be
taken as an exposition of and an argument for a particular type of music-centered music
therapy rather than an argument for music-centered therapy in principle, the latter of which is
the focus of the present work; and Brandalise (2001), in a book entitled Musicoterapia
Músico-centrada (Music-Centered Music Therapy) in Portuguese.17
However, in none of these publications is the term explained in detail, as its meaning
appears to have been assumed. Even in Lee (2003), the term is not defined other than in saying
that “to be music centered is to consider music as the core of therapy” (p. 13). Similarly,
Carolyn Kenny recalls that in deciding to use the term as a descriptor of the Bonny Foundation,
it was used to define
any therapy that used music in the core of the practice, or as a base for the practice, to
distinguish these therapies from verbally-based practice. That was our shared
understanding of the meaning of the term. We intended to support this type of work. And we
felt that, simply stated, this was the essence. (C. Kenny, personal communication, December
15, 2002)
The music-centered perspective cannot be represented simply, as there is no official

doctrine or set of beliefs and practices that define the approach. What I will do in chapter 5 is
provide an overview of thoughts and practices common to many music-centered practitioners.
It may be that no single person subscribes to all of the elements presented, although the more
ideas and practices one uses, the more music-centered one’s practice is.
In a discussion of Creative Music Therapy, Gary Ansdell says that music therapy “works in
the way music itself works” (1995, p. 5). I would like to extend Ansdell’s statement to the
notion central to the present work that in music-centered music therapy, the mechanisms of
music therapy process are located in the forces, experiences, processes, and structures of
music.
There are three purposes behind organizing the mechanisms of music therapy process into
these four dimensions of music:
(1) It provides a schema for organizing and differentiating among music-centered inquiries
into music therapy practice.
(2) It helps identify related disciplines with potential contributions to make to music-
centered theory.
(3) It helps identify perennial questions about music to which music therapists can make
unique contributions.
Each of these four dimensions or levels of analysis has a corresponding discipline of
inquiry that has traditionally focused upon it: In identifying the forces of music as a potential
explanatory mechanism of music therapy, one can draw upon the ideas of philosophers of
music, who discuss its ontology or the nature of the tonal, harmonic, rhythmic, and timbral
material that constitutes music; in identifying the experiences of music, one gains access to the
material from psychological and social science research that studies musical experience and
the cognitive operations involved in performing, composing, and listening to music; in
identifying the processes of music, one gains access to all of the ideas from the disciplines of
ethnomusicology, sociology, and anthropology, that discuss the social processes involved in
the creation of music and the social contexts in which it is used; and in identifying the
structures and forms of music, one can draw from music theory and musicology studies of how
music is constructed and what this tells us about its clinical value. Of course, just as music
therapists can draw from these other disciplines, music therapy inquiries have the potential to
contribute to perennial questions in these domains as well.
In general, music-centered concepts are those in Table 2 that would be placed in the
general category of music. I lean toward the belief that a bona fide form of music therapy
practice has to have music has its core; otherwise one is practicing psychotherapy, education,
medicine, or some other form of therapeutic, educative, or rehabilitative intervention with
music as an assistive tool, although I realize that this point can be forcefully argued from both
sides.
Music-centered theory is indigenous to the extent in which musical forces, experiences,
processes, and structures are identified that emerge from study of music therapy, or in the
extent to which external ideas are adapted to music therapy processes;18 it will make
contributions to other disciplines to the extent that discoveries are made that enhance
constructs that have been developed in other areas, or in the way that music therapy inquiries
shed light on questions that have arisen in other disciplines.
Music-centered thinking is a significant perspective in the music therapy profession, as can
be seen from its prominence in practitioners in advanced clinical models such as Nordoff-
Robbins Music Therapy and Guided Imagery and Music. Many clinicians work this way, and
many theorists think this way. Because the music-centered position is not model-specific, it
can serve an integrative function in music therapy.
There is a diversity of opinion regarding music-centered thought in forms of practice such
as Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy and Guided Imagery and Music, as practitioners within
these models do not necessarily construe the music-centeredness of their model in the same
way. The models are developing in a way where the differences within them are greater than
the differences between them. This can explain the observations of Rudy Garred (2000), who
noted in his review of the Ninth World Congress of Music Therapy that there was little debate
between practitioners of different clinical models and that “to the extent that people marked
differences of opinion towards other music therapists, it was from representatives of their own
model! What became clear to me was that the most interesting debates to be expected now
might be within each model rather than between them” (p. 73). This is congruent with the
claim that music-centered practitioners in approaches as different as Nordoff-Robbins Music
Therapy and Guided Imagery and Music are finding that they have more in common with each
other than with fellow practitioners within their own model who rely more on psychodynamic
theory, for example.19
The presence of music-centered theory and practice reflects the development of the music
therapy profession. First, it broadens the number of domains music therapists draw from and
interact with to include areas such as musicology, music philosophy, and music theory.
Because the music-centered position seeks to explain the efficacy of music therapy within
specific musical structures and processes, it allows greater specificity in musical
interventions. Music-centered theory has the potential to explain the rationale for and the effect
of the tonal, rhythmic, harmonic, and stylistic components of clinical music. Practitioners from
other domains and more mature disciplines recognize the sophistication of explanation that
takes into account the musical specifics of music-centered theory and are generally led to hold
music therapy in greater esteem as a result of encountering such explanations.
Because this approach can be misunderstood, it is important to lay out the specific ways in
which music-centered thinking represents a continuation of the historical development of
music therapy. Music therapists who have followed the history of theory and practice in music
therapy might be concerned that music-centered thinking represents a step backward in
development, a sentiment that I have encountered in putting forth music-centered ideas.
It is possible to make a strong case for the idea that the beginning rationales for music
therapy practice were music-centered. In their examination of the development of theory in
music therapy, Schneider, Unkefer, and Gaston (1968) observe that in the early days of music
therapy there was “almost a common societal belief that music had inherent healing power,
and thus some early practice that now would be considered inappropriate was accepted and at
times even commended” (p. 3). In these reports of miraculous cures “seldom was there a
description of the manner in which the music therapist approached the patient or how he used
the music” (p. 3). And it was seen as a limitation that, like other activity therapies, the
“particular activity by itself [music] was credited far too much with direct healing power” (p.
3). It was problematic because claims about cures resulting from the power of music could not
be substantiated.
Once these miracles were questioned and no mechanisms could be put forward to explain
the clinical process, music therapists “began to deemphasize music activities and emphasize
the development of interpersonal relationships” (p. 3). Hence, they began engaging in “too
much psychotherapy, for which they were scarcely prepared, and indulged in music activities
only as the patient desired” (p. 3). Schneider et al. go on to say that the two extremes were
becoming reconciled into a more complete approach that gave appropriate balance to
relationships and the use of music.
It appears that the music-centered position had been abandoned by much mainstream
thinking in music therapy and has proceeded as somewhat of an underground development.
This has been due partly to two arbitrary and incorrect assumptions, both of which are
highlighted in the accounts provided by Schneider et al. (1968). First, because of its emphasis
on the clinical value of purely musical processes and experiences, it is possible that music-
centered thinking has been indirectly associated with the “miracle” school of music therapy,
and hence has been discredited as this way of thinking was.20 Second, again owing to the
history involved—and to the way the theoretical pendulum swung—music-centered thinking
was set in opposition to psychotherapeutic thinking that incorporated the importance of the
therapeutic relationship in music therapy theory. However, there is nothing inherent in music-
centered thinking that either eschews the need for rational explanation of music therapy
processes or necessitates that one ignore the interpersonal (or sociocultural, for that matter)
context in which music therapy takes place.
Because music-centered approaches emphasize the inherent clinical value of musical
experiences, and because music-centered practices are implemented that create musical
experiences beyond the boundaries of the therapy room, some might feel that the music-
centered perspective will return the profession to a situation where music therapists are asked
to regularly prepare patient performances while being proscribed from speaking to their
clients because of their lack of psychotherapeutic training.21 In order to counter the belief that
the music-centered position represents a regressive force in music therapy, it is essential for
music-centered practitioners to (1) articulate as fully as possible the inherent value of
clinically directed musical experiences; (2) create music-centered theory based upon the
meaning of these experiences for recipients of music therapy services; (3) explain clearly
what it is that makes their work therapy; and (4) emphasize that music-centered positions do
not prohibit verbal interaction with clients or mandate performance as a clinical vehicle, but
instead provide a conceptual model of practice where verbalization is not always necessary
and clinical interactions can take place outside of the session room. In saying that the music-
centered approach represents an important line of development in music therapy, it is
important for practitioners to ensure that the approach is not mistakenly characterized as a
throwback to an earlier time.
As will be subsequently discussed, the music-centered approach reflects and honors client
experience and motivation because it can account for the value of the music therapy
experience where the client’s motivation is primarily to make music rather than to achieve a
nonmusical goal. In this way, music-centered approaches establish continuity between
nonclinical and clinical musical experiences. They emphasize that some music therapists are
musicians who work in therapeutic contexts to bring the inherent benefits of musical and
musically based experiences, rather than therapists who use music as a tool to achieve goals
that are not specific or unique to music.
MUSIC AS A MEDIUM: ONE BASIS OF MUSIC-CENTERED THEORY

Many music therapists define music therapy as the use of music to achieve nonmusical goals,
thus distinguishing it from music education, music appreciation, or music performance. There
are a myriad of possible goals that vary according to the treatment milieu. Typical goals
include increasing impulse control, enhancing social skills, increasing emotional
expressiveness, resolving psychological conflicts, improving cognitive functions such as
increasing attention span, and any number of goals in the social, emotional, cognitive,
physiological, neurological, or motor areas. The rationale often put forward is that the clinical
must be distinguishable from the musical for a particular use of music to be considered music
therapy.
However, this approach renders the actual musical experience dispensable. The music
becomes merely a tool to achieve some nonmusical end, goal, or experience. This is common
in behavioral music therapy, medical musical therapy, and psychodynamically based forms of
music therapy practice. Gary Ansdell (1995) agrees that the predominance of music therapists
would assert that “the music in music therapy is … a means to a nonmusical end” (p. 3).
In contrast to this position, the goal of music-centered work is the achievement of
experiences and expression specific and unique to music. In this view, the clinical and the
musical are not separable. What is achieved through the music cannot be approached in any
other way because musical experience and expression are the goals of therapy.
Implicit in this idea is that musical experience and expression are inherently beneficial
human activities that are legitimate ways to address the reasons for which people come to
therapy. There is no denial that capacities such as impulse control, expressiveness, and social
skills can increase from the musical engagement; it is just that these are considered to be
secondary effects, not the primary locus of intervention. Therefore, music is not necessarily a
tool for achieving something else. What David Elliot (1995) calls musicing (see next section)
is the goal of music therapy.
The idea that musical goals are a legitimate focus of music therapy involves conflating the
means and ends of music therapy. Musical experience is being framed as a medium of
experience in the sense that John Dewey uses the term in his aesthetic theory (Dewey, 1934).22
In discussing the common substance of the arts, Dewey makes a detailed examination of the
role and significance of the medium of particular art forms. Dewey observes that the word
medium implies the presence of an intermediary, as does the word means. Both words
indicate the presence of an intervening process, activity, or substance through which something
occurs. But there is a crucial distinction between the two concepts:
Not all means are media. There are two kinds of means. One kind is external to that which
is accomplished; the other kind is taken up into the consequences produced and remains
immanent in them…. External or mere means, as we properly term them, are usually of a
sort that others can be substituted for them…. But the moment we say “media,” we refer to
means that are incorporated in the outcome, (p. 197)
Human activities can be separated into those that are media and those that are mere means.
A medium is an experience sought for what is inherent in it; a mere means is a tool to an
external end. Dewey uses the example of a student studying merely to pass an examination
compared to another student for whom learning has a meaning apart from its instrumental
value. We can also think about the difference between traveling to get somewhere, such as
getting on the train to go to work, and traveling for the pleasure of it, such as hiking in the
mountains. In the former example, our travel is a means to an end, getting to work, and we
would gladly do without the means if we could be instantly transported to our workplace. In
the hiking example, it would not make sense to say that we would gladly do without the travel,
because the travel itself is our motivation and our goal.
In music-centered thought, music is a medium of experience. It is indispensable. In this way
of thinking, musical experiences are more akin to the travel involved in hiking in the mountains
than to the travel involved in getting to work. Just as one would not do without the travel in the
hiking example because the trip itself is the focus, in music-centered work one would not do
without the musical experience because it also is the focus. Hence, there is a unity of means
and ends as regards the music in music-centered theory. This is similar to what is the case in
aesthetic experience in general—Dewey believes it is a defining feature of the aesthetic—and
helps to explain the relevance of aesthetic concerns in music-centered theory.23
Rudy Garred (2004) agrees that a music-based24 music therapy theory requires conceiving
of music as an experiential medium:
The pure logic of means and end does not presuppose any internal relation between the set
aim and means applied; rather they are in principle split apart. This raises the question: If
you do not meet the music for it[s] own inherent qualities, will you then actually receive the
full beneficial “effects”? For instance, you would not on the whole decide to develop your
social skills, and thereafter join an orchestra, band or choir, irrespective of your interest in
these activities. You may join any of these, and receive such benefits. If you do not really
care so much about the music activity, you could hardly expect to receive the full positive
gains connected with it. The pure means and end logic tends to put the order the other way
around, missing out on the qualities of the medium, from which the benefits follow. For the
client in music therapy the primary motivation is likely to be connected to music activity
itself, and if it were not, one could hardly expect any improvement of functions following
from this activity, (p. 124)
Thus, for Garred, it is the client’s motivation toward musical activity and experience that
explains the willingness, even eagerness, to participate in music therapy treatment. And this
motivation toward music is not just something that serves to enlist the client in treatment, but
actually contains within it important explanatory properties. Garred’s ideas suggest that when
the client’s experience in music therapy is fundamentally a musical one, this fact has to figure
in explanations for the effectiveness of the treatment form.
There are complex empirical and formal issues brought up by construing music in music
therapy as an experiential medium rather than as a tool to an external end. These issues are
addressed throughout the present book in a variety of ways, and I would like to briefly sketch
out how I see them in order to form a foundation for their subsequent examinations in the
balance of the text.
First, one objection to the foregoing could be that one could use music as a means to a
musical end. The use of a musical focal point for the therapy would be consistent with music-
centered thinking, and therefore it is not necessary for music to be a medium of experience to
be consistent with music-centered principles.
An example of this in music therapy is when the musicing of the client (itself a medium of
clinically beneficial experience) becomes a means to a more profoundly involving and all-
encompassing musical experience. The way that therapists in the Nordoff-Robbins approach
work to extend, develop, and differentiate a client’s musical participation in order to bring
enhanced experiential benefit is a prime example of this. It is known as the art of clinical
musicianship. The clinical-musical work that takes place within the improvisations is both a
medium of enjoyment and expression for the client and at the same time a means to developing
enhanced expressive and communicative musical skills.25
This example highlights the fact that, strictly speaking, means and media are not
dichotomies. Dewey’s presentation of the concepts does not preclude something from
functioning both as a means and as a medium. A medium is a medium for something. It is an
entity, process, or substance through which something occurs, and in this way it is similar to a
means. Identifying something as a medium does not formally dissolve the notion of a means; it
just locates what is usually considered the external goal of the means to an internal position
within the means itself.
So, for example, the student who embraces learning for the love of it may also have a wish
to earn high grades. The hiker may also be pleased by the fact that the walk in the mountains
will have positive cardiovascular health benefits. But the reason why these activities can be
considered media of experience is that these secondary benefits are just that; they are not the
sole or even the primary reasons for which the activity is undertaken. In the same way, music-
centered music therapy can lead to many areas of benefit that are either nonmusical in nature
or not connected in a singular way to the musical experience. This observation, however, does
not invalidate the fundamental notion of music as a medium of experience in music therapy,
any more than it does in the hiking or educational examples.
Let us consider the educational example for a moment because there are two parties
involved who exist in a professional relationship, just as in the therapy situation. For the
teacher, the classroom situation maybe considered to be purely a means, either for the teacher
to earn a living or for the student to become better equipped to earn a living in the future. Or it
is possible that the teacher conceives of the interaction as a medium of experience, either for
the teacher who gains intrinsic gratification from the interaction with students or for the
students within whom the teacher is endeavoring to cultivate a love of learning. Similarly, as
described above, the situation could be experienced either as a means or a medium from the
student’s perspective.
Thus, in considering whether music is a means or a medium in a music therapy setting, one
has to specify for whom the determination is being made. It is possible that a music therapist
might be completely nonmusic-centered in approach and conceive of the musical experiences
purely as means to accomplish nonmusical goals, while the client’s experience might be
completely of the music as a medium of enjoyment that is self-justifying. Would the use of
nonmusic-centered theory be warranted in such a situation?
The answer depends on what you believe the role of theory is. If it is to serve as a heuristic
device for the therapist regardless of how well it models the situation in question, then there is
no problem with a situation where there is a disjoint between the client’s experience and the
therapist’s construal of the situation. On the other hand, if you believe that for pragmatic,
epistemological, or professional reasons that theory should fit to client’s experience in
important ways, then the use of nonmusic-centered theory would not be warranted.
In the present text, I am clearly advocating for the latter position, both for epistemological
reasons and pragmatic, professional ones. Epistemologically speaking, I think that the domain
of music therapy process shares enough characteristics with traditional scientific endeavor to
aspire to theory that actually reflects the domain of study accurately. Professionally speaking,
all things being equal, I am of the belief that theory that accurately represents client experience
will generally lead to more effective therapy practices than will theory that functions primarily
as a heuristic device. This is because if the therapist is thinking of the musical interaction with
a client only as a means, then the musical quality of the interaction will suffer and the client
will not gain all the potential benefits.
Returning to the example from Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy, we can see that in a formal
sense, music in a music-centered approach is not precluded from being a means when, in the
mind of the therapist, the end worked toward is a musical one. But even in this case, the
client’s experience is one of music as a medium. After all, it is only in retrospect that one can
know whether a given musical experience actually functioned as a means for the client, and the
purpose of much of the present work is to demonstrate how music as a medium of experience
has significant human value regardless of what it leads to in the future. It is more accurate to
say that in music-centered work music must be at least a medium of experience for the client
regardless of whatever else might be in the therapist’s mind about the future value of the
experience for the client.
In sum, I would still want to hold up the idea of music as medium of experience for the
client in music-centered work, but this would not preclude a therapist from additionally
maintaining an instrumental focus (meaning using the music as a tool) on the client’s music as a
way to develop enhanced musical experiences in the future.
A second objection to the view being put forth is that it is possible that even though a
therapist is using music as a medium, important nonmusical clinical outcomes might result.
Therefore, it would be incorrect to say that music-centered work that conceives of the music
as a medium of experience must necessarily be oriented to musical goals or outcomes.
Considering this objection necessitates an examination into two questions: (1) What is meant
by an outcome of therapy? (2) How is a musical outcome differentiated from a nonmusical
one?
In answering the first question, I would assert that when used as a medium, the therapeutic
value of the client’s engagement with music is found in what occurs during that encounter. The
desired clinical outcome is found within the client’s in-the-moment receptive and active
involvement with music. This means that the target outcome of the therapy is what occurs
during the musical experience. The idea of music as a medium necessarily entails this view of
the nature of clinical outcome. And again, to repeat the points made above, this does not mean
that all kinds of secondary benefits cannot occur in the client’s life outside of the music. If one
wants to specify these as outcomes of therapy, I have no issue with that. However, once
benefits lying outside the musical experience are specified as the primary clinical focus, one
has moved outside the understanding of music as a medium.
And this situation is the same as holds for the arts in general. Certainly one possible
outcome of spending an afternoon contemplating the masterworks of an artist like Renoir can
be a newfound appreciation for the subtleties and beauties of the play of natural light in
domestic or natural settings. This does not invalidate the characterization of the appreciation
of his art as a medium of experience. Certainly one does not contemplate the Renoir while
impatiently waiting for an intellectualized insight to occur so that one can now move on in
one’s life appreciating the play of light. And conversely, it is not likely that one would engage
in joyful contemplation of the paintings and subsequently feel that the experience was not
worthwhile if the appreciation did not spread into other realms of experience. Further, it is not
possible to know that the experience will have any instrumental value as a means for a
generalized appreciation of light in the world outside the museum until well after the initial
artistic experience is over. Therefore, the motivation for the viewer’s artistic engagement
cannot legitimately be explained by its value as a means toward an external end. And while
there may be differences between aesthetic experience in clinical and nonclinical settings, one
similarity is the way that the experience is a self-justifying one.
In taking up question (2) on the distinction between musical and nonmusical outcomes of
therapy, I would first like to dispose of two simple but ultimately unsatisfying answers. The
first is that, by definition, everything that happens during the music is a musical outcome. In
other words, because it will be difficult if not impossible to define music, it will therefore be
difficult if not impossible to define musical outcome. Therefore, whatever occurs during
active or receptive musical involvement is, by definition, a musical outcome.
This answer is unsatisfying because there are many possible experiences that people have
during music that most people (but not all) would agree are nonmusical ones. For example,
consider a client in music therapy who has an association with a particular piece of music
played by the therapist that evokes childhood memories of a significant family member. The
client goes on to verbally explore the nature of this relationship with the therapist while the
music is being played. I would hold that this experience of recollection might have been
triggered in another way, that it is not specific to the music. A familiar smell, or painting, or a
comment by the therapist might all have evoked the same memories. For these reasons, I
would not want to characterize such an experience, or others like it, as a musical one.
The second simple answer is that only those experiences that can be specified in musical
terms can be considered musical outcomes. Paradigmatic examples would include the focus in
Nordoff-Robbins work on enhancing a client’s tempo mobility, vocal range, phrasing, or
ability to participate receptively in increasingly differentiated musical experiences. Requiring
that one specify musical outcome in terms of these musical descriptions would be a clear
answer to our question, but it may leave out certain experiences that, again, many people
would want to include as musical or as belonging to the category of musical experiences.
This will be an area of discussion in chapter 5, where there is an extensive look at the
intrinsic rewards of participation in music in the creative, expressive, aesthetic, communal,
and transpersonal realms. The basic premise of that discussion is that it is possible to specify
the nature of human musical experience in all of these dimensions without stepping outside of
a music-centered stance. It is acknowledged that in the musical experience itself there are
powerful and clinically relevant experiences in these five realms. The argument is proposed
that these types of experiences in music are not generic experiences but are intimately tied to
their source in music. Thus, the transpersonal experience that one has in music is not the same
as the one that might be obtained from meditational practices or ingesting psychedelic
substances. It is a specifically musical one with characteristics connected to the specific
qualities of music that occasion it. Therefore, I would like to maintain that experiences in
these realms are musical ones, regardless of whether they are best described through musical
terms.
Many of these types of experiences arise from a powerful integration or merging of the
person and the music. This is true whether we are considering an adult client engaged in
processes of self-actualization through experiencing symbolic transformation in Guided
Imagery and Music or a severely disabled child whose developmental path may involve more
concrete concerns. But it is my belief that the more deeply one identifies with the music, the
less the music itself is concretely described or experienced. This point can best be illustrated
by an analogy.
Think of music as a river. A person can be on a riverbank, observing the river completely
from the outside. Its attributes are clearly seen and can be described as riverlike qualities.
One can describe things like the speed of its flow and the obstacles in the water that create
different patterns of rippling. River qualities are clearly perceived because they are so clearly
external to the person or the perceiver.
Now imagine that you are on the river in a canoe. Now you are moving with the river and
are part of it in a sense. Some of its qualities can be clearly seen, such as the patterns of
rippling as described above; some its qualities are now directly experienced as you are
carried along in the speed of its flow. You are now moving with the river, so its flow still
exists, but your phenomenal experience of it is different because it is no longer completely
external to your experience. The flow of the river affords you a different experience. And your
attention is drawn to the banks of the river in a way that was not possible previously. It is not
an experience of the river per se although it is an experience allowed by your participation in
the river.
In a greater leap of imagination, I now ask you to imagine yourself as the river. You become
its flow, its ripples, its eddies, its motion. Your experience is of everything but the river,
because the river is now the vehicle through which you experience everything else: the banks,
the rocks, the sun, and so forth. You do not experience the river because you are the river, but
you now have an experience that is unique to being the river. It is unlike any other experience
and can only be described as a riverlike experience.
I would like to suggest that in the most powerful of musical experiences where there is a
merging with the music or a transcendence of individual identity, something occurs that is like
the river example. The specification of the nature of the experience in musical terms is no
longer as relevant or even possible. One is in the music so completely that it disappears as an
external entity, and its concrete parameters are not what is of the greatest relevance to the
experiencer. Instead, it is the experience afforded by being the music that is most prominent. It
may be more accurate to say that this is not an experience of music but an experience of
oneself and the external world as music.
I would not want to say that this is no longer a musical experience just because nonmusical
terms may best communicate the nature of the experience, because whatever the client
experiences is necessitated by the presence of the music and is specific to this presence. And
paradoxically, when the musical parameters are least important to the client as an autonomous
focus of one’s consciousness because he or she has merged with them, they are most important
to the therapist, particularly in active and improvisational approaches where the therapist is
directing the ongoing flow of the music.
Asserting that the creation and experiencing of music can be legitimate clinical goals in and
of themselves entails undertaking the obligation of discussing how the particular qualities of
clinical music are related to client needs. This obligation is unique to music therapy
approaches in which music is used as medium of experience, something supported by Garred’s
(2004) reasoning in explaining why the use of music as an extrinsic means incurs no such
obligation:
If the use of music within therapy is legitimatized solely on the ground of it being a means
for a predefined aim, music as such becomes just a means besides any other means. And
considered as a means, it is of no particular interest in itself. Its interest lies in what can be
accomplished through its use. Within a purely instrumentalistic view of music, being used
solely for the purpose of something else, music, as music considered, recedes to the
background. The distinctive qualities of the medium do not carry any weight on their own
accord with such a position, (p. 123)
In portraying the presence of music-centered theory as a step forward in the maturity of

music therapy, it is important to acknowledge the primary challenge for music-centered
theorists: This is to articulate a view of music and human well-being that is congruent with
music-centered precepts. Otherwise, there is the danger that the music-centered approach will
be portrayed as a backward step. It cannot be emphasized enough that the choice of music-
centered theory and practice is not driven by an inability or unwillingness to apply theory from
other domains but from a recognition of the unique explanatory capacities of looking to the
music itself as the primary phenomenon of interest. Therefore, a broad-based, expansive
notion of human participation in music is an important component of music-centered clinical
frameworks.
MUSICING AS THE CORE OF MUSIC-CENTERED PRACTICE

As mentioned above, a primary focus of music-centered approaches is to bring a client into
a state of musicing as Elliot (1995) defines the term:
To act is not merely to move or exhibit behavior. To act is to move deliberately, with
control, to achieve intended ends…. Musicing in the sense of musical performing is a
particular form of intentional human action…. To perform music is to act thoughtfully and
knowingly, (p. 50)
Music is not just something we know. It is something we do, and this is an informed doing,
embodying a specific form of knowledge.26
In this view, music is clearly not behavior in the sense of actions devoid of consciousness.
Hence a true music therapy is incompatible with behaviorism because if it is behavior that is
being conditioned, then it is not musicing that is the object of the behavioral contingencies.
Musicing implies the activation of knowledge, but it is knowledge that is implicit, it is
“knowledge-in-action” (Schön, 1983). The act of musicing implies an informed doing.
Therefore, making the judgment that a client is musicing and not just interacting in a motoric or
sensory way with a musical instrument means that cognitive capacities are present that may not
be evidenced in any other way.
Perhaps this point would benefit from a music therapy example. Consider an autistic child
who is playing all of the white keys on a piano up and down the keyboard. It is certainly
possible that this is a behavior devoid of musical significance and reflects cognitive obsession
or motoric perseveration. On the other hand, imagine a therapist who accompanies this child
and establishes a meter, tempo, tonality, and harmonic structure. And also imagine that while
the sequence of tones played by the child does not change, one can detect an underlying
alteration in the way that certain tones are stressed or phrased that appears related to some
aspect of the organization that the therapist has contributed to the music. In other words, in
some way the child is now relating in a musically meaningful way, albeit on a basic level.
If one makes the judgment that the child is musicing on any level, then I would argue that a
level of intelligent engagement is necessarily implied, regardless of whether this is conscious
on the client’s part and of whether the client could articulate the musical knowledge in words.
After all, in a music therapy setting, knowledge about music is usually much less important
than musical knowledge, which is understood to be the ability to make music alone or engage
musically with another. The inability to articulate the nature of one’s knowledge, or even to
know that one has it, does not preclude that knowledge from existing or from being used as a
point of engagement in music therapy.
Musicing is not just an informed doing on the client’s part but on the therapist’s as well.
This explains why the more music-centered one’s practice is, the less important is extrinsic
theory in guiding clinical-musical actions. In music-centered practice, the therapist follows the
dictates of music because of a belief that the creation of music is itself the product of informed
thought that is embodied in it. The music-centered position is not anti-intellectual or
antitheoretical, but locates the activity of intellectual processes within the musical ones. And
just as the therapist’s therapeutic thinking takes place musically, for the client “the therapeutic
locus is still within the musical” (Ansdell, 1995, p. 4).
One of the implications for music therapy is that making music is never just making music
in the sense of being engaged in rote behavior. The judgment that musicing is occurring implies
that there is intelligence, intention, and consciousness present, although these qualities may not
be verbally expressed. This is because musicing is a unique way of knowing based on its own
epistemology, not reducible to verbal formalizations.
In Elliot’s view, musicing is a most valuable human experience. He believes that self-
growth, self-knowledge, and enjoyment are the primary reasons for making music. They
underlie all others. Musicing consists of activities that order and strengthen the self, and our
goal as human beings is to engage in activities that reflect this desire. We find as enjoyable
and meaningful those activities that are congruent with our fundamental drive toward self-
development.
The development of self comes primarily from activities without biological necessity. And
flow experiences (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), in particular, lead to more complex self-
organization. Flow experiences arise when we apply our conscious powers and knowledge in
goal-directed activity; musicing can be an exemplary flow experience.
The construct of musicing supports a music-centered notion of clinical practice where the
essentially musical experience is a legitimate clinical goal because music exists primarily as a
medium for the development of the self. Elliot’s ideas on the value of music-making are
relevant for music therapy because sometimes clinical skills are used to create a place where
a client can be musicing. What is clinical about this is not the addressing of a nonmusical skill
but that particular obstacles are circumvented in order to give the same musicing experience to
a client that musicians in nonclinical situations obtain. It is music therapy not because the goal
is different—this is still to produce and/or experience music—but because of what is done to
help the person achieve a state of musicing.
Elliot believes that “music is the diverse human practice of overtly and covertly
constructing aural-temporal patterns for the primary (but not necessarily the exclusive) values
of enjoyment, self-growth, and self-knowledge” (1995, p. 128). If we can accept this as a
definition of the role of music in music therapy as well, then perhaps music therapy music is
not an alternative use of music. Perhaps it is merely another musical idiom with its own
conventions, styles, standards, and representative patterns of interaction. And perhaps it is a
form in which the underlying reason for all music-making is not obscured by other purposes—
for example, selling a product or becoming famous—but is instead revealed directly.
THE NECESSITY OF A THEORY OF MUSIC AS A BASIS FOR MUSIC-CENTERED

MUSIC THERAPY
A metatheoretical consideration that speaks to whether a particular theory is music-centered
and general in character is the extent to which it is based upon a theory of music. Grounding
music therapy theory in a conception of music gives the music therapy theory a firmer
foundation, more extensive roots, and a greater potential area of application.
A theory of music serves a music-centered music therapy theory much as a theory of
personality serves a psychotherapy theory. Thus, saying that music-centered music therapy
theory should rest on a conception of music is no different from saying that theories of verbal
psychotherapy must be supported by a credible, underlying theory of personality. When one
intervenes with a person’s psyche to promote psychological development, explanatory power
is gained when the mechanisms proposed to account for the efficacy of the treatment method
are grounded in general psychological processes and structures. Similarly, the theory and
practice of music therapy should be grounded on a credible and broad-based view of music.
One drawback of psychoanalytic personality theory is that its original formulations were
based on experiences with people with problems severe enough to seek analysis rather than on
the study of psychologically healthy people. Freud’s model of the personality, which supports
psychoanalytic treatment theory, was based on the study of a very culturally specific group of
people who, because they were seeking treatment for psychological difficulties, were
obviously not functioning in an optimum way. Freud’s personality models and those inherited
from his way of thinking emphasize dysfunctional aspects of people more than functional ones.
It is as if all we knew about how the human body functions was from the study of diseased
individuals.
None of this is to say that music therapy cannot illuminate fundamental aspects of music or
that psychotherapy cannot reveal personality processes active in other domains of functioning.
Certainly both music therapy and psychotherapy have taught us much about music and the
human personality, respectively. And, in fact, it is the music-centered position that asserts the
basic continuity between clinical and nonclinical uses of music and that supports the idea that
experiences of music in music therapy are relevant for general conceptions of music. It is to
say, however, that the mechanisms proposed to explain a set of phenomena should be
conceptually congruent with the fundamental entities that are active in a particular domain.
And to the extent that music therapy theory treatment is based on a broadly conceived concept
of music, it will be a more powerful and more generally applicable theory.
CAN A NOTION OF MUSIC DERIVED FROM NONCLINICAL CONTEXTS BE THE

BASIS FOR MUSIC THERAPY?
One of the issues that separates music therapists who embrace music-centeredness as a formal
identity from other music therapists is their belief about the relation between music in music
therapy and music outside music therapy. Practitioners who operate more from a music
psychotherapy framework, for example, tend to assert that there are essential and observable
differences between the two types of music. It is asserted that music therapy improvisations,
for example, possess unique expressive, formal, interactional, or communicative
characteristics that clearly differentiate them from nonclinical musical improvisations. In this
view, it is said that music therapy improvisations develop in a way that reflects clinical—for
example, communicative, expressive, relational—demands, while nonclinical improvisations
follow purely musical demands. Implied by such a view is that there is a dichotomy between
the communicative, relational, and expressive on one hand, and the musical on the other.
Further, such a view minimizes the relevance for music therapy of ideas about how music is
heard, composed, improvised, and performed in nonclinical settings.
In contrast are music therapists who argue for the essential continuity between nonclinical
music and clinical music. In this view, the similarities in function and context of creation
between clinical and nonclinical music are emphasized. Ansdell (2002) emphasizes the
similarities of context and goals of clinical and nonclinical music-making in his exploration of
Community Music Therapy; Lee (2003) talks about how musicological analyses of the great
works of western classical music can serve as the foundation for Aesthetic Music Therapy;
and the present author has discussed how interactional processes at the heart of jazz
improvisation are central clinical factors in music therapy improvisations (Aigen, 2002).
In an empirical investigation of this issue, Brown and Pavlicevic (1996) discovered that
blind raters could distinguish between music therapy improvisations and nonclinical
improvisations. Although there are factors related to the design of their study that might
account for their results, let us assume for the moment that the perceived differences were real,
objective, and an accurate basis for saying that clinical music and nonclinical music differ in
some fundamental way. Even granting all of these points, it does not necessarily follow that the
agenda of the music-making differed in fundamental ways. The ability to distinguish between
clinical and nonclinical music might be similar to the ability to distinguish between jazz and
gamelan music, for example. One pays attention to things such as instrumentation, timbres,
rhythms, scales used, and patterns of interaction among the various instrumental contributors.
Thus, just because clinical and nonclinical forms of music-making may have some inherent
differences, it does not follow that these differences are of the kind where the nonclinical
music is formed along purely musical contours while the clinical music follows fundamentally
different types of nonmusical dictates.
Brown and Pavlicevic (1996) and Pavlicevic (1997) argue that music therapy
improvisations are unique in abiding an interpersonal, inter-communicative dimension and that
nonclinical improvisations build upon musical lines rather than interactive and communicative
ones. In other words, in music therapy improvisations one can hear the music carve out the
contours of the human relationship of the players to one another; in nonclinical improvisation,
such as might occur in a jazz or rock idiom, the development of the music follows musical
considerations rather than interpersonal ones.
Here I would like to appeal to my own experience as well as that of the reader. This
dichotomy does not match my experience as either a listener or a player of improvised music
in nonclinical settings. As a musician, I am always interacting with other musicians, not with
disembodied sounds. And the music that results is always a product of, or a reflection of, the
specific human interaction of the people creating the music, an interaction that can occur on
different structural, processual, and experiential levels of music.
Musical performances can be listened to in different ways, a basic precept of all
phenomenological investigations of music. One can listen to the pure sounds, or one can listen
for the patterns of human interactions that produce the sounds. Music therapy improvisations
and jazz improvisations can be listened to in each of these ways, and, depending upon what
one is listening for, what will be heard will be either sounds or patterns of human interactions
(relationships). It is just not the case that people listening to a jazz combo are hearing pure
sounds only and people listening to a music therapy improvisation are hearing pure musical
relationships only. Both contexts of listening produce experiences in both realms of
experience.
Therapists making music with clients are never just concerned with the therapeutic
relationship in sound because this relationship is mediated by musical factors. The therapist’s
choices of instrument, tonality, timbre, harmony, and tempo are all affected by the musicality of
the client’s expression as well as the clinical needs, the dynamics, and the communicative
patterns of the relationship. The same is true of the players in a jazz group. What they play is a
combination of what they hear from each other, what they know about each other’s
predilections, and the relationship dynamics among them, including who is a better listener,
who functions more as a leader or a follower, and who is a more dynamic personality. In fact,
jazz can be as much as music therapy an example of interpersonal communication in music.
In music therapy improvisations, one can hear musical communication as well as
interpersonal communication in music. The more music-centered one’s practice and theory is,
the more one will emphasize musical communication and experience in one’s musical
interventions and style of playing. This can explain some of Brown and Pavlicevic’s (1996)
results as described above. Because they had a clinical predilection to play differently when
they were playing as therapists, it was natural that their panel members heard the differences.
If a panel were to listen to examples of music therapy improvisations played by music-
centered therapists whose clinical music-making is not fundamentally different from their
nonclinical music-making, it is less likely that panel members would be able to differentiate
between the two types of music.27
Similarly, in jazz improvisations, one can hear musical communication and interpersonal
communication in music. For example, one can hear a drummer play three beats against two,
or a pianist extending a harmony, both of which can reflect the rhythmic phrasing and tonal
extensions of the soloist. One can also hear a drummer make unexpected rhythmic punctuations
or a pianist introduce unexpected harmonic extensions in order to goad a soloist into becoming
more explorative. In sum, one can hear all of the same musical and interpersonal
communications in music therapy that one hears in a nonclinical style such as jazz. What one
does hear depends on the level of listening at which one is engaged. Clinical and nonclinical
improvisational approaches are not differentiated along the lines of the former consisting of
interpersonal communication in music while the latter consist of musical communication,
although this is not to say that other types of contextual clues might not help blind raters
distinguish between them.
Various music therapists have used ideas from the study of nonclinical music and showed
how they can illuminate music therapy processes. Music-listening in music therapy, the
musical structure of clinical improvisations, and the social interaction that characterizes music
therapy improvisations have all been subject to examination through musicological constructs,
and our knowledge of these areas has increased as a result.
In addition to possessing a shared mode of generating music, the type of listening engaged
in by music therapists and nonclinical musicians can be quite similar as well. Ansdell (1995)
identifies a type of listening that arises when one is “an active part of the music-making,”
which he identifies as “listening-in-playing” or “social listening” (p. 158). This type of
listening is “a central focus of many non-Western forms of group music-making,” and it is also
“central to any musical relationship, be this between a singer and her accompanist, or the
members of a string quartet” (p. 158). The music therapist engages in other types of listening
as well, but it is this type of listening as a musician that is the therapist’s primary
responsibility and upon which the other types of clinical listening are based. Lee (2003)
identifies six levels of listening applicable to clinical improvisations, and yet only one refers
to factors unique to therapy processes. In this way, both of these authors consider general
music-listening skills to be essential to the music therapist’s improvisational craft.

Pavlicevic (1997) identifies the concept of invariants from Dowling and Harwood’s
writing on music as being of central importance in understanding music therapy
improvisations.28 Invariants are aspects of music that provide continuity in one dimension of
the music in the face of change in other dimensions. Their presence facilitates our ability to
hear music “as a continuous, unfolding event” (p. 68) rather than as a discontinuous stream of
isolated or unrelated sounds. An example of an invariant is the pulse of music that stays the
same in the face of complex changes in harmony or melodic phrasing. Pavlicevic describes
how it possible to understand “fully mutual clinical improvisation as one where therapist and
client generate invariants together” (p. 70). Much of the therapist’s task in clinical
improvisation can be understood through this concept of invariancy, as it helps to explain how
a therapist can establish musical communication with isolated individuals or bring coherence
to highly disordered playing. This construct, so essential to understanding nonclinical music,
is useful in understanding clinical music as well.
Two concepts from ethnomusicology that describe the creation of nonclinical music that
have been applied to music therapy improvisations are those of participatory discrepancy
(Keil, 1994a, 1995) and vital drive (Keil, 1994b).29 Vital drive is an aspect of groove that is
particularly relevant when considering how a jazz rhythm section supports and inspires a
soloist. Different types of jazz soloists require different types of rhythm sections whose unique
characteristics specifically support the soloist based upon how the soloist plays. The task of a
jazz rhythm section in creating vital drive is remarkably similar to a therapist’s task in relation
to a client. This is to “create music which maintains enough sameness to groove and yet which
is also individualized for the soloist and which keeps changing in order to propel the solo
along” (Aigen, 2002, p. 103). To use Pavlicevic’s term, the therapist’s task is to establish an
area of invariancy in the improvisation while still incorporating enough variations to respond
to the way that the client’s expression develops.
Keil’s concept of participatory discrepancy asserts that this balance of sameness and
difference, or of precision and loose fittingness, is at the heart of all music-making. Keil says
that “music, to be personally involving and socially valuable, must be ‘out of time’ and ‘out of
tune,’ ‘out of time’ and ‘out of tune’ only in relation to music department standardization and
the civilized worldview of course” (Keil, 1995, p. 4). Further, “the power of music lies in its
participatory discrepancies, and these are basically of two kinds: processual and textural”
(Keil, 1994a, p. 96). A processual discrepancy would be reflected in an Afro-Cuban music
group where the players play certain beats of a rhythmic pattern in temporal unison and other
beats in a pattern in more of a loose-fitting way without a necessity for precise co-temporality.
A textural discrepancy might consist of departures from playing in perfect tuning, not as a
mistake but as a stylistic characteristic of a particular type of music.
The primary contribution of Keil’s thinking is to demonstrate how “the creation of vital,
alive, quality music does not derive from the ability of musicians to link with each other
around perfect tunings and precise co-temporal events…. Music is created by an ability to
connect with others in unique ways that preserve our separateness” (Aigen, 2002, pp. 53-54).
Even Ruud (1998) first suggested that participatory discrepancies were relevant in
understanding music therapy improvisations when he observed how they were present in Paul
Nordoff s and Clive Robbins’s work with exceptional children. Ruud’s observations attest to
the fact that participatory discrepancies are a relevant class of phenomena to apply to music
therapy improvisations, regardless of whether the improvisations take place within a
recognizable music style such as jazz or rock music.
The way that the concepts of musicing, listening-in-playing, musical invariants, vital drive,
participatory discrepancies, and the explorations into the clinical relevance of nonclinical
musical forms have all been used to illuminate essential aspects of music therapy processes
suggests that the answer to the question posed in the title of this section is a resounding Yes!
Music therapists and their clients create and listen to music together, and there is no a priori
conceptual or methodological reason why constructs from other areas of music study cannot be
fruitfully applied to music therapy when the sources of these ideas have significant areas of
congruence with the music therapy contexts in which the ideas are being applied.
Music-making occurs in a variety of contexts in society, such as to entertain people, to
support religious rituals, and as a medium of therapy. However, before music can be therapy it
must first be music. Music-centered theories on the nature of music and its role in therapy
recognize the primacy and universality of musical forces, experiences, processes, and
structures, and they seek to establish clinical efficacy in these primary attributes rather than in
the secondary attributes that arise as a consequence of the particular social context in which
the musicing takes place.
In the case of music therapy, the social roles present in concepts of therapist and client that
have been imported from medical and psychotherapy frameworks function as an important
supportive edifice that allows for musically transforming experiences to emerge in music
therapy. However, a foundation of music-centered thinking is that “the components of the
enabling social structure are not themselves the agents of change” (Aigen, 1991a, p. 245).
l4The Art of Music as Therapy was first used as the title of an unpublished manuscript
begun by Nordoff and Robbins in 1963 and completed in 1965. The first published instance of
the term appeared in their 1965 book, Music Therapy for Handicapped Children:
Investigations and Experiences, which served as the basis for the 1971 publication Therapy
in Music for Handicapped Children. Their term, therapy in music, is a deliberate turn of
phrase of the title of the well-known book Music in Therapy, edited by E. Thayer Gaston
(1968a); it stresses the philosophical foundation of the Nordoff-Robbins approach that the
therapy is in the music. Readers who possess the 1971 publication will find the phrase music
as therapy on pages 141 and 142.
15Bruscia’sformulation has been developed significantly during the past 17 years, and
these developments are discussed below. However, as his initial formulation is of historical
significance and is known broadly with substantial references in the music therapy literature,
this discussion will begin with the initial presentation of his ideas and will subsequently
incorporate later developments.
16And, in fact, Bruscia (2002) himself applies the constructs of music as therapy and
music in therapy to Guided Imagery and Music (GIM) practice in order to develop criteria for
differentiating GIM practice that lies within music therapy from GIM practice that belongs to
other domains.
17In this
work, the author proposes that “music treats with its dynamic qualities, with its
structures and forms, with its grooves (the clinical essence of the idiom), with its ‘existence.’
Music is the primary therapist; the music therapist is the one who facilitates the involvement of
the client with and in music and creative experience” (A. Brandalise, personal
communication). Because I do not read Portuguese, the foregoing comments do not apply to the
Brandalise book.
18I am intentionally not saying uniqueor specific to music therapy here. If there are
elements of music therapy that are essential in explaining its efficacy and yet are also active in
other domains of music, it will be possible to discover phenomena that are essential to music
therapy and yet shared by other areas of music as well.
19Another interesting trend is that since the late 1990s, therapists (including a number of
Nordoff-Robbins ones who have also pursued training in Analytical Music Therapy or Guided
Imagery and Music) have begun taking advanced training in more than one model. This also
suggests that there are strong, underlying philosophical continuities among the approaches.
20Theearly miracle school probably never disappeared; instead, it became manifest in
the various New Age and healing approaches to music, most of which have been soundly
discredited in a masterful study by Lisa Summer (1996), who is sympathetic to music-centered
theory.
21Music therapy pioneer Florence Tyson often spoke about how in her work in
psychiatric hospitals in the 1950s she was explicitly warned by medical staff not to speak with
patients.
22SeeAigen (1995a) for a more thorough application of Dewey’s aesthetic theory of
creative music therapy. See also Stige (2002) and Garred (2001, 2004), who both discuss the
idea of music as a medium of experience in music therapy.
23Consider that in Guided Imagery and Music, music of the highest aesthetic quality is
chosen; that in Nordoff-Robbins work, the aesthetic qualities of the music are directly related
to the clinical process; and that Lee’s (2003) music-centered approach is called Aesthetic
Music Therapy.
24A term he prefers over that of music-centered.
25Thisis the focus of the case study of Martha in Aigen (1998), particularly in the
discussion of the development of functional musical skills starting on page 74.
26Although Garred (2004, p. 271) notes how the term musicing has been used since the
17th century, Elliot was one of the first contemporary writers to use it. Garred identifies
Robert Walser as using the term (spelled with a k) in a 1993 publication, and the alternatively
spelled Musicking is the title of a book by Christopher Small (1998). Although Elliot
published his work on musicing as early as 1993, Small does not refer to Elliot’s work or his
use of the term. Small has a similar agenda in using the verb to illustrate that “music is first
and foremost action” (p. 9) and that “music is not a thing at all but an activity, something that
people do” (p. 2). In many other ways, the two terms differ. In the present book, in quotations
from music therapists who use the spelling containing a k, it should be understood that they are
drawing from Small’s work.
27A brief anecdotein this regard: During Fall 2003, I had the occasion to give an
introductory talk on music therapy to music composition students. As a clinical illustration, I
chose to play audio extract 6 from Lee (2003). As the piece progressed, I saw somewhat
embarrassed smiles of self-recognition emerge on the faces of many of the students. When it
was over, I asked about these reactions. The students explained to me that they felt that this
example of clinical music therapy was indistinguishable from their own student compositions.
28Thusillustrating the opinion voiced earlier that it is more useful to label particular
ideas as being music-centered or not rather than attempt to apply this label to specific
individuals or publications.
29Both constructs are extensively applied to music therapy in Aigen (2002).
CHAPTER 4
Values Central to Musicing in Music-Centered Music Therapy
Even Ruud (1988) has observed how the efforts of music therapists to gain more credibility in
the scientific community by adapting extrinsic frameworks have come at a certain cost. By
abandoning “metaphysical or idealistic types of theory” (p. 34), music therapists have ceded
some of the most important questions involving music to other types of scholars and
professionals:
In creating the science of music therapy, along with the profession of the music therapist,
the question of the general role and value of music in everyday life was handed over to the
music educator and the philosopher of music—as well as to the music industry. The concept
of music as therapy won much scientific credibility but lost its historically important role as
a field of knowledge seeking to utilize music as a prime source of information about how to
live and relate to the universe, (p. 34)
In music-centered practice, music is more than an art form, a means for communication, or
even a vehicle for therapy. It is a way of being with other people that embodies particular
values that form the foundation for music therapy practice. The music-centered perspective is
reclaiming for music therapy the responsibility for contributing to the ongoing human
investigation into the nature of music and its meaning for human beings. Toward this end, the
present discussion focuses on how music-centered practices rest on the foundation of
specifically musical values.
Discussions involving values are difficult ones. First, the term value is a confusing one,
with many different contemporary uses and connotations. Originally descriptive of the worth
of a thing in a material sense, it had no connection to “beauty, truth, rightness, or even
goodness” (Frankena, 1967, p. 229). The evolution of discourse in philosophy connected these
two areas of inquiry so that one sense of values came to indicate those practices and beliefs
that are “thought to be good, or desired” and are therefore things that we “prize, like, esteem,
cherish, or hold dear” (p. 230). This is the sense that the term is being used in here.
Second, discussions of values occupy an unusual place in contemporary intellectual
discourse. The moral relativism of the postmodern intellectual tradition holds that all values
are local and culture-bound and that it is illegitimate, conceptually and politically, to apply
values across temporal, geographic, or cultural boundaries. To do so is considered to be an

example of absolutism or universalism (the particular value being discussed is said to be a
moral absolute or present universally) and to show that an author is guilty of such an
intellectual strategy is to automatically discredit the position being advocated, without having
to consider the merits of the argument being made.
However, many of the authors who espouse versions of postmodernism, or intellectual
positions growing out of postmodernism, are not reluctant to argue for the universal
application of certain values themselves, such as the empowerment of disenfranchised social
groups, reflexivity in intellectual work, liberal tolerance of cultural and individual
differences, and inclusiveness in the political, educational, and artistic arena. Individuals can
take these positions without realizing that this stance can also be an example of the same
cultural imperialism for which they criticize those who argue for historically older
transcendental values, such as intellectual freedom and democratic political processes. And
when qualitative researchers, for example, take the position that members of a disempowered
social group need to have their consciousness raised by the researcher coming from a more
dominant social group, the activist-researcher can be guilty of the same type of cultural
imperialism as those who draw commercial or political gain from activities of cultural
appropriation.
While it is not necessary in the present work to take this discussion further, it is important
to see that some of the primary arguments used by contemporary intellectuals to stifle
discussion of values are self-contradictory because they are themselves based on particular
values. Thus, I would like to engage the reader’s attention in a brief discussion of musical
values that some might see as absolutist or universalist in the sense described above. To this
judgment I plead guilty, with the caveat that such a claim is not necessarily a crime when there
is evidence that certain values approach universality in their application.
Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins (1971) were not shy about the values that motivated their
work and unabashedly declaimed their belief that music could embody values that transcended
the lives of individuals while they simultaneously enriched these lives.
Within exceptional children live some of the deepest needs of humanity…. In some degree
they live in all children but in the exceptional they are less obscured by the more superficial
needs of everyday life…. The approach to therapy … is widened beyond measure by
considerations that invest the individual in the universal. Universal humanity is far greater
than any transitory norm. A therapy which has as a goal the freeing and development of the
individual within universal human principles is more effective than one that aims merely to
normalize. Universal values transcend the limited values of any one nationality or culture.
Universal values can live in music. This is why music can become so important in the lives
of exceptional children, (p. 56)
In the phrase deepest needs of humanity, Nordoff and Robbins bring up the possibility that
there are universal human needs that typically remain unmet within exceptional children.
These are needs that go beyond culture and individual history and that music is uniquely
poised to meet because it also transcends ordinary cultural divides and individual differences.
To Nordoff and Robbins, ideas about the normalization of disabled children as the focus of
music therapy were hopelessly restrictive, both in terms of their origins and in relation to the
unnecessary limitation they put on what otherwise could be profound, life-changing
experiences in music therapy. Because music could contain the expression of the universal
need for self-development through musical connection to others, the source of its efficacy lay
in extracultural concerns. This belief was certainly validated by thousands of hours of clinical
experiences with disabled children from many countries who responded positively to types of
music from cultures with which they could not have been familiar.
Even Ruud has often written about the importance of the cultural context of music therapy
and is recognized as someone who is not only sensitive to cultural concerns but has also been
one of the pioneers in music therapy in emphasizing the importance of cultural considerations.
Therefore, it carries great weight when he talks about the complementary way in which music
can also bring someone beyond culture:
Due to its indefinable aesthetic nature, or sometimes merely to its sound presence, the
experience of music may transcend the culturally and verbally prescribed code written into
the music. The polysemic nature of music sometimes forces us to open up noninvestigated
areas of body and consciousness. This increased awareness… may help us construct new
categories … through which to meet the world. And if this increased awareness includes
not only aspects of mind and body, but also a new awareness of our relation to nature—as
well as our place in society, culture, and world community—there is a hope that the
experience of music may lead to personal change. (Ruud, 1988, p. 37)
The development of the self (and thus progress in therapy) can involve developing a
relationship with one’s culture as well as transcending it. Because it is partially cultural
artifact, music can play an essential role in bringing individuals into relationship with their
culture. In this type of work, an awareness of local musical values and style characteristics is
essential.
Yet the ubiquity of music in human cultures also suggests that there are transcendent aspects
of music that exist cross-culturally. The transcendent qualities can be drawn upon in helping
someone to move beyond the constraints of culture when these impede self-actualization. I am
proposing that one of the transcendent realms exists in the area of musical values.
THE IDEA OF MUSICAL VALUES

Music-centered practitioners do not necessarily subscribe to a common conception of music,
and as a group they employ the full spectrum of musical styles. They probably have quite
different ideas about what musical values are. However, I am proposing that what they share is
a profound connection among the values at the core of their individual identities as people, as
musicians, and as music therapists.30
Before moving on to the discussion of particular musical values, I would like to qualify the
following remarks: First, I am not making the claim that these values are unique to music or to
music-centered music therapists. While they are specific to music, only empirical
investigation can determine their uniqueness. Second, I am also not making the claim that all
music-centered music therapists would subscribe to these beliefs. Instead, my intent is to

discuss some examples of the types of musical values embraced by a diversity of music-
centered music therapists. My purpose in delineating values in this way is to highlight the fact
that the therapy approach of music-centered music therapists can reflect an embracing of the
values intrinsic to the human practice of music. Third, there is no claim to comprehensiveness,
and there may be other types of musical values that are not discussed below. I have chosen to
discuss those values that seem particularly related to music therapy.
This chapter focuses on values that are integral to musicing. I sympathize with the reader
who may be thinking that the universal practice of music is constituted of such diverse
phenomena, and originates in so many diverse cultures, that it is too difficult to support the
claim that there are such things as musical values. Moreover, even if there are musical values
in certain local cultures, given the diversity of musical cultures it would seem unlikely that
these values are similar from culture to culture. Yet, if there is such a thing as music that exists
cross-culturally, and if there are certain invariant characteristics of this phenomenon in its
many different manifestations, it is not unreasonable to suggest that in these commonalities lie
certain prevalent values that are necessitated by musicing. In other words, to music with others
both requires and reflects particular beliefs and practices. It is worthwhile to examine what is
required of people who music together and examine how these requirements might fit into a
broader system of values that can support different music therapy approaches.
Recognizing the possibility of universal values becomes more tenable when we separate
surface behaviors from the beliefs that underlie them. For example, while in some cultures it is
considered impolite and disrespectful of one’s hosts to belch after a pleasing meal, in other
countries it is considered a high compliment. If one is just to look at the surface behavior, one
might assume that it is obvious that manners are not universal. However, what might be
universal is the injunction to respect and honor one’s host. The way that this particular value
is expressed might vary significantly, but this is no argument against the universality of the
underlying value.
In the same way, the diversity of musical practices is not an argument against the possibility
of there being some universal (or at least generally prevalent) musical values. Mary Louise
Serafine (1988) has proposed a theory of music that suggests that there are universal cognitive
processes that are implicated in music across cultures. None of her processes refers to style-
specific elements, e.g., tonal structures or harmonic cadences; instead, they are generic
processes, such as patterning, phrasing, relative repetition, and property abstraction. Serafine
demonstrates that there are enough similarities in the production and perception of music on a
cross-cultural basis to posit some universal aspects.
While the present focus on musical values differs from Serafine’s focus on cognitive
processes, it is based on a similar belief that universal similarities can be revealed provided
that one attends to fundamental levels of musical organization rather than to its surface
characteristics. Framing the chapter in this way emphasizes that in music therapy we music
with clients. We are looking at the values inherent in the activity of musicing, particularly
those that lead to richer and more satisfying experiences of musicing.
MUSICING REQUIRES AN UNDERSTANDING OF SILENCE

Because musicians are focused so intently on the artistic creation of sound, we sometimes
forget how important silence is as a component of music. Silence is present on many levels in
a musical performance. On the broader levels of organization, it is present in the poised
moments when a conductor lifts the baton and waits to begin the music, and also in the pauses
between movements of a longer piece. Conversely, one can look at the micro level of analysis
and find that musical groove is created by the unique way in which rhythm section members
(percussionists, bass players) cut off the sustain of their instruments and leave a silence that is
either completely empty of sound or filled by another band member. As Gillian Stephens
Langdon (1995) has noted, “if one studies a piece of music carefully, one discovers that it is
not simply the notes, rhythms, and harmonies that create the power of the music. It is the rests
and pauses—the silences. It is the same in a music therapy session” (p. 66).
The highest levels of musicianship incorporate an understanding for and appreciation of the
potentials of silence. Many of the most accomplished improvising musicians in jazz and blues
musical styles are known for their unique phrasing in which the places of silence are essential
in defining the musical character of their playing. Jazz and blues musicians such as Count
Basie, Miles Davis, and B B. King defined genres of music through the complementary aspects
of their phrasing and associated silences. And regardless of whether one is considering an
improvising jazz group or a string quartet, for example, the silences in the music must come
about from a shared appreciation of their meaning and cooperation in their creation. The
ability to phrase together or to create a groove involves recognizing that shared silences are
not just the absence of sound but a vehicle for musical connectivity as well.
To be a musician and a music-centered music therapist is to cultivate a respect and
understanding for silence. Silence is a place of nondoing, of receptivity, of waiting, of
patience. Learning to appreciate the value of silence in music means learning the value of
these qualities. For Gillian Stephens Langdon (1995), in “‘sitting in silence,’ the therapist
begins to make room for the client on a deeper level” (p. 67). Langdon writes about learning
to feel comfortable in this silence and, as with a nonclinical musician, to understand how a
shared silence can be “a place of connection as opposed to isolation” (p. 67). While Langdon
acknowledges that silence can begin a session, it is more typical for the silence to occur at the
conclusion of an improvisation “which was very moving” (p. 67). At these moments, she
resists the temptation to process the experience verbally, instead allowing the client and her to
fully live in the space created by the music by not interrupting the silence that follows it. In
this way, the silence itself becomes a means of processing the experience, something that
would be disturbed by a verbal inquiry into the nature of the client’s emotional reaction to the
music.
Silence can invite participation, whether this is the silence prior to the beginning of a piece
of music or a briefer silence in a two-beat rest in a therapist’s playing that invites the client to
respond. Well-placed silences can evoke a client’s musicality as much as can inspired musical
interventions. For example, Joseph Piccinnini (2001) has discussed how the back beat of rock
and roll music, with its emphasis on beats two and four of a measure, serve to invite musical
participation because the initial beat of the measure is a space to be filled. For him, the
essence of the back beat helps to explain the clinical efficacy of this style of music.
MUSICING REQUIRES LISTENING

Musicing with other people involves listening intently to them and responding in a way that
reflects the listening. Part of one’s attention is always directed outward to the sounds being
originated with others. This is true of an improvising jazz group, a string quartet, the members
of a music therapy group, or any other gathering of people playing music together for any
purpose. It is one of the undeniable truths about cooperative musicing that it demands that
careful attention be paid to others. The quality of music is directly related to the listening skills
of the people creating it.
Inherent in musicing is an outward focus that reflects a profound respect for other people.
Many music therapists have written about the importance of listening. Gary Ansdell (1995)
has identified different types of listening and has observed how “listening-in-playing” is
especially important for the improvising music therapist. Dorit Amir (1995) comments that “in
order to serve, our listening has to be transcendent…. When this listening is connected to our
client’s inner and outer music, it has the potential of awakening the life spirit” (p. 55). An
excerpt from music therapist Nancy McMaster’s poem (1995, pp. 72-73) eloquently expresses
the value of listening:
Something sacred there is about listening
when the whole of our Being is tuned
to resonate with all that enters our field of experience.
Such listening requires an openness,
an interest in contact, in discovery;
a faith, however momentary, that there is a place for
“everything under the sun.”
To be a musician is to embody a respect and reverence for the people with whom we
music, something reflected in the way that we honor, respect, and respond to their soundings.
This regard for others is integral to musicing and forms the foundation for how music-centered
music therapists listen to their clients. It forms the template for the overall feeling of respect
afforded to them. The type of listening that accomplished musicians such as accompanists do
transfers directly to the clinical situation and has important benefits for clients. Gary Ansdell
(1995) reports a clinical anecdote which succinctly illustrates this point:
Another client told me how she experienced what she called ‘getting a resonance’ when
improvising with me. She was translating from German, and I thought that perhaps she
meant ‘response.’ She said, however, that she did mean ‘resonance’ in the sense of hearing
her own sound sustained as if from a bell. She heard herself being heard, ‘I wish life would
always be like this—just to get a resonance!’ (p. 159)
She heard herself being heard. The phrasing of this client is important. She did not just feel
herself being heard but heard it. The type of listening done by the music-centered music
therapist is directly imparted to the client who learns to perceive on a similar level and thus
have a meaningful experience. The clinical process for clients can involve developing in them
the capacity to listen as a musician does and thereby gain access to new sources of meaning
and connection to other people.
MUSICING INCORPORATES THE INDIVIDUAL WITHIN THE COMMUNAL

Apart from solo performances, all types of nonclinical musicing require the fitting of
individual contributions into a group creation. And even in solo performance there is typically
a musical form or composition that embodies communal creation and expectations.31 The
challenge for musicians of all types is to play music in a way both that is personally satisfying
and that enhances what is created together. In this way, playing music with others is a
microcosm of the challenge put to all human beings to achieve personal satisfaction within
social structures.
The process of fitting together that musicians engage in is not a simple one of suppressing
individual sensibilities and expression in service of the group creation. The fact is that those
collections of musicians who are recognized as being at the pinnacle of their particular
musical styles represent a balancing of their individual and communal identities rather than an
elevation of one over the other. Think of entities such as the Berlin Philharmonic string
sections, Duke Ellington’s saxophone section, or the vocal harmonies of a rock band such as
The Band. Each of them was known equally for its manner of combining sounds in a way that
produced an overall, singular identity, while allowing the individuals’ voices to come through
as well. The highest levels of musicing involve the artful blending of individual instrumental
or vocal voices in which individual expression exists in concert with communal expression.
When done artfully, the two forms of expression become completely complementary rather
than compete with one another.
The musical format of a music therapy session varies widely across a spectrum
characterized by complete musical freedom at one end and no musical freedom at the other. At
the former end of the spectrum lie some psychodynamic forms of music therapy in which a
client is encouraged to engage in spontaneous sounding through music. In such an approach,
not only is improvisation encouraged, but also musical forms in which improvisations take
place in other types of music therapy may be eschewed as well. This type of work is built
primarily on the value of individual expression. At the latter end of the spectrum lie highly
structured activities such as drum circles, in which the client is given no choice of instrument,
musical part, phrasing, or dynamic level, as these are all controlled by a therapist-facilitator.
This type of work is built primarily on the value of communal cohesiveness.
Gary Ansdell (1995) has discussed how people who are focused solely on self-expression
cannot contribute to a music therapy group improvisation because such individuals “become
trapped in a bubble of their own action and emotion” (p. 125). The creation of a shared
product involves “inhibition of the purely self-expressive impulse” (p. 125). Ansdell is
correct that the ability to music together with others begins in a place of listening to others
combined with developing the type of restraint he describes. But group musicing skills only
begin here. They move beyond this to a state where the contribution to the group music
becomes an act of self-expression. The dichotomy between group creation and individual
expression can be transcended when the individual finds a realization of his being within the
contribution to the group creation. Inhibition is no longer required because the individual
expression is manifest in the contribution to the group music. The restraint necessary to music
with others is not felt as a constraint.
Barbara Hesser (1995) comments on the similar challenges faced by music therapy groups
and other types of social entities:
It is impossible to always have one’s needs met in a relationship or group. To find a way to
maintain the unity of the group and still work on one’s own needs is a challenge for group
members. This same challenge also can apply to most groups and communities. Finding the
harmonious balance of consonance and dissonance among group members is a goal of the
music therapy process…. Consonance and dissonance can be woven together in a beautiful
and deeply satisfying way…. Finding this balance is possible in highly developed and
mature groups and requires each individual to be willing to hear and accept a newer kind of
music than perhaps they are used to. (p. 49)
Just as musicing involves balancing forces of tension and release, and consonance and
dissonance, the interpersonal processes of creating music require a similar managing of
tension and dissonance. Once the qualities of tension, dissonance, and difference can be
incorporated into the music of a group of musicians, in therapy or otherwise, that group can
become a setting for the realization of artistic and personal fulfillment.
Musicing, in its advanced forms, involves a mutual respect of group and individual needs
and indeed a transcending of these polarities. Such a state characterizes the highest of human
communal achievements, such as in the realms of athletics, government, and science. In all of
these areas of human achievement, there is a melding of individual and group needs. Musicing
provides an embodiment of an approach to social life that characterizes the best of human
beings. Through their emphasis on group music therapy music as primarily a communal,
artistic achievement, music-centered music therapists actively embody this central value of
human societies.
MUSICING INVOLVES SURRENDER

Descriptions of peak experiences of music can refer to a type of surrender on the part of the
musician. Typically, a musician speaks about the music as something coming from without
rather than something that the musician creates through a conscious act of the will. There is a
sense of musicing as an activity that involves a letting go of active doing as the musician feels
as if he/she is being played by the music rather than the reverse. Helen Bonny and Mary
Priestley have both discussed such types of experiences, although while the former appears to
have been motivated to become a music therapist because of such experiences, the latter
clearly has ambivalent feelings about their nature.32
A common feature of such experiences is that they seem to come about not through a
conscious, active striving, but through letting go and cultivating an openness to something
coming from without. There is a recognition that surrender is essential to the most powerful
moments of musicing. These moments become an orientation point around which people create
careers, musical identities, and entire lives.
The value here is that surrender and letting go are powerful means to human artistic
achievement. This value is reflected in music-centered therapies in the way that they
emphasize that it is the music that does the clinical work and at times the best thing that a
music therapist can do is “get out of the way of the music” (D. Gormley, personal
communication, May 1, 1990).
MUSICING CULTIVATES A RESPECT FOR CRAFT
Phaedo, the great dialogue on the immortality of the soul held on the eve of Socrates’
death, opens with a remarkable admission on the philosopher’s part concerning music.
Socrates’ friends are questioning him about a rumor current in Athens that in the last
days of his imprisonment he has turned to the practice of music, of all things. In reply,
Socrates tells them that repeatedly, throughout his life, he has had a dream in which a
voice has told him to “make music and work at it.” Until recently, he tells them he had
not felt obliged to take the admonition literally…. Since his trial, however, Socrates had
begun to wonder whether he might not have taken the admonition too lightly, and so had
occupied himself in the last days before his execution by composing a hymn to Apollo
and by turning into verse some of Aesop’s fables…. He will make one last gesture of
reverence and gratitude to the power of music: He will raise his voice in song at least
once before dying.
Man the Musician
Musicianship involves mental capacities such as focus, creativity, and musical knowledge, as
well as physical capacities in fine and gross motor skills. Both types of skill are essential to
musicing, and their integration is the core of a musician’s training. In this blending of artistic
sensibility with physical skills, music is as much a craft as it is an art. There is no
musicianship of a high caliber without extensive hours spent mastering the physical aspects of
one’s instrument. As a result, musicians come to appreciate the values of craft: long hours
spent in lonely practicing; a dedication to perfecting a manual skill over years, decades, and
even a lifetime; an appreciation for subtle variations in basic materials that mark the individual
being of the craftsman.
Professions such as journalism, law, and verbal psychotherapy take place fully in the
verbal realm, or the realm of thought. There is no actual physical manipulation of materials in
such endeavors. In other professions, such as medicine, architecture (in the creation of
designs, drawings, and models), and music therapy, the professional knowledge is mediated
through physical actions and materials. Individuals in these areas develop an appreciation for
the actual physicality of their work that is not present in other professions.
Music-centered music therapists internalize this value of craft in their work. It is a value
that is imparted to clients as well. This value of the work involved in craftsmanship can be
seen in a variety of music therapy activities, such as when working for extended time periods
while learning or composing a piece of music that is to be performed or recorded. The care
and love for the actual work and craft involved in musicing is an important component of
clinical music therapy processes in a music-centered framework. A love for musicing
generates a respect for the many hours of work that go into its realization. Music-centered
therapists embody this respect of the craft involved in making music and employ it as a
motivating factor for clients to use in overcoming a variety of motoric, cognitive, expressive,
and social obstacles.
The dedication to the crafting of sound, or to any craft for that matter, is an existential
statement about how one should live one’s life in the face of a death that comes to all. We all
will die one day, and yet this fact does not prevent musicians from constant efforts at
improving their craft. Socrates’ imminent death did not stop him as well. Similarly, even
though most music therapy clients may never achieve commercial or vocational success as
musicians as a result of their activities in music therapy, this is no reason not to allow them the
personal rewards that come from working on their musicianship, whether as players,
composers, or even listeners.
Encouraging this is to support the idea that human beings can create meaningful ways of
spending their time, and that crafting sound with other humans is one of the highest, noblest,
and most enjoyable activities in which we can be engaged. This is because musicians as
craftsmen understand that working on their craft is simultaneously working on themselves,
which, after all, can be a primary focus of therapy.
MUSIC CREATES CONNECTION

Music is like a connective tissue among the spirits of human beings. It forges connection among
members of an audience, among the musicians, and between performers and audience. It both
solidifies intracultural bonds and makes connection across cultures. It can serve as a leveling
phenomenon in a society, bringing people together from different walks of life and different
levels of socioeconomic status.
Because musicing does have intrinsic values, it creates its own culture around uplifting
human experiences. In this way, it can be a powerful tool in mitigating the negative effects of
divisive forces in the political, religious, or cultural realm. It may be trite or obvious to say
that music brings people together in ways that are generally beneficial for them as individuals
and for the society as a whole, but this does not mean that it is not true.
This essence of music as human connection has clear implications for its use in music
therapy. It makes relationship possible on an intrapersonal level as well as on an interpersonal
one, between therapist and client, among clients, and between clients and people in their life
outside of therapy. One of the central concepts of both community music therapy (Pavlicevic &
Ansdell, 2004) and culture-centered music therapy (Stige, 2002) is that music therapists have
already engaged in a paradigmatic level of change in the entities with which they engage in
society. Music therapy is moving beyond being solely a private and confidential affair that
takes place in a closed room divorced from other areas of human social life. Music therapists
are consciously intervening on broader levels of social organization both to integrate

traditional clients into community and to forge connections within the community itself. The
connective power of music directly supports these efforts.
A painter works alone in his studio, an author sits by himself at a desk in his office, even a
composer’s work has a solitary nature. But a musician’s work primarily takes place within the
field of human connection. This is not to say that the painter, author, and composer do not
desire human connection through their work, but the nature of such work means that the
connection is indirect. Individuals drawn to music are simultaneously expressing the value
they place on human connection. Music-centered music therapists directly embody this value
placed on human connection through music and consciously and deliberately build their
approach to music therapy upon it.
30Although it is
probably more accurate to say “music-centered practitioners and those
who adopt a music-centered stance on occasion,” I will avoid repetition of this awkward
phrase throughout the remainder of the present text and allow the term music-centered
practitioners to stand for both groups. It should be clear that the foregoing assertions about
values are more characteristic of the former group than of the latter.
31Of course,
there are exceptions to this statement, such as the jazz pianist Cecil Taylor,
whose performances can consist of single, free-form, atonal improvisations.
32See chapter 6 for a discussion of Helen Bonny’s epiphanous experience and Mary
Priestley’s experience in this area.
CHAPTER 5
Rationales, Practices, and Implications of Music-Centered Music Therapy
Wittgenstein was wrong to write, “What we cannot speak of we must consign to silence.”
Not at all: What we cannot speak of we can sing about.
Man the Musician
Once, I was questioning a patient about what his chant and drumbeat had meant. Like
any good therapist, I found different ways of asking the question. I first asked directly
what it meant. He said he didn’t know. It just felt good to have done it. Then I probed a
little deeper: “Can’t you just give us a few words to describe how it felt, what it means to
you now?” Then from the group another patient called out to me, “Lady, if he could say
it, he wouldn’t be singing it.”
—Carolyn Kenny
The Mythic Artery
Music-centered practices are based upon music-centered ideas, values, and theories. The
aspects of music-centered thinking discussed in the present chapter are manifest in practice
and theory. There may be no one practitioner or theorist who subscribes to all of them, and
they originate in my observations, readings, and discussions with fellow music therapists. The
list of topics is not meant to be an exhaustive or complete one, but is instead offered to
illustrate the types of ideas at the core of music-centered forms of music therapy practice.
THE CLIENT’S EXPERIENCE IN MUSIC IS PRIMARY

Many music therapy clients are motivated primarily by a desire to make music. This
recognition is a central point of departure for music-centered approaches. Whether we are
considering an autistic child with an affinity for playing the piano, a group of adolescents with
behavioral problems creating a rap song, or an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s disease
singing a song from her youth, in each case (and each reader can supply countless others) I
would put forth that the client’s primary motivation is to participate33 in music, not to achieve
some nonmusical clinical goal. And I would also put forth that in each case the motivation
behind the music-making is no different from the motivations that people possess to make
music in the nonclinical domain.
Of course, there are many other music therapy clients whose participation is predicated on
the achievement of nonmusical goals, or—to accommodate other forms of practice such as in
palliative care—for whom the primary benefits of music therapy may not be in the musical
domain. No one would reasonably argue otherwise. The main point here is that for clients
whose desire in music therapy is primarily to participate in music, a music-centered stance
can be the most appropriate one to adopt.
This is not to say that a music therapist should uncritically or naively accept clients’
perspectives on their own difficulties. A desire to use music therapy primarily for
participation in music can also be reflective of a client’s limitations. For example, in my own
experience I have come across individuals with paranoid conditions who did not acknowledge
that they had a condition that warranted psychiatric treatment. They considered their music
therapy sessions to be music lessons and their therapist to be a music teacher. For some of
these individuals, the adoption of a relatively complete music-centered stance was clinically
warranted, while for others this stance was contraindicated as it may have been a form of
collusion or denial. And in fact, important work remains to be done for music therapists in
describing conditions that warrant one or another given therapeutic stance. It is the music
therapist’s responsibility to determine how best to integrate the client’s perspective on the
rationale for participating in music therapy into the therapist’s own clinical stance. This is
why it is important for the music therapist to be able to move across a spectrum of approaches
in a way that will best serve individual clients.
It is also legitimate for a music therapist to adopt music-centered thinking in its totality and
not practice in any other way. This may be a more appropriate stance to take with clients who
are able to participate in a discussion regarding the therapist’s approach and then determine if
the music-centered framework is congruent with their personal goals.
MUSICAL GOALS ARE CLINICAL GOALS

The use of purely musical clinical goals is legitimate when this dovetails with the client’s
agenda, whether this is stated explicitly by the client or is conveyed implicitly by the client’s
actions, affect, or expression. This does nothing more than reflect a profound respect for the
client’s perspective on the clinical experience, and it also makes room for situations where the
client is not able to state a preference but communicates it in other ways. For clients who
cannot communicate their preferences directly, it is important for the music therapist to use
individual judgment in deciding when the client’s motivation is primarily toward musical
participation.
In a music-centered perspective, there is license to express clinical goals in purely musical
terms. This is not to deny that changes in nonmusical areas can occur, or even that these
nonmusical changes can be the music therapist’s primary focus at times. It is merely to say that
when one is practicing in relatively pure music-centered fashion, one is seeking to develop
and enhance capacities for musical expression and experience. Changes in other areas
frequently occur as secondary consequents of the primary locus of intervention, the client’s
ability to music. Yet, these changes, as welcome as they are, are seen as things that accompany
the primary process and are not what justify it.
The starting point for this way of thinking is that music enriches human lives in a unique and
necessary way. Music therapy consists of providing opportunities for musicing to people for
whom special adaptations are necessary. The functions of music for disabled individuals or
for those in need of therapy are the same as for other people. It is the means for achieving the
musical state that comprise the music therapist’s craft and that differentiate music therapy from
music performance or music education. In this view, music therapy can be seen as the creating
of special conditions where musicing can happen for people who cannot create the conditions
on their own, whether this is due to physical, cognitive, social, or emotional reasons.
The overriding clinical purpose in this perspective is to bring people into contact with
music and musical experiences in a way that can enrich their lives. They may change as a
result—their personality structures, modes of relating to others, sense of purpose in life,
ability to express themselves, self-image, and sense of purpose in life, among other things,
may change—but these are the secondary consequents of involvement in the musical
experience. The locus of intervention is the capacity for musical acting, feeling, thinking, and
being, and the tool of intervention is music. The effects can radiate throughout one’s being but
the particular areas into which the effects radiate are determined by the type of music, how the
therapist plays, the prior experiences of the client, the musical preferences of the client, and
the areas of need of the client. The music therapist’s role in this is to discern areas of need and
to create musical experiences to meet these areas of need.
THE PRIMARY FOCUS IS ENHANCING THE CLIENT’S INVOLVEMENT IN MUSIC

Music therapy clients participate in music in both receptive and expressive capacities. That is,
they both play music and listen to it, and while playing music they are simultaneously listening
to it. Musicing occurs in both the expressive and the receptive relationship to music, and both
can be legitimate areas of clinical focus. Receptive sensitivities are obviously at the forefront
of music therapy approaches, such as in Guided Imagery and Music, but they can also be
central to models where the client’s active music-making is the primary focus, such as in
Nordoff-Robbins work (Ansdell, 1995; Aigen, 1998).
Regardless of whether one is talking about receptive or expressive musicality, in music-
centered approaches there is a congruence of clinical and musical processes. Because the
musical process is the clinical process—in the sense that, at times, a purely musical
description of a clinical interaction can be a self-justifying clinical event—the therapist’s
primary focus is to formulate strategies to deepen and differentiate the client’s musical
experiences. The therapy lies in the variety, complexity, depth, beauty, novelty, spontaneity,
and honesty of the musical expression. These experiences of oneself in music contribute to a
fuller sense of self and meet essential human needs (Ramsey, 2002).
THE CONVERGENCE OF PERSONAL PROCESS AND MUSICAL DEVELOPMENT

In music-centered thinking, there is no need to verbally specify clinical interventions and then
find musical translations for them. Instead, the entire clinical process can be contained within
the therapist’s musical thinking. Because clinically directed music-making can be inherently
therapeutic, there is no need to leave the realm of musical thinking to direct an ongoing
therapeutic musical experience. The way that any piece of music develops becomes the client’s
personal process so that the musical elements—for example, the changes in meter, melodic
variations, introduction of expressive elements, rhythmic groove—are simultaneously the
client’s experience.
Bruscia (1998b) considers this issue from the perspective of its impact upon the client. He
makes a distinction between “forms of music psychotherapy that aim at experiential change” or
transformative therapy, and “those that aim at verbally mediated awareness” or insight therapy
(p. 3). In music-centered psychotherapy, the “music experience is therapeutically
transformative and complete in and of itself” because “the musical process is in fact the
client’s personal process” and the “process and outcome are inseparable” (p. 4).
Experiences of merging with the music or becoming the music on the client’s part—or less
dramatically, developing strong identifications with the music—are not distractions or
byproducts of the clinical focus but represent the clinical focus. The expansion of boundaries
and consciousness that takes place opens people to new experiences that would not be
possible without the music. To the extent that the person becomes the music, all of the dynamic
processes characterizing the tonal, timbral, and rhythmic aspects of the music become
available to the client to experience: For example, physically impaired clients can experience
motion; emotionally constricted clients can experience the varieties of musical emotional
expression brought out in its harmonic element; fearful clients can experience boldness through
something like the declaration of a melody or the power of rhythm; isolated clients can
commune with others through participating in rhythmic groove; and all clients can experience
the potential for transformation that lies at the heart of musical development, whether this is
through an active improvisation or a receptive listening to a composition.
While music-centered practitioners have been criticized by authors such as Lecourt (1998)
and Streeter (1999) for considering the process of musical merging to have clinical value,
there is a clear rationale for this stance. In the Nordoff-Robbins approach, for example,
license is given to understand the music created jointly by client and therapist as a unified
entity. The therapist endeavors to maintain the client’s connection to the music, adjusting it
on a moment-to-moment basis to ensure this connection…. The nature of the therapist’s
music is a legitimate source of information of what is happening for the client because this
music takes the form that it does as a result of the client’s ability to participate in it, whether
actively or experientially. (Aigen, 2001, p. 33)
The reason why the specifics of the music are so important in music-centered work is that the
musical process is the personal process, and understanding, or at least experiencing, the music
can provide insight into the nature of the clinical experience for clients who cannot report this
themselves. As importantly, it can do so in a way that is not mediated through the client’s
particular way of describing the experience.
THE INTRINSIC REWARDS OF MUSICAL PARTICIPATION

In music-centered work, music is not used as an inducement to other behaviors nor is it used
primarily as a vehicle for insight into thoughts and feelings. Instead, the inherent rewards of
musical experience are drawn upon, and they provide the client’s motivation to musical
activity and experience. The emphasis is placed on the creative, expressive, aesthetic,
communal, and transpersonal dimensions of music. These are the areas of musical experience
that promote well-being in the nonclinical domains, that provide those who partake in them a
sense of meaning and purpose, and that are essential in creating a sense of self-identity that has
musical experiences as a central component. These experiences are approached in unique
ways through music, and for many clients music therapy is the only way to access them.
Creative Dimensions
Stimulating the client’s creative capacities is essential to music-centered approaches. Creative
processes represent an engagement with life that can counterbalance emotions such as
depression and despair that can lead a person to withdraw from this engagement. Exploring the
connections between creativity and creation can help explain why this might be so:
All creative acts have as their archetype the creation of the world and our presence in it.
Very simply, then, to embrace creation, and hence creative activity, is to embrace life.
Conversely, the symptoms of extreme emotional need—such as depression, isolation, and
suicidal inclinations—can be seen as a rejection of life. Inner health cannot be separated
from physical well-being in this perspective. Certainly we can see this in people whose
depression drives them to suicide…. For individuals struggling with such severe problems,
we can see that an interest in creative activity manifests their much submerged investment in
maintaining and developing life. Engagement in creative activity, particularly music, is
therapeutic because it provides both access to and field for the development of the
individual’s capacity for embracing creation and, hence, life itself. (Aigen, 1991b, p. 94)
Creative processes can be stimulated in many ways in music-centered approaches: through

listening to or playing music, through improvised or composed music, through song, or through
purely instrumental music. But what they have in common is a recognition that the clinical
value of the experience often turns upon the degree to which the client’s creative capacities
can be activated, engaged, and directed in intentional forms of musicing. While other music
therapy theories may understand the activation of creativity as a means for effecting change in
some other dimension, music-centered approaches recognize that this stimulation is a
legitimate clinical focus because it necessarily involves capacities that are life enhancing.
Expressive Processes
Expressive processes bring us into more intimate contact with human emotions. In music
psychotherapy approaches, the assumption is usually that music expresses feelings and
emotions that are being withheld by the client, either because of fears or because they are
unconscious. Yet, in both instances the assumption is that the primary relationship between
music and human emotions in a music therapy setting is that the music facilitates the
manifestation of feelings currently present in the client, whether they are conscious or not.
In this way, many descriptions of psychodynamic work within music therapy are congruent
with the traditional expression theory from aesthetics that discusses the relationship between
music and emotions.34 All forms of this theory consist of a variant of the idea that the function
of music is to evoke in others feelings, moods, and emotions that one has lived through. Thus,
composers and musicians find the appropriate sound forms that express emotions they have
experienced, and when listeners and musicians hear or play these sound forms they experience
the original emotion felt by the originator of the music.
The predominance of psychodynamic applications in music therapy emphasize that the
primary role of the music is to either express or symbolize individual emotion, whether
unconscious or conscious.35 Therefore, the most clinically relevant parameter of the music is
the personal emotion embodied within it. The congruence between traditional thinking in
music therapy on the music-emotion relationship and the expression theory is that both
perspectives locate the primary significance of music in a nonmusical originating emotional
experience.
A fundamental drawback of the expression theory is that the element that gives music its
value—the experience transmitted from composer to listener—is separated from the music
itself. Music becomes a mere tool or a mere means to arouse a nonmusical experience in the
listener. This implies that within the music is an experience that could be had even without
creating the music, because the composer had it before expressing it musically or it existed
unconsciously in a nonmusical form. This is problematic because it implies that people listen
to music not for the experience of actually hearing music, but for the emotional message it
contains. This does not seem to match most people’s experience of music.
From a music-centered perspective, any view that minimizes the actual experiencing of the
music is inadequate to account for the mechanisms of music therapy process. The music is
reduced to a mere means, or a message carrier, and is not engaged for its inherent properties.
Therefore, a more expansive view of the relationship between music and human emotion is
required in a music-centered perspective.
Peter Kivy (1989, 1990) writes as a music aesthetician who wants to preserve the role of
emotion in music, but in a way that does not fall prey to the inadequacies of the expression
theory. Kivy draws upon the philosophical distinction between to express and to be
expressive of. In his (1989) text Sound Sentiment, there is a portrait of a Saint Bernard dog.
Kivy observes that while his own clenched fist directly expresses his anger, the Saint
Bernard’s face is expressive of sadness. For something to express implies a consciousness that
is communicating an inner state. Something must be in the state that is expressed. For
something to be expressive of means that there is a formal relationship between a physical
characteristic of the thing and the physical characteristics people have when they express that
emotion. Thus, the drawn countenance of the Saint Bernard is expressive of sadness because it
resembles the faces of humans when we are sad. However, saying that the Saint Bernard’s face
is expressive of sadness does not imply that the dog is feeling sadness.
Kivy acknowledges that music can both express emotion and be expressive of emotion.
When music is expressive of an emotion, a characteristic such as sadness is a quality of the
music, not a power of the music to do things to the listener. In music-centered theory, it is
acknowledged that at times music expresses emotion but also that music in music therapy can
be expressive of emotion. This is certainly true of the Nordoff-Robbins approach in
understanding the therapist’s use of music, and it underlies Paul Nordoff’s observation that
“we use very little expression in music. We use expressive components in music clinically”
(Aigen, 1996, p. 11).36
Creating music expressive of various emotions and feelings is inherently therapeutic for a
variety of reasons. Primarily, it means that one can gain experiences of emotions in a more
distanced way without actually experiencing the emotion in relation to a particular internal
cause. Creating and living in music that is expressive of things such as sadness, anger, love,
and intimacy brings a richness of emotional experience for individuals for whom the actual
experience of such emotions can be problematic.
Thus, music in music therapy can be connected to human emotions without necessarily
being self-expressive of a particular feeling for a particular person at a specific time. It is the
universals of the feeling that are experienced. Bringing clients into various experiences where
the music is expressive of emotion helps them to be more fully human by giving them
experiences of human emotions on a universal level. This complements the self-expressive
aspect of music. Moreover, for people for whom the very experience of emotion is
problematic, experiencing music expressive of emotion helps acclimate them to the type of
energy involved in human emotional experience in a way that is less threatening because it is
not connected to a specific emotion with a specific cause.
Aesthetic Dimensions
Music-centered thinking recognizes that aesthetic experience is an essential psychological
human need. It is a highly motivating need in understanding much of human activity. We
resonate to beauty in our life, and the need to create and experience beauty motivates us to
activity that creates the circumstances for its emergence. Music-centered thinking recognizes
that the aesthetic quality of music in music therapy is not incidental to clinical processes but is
essential to these processes.
Aesthetic properties of music relate to qualities as varied as its subtlety, expressiveness,
conviction, simplicity, complexity, beauty, novelty, unity, rhythmic cohesion, and strength of
representation, just to name a few. Creating music with increasing degrees of these qualities
becomes a legitimate clinical goal when one recognizes that client needs can be met in this
way. For example, in a group improvisation, the ability to create music with aesthetic value is
certainly dependent upon the ability of each of the group members to listen to one another and
react in a suitable musical fashion to each other’s musical contribution. In a group of
hyperactive children, one could see the achievement of nonmusical goals in social areas of
functioning such as the ability to listen to others and moderate one’s own impulses. However,
as per the discussion above, the clinical goal is the creation of a unified group music; the
increase in impulse control is a secondary consequent of the creation of music, the primary
clinical goal. This is not just splitting hairs, because the therapist’s focus on the creation of
aesthetically pleasing music, rather than on the social control of the client’s behaviors, shifts
the entire focus of the therapeutic process away from behavioral controls that can evoke
problematic dynamics to one where client and therapist relate as coactive musicians
contributing to a common musical product.
None of this is to say is that music-centered practice focuses on creating aesthetically
pleasing music predominantly, or that it overrides any of the other dimensions of musical
experience, such as the communal or the expressive. It is just to say that the quality of the
music matters in music therapy, sometimes as a tool to better experience some other aspect of
the music, and sometimes as an end in and of itself. After all, musicians in the nonclinical
domain are motivated to create music with aesthetic value. Music-centered practice
recognizes that the same need to experience musical beauty that motivates people in the
nonclinical domain is active in people in need of music therapy services, and it performs a
similar motivational function.
Communal Dimensions
Something that the communal creation of music provides to people is a feeling of participating
in something larger than themselves. This sense of belonging is a primary human need and an
important component of a well-rounded self-identity. For most people, this need is met by
being part of a family, religion, tribe, ethnic group, or a nation. Yet, many music therapy clients
experience extreme isolation: the psychiatric patient, the autistic child, the person affected by
HIV/AIDS, the elderly person, the stroke victim, for example. Hence, their needs for
communal experience are exacerbated while their disabilities can make the achievement of
these experiences exceedingly difficult.
The communal dimension of music has two aspects: one related more to socialization that
is not music-specific and one related to a unique sense of communitas that is music-specific.
Because of the conditions that may limit them, music therapy clients often have limited
opportunities to be with other people in any constructive way. This is true of an elderly
resident of a geriatric facility, a nonverbal autistic teenager, or a schizophrenic individual who
rarely leaves his home. Creating music together provides one of the only ways—sometimes
the only way—that certain people can engage in meaningful, constructive activity with others.
For these people, group music-making can be its own justification. This is because the
demands of creating music together involve moving beyond the isolation that characterizes
many clinical conditions.
Beyond just the experience of being with other people is the experience of communitas, a
special way of experiencing social relationships. Certain types of social processes, such as
rites of passage, generate an intense form of comradeship among the participants; this is what
Victor Turner (1966) has termed communitas. Turner notes that
for individuals and groups, social life is a type of dialectical process that involves
successive experience of high and low, communitas and structure, homogeneity and
differentiation, equality and inequality…. Each individual’s life experience contains
alternating exposure to structure and communitas, and to states and transitions, (p. 97)
Turner further describes communitas in contrast to its cultural opposite, defined by an

emphasis on structure.37
Spontaneous communitas is richly charged with affects, mainly pleasurable ones. Life in
“structure” is filled with objective difficulties: decisions have to be made, inclinations
sacrificed to the wishes and needs of the group, and physical and social obstacles
overcome at some personal cost. Spontaneous communitas has something “magical” about
it. Subjectively, there is in it the feeling of endless power…. Structural action swiftly
becomes arid and mechanical if those involved in it are not periodically immersed in the
regenerative abyss of communitas. (p. 139)
Feelings of communitas are an important component of a sense of purpose in life and can be
generated through any number of human activities such as rituals, crises, athletic endeavors,
and religious practices. Yet, for a variety of reasons, some of which mirror those that restrict
them from any type of social activity, many music therapy clients have no opportunity to
experience communitas except through their music therapy sessions. It is certainly the primary
place they can experience musical communitas. And one of the reasons that this is important is
the role of music and musical experiences in creating, maintaining and enhancing one’s sense
of self, both in general and in the exacerbated states of need many music therapy clients find
themselves in.
Music-centered thinking acknowledges that playing music with other people is one of the
prime ways of creating communitas and that musical communitas has unique qualities that
benefit the people who participate in it in a variety of ways. One of the reasons why it may be
so powerful is because it operates on a number of experiential levels simultaneously: self-
sacrifice for the greater good characteristic of altruistic endeavors; transpersonal and ecstatic
experiences characteristic of spiritual and religious practices; the precise coordination of a
group of individuals through time characteristic of athletic endeavors; the group creation of an
aesthetic product characteristic of artistic endeavors; and the group experience of enjoyment
that characterizes any practice that involves the application of skill. Musical communitas may
be so powerful because it reaches human beings through many channels, most of which are
typically only activated in isolation in other forms of human activity that lead to feelings of
communitas. This can explain why people who experience musical communitas together
develop such strong bonds and why this experience can be an essential clinical tool for music
therapists who focus on developing such feelings.
Because of its importance in human development, establishing communitas can be a
legitimate clinical focus in and of itself. It can also be used as a vehicle for achieving other
clinical goals as well because it is such a powerful motivational force. In a study of the use of
popular idioms in clinical improvisation with a developmentally delayed man named Lloyd
(Aigen, 2002), I have discussed how his identification with the band formed by him and his
two music therapists played an essential clinical role in this way, both motivating him to
become more socially involved with others and simultaneously enhancing his sense of self:
And somewhat paradoxically, eventually the band defined itself as one in which
exploration, risk taking, spontaneity, and moving into unpredictable emotional realms are
all part of its identity. Thus, the very thing which gave Lloyd stability, security, and a sense
of self and continuity has within its own essence a capacity for transformation, novelty, and
unpredictability. When the band itself acquired personal meaning for Lloyd, he began to
internalize its values and its mode of being, particularly those things which challenged his
pathology and disability. Through his identification with the band we hoped to establish
within him a new sense of self which promoted health and enhanced social and
psychological functioning. His basic need for communal experience was enlisted to
overcome his fears and resistiveness. (Aigen, 2002, p. 86)
Just as music therapists create a sense of self-identity that is influenced by their clinical and
nonclinical musical experiences, music therapy clients are similarly engaged in constructing a
sense of self influenced by their musical experiences and the relationships formed by them.
Because musical communitas can be such a powerful force, it has the ability to stimulate
profound changes in self-image and in the ways that those who experience it act in the world.
Transpersonal Dimensions
While it is probably true that the four aspects of musical experience discussed previously—the
creative, expressive, aesthetic, and communal—each have transpersonal components, there are
other transpersonal dimensions of music therapy practice not subsumable into those categories
of experience. Music creates a whole host of categories of transpersonal experiences that
involve experiences beyond oneself or that incorporate significant changes in consciousness
and awareness. Just as with the area of communitas, the nature and variety of such experiences
in music in general, and in music therapy contexts specifically, is also an empirical question.
My belief is that each of these categories has music-specific manifestations that music
therapists draw upon and seek to create with other clients on a daily basis.
Although a broad discussion of these categories is beyond the scope of the present work,
there is one dimension of transpersonal experience that bears mentioning because it may be
specific to music therapy. This involves the way that the transpersonal dimensions of musical
experience may be used to establish contact with clients for whom other forms of contact are
either not possible or extremely limited.
Some music therapy clients exist in experiential worlds far from that of normal states of
consciousness—for example, autistic children, dementia sufferers, coma patients, and
individuals with more severe forms of schizophrenia. Musical interaction can create a meeting
place between the music therapist and such people, and this may be the only form of contact
that person has with any other person. Music can establish an experiential world for people to
meet within for whom it was thought that meaningful contact was not possible. Such a use of
music has in fact been present in historical studies of the early Nordoff-Robbins work in the
discussion of establishing a musical world (Aigen, 1998).
For those who maintain a belief in the idea of a human spirit, it is natural to believe that
there are transpersonal realms of meeting where human spirits can come into contact or
relation with each other. Those who choose to work within a more psychological framework
—as opposed to an overtly spiritual or mystical one—can think about dimensions of human
experience, a construct that has been invoked frequently in the present discussion. The idea is
that through music human beings can come into awareness of each other’s presence and
interact in ways that are not possible without music. Music becomes a vehicle for establishing
contact between beings because it provides an alternative experiential realm that is available
for human consciousness to exist in when other realms are not available.
The musical meeting becomes a legitimate clinical goal and does not need to be reframed
as a tool for achieving something other than the meeting, although these alternative functions
are often invoked when transpersonal meetings through music are referenced. Consider the
work of Dagmar Gustorff with a comatose patient as described by Ansdell (1995), where the
meeting of beings that took place in the music served “as a call back to life” (p. 64). The
musical meeting here had the most profound of nonmusical implications: It saved a man’s life!
Yet, there are probably many moments of such musical meetings that do not lead to such
profound outcomes. Nevertheless, because certain clients can live in such an isolative state for
any number of reasons, a music-centered framework includes the meeting of beings through the
transpersonal dimensions of musical experience as a legitimate and self-justifying clinical
goal.
* * *
A few words are in order regarding the preceding discussion on the benefits of music
therapy in the creative, expressive, aesthetic, communal, and transpersonal realms. It is
legitimate to question whether specifying benefits in these dimensions of human experience
contradicts the idea central to music-centered music therapy that it is the musical experience
and expression that is the prime clinical benefit. In other words, in specifying these seemingly
nonmusical areas of benefit am I describing an instrumental use of music as a means to a
nonmusical end, thereby contradicting the earlier assertion that in the music-centered approach
the music is used as a medium of experience rather than as a means to nonmusical end?
These are serious challenges that deserve consideration. There are a number of
observations that I would like to make that bear on this objection and that support the idea that
specifying these seemingly nonmusical areas of benefit does not contradict the basic premises
of music-centered thought.
Intrinsic Gratification
Elliot (1995) has addressed a similar challenge in presenting his philosophy of music
education. Elliot rejects the dominant notion of music education as aesthetic education because
it justifies music education as a means toward developing a generalized aesthetic sense that is
nonspecific to music. His previously discussed notion of musicing places music in the category
of flow experiences as described by Mikhail Csikszentmihalyi (1990).
Optimal or flow experiences can arise in any number of human activities that involve the
application of intention and skill, such as sports and the arts. Their common factor is that they
result in the development of the self. When we invest ourselves
in pursuits that are not based exclusively on our purposeful drives for biological and social
satisfaction, “we open up consciousness to experience new opportunities for being that lead
to emergent structures of the self (Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi, cited in Elliot).
Our motivation is not any material reward. Our motivation is the enjoyment or “flow” that
arises when we apply our conscious powers and knowings effectively in goal-directed
action. Enjoyment, then, is the affective concomitant of self-growth. (Elliot, 1995, p. 114)
Elliot discusses a distinction between pleasure and enjoyment that is essential for the
present discussion. While the satisfying of biological and social needs results in pleasure, it is
only self-growth activities that result in enjoyment. “Pleasure can occur with little or no
conscious effort; enjoyment cannot. Pleasure can be stimulated electrically and chemically in
the brain; enjoyment cannot” (p. 115). Further, activities characterized by flow and leading to
self-growth are engaged in not for “material rewards but rather for their own sake, meaning
for the sake of the self [emphasis in original]. Elliot makes the point that while flow
experiences come about from activities that are
intrinsically rewarding, we cannot mean ‘intrinsic’ in the absolute or pure sense of
something completely unrelated to all real-life concerns…. What could be more practical,
more useful, or more interesting to an individual than the self-growth and enjoyment he or
she experiences in the actions of meeting a challenge by doing something that he or she
personally knows how to do? (p. 118)
In this way, Elliot defines doing something for its own sake, for its inherent value, as doing
something for the sake of the self. Although critics may suspect an intellectual sleight-of-hand
in this type of identification, Elliot’s argument, which is far more detailed than can be
recounted here, is highly suggestive at minimum, and, to the present author, very convincing.
And it is clearly relevant to the present discussion. If some forms of musicing in music therapy
can be identified as flow experiences, and if Elliot’s argument that what we mean when we
say something is done for its own sake is that it is done for the sake of the self, then the idea of
music as a medium can be preserved as a central component of music-centered thinking. What
Elliot’s work shows is that in saying that music-centered music therapists can work toward
musical experience and expression as primary goals, we are not committed to saying that these
experiences are in any way divorced from the primary concerns of all human beings to engage
in activities that develop the self. What Elliot’s view of music does provide is a vision where
one does not have to go outside the realm of music to locate its practical value.
Categories of Experience
Elliot (1995) identifies musical experiences as being a subset of the broader class of
experiences described by Csikszentmihalyi as flow or optimal experiences. In spite of sharing
characteristics with these other types of experience that might arise in athletics and artistic
pursuits, Elliot still considers musical experiences to be unique because the specific
conditions that give rise to them, and “their cognitive and affective qualities, the way they feel
while they last… differ significantly from other forms of … artistic experience” (p. 126).
In a similar way, we can look at creative, expressive, aesthetic, communal, and
transpersonal experiences in music as subsets of these forms of experience in general. Thus

we can argue that these five areas of experience are necessary for human beings to experience
and that music therapists provide them to people who cannot create them for themselves. But
again, we are faced with the question of whether this violates the idea of music as a medium
because we are using music to create experiences contained within certain broad classes that
are not solely musical. Does this mean that we are in fact using music to a nonmusical end?
Again, following Elliot, I would argue that what the music therapist is doing is creating the
conditions where musical creativity, musical expression, musical aesthetics, musical
communitas, and musical transpersonal experiences can occur. So while musical communitas,
for example, may be a subset of the larger class of communal experiences, this does not mean
that it does not have unique features that distinguish it from other members of the large class.
And since the idea is that there is no way to provide an experience of musical communitas
other than through musicing, it is not the case that we are using music to a nonmusical end
when we focus on any of these five areas of experience. As Elliot (1995) puts it,
the nature and quality of self-growth, self-knowledge, and flow as experienced in musicing
and music-listening are unique to the practice of music overall and to the specific practices
in which different kinds of musicing, listening and musical challenges arise. Thus, music-
making, music-listening, and the involvements that result from these particular forms of
action are distinctive sources of self-growth, self-knowledge, flow, and self-esteem, (p.
128)
This is the theory. It is an empirical question as to what the nature of musical communitas
is, how it arises in music therapy, and how or if it differs in essential ways from other types of
experiences of communitas. Implicit in this way of thinking, however, is that people drawn to
music and to music therapy—whether as listeners or musicians, therapists or clients—have a
basic need for musical communitas and musical expression that cannot be substituted for by
other forms of communitas and expression. In this way, the music-centered premise is
preserved, and this is that people engage in music primarily because of what the music itself
provides, not because it provides a type of generalized experience that can be obtained
through other means. This is not to say that some people do not engage in musicing for all sorts
of nonmusical reasons; it is to say that identifying categories of experience that music gives
rise to is not to thereby demonstrate that music is being used to achieve a nonmusical
experience.
THE EXPERIENCE OF THE MUSICAL PROCESS IS THE THERAPY

While the concern with client process and experience is not unique to music-centered thinking,
there are some unique dimensions to these concerns because in some ways the process is the
therapy. In insight-oriented work, the clinical outcome is embodied in an awareness about the
thoughts and feelings that previously were unconscious; in behavioral music therapy, the
outcome is manifest in new behaviors. In contrast, in music-centered thinking client outcome is
not a state of being achieved at the end of therapy but is instead something that unfolds within
the clinical process itself. The way the person is while musicing is the clinical outcome.
Hence, the goal of therapy is not necessarily growth or change when this is understood as a
general, permanent alteration in a person’s personality or capacity to respond to the world.
Rather, it is the evocation of latent skills, capacities, functions, and experiences of self that
may only be present while musicing. This is a logical consequent of an element subsequently
discussed that musical functioning need not generalize to nonmusical areas or outside the
therapy room to be considered a valuable focus of clinical work, because the act of musicing,
receptively or actively, is considered to be a self-justifying therapeutic activity.
This emphasis on the ability to music receptively is an important one. Consider how two
music therapy models built upon music-centered foundations—Nordoff-Robbins Music
Therapy and Guided Imagery and Music—are completely opposite in that one emphasizes
active musical experiences while the other completely takes place within receptive
experiences. However, the fact that both can be practiced in a music-centered way
demonstrates that music-centered thinking is not specific to one model, to one way of using
music, or to a particular level of client functioning. And although active music-making on the
client’s part is emphasized in the Nordoff-Robbins approach, there are many times when the
client’s receptive musical capacities are focused upon, whether as a part of active music-
making or in isolation as when music is played to which it is intended that the client listen
(Aigen, 1998).
While it is noted that active capacities that emerge in music therapy can be important,
equally important is the activation of receptive capacities. When clients have internal barriers
to various types of human experiences, what the client is able to allow himself or herself to
experience during the therapy is as important as what the client is able to do. And at times,
providing the opportunity to have a gratifying human experience is the single greatest thing that
a music therapist can offer to a client.
INTERVENTIONS ARE GUIDED BY MUSICAL PROPERTIES

In music-centered work, clinical interventions take the form of specific musical choices that
are tailored to each situation and person. An individualized treatment approach is therefore
essential to create musicing. This is a consequence of the idea that there is a convergence of
musical and personal process. Because the characteristics of the music so closely define the
client’s clinical process, and in some ways are the process, it is essential for the therapist to
direct the music in a way that is dictated by the client’s needs and expression. This is the
primary reason why music-centered practitioners analyze clinical music so carefully and have
as a priority the establishment of connections between musical and clinical processes.
Even though the musical process does not require a nonmusical rationale, it is still
important to be able to use words to explain music therapy process. This is true in a variety of
domains: in communications with clients and family members; in professional communications
such as writings and presentations; and in explaining music therapy to the general public and
to administrators in the position of controlling access to music therapy services. But the fact
that we have pragmatic needs to communicate in words the nature of music therapy process
does not mean that the fundamentally musically-based nature of the process is an incorrect or
not well-founded one. It just means that it is important to be conscious of the discourse of
music therapy (Ansdell, 1999b) and to realize that our verbal descriptions of music therapy
process and goals are just that: descriptions and not the phenomenon itself. It is important to
avoid the trap of unintentionally identifying the nature of the process with the means that we
use to communicate about it.
Clinical music is drawn from a variety of inspirations, and it is used for various purposes
among music-centered clinicians: to reflect the surface or underlying affect of clients; to
manifest pervasive personality characteristics or a client’s stance toward the world; to
connect to the client’s bodily movements, breathing, and posture; to frame the client’s musical
expressions; to draw these expressions out into greater differentiation; to connect to a client in
the joint creation of music; to invite a client into participation; and to challenge a client to
overcome blocks, fears, or insecurities. Yet, it is not just therapist intent in music that makes
these things occur. Instead, successful interventions are determined by specific musical
choices. And what determines the success of an intervention or strategy is an interaction
between the objective properties38 of music and the unique qualities of the client and the
therapeutic relationship.
This belief is reflected in the Nordoff-Robbins approach, for example, by the attention paid
to the details of the clinical music improvised between therapist and client. This work is
based on the idea that different music intervals, whether they are used harmonically or
melodically, convey characteristic types of tension and release. The way that the interval is
experienced may vary among different contexts, such as when the interval is used in the
context of pentatonic, diatonic, or whole-tone music, but the influence of context does not
mean that the interval does not have its own identity, just as the fact that a word has different
meanings in different contexts does not imply that the word does not have specific, if variable,
identities.
Not all music-centered practitioners would agree on the two traditional areas of dispute
when the subject of the objective properties of music is discussed. Some may believe that
musical tension and resolution are properties of the musical elements, while others may see
them as purely psychological phenomena stimulated by music. And some may believe that
these considerations are true cross-culturally while others maintain that they are culturally
specific judgments. But the belief that the specific nature of the music matters in clinical
interventions can accommodate either point of view on these two areas of discussion.
Equally, these considerations can relate to improvised or composed music, as well as to
receptive or active music therapy approaches. In improvisational music therapy, it is clear that
there is ample room for therapist choice in terms of musical elements. In the middle ground is
the situation where therapists play compositions but make a myriad of musical choices in
terms of touch, timbre, tempo, and how to voice chords and what inversions to use. Even in
choosing recorded music, therapists are making implicit decisions in these areas, such as
when a Guided Imagery and Music practitioner chooses a specific recording or composition
with particular patterns of musical tension and release. The common ground is that in each
instance, there is a recognition that the specific nature of the music matters, in terms of both
what is played and how it is played. Music is not just a generic black box that is used in a
generalized way with clients of greatly varying needs and preferences.39 And the musical
choices made can be discussed in terms of clinical intent.
By using the terms choice and decision, I do not mean to imply that the musicing of
therapists is always (or even usually) guided by conscious, formalized intent. In
improvisational approaches, it would be impossible to think about every single tone prior to
playing it; the process just goes much too quickly. And improvisational music therapy is an art
that cannot be reduced to series of concrete and specific guidelines and rules. Often, the
factors behind the therapist’s musical interventions can be reconstructed only from postsession
analyses.
MUSIC AS AN AUTONOMOUS CLINICAL FORCE
In various applications of music therapy, regardless of whether they are music-centered, music
takes on functions that are typically assumed by the person of the therapist. This is true in
domains as different as music psychotherapy, where music can be used to reflect or nurture a
client, and music therapy in rehabilitation, where the rhythmic aspects of music can be used to
replace a therapist’s exhortations to enhance motor activity.
However, there is another way in which music takes on aspects of the therapist’s role that
is specific to music-centered work. In this manner of working, the specific inner dynamics and
processes of music are consciously used to depersonalize those aspects of the therapy process
that might otherwise be more problematic, threatening, or challenging. When the more difficult
demands of the therapy process can be taken on by the music itself, this can preserve the
relationship between therapist and client as safe haven for the client. The therapist-client
alliance can then be drawn upon by the client in meeting the challenges posed by the music,
challenges that when overcome can represent significant development on the part of the client.
Music can be used in this way whether one is working with composed music or improvised
music, with active or receptive music-making, and within a psychodynamic or a more overall
music-centered framework.
For clients who are working on a range of functional motor or cognitive skills, therapists
can choose compositions whose realization poses challenges to clients in the area of need. For
example, a hyperactive child might be asked to play a composition that requires a slow tempo,
or a youth with needs in the area of focusing or impulse control might be asked to play a piece
with musical rests in it. The idea is that playing the piece as composed demands that the client
overcome certain areas of limitation. Because the focus is on the intrinsic gratification
provided by the appropriate realization of the composition, the challenges posed to the client
are posed by the music rather than by the therapist.
It is not just specific compositions that can be used in this way; particular styles of music
carry their own inherently musical challenges as well. For example, certain popular styles of
music that require consistency of tempo to create satisfying and pleasurable experiences of
groove can be very challenging for clients with a range of motor or cognitive needs. Yet, the
inner motivation to realize the style can endow clients with the motivation to overcome areas
of disability. And it can do this without activating potentially problematic relationship
dynamics that can emerge when a client feels overly challenged or pressured by a therapist
(Aigen, 2001, 2002).
The therapist’s improvisational skills are crucial here. For example, if a therapist is
improvising with a client and arbitrarily stopping and starting the music to work on
developing impulse control, the absence of a musical basis for the stopping and starting means
that it is the therapist who is directing and controlling the music and hence the client. Such a
situation is likely to lead to a higher level of resistiveness on the part of the client. However,
when the stopping and starting has a musically interactional basis, the motor, emotional, and
attentional demands are perceived as existing within the music rather than as emanating from
the therapist. This can be done either by improvising in a stylistically appropriate way such as
occurs in rock or jazz idioms, or by creating spontaneous musical forms between therapist and
client that have musical and interpersonal integrity while simultaneously posing appropriate
challenges to the client.
Further, using the music in this way serves as a guide to therapists in improvising and
composing music in the clinical milieu. For example, for a variety of reasons a therapist might
want to help a client sustain musical participation for increasing lengths of time. One way of
doing this is to make musical choices, either compositionally or improvisationally, that do not
prematurely indicate musical endings or closure. This includes the use of chord inversions,
deceptive cadences, melodies where the last tone of the phrase is simultaneously the first tone
of the next one, and melodic themes that do not end on tonic tones. Thinking in this way allows
therapists to employ specific musical elements that directly reinforce their clinical strategies.
This way of thinking about and working with music is not limited to active music therapy
approaches. In the practice of Guided Imagery and Music, music is also used as an
autonomous entity that can assume some of the more challenging aspects of the therapeutic
relationship. Lisa Summer (1998) has discussed the phenomenon of the pure music
transference in which the music takes on potentially problematic transferential projections that
otherwise would be placed on the therapist (see chapter 6). The way in which the music is
able to assume this important function, thus preserving the therapist-client alliance, is
explained through the specific inner workings of the musical material comprising the
compositions used in Guided Imagery and Music.
MUSICAL ANALYSIS HIGHLIGHTS CLINICAL PROCESSES

Because the musical specifics of the therapist’s interventions are directly related to the
therapist’s rationale and clinical efficacy, music-centered work emphasizes the importance of
musical analyses of clinical music, both as a component of ongoing clinical work and in
retrospect through research. It is assumed that the meaning and clinical significance of the
music created and used in therapy is connected to its harmonies, its rhythms, and the scales
from which it is derived. This is true in both the client’s production of music and in the client’s
receptive experience of music.
As discussed previously, working toward increasingly richer musical experience is often
the focus of music-centered work, and the richness of the experience can be indicated by the
client’s initiation of and participation in increasingly differentiated, solidified, and expressive
music. The clinical value of a particular musical interaction or act of expression is best
revealed through detailed musical analyses that reveal subtle or dramatic changes in the
client’s musical expression or in the music the client can receptively participate in.
The need for such analysis is part of the rationale for the recording and subsequent analysis
of the music of each session in the Nordoff-Robbins approach. Any and all parameters of the
music have clinical importance. The three scales of assessment in Nordoff and Robbins (1977;
in press) are used to evaluate musical response, musical communication, and the qualities of
the client-therapist relationship in musical activity. Research is also done through transcription
and performing musical analyses on the musical transcription. This transcription is most often
done through standard notation (Lee, 1992, 2000), although Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen (1993)
demonstrated how this could be done using graphic notation originally designed for avant
garde and other nontraditional styles of music.
Moreover, newer approaches within Analytical Music Therapy also incorporate an
examination of musical parameters in assessment. Benedikte Scheiby (2002) describes the use
of rhythm, melody, harmony, tempo, phrasing, themes, dynamics, and choice of instrument,
specifically as they apply in a rehabilitation facility. And Juliane Kowski (2002) examines
how Analytical Music Therapy techniques are used to establish communication with a
nonverbal client. The musical notations of the therapist’s and client’s piano playing and
singing are used to illustrate a number of client abilities: the capacity to engage in rhythmic
call and response, the ability to stay in tempo, the intentional use of crescendo and
accelerando, and an ability to play piano tones in the context of the therapist’s harmonic
accompaniment. Within an Analytical Music Therapy framework, the musical parameters are
used to assess the client’s communication and relationship.
The two music therapy approaches that place the greatest emphasis on understanding the
specific properties of music are Guided Imagery and Music and Nordoff-Robbins Music
Therapy. In the Nordoff-Robbins approach, essential to clinical musicianship is the ability to
play music in a wide variety of styles, scales, modes, and idioms so that the specific musical
choice has a particular clinical function. Regardless of whether the choice is a result of a
consciously reached decision or a creative intuition in the moment, the underlying theory of the
work suggests how the efficacy of the choice can be related to the specific musical
characteristics of the choice. So if a Japanese pentatonic scale is used, for example, its
efficacy as an intervention will be correlated with the intervallic relationships that comprise
the scale and the characteristic harmonic relationships indigenous to the style.
Similarly, the pieces of music that define a Guided Imagery and Music practitioner’s
musical interventions are also selected with attention paid to their musical characteristics.
While the imagery evoked by pieces of music is an essential criterion in the selection of
individual pieces and the creation of theme-based program tapes, it is the musical properties
of the pieces that are directly linked to the type of imagery elicited. Helen Bonny (1978b)
suggests that it is the “musical qualities within a selection which help determine the
effectiveness of the musical stimuli” (p. 23). These are “the variables within the music which
seemed to have the strongest influences in Guided Imagery and Music” (p. 26).
Thus, as different as they are, these two music-centered models share the concern with
specific characteristics of the music comprising the basic interventions of the model. And
interestingly, in both models, practitioners are encouraged to engage in their own creative
clinical intuition in formulating their musical intervention while still maintaining an emphasis
on gaining a retrospective understanding of the clinical salience of the musical elements
chosen intuitively.
THERAPY CAN INCORPORATE A FOCUS ON PERFORMANCE AND PRODUCTS

For a number of reasons, music-centered music therapists can find themselves engaged in
activities outside the traditional frame of the psychotherapy session. Because there is a
continuity between the way music is used in therapy and outside of therapy, it is natural that
some of the venues in which music is experienced in nonclinical situations would transfer to
the clinical situation. Hence, music-centered practitioners often find it useful to incorporate a
performance aspect into their work.
Sometimes this performance is a private occurrence taking place within an institutional
setting; at other times, performance is moved into the public sphere and can occur either with
or without the therapist’s participation.40 The impulse to music in human beings can demand
public performance to reach its consummation. This is accepted as natural in nonclinical
settings.
Music-centered thinking acknowledges that it is natural that the same impulse that explains
the appeal of music and the way that it can engage and motivate people in therapy contexts
also leads to a desire for public performance. While some therapists draw the boundary of
their professional activity here, other music therapists are extending their professional role
into more public realms and creating theoretical frameworks to accommodate this expansion
of practice, many of which are illustrated in Pavlicevic and Ansdell (2004).
Moreover, recordings originating in music therapy sessions can at times be made publicly
available. Again, these may be recordings of actual therapy sessions and used as an adjunct to
a text accompanying and explaining the recording; at other times, the recording may have been
an object of creation that gave a focus to the clinical efforts within the session.
Bringing clinical and clinically inspired music into the public domain reflects the idea of
music as a medium, which is at the core of music-centered thought. When music is used
primarily as a tool to a nonmusical end, the music is only of secondary interest, if that.
However, when music is a medium, there are essential aspects of it extremely important to its
clinical significance that cannot be conveyed verbally. The experiencing of the music is
essential to a conveyance of its meaning. Much like nonclinical music, its meaning and
significance is contained within its sound, within the experiencing of it. And because the
experience contained in the music is essentially a musical experience rather than a clinical
one, the same motivations that hold when we experience nonclinical music are brought to bear
in the experience of clinical music.
VERBAL PROCESSING NEED NOT ACCOMPANY MUSICAL EXPERIENCES

Because musical experiences can be self-contained clinical events, music-centered theory
does not necessitate engaging in verbal or other cognitive processing of these experiences in
the session with clients. This extends to discussing the work in various professional forums
where music-centered practitioners may assert that translating the musical experience into
theoretical terms from other disciplines or forms of psychotherapy can distort its essential
nature. This is true regardless of the client’s capacity for verbalization. So it is not true, for
example, that the Nordoff-Robbins approach developed in a way that gaining verbal insight
was not utilized because the early clients seen in the approach were either not verbal or not
capable of benefiting from verbalized insight.
Many clients seen by music therapists are either nonverbal or have seriously impaired
verbal capacities—for example, some autistic children, individuals with elective mutism, and
aphasic stroke patients. Obviously, there is a prevalent belief among music therapists that
therapy is possible without verbalized insight or the amplification of the meaning of the
experience through verbal means, as evidenced by the large numbers of such types of clients.
The music-centered position recognizes the possibility of this type of experience for all
people, not just for those without language.
There is a wide spectrum of beliefs among practitioners in relation to the issue of the
necessity of verbalization accompanying musical experiences.41 Some believe that
verbalization is never necessary and serves either to diminish the impact of the musical
experience or is of no clinical significance; others believe that it is necessary at times and that
this should be dictated by client need; and still others believe that while verbalization can be
needed at times, there are modes of verbal clinical interaction other than the interpretation of
the musical experience. To a degree, all of these beliefs reflect a music-centered stance, with
the only position opposed to this stance one that holds that verbalized insight must be
developed for a musical experience to be of clinical benefit.
Whether or not a theorist believes that verbalization is necessary can be related to the view
of the function of music in music therapy. For example, Mary Priestley (1994) recognizes that
“as a musician, the analytical music therapist suffers from the temptation to let the music
created by the therapeutic dyad have its own hidden meaning, as Mendelssohn said, ‘too
precise for words’” (p. 135). She believes that there is a danger in adopting this practice in
that the verbal and musical parts of the session will be artificially separated and that either the
verbal part of the session will then be without the feeling content provided by the music, or the
music will be left without the deeper content that verbal exploration provides.
The meaning of the music must be put into words, according to Priestley, because the
“cathartic release of tension through the music, without knowledge of what the feelings are
about, gives temporary relief, but without understanding in words, the tension will mount
again” (p. 135).
This rationale does make sense if one believes that music in music therapy is used as a
cathartic release of tension or to express repressed or other unconscious feelings. The
argument for the necessity of verbalization is therefore tied to a particular conception of
music.42
However, this conception of music is not necessarily subscribed to by music-centered
music therapists. The music created in music therapy is usually not considered as primarily a
form of release—although release may occur within it—but is instead more typically
considered as a communal, aesthetic, and/or cultural phenomenon, the creation of which has
inherent clinical value. Thus, the reason that music-centered practitioners do not necessarily
engage in postmusic verbalization is because they believe that musical experience in music
therapy is not primarily a form of catharsis. Because the process of musicing in this
perspective is not primarily one of catharsis, emotional release, or the expression or
symbolization of repressed, unconscious emotion, verbalization is not required for the musical
experience to be a legitimately therapeutic one.
THE THERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIP IS A MUSICAL RELATIONSHIP
Music-centered theory frees clinicians to think musically as they approach their work and
encourages them to think first and foremost as musicians. It encourages the discovery of means
to enhance human lives through the intentional direction of the forces and structures of music.
The dimension of the therapist-client relationship that involves the meeting of two
musicians is stressed in this perspective. It facilitates the establishment of a unique therapeutic
relationship based on a shared love of music, and the therapeutic meeting is primarily one of
musician to musician. This can transcend barriers between therapists and clients and establish
relationships where they are not normally possible, as with an autistic child, or where there
might be great suspicion, such as with a victim of abuse or a paranoid individual. Placing an
emphasis on the fact that the therapeutic meeting is fundamentally between two musicians or
two musicers supports the establishment of mutuality and equality between therapist and
client. Both therapist and client are subject to the same forces and characteristics of music. In
this way, music-centered thinking dovetails with certain precepts of humanistic and
transpersonal approaches in psychotherapy.
In a musical relationship, the primary message from the therapist to the client is I am here
to help you make music, rather than I am here to change you, fix you, control you, or heal
you. The demands the client faces are internal demands necessitated by the desire to create
music. Put another way, they are the demands of music. This does not mean that a therapist
cannot be directive, demanding, or confrontational if need be. It does mean that the client’s
reactions to these challenges are less likely to be determined by intra-or interpersonal
dynamics. The client is then freer to meet the demands of musicing and to obtain its benefits.
MUSIC-CENTERED THINKING EMBRACES HOLISM

Reductive analysis in science attempts to understand phenomena by breaking them into parts
and studying how they function in relation to each other.43 Psychodynamic explanations and
personality models are reductive in the sense that they attempt to explain an individual’s
actions and experience based upon the interactions of personality constituents. Behavioral
explanation is built on a similar conceptual foundation in that complex behaviors are analyzed
into the simpler behaviors constituting their building blocks. The idea that a scientific
explanation for a phenomenon is achieved when its structure is articulated provides a criterion
for determining when explanation stops, although it is based upon metaphysical beliefs whose
validity cannot be proven. It therefore embodies only one possible type of theorizing.
Music-centered thinking holds that clinical music is a phenomenon arising on the level of
the whole individual and it is in relation to this level of organization that it can best be
understood. A personality theory that takes as its starting point an individual as a complete and
unitary being is seen as being more in line with understanding an aesthetic process that springs
from the need to create, a need that is a property of people rather than of an ego, an inner
child, or neurons.
It follows from this that viewing music therapy process in terms of categories of pathology
or disability does not provide a relevant dimension for analysis. In the holistic position, there
is no rationale for reducing musical expression to the interactions of personality constituents,
whether they are healthy or destructive ones. Music-centered practitioners tend not to treat
schizophrenia, autism, Alzheimer’s disease, or the inability to trust others, to name a few
examples, but instead conceptualize their work as discovering how to musically engage with
an individual with various universal, human needs. This can involve the need for meaningful
human relationships, a rewarding vocation or avocation, an existential sense of purpose in
life, and the ability to expressively relate to others in order to meet these needs. In this vein,
the research of David Ramsey (2002) revealed seven categories of “essential human
experiences” (p. 125) that characterized his music therapy work with aphasic clients:
“striving, competency, frustration, humor, camaraderie, self-assertion, and community” (p.
129).
Psychiatric, emotional, intellectual, and motoric disabilities can place obstacles in the way
of meeting these needs, just as less severe, nonpathological factors can. This idea—and, by
extension, music-centered work—is not one that is population-specific or driven by disability.
In fact, in music-centered work the nature of the music therapy process with individuals across
a wide spectrum of functioning appears to be remarkably similar. Human need appears as a
much more relevant factor in dictating the course of the work than does something like
disabling condition.
The need to experience and create music is an intrinsic human desire, not better understood
when reduced to or explained by other drives, needs, or deficiencies. It is fundamental to
human well-being because of its essential characteristics. Music therapy process, then, is not
seen as a reflection or symbol of something more basic—whether this is on the psychological,
behavioral, or neurological level—but is the actual phenomenon of interest. The therapeutic
relationship is formed musically, and inter-and intrapersonal conflicts are expressed and
resolved musically. This does not mean that the conflicts and feelings are represented
musically, something that would be more true of a dualistic or reductionistic approach.
Instead, in representing the music-centered perspective it would be more correct to say that a
process of identification takes place where the identities of client and therapist become bound
with their expression. The musical development is a personal development.
It is not only the person who is considered as a holistic entity but also the music itself that
is looked at this way. The value of music in music therapy is not seen in terms of its elements
taken in isolation, but in terms of the overall meaning and significance of the music
experience. Ansdell (1995) advocates this position in saying that “it is music as an undivided
whole which quickens—which is to say, gives life and fluency and ease back to a person….
The ‘solutions’ of rhythm, melody and phrasing are essentially byproducts of the basic fact of
simply making music together” (p. 86).
As Ansdell observes, these two positions are related, for when music is reduced to its
elements, it is only a short step to a reductionist treatment philosophy that prescribes “rhythm
for Parkinson’s disease, phrasing for asthmatics, and so on” (p. 86). There is a logical
connection between the way that the musical experience is preserved in its wholeness and the
way that person in music therapy is similarly considered. Rather than using elements of music
to treat conditions, clinical needs, or deficits, in the music-centered position music therapy is
conceived as bringing the holistic phenomenon of music to human beings for the intrinsic
rewards it possesses.
AN ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVE ON GENERALIZATION

The next aspect of music-centered thinking to be discussed may not appear to be necessarily
connected to it. After all, it might seem reasonable to assume that one could work in a music-
centered way, and yet still subscribe to traditional notions of the success or value of a
therapeutic intervention as being determined by the degree to which it generalizes outside of
the therapy session and into other areas of functioning.
To take up this question, I would first like to separate it into the two questions that are
really being asked. In most discussions of generalization, these two questions are usually not
distinguished from each other; this can lead to confusion when music therapists discuss a
client who has shown positive changes in the therapy sessions.
(1) First is the question of the extent to which changes in the therapy room are evidenced in
other areas of the client’s life. That is, are whatever changes evidenced in the sessions being
seen outside of the sessions? If one looked at musical functioning outside of the session, this
would be a legitimate area of inquiry in answering this question.
There is a second question that is also being asked that is different from the first: (2) To
what extent are the changes seen in music evidenced in other areas of functioning? In other
words, how has functioning in the motor, cognitive, emotional, physiological, neurological, or
communicative dimension improved as a result of the change in musical functioning?
Hence, there are two dimensions of generalization being asked about. In answering
question (1), it would be legitimate to discuss how the client’s musical functioning outside of
the session improved concomitantly with the musical functioning inside the session. Let’s call
this Type 1 generalization. This would be a form of generalization of functioning, because the
change in the sessions was being seen outside the sessions. In question (2), it would be
legitimate to discuss how the client’s nonmusical functioning changed both inside and outside
of the sessions. This would also be a form of generalization of functioning, because the
changes in musical functioning were being seen in other areas of functioning, regardless of the
particular milieu—inside or outside of the session—in which the assessment was made. Let’s
call this Type 2 generalization.
It is probably true that when most people ask about generalization of the development
taking place in a music therapy session, they are really asking a question that combines
questions (1) and (2). What they really want to know is how well the (musical) changes in the
therapy session are being seen in (nonmusical) areas of functioning outside the session,
something that we will call Type 3 generalization. In fact, many people may believe that Type
3 generalization is really the only legitimate one in assessing the value of music therapy and
that my discussion of Types 1 and 2 is somewhat fanciful or impractical.
Yet, if we consider something such as speech therapy or physical therapy, these other types
of generalization will not seem fanciful at all. Speech therapists and physical therapists would
certainly be interested in Type 1 generalization, wanting to know how well the improvement in
speech and motor functioning seen in the session was generalizing outside of the session.
Therapists with a holistic regard for their clients would also probably be interested in Type 2
generalizations, hoping to see how changes in speech and motor function were influencing
other areas of the client’s functioning, such as the emotional area, both inside and outside of
the sessions. So why does a question that appears perfectly legitimate for other professionals
seem like a distortion of the concept of generalization when applied to music therapy?
For the speech therapist and the physical therapist, their medium of intervention—speech
and muscular movement—is simultaneously the tool of intervention and the domain in which
change is sought. A speech therapist intervenes through speech to enhance speech functioning,
and a physical therapist intervenes through bodily manipulation and movement to enhance
motor control. Yet, the traditional notion of the music therapist is different; there is a
separation of ends from means in saying that the music therapist intervenes through music to
influence other areas of functioning.
For the music-centered practitioner, musicing is considered an essential human activity, the
participation in which brings unique and valuable rewards. Thus, both Type 1 generalizations
and Type 2 generalizations, seen as legitimate in forms of intervention where there is an
identity of means and ends such as speech therapy, are also seen as legitimate forms of
generalization in music therapy. For the music-centered practitioner, if the client’s musical
development in the sessions manifested in some musical development outside of the sessions,
this would be a legitimate clinical outcome, and an example of successful generalization,
because of the esteem in which the music-centered practitioner holds musical participation
and experience.44
A possible objection to this line of reasoning is that while clients come to speech therapy
and physical therapy to address speech or motor problems, music therapy clients do not come
to address musical problems. Thus, the fact that the medium of intervention and area of change
are identical in speech or physical therapy does not support taking a similar stance in music
therapy.
Now let us think about why music therapy clients come to music therapy. Asking why
questions is a notoriously complex philosophical issue. If we are asking, for example, why
President Kennedy was killed, there are a number of answers to the question that vary greatly
in their level of conceptualization. Just consider how many different types of answers, not just
different answers, are possible to this question: (1) a purely physical description of the
mechanics of shooting a rifle and the attendant physiological damage it can cause; (2) a
description of political forces and unrest at the time and Kennedy’s role as a symbol of a
particular viewpoint; (3) a psychological-biographical portrait of a crazed gunman; (4) a

description of the role of violence in American political history. Clearly, each of these levels
of analysis—addressing physical, social, psychological, and historical conditions—offers an
answer to the question of why.
So why do people come to music therapy? There are a similar variety of ways of offering a
legitimate answer. Of course, some people do come by their own choice to address
nonmusical issues. This would seem to be typical of people who are psychologically intact
and who want to address specific psychotherapeutically framed issues, or who want to engage
in a process of self-actualization.
However, many music therapy clients do not initiate their own participation in music
therapy in the manner and for the reasons just described. This would include all children, and
anyone of any age with developmental delays, dementia, severe psychiatric disturbances, or
medical or physical impairments that prevent communication of needs. So let us ask, “Why are
these people in music therapy?”
Here are some typical answers: Parents think that it will help a child in some way; an
administrator thinks that patients/clients under his charge could benefit from music; it is part of
a treatment plan formulated by someone other than the client, such as a treatment team or
school committee. For all of these individuals making decisions on behalf of music therapy
clients, it certainly might be that their rationale for involving the person in music therapy
involves areas of gain outside the medium of treatment.
But music-centered thinking is particularly focused upon the intrinsic rewards of music
therapy as it is experienced by clients and building explanatory models for music therapy
based on this level of description.45 Why does an otherwise fearful autistic child enter the
music therapy session willingly? Why does an otherwise withdrawn dementia sufferer
participate actively in music-making? Why does a catatonic schizophrenic woman leave her
house once a week for her music therapy session? Why does a psychiatric inpatient with
substance problems willingly attend his music therapy session while not actively engaging
with any other areas of his treatment?
My suggestion is that all of these people are coming to music therapy for the music. This is
what draws them in, this is what motivates them, and this is what explains how they can each
function in a fuller and healthier way than they do in other areas of their lives. It is the
opportunity to engage in musicing that is their reason for being in music therapy, and thus if
one can define a dearth of opportunity for music as a musical problem, they can be said to be
coming to music therapy for a musical problem, thus supporting the analogy to speech therapy
and physical therapy.
GENERALIZATION OF FUNCTIONING IS NOT A NECESSARY CRITERION FOR

EVALUATING MUSIC THERAPY
Having identified some thinking on generalization specific to music-centered understandings, I
would like to take this one step further and discuss how it can be that the music-centered
practitioner’s clinical focus can be something other than the direct generalization of musical
functioning into nonmusical areas. It is probably true, although again this is an empirical
question, that the enhancement of self resulting from musicing is often manifest in other areas.
However, in the music-centered perspective, these areas are neither the locus of intervention
nor the domains in which improvement is directly sought. In musicing, we frequently see
functioning beyond that available to clients in other areas. However, the absence of
generalization—either of Type 1, to other musical areas outside the sessions, or of Type 2, to
other, nonmusical domains—is not considered damaging in assessing the value of the therapy
interventions for two reasons:
For those who are interested only in Type 3 generalization—that is, the generalization of
musical development to nonmusical areas outside of the session—the question of
generalization is turned around. The meaningful question is not, Why don’t these gains
generalize? Instead, the question is, Can others relate to the client and structure nonmusical
environments in a way to evoke the same potentials? In other words, the lack of
generalization is not seen as a deficiency of the treatment but as an inability of other milieus
and individuals to evoke the skills and sensitivities that the music therapist sees.
Because musicing is considered to be such an essential human activity, music-centered
practitioners can accept that at times the client’s activity and experience of music and self and
others in the music therapy session can be a self-justifying one. No changes in functioning are
directly sought in these instances, whether in musical or other areas of functioning, whether
inside or outside the sessions. The client’s experience of himself in music can be so important
on a basic human level that it need not be justified based on anything outside of itself.
This idea is not so radical when one considers that the arts are present in society not
because of the extrinsic gratifications that they bring but because participation in them is self-
justifying. No one questions the value of an art museum or of civic support of a symphony
orchestra because there is no proof detailing how involvement with these art forms enhances
nonartistic areas of human functioning, although many other arguments are put forward that
challenge public support of the arts. In the music-centered position, the role of the art of music
for the disabled person is not seen as fundamentally different from its role for the nondisabled
person, and for this reason if engagement with music requires no nonmusical rationale outside
of the clinical milieu, then it should require no such rationale within the clinical milieu.
None of this is to say that changes in nonmusical milieus or areas of functioning are not
welcomed and even sought after by music-centered practitioners. In fact, in the following
chapter I discuss how one important aspect of the music-centeredness of the Nordoff-Robbins
approach is that musical development is self-development, and that alterations in a person’s
musical being can serve as the template for the development of a healthier self. It is to say that
such change is not privileged as the single most important criterion for evaluating the success
of music therapy as a clinical treatment form. To extend the example described above, no one
questions the fact that a person goes to a speech therapist or physical therapist because of a
deficit in the communication and physical functioning. In a sense that is more than fanciful,
music-centered thinking can support the notion that a legitimate reason to come to music
therapy is because of a deficit of music in one’s life.
33I would
like to use the term participate to encompass listening to, playing, and
composing music.
34Thisgeneral topic and the applications of Peter Kivy’s theory (introduced below) are
elaborated in chapter 12.
35I shouldemphasize that this is a personal impression of the literature and is not
something that has been substantiated by a comprehensive empirical investigation. While some
readers may agree with this impression, others may consider it to be an inaccurate portrayal.
There may be more contemporary formulations in which this is not true, but I do stand by the
comment as generally, if not universally, accurate.
36Nordoff was referring to the necessity for the therapist to avoid habitual expressiveness
in musical expression in order to direct it clinically when needed. For a discussion of the role
of personal expression in music in the early Nordoff-Robbins work, see Aigen (1998).
37Carolyn Kenny (2002) discusses the area of ritual criticism stimulated by the work of
Richard Grimes, and she identifies Catherine Bell, who “insists that ritual form is not merely a
vehicle for the mediation of conflict between structure and anti-structure” (p. 166). She goes
on to assert the importance of being aware of critiques of concepts, such as communitas, that
are imported from other disciplines. Although I find Turner’s construct to be useful in
understanding the mediation of structure, freedom, and transition in music therapy, I do not
mean to imply that achieving communitas is the only function of ritual or even its most
important one.
38SeeAigen (1998) for a discussion of the concept of objective musical properties in
connection to the Nordoff-Robbins approach.
39Theterm black box means an amorphous input-output device whose specific
characteristics are unimportant, not relevant, or unable to be determined.
40See Aigen (2004) for three examples of performance as music therapy that occupy
different gradations, from the institutional to the public sphere.
41Seeespecially Streeter (1999) for a perspective that is in opposition to the music-
centered one, and four responses to her article in the subsequent issue of British Journal of
Music Therapy, 13(2), by Aigen (1999), Ansdell (1999a), Brown (1999), and Pavlicevic
(1999). Also interesting is Kowski (2002), who discusses how to use Analytical Music
Therapy with a nonverbal client, thus supporting the idea that music-centered practices
characterize a range of music therapy models.
42Making judgments about an entire approach based on one source can be problematic. .
Although Mary Priestley is the founder of Analytical Music Therapy, many contemporary
practitioners of the approach have developed it in novel directions that have expanded beyond
Priestley’s initial formulations. Thus, this foregoing material should be understood as an
illustration of how one’s view on the necessity of verbalization is necessarily tied to one’s
view of the nature of music in music therapy rather than as a description of all Analytical
Music Therapy practice.
43This discussion is taken primarily from Aigen (1991a).
44For
further discussion on the issue of means and ends, and their relation to the issue of
defining music therapy practice, see Stige (2002, pp. 190-191) and Garred (2001, 2004).
45The idea of a client coming to music therapy to work on musical goals is not just a
whimsy of the present author, although there is a paucity of published examples of such
thinking. Nevertheless, the situation is rapidly changing. As an example, consider Procter
(2004), who describes the music therapy process of a client as “discovering a new, more
healthy relationship with music” (p. 224).
CHAPTER 6
Music-Centered Thinking in Music Therapy Models
The material in the present chapter serves two purposes: First, I would like to discuss some
specific music-centered concepts and theories, with an emphasis on highlighting those aspects
that define their music-centeredness. Second, I would like to support the general thesis that
music-centered thinking is not the exclusive possession of any particular model by showing
that music-centered constructs are found in a variety of music therapy approaches.46 Thus, I
have organized the presentation of concepts and theories according to the model of music
therapy in which they originate.
The point was made earlier that each of the original models of music therapy is becoming
so diverse and differentiated that the differences within the models are becoming greater than
the differences between them. In fact, the models are differentiating in similar ways so that, for
example, one can find music-centered practitioners in the Guided Imagery and Music,
Analytical Music Therapy, and Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy approaches that have more in
common with each other than with some other practitioners within their own model. The
profession of music therapy is going through a reconceptualization where the old labels still
carry meaning but do not tell the whole story in understanding a given clinician’s treatment
framework. Therefore, it can be useful to discuss how music-centered concepts relate to some
of the models of music therapy practice in their original formulation and in terms of some
contemporary applications.
The accounts and analysis of each approach are suggestive rather than comprehensive.
Some central ideas and practices are discussed with an eye toward the elements that make
them music-centered. But no effort is made to provide either a complete overview of the
approaches or a summary of their central characteristics.
ANALYTICAL MUSIC THERAPY

Although the name of the model that she created may indicate otherwise, Mary Priestley’s
Analytical Music Therapy (AMT) is based upon some conceptual foundations that are very
much congruent with music-centered principles. These principles will be discussed in three
areas of music therapy process: (1) the musical nature of human affect and its connection to the
function of the therapist; (2) the clinical role of the elements of music; and (3) music as a
vehicle for transcendent experience.
Although AMT is clearly not a music-centered approach in its totality, it is evident that
Priestley has a sense of music that is broader than the classical psychoanalytic perspective that
often explains the appeal and clinical functions of music through the processes of regression
and sublimation. Instead, she has a broad-based view of music and its significance for human
beings; her concept of “inner music” considers music to be as essential to human life “as is
digestion or breathing or sleeping” (Priestley, 1975, p. 199). In fact, some readers might be
surprised to see her quote Rudolf Steiner—someone much more closely associated with the
Nordoff-Robbins approach—in conveying the degree to which she believes music is at the
center of our existence as humans: “Melody exists in the soul of man. The soul is indeed the
harp upon which the musician plays” (Steiner, cited in Priestley, 1975, p. 199).
The music and the therapeutic relationship each have an essential role to play in the therapy
process. In AMT, “the relationship between the client and therapist becomes an effective
means of therapeutic change through the music; the music becomes an effective change agent
through the relationship” (Bruscia, 1987, p. 157). In recognizing the music itself as an agent of
change, Priestley clearly embraces one important aspect of music-centered thinking.
In the way that she acknowledges transpersonal and music-centered ideas, while keeping
them apart from her more conventional ideas about music therapy, Priestley exhibits a similar
tendency to that exhibited by American music therapy pioneer E. Thayer Gaston, who
acknowledged the central role of aesthetic experience in music therapy, and yet believed that
this was outside of the scope of systematic professional practice (Aigen, 1991a). Perhaps, in
developing music-centered ideas, we are primarily engaged in carving out a role in the
professional discourse for experiences and ideas that have been part of music therapy since its
inception, but that have been pushed aside because of the way in which they challenge
conventional thinking. Certainly Priestley embraces this notion in describing her work as
plowing “a sturdy furrow somewhere between the starched white coat of the highly trained
medical man of today and the ragged fur wrappings of the shamans and drumming healers of
other times. We owe a great deal to both” (1975, p. 264).
The Musical Nature of Human Affect and the Role of the Therapist
In Priestley’s (1975) construct, “inner music is the prevailing emotional climate behind the
structure of someone’s thoughts” (p. 199), and it is manifest in all of a person’s actions. The
nature of each individual’s inner music is determined by “unexpressed emotion coming from
habitual attitudes, emotional reactions to past events, and expectations about the future” (p.
200). People’s inner music determines their effect upon others, significantly influencing all of
their social relationships. In this view, our innermost beings are musically expressed through
all of our interactions in the world.
Because we are so essentially musical beings, the first two functions of the music therapist
elucidated by Priestley (1975) are essentially musical ones. These are to be a “nodal point”
(p. 195) and a “sympathetic string” (p. 196). Just as a nodal point of a musical instrument is
the point that does not vibrate so that the rest of the object can vibrate and produce a pleasing
tone—such as the nut and bridge of a guitar—the therapist’s stillness allows the client to let go
and fully vibrate to his/her own feelings. It is the stillness and beingness of the therapist as a
fixed nodal point that allows the client to give expression to his own inner, emotional reality.
In contrast to the concept of nodal point is the concept of the therapist as a sympathetic
string that “is not directly bowed or plucked … but [whose] vibration enriches the tone” (p.
196). The therapist can vibrate to an unexpressed feeling within the client, something that can
serve to raise it to the client’s awareness through the therapist’s music and words. This ability
to vibrate to an aspect of the client’s being that is as yet unexpressed is experienced by the
client as the “vital Permission-To-Be” (p. 196) that may have been denied by others early in
life.
In Priestley’s presentation of these concepts, it is clear that she means them in more than
just a metaphorical sense. She does not say that the therapist’s function is like that of a
sympathetic string or that our emotional lives are like music. It is clear that one of the
fundamental rationales for music therapy in her approach is that we are fundamentally musical
beings, our emotional lives have an essentially musical character, and therefore music is an
eminently suitable vehicle for addressing inner obstacles to obtaining greater satisfaction in
our lives. While many of her specific techniques can be seen as derived from psychoanalytic
thinking, Priestley’s basic views about music and human nature allow for certain lines of
development proceeding from her initial conceptualization that are completely congruent with
some facets of music-centered theory.
The Elements of Music

Mary Priestley did not write extensively about musical materials and their clinical functions.
However, there are statements in her writings that indicate that some of her beliefs about music
are in agreement with some of the premises of music-centered thinking, although there are
contradictory thoughts expressed in her writing on this subject. For example, she observes that
“the pattern of melodies have been born out of the life experiences of their composers. They
have deep inner meaning” (Priestley, 1975, p. 214). She goes on to recount an anecdote about
how she played a “jolly little tune in the major” key for a hydrocephalic 3-year-old to no
apparent effect. But when she played in a minor key, she recounts how “his eyes sought mine
and his whole tiny body expressed keen attention…. We shared the experience of suffering
expressed in the music” (p. 214).
Interestingly, Paul Nordoff reported a remarkably similar experience with the very first boy
with whom he ever worked in a music therapy context. He observed that while the boy seemed
content and serene while a Chinese pentatonic scale was played (built on the root, second,
fourth, fifth, and sixth tones of the scale), when Nordoff altered the tones to a Japanese
pentatonic (root, minor second, perfect fourth, fifth, minor sixth), the boy responded with
crying. Nordoff changed back and forth a number of times between the two scales, and each
time he observed the same reaction.
This seminal experience was instrumental in creating the foundation for the Nordoff-
Robbins approach in terms of recognizing that different scales, styles, and idioms have
essential natures; that these characteristics reflect the world view of the cultures in which the
music originated; and that part of the process of music therapy involves the therapist
discovering the music that will be most effective with particular clients, based upon the needs
and character of the client and how these interact with elements of different musical styles.
That Priestley believes that it is relevant to describe the tonality of the playing indicates
that the nature of the music is relevant on some dimension in understanding her clinical
intervention. In other words, she partially acknowledges that the music itself is part of the
clinical intervention; it is not the case that the therapist acts only through the music but
sometimes the music itself is the intervention. This music-centered concept is further
elaborated by her:
There are four modes which I find especially useful for improvisation: the Dorian … the
Aeolian … the pentatonic scale on the piano black notes, and an Eastern scale going A, B,
C, D sharp, E, F G sharp, A. The first two have, for me, qualities of peace, acceptance, and
continuity. The pentatonic scale is cheerful and resigned and, as there are no semitones …
players can improvise in it together without producing dissonances…. The Eastern scale
gives a piquant flavour of controlled frenzy and can be used with a tonic and dominant
drone in the bass. (p. 214)
Priestley does not put forth these ideas as if she is offering the equivalent of musical
prescriptions. Instead, she is highlighting the idea that the musical materials employed by the
therapist have inherent qualities that should be considered when they are used clinically.
In contrast, in discussing structure in improvisation, Priestley says that she normally would
not introduce nonclinical musical forms in a therapy improvisation, whether this was a 12-bar
blues, a binary, a ternary, or a rondo form, because such forms lead clients away from the
contents of the unconscious that constitute the material she works with in therapy. Exceptions
occur for clients whose repressive superego prevents the unstructured expression of emotion.
For such clients, setting a task “such as playing in a certain scale or mode” can alleviate the
repression and allow the “expression of a formerly intolerable emotion” (p. 131). In sum,
while Priestley does pay some attention to the formal contents of her musical improvisations,
at times this is because of the inherent qualities of the ones used and at other times this is due
more to the fact that they provide a structure that deflects a client’s defense mechanisms. While
the former use appears congruent with music-centered thinking, the latter use does not.
The Receptive Creative Experience

Mary Priestley (1994) concluded her most recent major publication with an essay entitled
“The Ineffable,” in which she attempts to provide words for musical experiences of
transcendent beauty.47 One could interpret the placement of this essay at the end of the book as
a reflection of her deep ambivalence: On one hand, it has a place of honor at the book’s
culmination; on the other hand, it may seem as if Priestley is burying such thoughts at the back
of the book. And in fact she expresses her ambivalence, saying that she was “quite frightened
of writing this postlude” because of a feeling that to do so runs the risk of destroying the
possibility of that type of music emerging again and that it might “destroy something vital in the
performer” as well (p. 319).

Here is how this music is described:
Sometimes, when the therapist and patient are improvising there comes a moment when the
music starts to change its quality so that it begins to hold the therapeutic couple. The
therapist may feel that the music has become greater than the two of them and then he feels
that it is playing him. In fact, instead of being the player he feels that he has become the
instrument…. The two players are strangely united in, but overshadowed by, the music. One
comes out of such an experience altered, one has lost some of one’s constricting
individuality and gained a feeling of a greater breadth of being…. This “receptive creative
experience” (RCE) takes place in the Eternal Now. (pp. 320-321)
Although it appears to play no role in her theory, it is apparent that the RCE has captured
Priestley’s imagination as her ruminations on it are quite profound and nuanced. She discusses
how this experience may arise in individual or group settings, and that there are different types
of RCEs. Some are more intense and quiet, while others are characterized by a “rapturous
feeling” with a “tremendous surge of rising joy” (p. 323).
In light of these descriptions, it is curious that Priestley says that she never talks about these
experiences with clients, instead asserting that “the music had said it. What more did we
need?” She goes on to observe that “when you touch the magic you respect its priceless
fragility. But the silence was rich” (p. 323). She considers the RCE to be a “by-product of the
improvisation, in no way essential for good therapy to take place” (p. 324). Finally, Priestley
observes that while it is possible to consider the RCE in Jungian terms, and that it has similar
feelings to how Jung describes the joining of animus and anima, it is clear that this is not quite
sufficient for her as she prefers to consider that the RCE has a quality of enchantment that is
not captured completely within the Jungian framework.
The way that Priestley had musical experiences that did not fit into her overall framework
and the way these experiences were managed and described by her is certainly of historical
interest to music therapists. For the present work, the more salient observation is her
recognition that there are transcendent musical experiences in music therapy that do not
require verbal processing or interpretation to be of clinical value. Their value is in the way
that they provide needed experiences of intimacy and joy, while also being part of the “normal
tuning process” that functions both intrapersonally and between therapist and client, “so that
emotions may be responded to and resonated” (p. 324). In its transcendent nature, in its
ineffability, and in its specifically musical character, the RCE is clearly a music-centered
concept that stretches previous conceptions of AMT while providing an important explanatory
tool for therapists working in other treatment frameworks.
The important difference for music-centered practitioners is that rather than being a by-
product of a more primary clinical focus, creating an RCE (as Priestley terms it) can be an
important clinical focus. Moreover, for therapists who actively seek to create such
experiences, and for whom such experiences are not so alien to their overall clinical
framework, there can be less fear that discussing such an experience with clients can be a
destructive intervention. In fact, when therapists have had such powerful experiences in either
clinical or nonclinical settings, they are better able to use discussion to help clients integrate
such experiences into their lives and overall sense of self.
GUIDED IMAGERY AND MUSIC

One of Helen Bonny’s prime motivations in developing Guided Imagery and Music (GIM) was
an epiphanous experience she had while playing the violin. As an outgrowth of that experience,
her professional inspiration in music therapy was to “find ways in which music could be
infused into the life of persons to create the changes which I felt had happened to me” (2002a,
p. 7). This type of musical peak experience, which is obviously not limited to the therapeutic
setting, is clearly at the center of GIM practice. In employing a musical process that
characterizes nonclinical musical experiences, and through the use of nonclinical music as its
working tool and agent of transformation, GIM clearly illustrates some of the basic tenets of
music-centered thinking.
Music as Therapy
To the extent that the GIM approach has strong roots in the idea of music as therapy, it is
congruent with certain aspects of music-centeredness described in chapter 3. In a publication
that represented the first full presentation of GIM, Helen Bonny (1978a) urged music therapists
to consider the exploration of this approach because it “is closer to the music-as-therapy
model than other extant techniques” (p. 2). She laments the fact that “the powerful evocative
effects of music have, for the most part, been reduced to fit into a package prescribed by
verbal therapeutic practice” and encourages the use of GIM because, through it, music can be
employed “as a primary form of therapy” (p. 3).
Bonny (1978a) frequently makes reference to the clinical efficacy of the music in this
seminal work. She observes that the
the processes implicit in GIM, which tend to produce a unification of being and a holistic
sense of self, are moved toward their goals by the music itself…. The creativity implicit in
the music itself seems to communicate a creative impulse in the guided listener, (pp. 46-47)
This is not to say that Bonny would agree with all of the central aspects of music-centered
thinking in the present work. The way that the benefits of GIM are discussed suggest that she
recognizes that music can be used as a means toward nonmusical ends, such as the stimulation
of imagery or the solving of personal problems. The point is that there are certain ideas central
to the conceptual framework of GIM practice that are congruent with music-centered ideas. My
own guess is that, although she does not state it directly, Bonny would agree that sometimes in
GIM the music is used as a means toward a nonmusical end (such as the stimulation of imagery
or the resolution of personal conflicts) and other times the music is used as a medium of
experience with no goal other than to become more fully human. The fact that music can
function at times as a medium in this way suggests that GIM can be practiced completely
within a music-centered framework if one chooses to do so.
The Use of Nonclinical Music in GIM Recordings

Whereas music therapy models such as Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy and Analytical Music
Therapy use music that is created in or for therapy almost exclusively, GIM uses music that
was exclusively created for nonclinical purposes.48 This is a significant consideration in the
present discussion because it means that music created for purely musical reasons contains
phenomena and forces of the most powerful and profound use in therapy. It suggests that the
clinical musical experiences characteristic of GIM have stronger parallels with nonclinical
music-listening experiences than have been written about previously.
The question of whether and in what ways clinical and nonclinical music differ has been
explored in the context of Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy by Brown and Pavlicevic (1996),
who conclude that a blind panel can discern clinical from nonclinical improvisations
according to certain patterns of musical interaction. To highlight the difference within this
model of practice, another Nordoff-Robbins practitioner, Colin Lee (1996), included a
compact disk with a book so that the music could be heard both “as an expression of a
therapeutic relationship but also as music in its own right” (p. 10). Within the Nordoff-
Robbins community, the debate is framed in such a way that those practitioners who argue for
the similarities between clinical and nonclinical music and musical experiences fall more
within the music-centered approach, while those who argue for essential differences between
the two—whether considered as structural elements of the music, patterns of musical
interaction, or inherent differences within the musical experience—are considered to be less
music-centered.
While I am not aware of publications addressing this issue within the GIM community, it
does seem that there are important conceptual explorations to be done on how it is that an
essentially nonclinical tool can have such strong clinical uses. While I do not have the GIM
credentials to undertake such an analysis myself, I would observe that adoption of some
aspects of music-centered thinking would go a long way in explaining this state of affairs.
If it is true that it is the supportive context rather than the actual musical experience that
differentiates clinical and nonclinical musical experiences, then this would be one factor in
explaining why nonclinical music can have such clinical value. In this view, the therapist’s art
lies in creating the conditions where a particular musical experience can occur, not in using
the music in a way fundamentally different from how it is used in nonclinical situations. This
is reinforced by the rationale for the concept of musicing, that music for its own sake is music
for the sake of the self. Thus, in GIM practice, one of the essential functions of nonclinical
musicing is being highlighted in an intentional way. Moreover, the way in which the music
itself suggests resolutions to personal conflicts by the tonal resolution of musical conflicts is a
prime example of the congruence between musical and personal process.
Music as Movement
In establishing a foundation for GIM practice, Bonny (1978b) cites the work of Susanne Langer
(1942) and Leonard Meyer (1956), but reserves her highest praise for Victor Zuckerkandl,
whom she considers to be “perhaps the most profound philosophical thinker on music of our
time” (p. 22). The idea of music as motion is presented as an essential foundation of early GIM
practice and is itself drawn from Victor Zuckerkandl, who is quoted directly: “Musical tones
are conveyors of forces…. Hearing the music means hearing an action of forces” (Zuckerkandl,
cited in Bonny, 1978b, p. 14).
Bonny observes that “there is nothing kinetic about a single note or series of notes written
upon the page” (1978b, p. 14) and then adopts Zuckerkandl’s ideas about the dynamic qualities
of tone to explain how motion exists in music and how meaning is derived from this sense of
motion. In Zuckerkandl’s view, because of their varying relations to the tonal root, different
scale steps have different dynamic qualities; they point in different directions, with a different
degree of force.
Bonny establishes a connection between these phenomena and GIM work in observing how
“the desire for completion inherent in tones parallels a human’s striving for wholeness”
(1978b, p. 16). This is a clear manifestation of the idea, central to music-centered thinking,
that there is a convergence of musical and personal development. And although Bonny does
not go into further detail on this point, she does present this idea to partly explain the great
attraction music has for human beings. She is not interested just in helping us to develop a
greater understanding of music. Thus, her thinking goes beyond that of Zuckerkandl and lays a
foundation for a variety of different music-centered practices.
The Role of the Elements of Music in GIM Programs

In GIM, there are clear connections between the way that music is structured and arranged and
its clinical use. These relate primarily to the way that affective elements are presented and then
transformed musically. Classical music is used because of the way that it
presents a mood or feeling, then significantly alters it through the use of complex
development sections before the music finally comes to a resolution. This kind of harmonic
and melodic complexity (or tension) is helpful for a person who opens themselves to the
deeper contents of their internal world. (Bonny, 2002b, p. 181)
Thus, the contours of the development of the music are intimately connected to the contours of
the client’s inner experience.
The study of the way in which the arrangement of musical qualities within a composition
influences the listener’s affective response is called “inner morphology” (1978b, p. 24).
Bonny wants to go beyond the psychodynamic view of music in understanding its clinical
effectiveness and lists, in order of importance, “pitch, rhythm and tempo, vocal and/or
instrumental mode, melody (linear line) and harmony, and timbre (color)” (p. 26) as being the
most salient variables in influencing the listener’s process in GIM.
This focus on the elements of music is congruent with the interest in Zuckerkandl and with
the general idea in music-centered thinking that musical analysis provides insight into clinical
processes. However, in the relatively brief monographs that constitute the primary source for
information in the present section, Bonny did not go into great detail in this area nor did she
link her thinking about GIM processes to Zuckerkandl’s ideas. Instead, she focused on more
conventional referential meanings in the music implied by the manipulation of musical

elements.
For example, one of the important dimensions she used in analyzing pieces of music was
the predominant tonal range or direction in a given piece. Her findings in this area were linked
to GIM processes in the following way:
The meaning of high and low is intricately associated with Western culture’s value systems.
High means to “go up” or to “be up”; up in the social system, to be “on the top of things,” to
feel good, to “to be high and lifted up.” … The use of women’s voices singing high pitches
in religious liturgical music will most generally signify the “high” religious state, which for
Westerners may mean a transcendent experience. (1978b, p. 27)
The significance of the musical elements is partly determined by the referential meanings
brought to the music by the listener. In her references to Zuckerkandl, Bonny has identified the
dynamic forces of tone as important phenomena in understanding GIM processes. Her initial
ideas were built on the specifics of music, but then went in a different, perhaps more
conventional, direction. But the foundation has been laid within her early thought for GIM
theory that is more fully music-centered in considering the musical mechanisms underlying the
experiences of listeners in-GIM.
Choosing Performances: The Aesthetic Dimension

GIM programs are constructed from the greatest music from all of the various periods in the
Western classical tradition. Although there is no discussion of the aesthetic value of the music
in these early monographs, there is an implicit emphasis on aesthetic experience by the choice
of such music. It is more than a little curious that experiences of beauty that lie at the heart of
all the compositions used are not discussed at all, although the reasons for this may well be
accidental, or historical, rather than conceptual. Nevertheless, it is clear that through the
choice of music constituting the GIM programs there is an implicit emphasis on providing
clients with aesthetic experiences as part of the GIM process.
Bonny does provide some insight, however, into how particular performances of
compositions were chosen. Her single most important criterion is that a given performance
“most closely ‘lives out’ the composer’s feelings” (1978b, p. 58). She says that there is a
consensus among listeners regarding which performances “activate a deep feeling response”
and that they are characterized by the ability of performers to “get inside the music and to flow
with it wherever it will go” (p. 58). Perhaps these performances are most effective in GIM
because they parallel the guide’s instruction to the GIM listener, which is to “get inside the
music and let it take you wherever you need to go” (p. 58). This complete absorption in the
musical experience is an important part of music-centered thinking, and it speaks to the central
role of the music in GIM processes.
Music as the Central Force in GIM

Helen Bonny (2002c) has written that “Guided Imagery and Music is a means by which the
intrinsic values and qualities of music are allowed to permeate the individual self for the
purpose of affecting equilibrium and change” (p. 187). In discussing the clinical value of music
in terms of its intrinsic qualities, Bonny establishes a connection with the music-centered
program of searching for the mechanisms of music therapy within the mechanisms of music,
and she also is attesting to the central role of music in this work.
Lisa Summer (1998) agrees that in GIM “the music—not the human guide—is the primary
instrument of transformation…. It is the music, not the therapist, that is the primary therapeutic
agent” (pp. 431-432). The client in GIM who enters an altered state of consciousness
experiences “a loosening [of] the boundaries of the personal identity” and can “become ‘one’
with the music” (Summer, 1992, p. 50). The receptivity facilitated by the loosening of
boundaries allows the listener to be “in tune with the healthful processes of self-actualization
paralleled in the structure of the music” (Summer, 1992, p. 50). Thus, it is not just that the
music is a catalyst for the client’s development. Rather, the specific contours of the ongoing
musical development are directly related to the nature of the client’s personal development.49
Not only is music the primary change agent, but the client’s primary relationship is to the
music as well. The primacy of the client-music relationship is not incidental to the approach
but is something that influences the way that the GIM session is structured and guided.
One consequence of positioning music in the role of primary therapist is that “the music can
nurture the client and thereby serves as the object for his transference” (p. 434). Summer
defines this as the “pure music transference,” which consists of a “therapeutic relationship in
which the music serves the essential therapeutic functions in the therapeutic process” (p. 434).
There are a number of advantages in employing a pure music transference: The client is
given greater autonomy from the outset of the therapeutic process, which makes separation
easier and allows the client to experience clinical gains as originating within himself rather
than being dependent on the relationship with the therapist; the ambiguity of representation in
music means that it can be more neutral than the most neutral therapist and therefore can evoke
a depersonalized transference reaction; because the music is there to take on the client’s
transference, there is less transference placed on the therapist, and this can minimize
countertransference reactions on the part of the therapist; the “complex, multilevel nature” of
music means that the client “can simultaneously experience several disparate feelings about a
situation or several fragments of the past in relation to each other” (p. 440); and last, when
musical themes take on transferential projections, the manner in which they are modified and
otherwise transformed “serves as a model for the client to integrate fragments of internal
experience that had been separate” (p. 440).
A number of music-centered principles central to GIM practice are illustrated in Summer’s
work. Music is the primary change agent. Music is used as an autonomous entity to
depersonalize potentially problematic dynamics and thus facilitate the client’s development.
There is also a clear congruence of personal and musical development as the integration of
musical themes facilitates the integration of disparate aspects of the psyche. In sum, even
though Summer identifies GIM as taking “place within a psychodynamic-transpersonal
theoretical framework” (p. 432), there is nothing in that commitment that necessarily conflicts
with important aspects of music-centered music therapy.
NORDOFF-ROBBINS MUSIC THERAPY

Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy is the original music-centered therapy. All of the
characteristics of music-centered work and theory discussed thus far could be applied in
varying degrees to the work of its originators, Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins. Moreover, it
has been my experience as a researcher and clinician working within this model that has been
a prime impetus behind my interest in developing music-centered thinking as a coherent body
of theory.
While it might be the case that music-centered thinking first became manifest in the work of
Nordoff and Robbins, it has clearly gone beyond this to influence other models and
practitioners in music therapy. Music-centered thinking is therefore broad enough to influence
different types of music therapy models and practices. Also, there is a wide spectrum of
practice under the Nordoff-Robbins umbrella. While the model as a whole is a music-centered
one, various practitioners within it vary according to the extent and the ways in which related
medical and psychotherapeutic theories are integrated within their practice. Just as music-
centered thinking is not restricted to Nordoff-Robbins practitioners, Nordoff-Robbins
practitioners are not restricted to thinking only in music-centered ways.
The present section is not a comprehensive view of the music-centeredness of the Nordoff-
Robbins approach. Instead, three types of constructs in the work of Nordoff and Robbins are
explored to provide an overview: an original construct presented by Nordoff and Robbins is
examined; then, some music-centered concepts that have emerged from archival study of their
work are described; and, last, some contemporary concepts put forth by other theorists
working in the Nordoff-Robbins tradition are examined. For more comprehensive discussions
of some of the music-centered theory underlying the work of Nordoff and Robbins, the reader
is directed to publications such as Ansdell (1995), Aigen (1998), and Turry (2001).
The Music Child

The original music-centered concept in music therapy is that of the music child, first proposed
by Nordoff and Robbins (1977). As with any resilient concept that becomes familiar with
much use, it can be beneficial to revisit it with fresh eyes to see how it relates to contemporary
concerns and questions.
It is the central idea in the work of Nordoff and Robbins, and much of the text Creative
Music Therapy is devoted to portraying its living manifestation. The music child is explained
as
that entity in every child which responds to musical experience, finds it meaningful and
engaging, remembers music, and enjoys some form of musical expression. The Music Child
is therefore the individualized musicality inborn in each child: the term has reference to the
universality of musical sensitivity—the heritage of complex sensitivity to the ordering and
relationship of tonal and rhythmic movement; it also points to the distinctly personal
significance of each child’s musical responsiveness…. The term Music Child denotes an
organization of receptive, cognitive, and expressive capabilities that can become central to
the organization of the personality insofar as a child can be stimulated to use these
capabilities with a significant extent of self-involvement. (Nordoff & Robbins, 1977, pp. 1-
2)
There are three important aspects of the music child that relate to concerns central to this
book: its inborn nature, its universality, and its role as a central point around which
personality development can be constellated.
Why should human beings be born with a propensity to music with others unless music
were essential to fulfilling our human nature? We have other innate psychological
constellations, such as a template to learn verbal language and a tendency to bond with a
primary caregiver. Both of these are activities that have clear survival value, and they suggest
that relating verbally with others and establishing parent-child relationships are essential
experiences to have as human beings. The fact of music’s innateness suggests that it is an
essential human activity, without which we are less complete as human beings. If this is so,
then the idea of musical experience as a clinical focus and as a medium of experience is
warranted because it provides such an essential human experience. The universality of the
predisposition to create and respond to music supports the idea that musicing is not reserved
only to trained musicians but should be made available to all people, regardless of functioning
ability or stage of life.
It is true that many of the more disabled individuals with whom music therapists work are
deprived of either receptive or expressive language, or both. This includes individuals as
varied as developmentally delayed children, adults with different types of brain injuries,
comatose individuals, and those with more advanced forms of dementia. But the universality
of the music child suggests that the opportunity to music in some form is present in all of these
individuals, regardless of deficits in other areas. Sometimes, the music therapy experiences
can be used to develop skills in other areas. But even if there is no such generalization, the
universality of the music child suggests that all people deserve opportunities to music,
regardless of the degree to which the musicing advances functioning in any other areas of their
life. The idea that music therapy treatment does not necessarily have to generalize to other
areas of functioning to be considered successful is supported by the universality of musicality.
The music child is not a peripheral part of the person’s inner life that is divorced from the
individual’s essential nature. Just as musicing is central to the meaning-making activities of a
culture, it is similarly central to the individual being, serving as an activity that integrates
affect, cognition, expression, and relationship to the body. And although all of these things are
absolutely central to the development of the human person, they are not empty categories of
being that can be filled up in any arbitrary manner. Instead, according to the concept of the
music child, it is the unique way that music brings together all these areas of functioning that
can serve as the basic template for the development of the personality.
Musical Development as Self-Development

The way that musical engagement can serve as the template for self-actualization was
illustrated in the very first extended courses of therapy undertaken together by Paul Nordoff
and Clive Robbins. In an unpublished manuscript, Nordoff and Robbins first discussed the role
of musical interaction in the development of the self:
It is characteristic of the therapy process that as his response ability develops and musical
communication intensifies, the responsive organization he integrates comes to hold a
positive experience of identity for him. In effecting and discovering a train of functional
integrations and the communicative experiences they directly realize, he discovers and
realizes himself. At this state of therapy he develops a musical self—a musically organized
and sensitive substratum in his personality that he feels to be an essential aspect of himself.
(Nordoff & Robbins, cited in Aigen, 1998, pp. 72-73)
It is this musical self that is the core of the developing personality and that first integrates
the cognitive, affective, and physical aspects of the being into a coherent, unified self. The
musical self and musical skills are not seen as existing on the periphery of the self and then
requiring absorption into the core of the person in order to be clinically beneficial. Instead, it
is the musical self that exists at the core, and other areas of functioning and awareness radiate
from this. By acting on a person’s music, the therapist is directly engaged with the most central
aspects of the person’s being. This directly speaks to the music-centered belief that musicing
itself is an essential human activity that does not require translation or generalization into
other areas in order to be a legitimate clinical focus.
The development of the musical self becomes “an orientation point, a new center, around
which a more developed personality can constellate itself (Aigen, 1998, p. 144). The work of
Nordoff and Robbins is not focused on behavioral manifestations because behavior is seen as
a consequence of the inner dynamics, structures, strengths, and limitations of the person’s
being. The idea is not simply to alter behaviors but to “provide an alternative ‘blueprint’…
for the formation of a different structure that is healthier, more fully functioning” (p. 144). The
music-centeredness of the approach is seen in the fact that it is music itself that provides the
template for the development of the newer and healthier self: “Much as the laws of DNA
provide a plan for the structure of fully functioning physical bodies, aligning our naturally
occurring propensities for emotional and cognitive development with the laws of music
provides for fully functioning psychological beings” (p. 144).
In the Nordoff-Robbins approach, music is considered to possess inherent qualities, seen in
things such as the forces and impetus to motion that exist in its tonal and rhythmic building
blocks. The natural congruence between these essential elements of music and the
developmental processes of human beings suggests that the relationship is not an accidental
one. An essential function of musicing is to promote the development of the individual. The
manner in which the forces residing in music are directed with clinical intent defines Nordoff-
Robbins work and is one of the prime reasons for its characterization as a music-centered
music therapy.
Establishing a Musical World

Music is an enormous world to live in and to work in. It’s the only world we can conceive
that can meet the variations of pathology as one sees them in any individual.
—Paul Nordoff
In the music therapy literature, music has been considered as a language, a metaphor, and
representative symbol, and it has been analyzed with conceptual tools developed to study these
types of phenomena. In the work of Nordoff and Robbins, music is used as a communicative
medium, but the approach goes well beyond this to use music to establish an alternative
experiential world for a client to live in.
The conception of music as an alternative experiential world was in part stimulated by
Nordoff’s and Robbins’s experiences in seeing how clients who were otherwise extremely
isolated were able to enter into the world of human relationship through music:
There are also children who live so remotely that it is hard to gain insight into their
experiencing and interpreting of life. These children are … unable to find significance in
any usual life context, incapable of assimilating any of the forms, modes, or expressions of
normal life. Their profound estrangement excludes them from the ensouling experience of
communicable human emotion. Their prevailing emotional condition evokes the image of an
inhospitable landscape in which they are fated to live. One may live amid tempestuous
storms, another in an icy wasteland; another may walk alone in a bleak, comfortless desert.
For such a child music can become something rare, evocative or consoling. It can become
another landscape for him, one in which he will be able find more than the limits of his own
being. (Nordoff & Robbins, 1971, p. 55)
For many disabled people, the qualities that make the social world a human one are
unavailable. Intentional action, emotional self-expression, human relationships are all aspects
of our day-to-day lives that can be closed to others. Yet, through establishing a unique musical
world for each client, experiences of these necessary qualities of human life can be imparted
to them. It is as if music can establish an intermediate plane of existence in between the normal
social world of human beings and the extremely isolated and individualized worlds of
disabled individuals.
In clinical research on the early work of Nordoff and Robbins, clients achieved growth not
possible outside of music. This included the ability to “work through pervasive inner
conflicts; others functioned in music unfettered by the barriers imposed on them in nonmusic
situations; new value systems and self-images were created” (Aigen, 1998, p. 266). The
experiential world these clients stepped into when entering their music therapy sessions was
characterized by a unique language of music. But it also was characterized by its own “value
system, epistemology, spiritual belief system, and metaphysic” (p. 266). The idea that these
extremely isolated individuals were able to transcend their areas of disability so profoundly
becomes more intelligible when the milieu of their therapy sessions is conceived in the
broadest possible terms as represented by the idea of the musical world.
Quickening
Gary Ansdell (1995) has introduced the idea of the quickening quality of music as an
important factor in its therapeutic applications.50 He observes how music functions to move us,
both physically and emotionally, and that these two types of motion are intimately related.
Quickening is defined as “to give life to” or “to impart energy,” and Ansdell is using the term
to suggest how music can impart “some of its qualities of liveliness and motivation to both
body and spirit” (p. 81).
Ansdell emphasizes that music moves us physically by moving us emotionally. This is
important because the phenomenon of quickening is not just a mechanical activation of the
body through purely physiological processes. Instead music activates the spirit, which in turn
moves the body. Because there is “a basic similarity between how both music and the body
organise themselves as moving forms in time” (p. 83), when disability impairs movement, this
can be recovered to some extent when the body can take on the characteristics of musical
movement, such as “flow, continuity, coordination, purpose and direction” (p. 83).
These qualities are attributes of music, not just of pure tone. This is central to Ansdell’s
point. It is the qualities of musical phenomena that possess the attributes (flow, continuity, etc.)
that determine music’s therapeutic value. The idea is that to understand how a patient suffering
form Parkinson’s disease, for example, can acquire a greater flow or continuity in movement
when engaged with music, one should look to the flow and cohesion of the melodies and
rhythms the person is engaged with.
It is Victor Zuckerkandl’s theory of music that supports Ansdell’s ideas about quickening.
For Zuckerkandl, whose ideas Paul Nordoff expressed agreement with in his teaching, motion
in music is real. “Hearing tones I move with them; I experience their motion as my own
motion. To hear tones in motion is to move together with them” (Zuckerkandl, cited in Ansdell,
p. 85). Thus, to music actively or receptively is to experience motion.
The “erosion of will” is identified by Ansdell as one of the “pernicious aspects of
handicap or illness” (p. 87), and it is in activating the will that music can most directly
overcome this dispiriting consequence. But as Ansdell emphasizes, this aspect of music is
much more than purely physiological stimulation. The real gift of music is “the unexplainable
power to animate not just flesh but also the spirit—to give an impulse which makes someone
want to act, want to respond, want to create” (p. 87).
The manner in which Ansdell draws from the musicological ideas of Zuckerkandl and
applies them to clinical music therapy examples is a paradigmatic example of music-centered
theory. It locates that which is of greatest importance in understanding the essence of music
and places this phenomenon at the center of explanation in music therapy theory.
Music as Identity
Stimulated by his research into the applications of Creative Music Therapy in medical settings,
David Aldridge (1989) has proposed the idea that there is “a correlation between music form
and biological form” (p. 91). The person’s identity is considered to be a “musical form that is
continually being composed in the world” and thus the operative metaphor in understanding
people is “‘symphonic’ rather than ‘mechanic’” (p. 91).
Aldridge argues that people are best understood by being considered as unified wholes, as
is music. Individuals are not only composed of “bones and blood” but are also considered “as
musical beings in regard to relationship patterns, rhythms, and melodic contours” (p. 93). Both
music and the individual rely upon the intricate and coordinated weaving together of intricate
rhythmic patterns. This is self-evident in music and also true of the individual in physiological
and social functioning. Problems in physiological functioning can be conceptualized as being

either “out of tune or out of time” (p. 95). The isomorphism between musical and biological
form is what allows the music therapist to understand the client’s musical expression as a
portrait of his identity. The nature of this isomorphism is that both music and the individual can
be understood as “patterned frequencies in time” (p. 95).
Aldridge’s conception provides insight into a dual aspect of the Nordoff-Robbins work. If
the coordination of rhythms that characterize biological processes necessary for a functioning
human body operate more according to the processes that characterize a symphony as opposed
to, say, an automobile, then the ability of the body to make use of musicing phenomena to heal
becomes more intelligible. The ability of human beings to take advantage of the quickening
phenomenon is natural when the processes of physiology are understood as consistent with
musical processes. And it is an open question as to whether this isomorphism exists because
human beings have created music as a vehicle for working toward health and meaning or
because the similarity of functioning between music and human beings owes to a shared
organic origin.
46This is not to say that the music-centered thinking is only subscribed to by therapists
practicing within a recognized model. There may be as many, if not more, music therapists
subscribing to music-centered beliefs and practices who do not identify with a particular
model. And there will also be a great diversity among practitioners within a particular model
in terms of the degree to which their practice is music-centered.
47Susan Hadley (2002) considers this to be a unique transpersonal aspect of Priestley’s
theoretical framework.
48This
statement is true in a relative sense but not in an absolute one. One could argue that
in emphasizing the use of musical scales, styles, and idioms, Nordoff-Robbins practitioners
employ nonclinical music, and some Analytic Music Therapists use composed music in
sessions.
49This
idea has a direct parallel in the Nordoff-Robbins approach, discussed in the
following section on Musical Development as Self-Development.
50Ansdell credits the philosopher Immanuel Kant and the neurologist/author Oliver Sacks
for inspiring his use of the term.
CHAPTER 7
Music-Centered Thinking in Contemporary Music Therapy Frameworks
As was noted earlier, theory in music therapy is entering a new stage of development.
Throughout the first 60 years of its history, theory in music therapy has largely been created by
pioneering individuals pursuing a unique vision regarding the possibilities of music therapy as
new treatment form. The 1960s and 1970s saw the birth of Analytic Music Therapy,
Behavioral Music Therapy, Benenzon Music Therapy, Guided Imagery and Music, Nordoff-
Robbins Music Therapy, and the unnamed approaches of individuals such as Florence Tyson
and Juliette Alvin. Yet, it has been more than 30 years since a new model of music therapy has
gained international popular recognition.
At this moment in the profession, treatment frameworks are beginning to emerge in a more
communal fashion. Constructs such as Community Music Therapy (Ansdell, 2002; Pavlicevic
& Ansdell, 2004), Culture-Centered Music Therapy (Stige, 2002), and Music-Centered
Music Therapy are coming about from an examination of the practices of the subcommunities
within the profession of music therapy.51
Rather than reflect the vision of individuals, these ways of conceptualizing music therapy
result from an examination of communal practices. Perhaps it is a sign of the gradual
maturation of the profession that there are sufficient numbers of practitioners for explanatory
frameworks to be developed in this way. And these new frameworks are consistent with the
concept of general theory because they each accommodate existing practices within a broader
formulation.
The present chapter focuses on the music-centeredness of these frameworks. Analysis of
these frameworks are included in this book for two reasons: (1) the frameworks themselves
hold great promise for being influential in the future development of music therapy; (2)
demonstrating that these new frameworks are congruent with music-centered thinking offers
further support for its central importance for music therapy.
AESTHETIC MUSIC THERAPY

Aesthetic Music Therapy (AeMT) is a contemporary approach to music therapy that is both
“music-centered and humanistic” (Lee, 2003, p. xvi). Its originator, Colin Lee, considers it to
be “a continuation of the original Nordoff-Robbins approach” (p. 7) combined with Lee’s

individual experiences and opinions on music, therapy, and aesthetic experience. Paul
Nordoff’s teachings about music, as embodied in Robbins and Robbins (1998), have been
especially important in stimulating Lee to develop his ideas on the relevance of classical
music for contemporary music therapy.
Musical Form as Clinical Structure: A Rationale for Musicological Analysis in Music

Therapy
Lee acknowledges that Nordoff’s compositional approach to improvisation in music therapy
influenced his own ideas about the architecture of the music therapy session. AeMT extends
Nordoff’s approach and “attempts to understand the music therapy
process/session/improvisation in terms of its universal musical structure” (p. 8). AeMT
reverses the traditional conception in music therapy that clinical needs determine the musical
form of the session, instead saying that “musical form influences clinical form” (p. 9). The way
that AeMT considers the musical components of a session “from a music analytic and
compositional foundation first and foremost” (p. 9) also serves to differentiate it from the
Nordoff-Robbins approach.
Lee’s model of the music therapy session is based on the sonata form of exposition,
development, recapitulation, and coda. In this model, the musical tasks inherent in the artistic
form are correlated with clinical tasks. For example, just as the central musical themes are
introduced in the exposition, so is the client introduced to the session. In the development
section, as themes are more fully developed, embellished and transformed, so are the
therapist’s clinical aims elaborated. The recapitulation with a return to the tonic “solidifies the
main [musical] argument and growth of the therapeutic process” (p. 12). And the concluding
musical statement of the coda simultaneously “invites the potential for future work” (p. 12).
Lee strongly advocates for the position that in an AeMT session, all of the musical elements
and choices should be guided by an overall aesthetic logic. The musical elements of the
session should cohere in an overall musical form. There are no arbitrary musical choices in an
AeMT session any more than in a classical composition. The music of a music therapy session
should have the same musical integrity as a piece of music intended for the concert hall, and it
can be analyzed with the same analytic tools. The rationale for doing so is that clinical
development is intimately connected to musical development, and it is musicological analysis
that can best reveal this musical development.
This discussion of the sonata form is only one example of the many ideas presented by Lee.
He goes into other areas on this general topic, including, for example, an examination of
counterpoint in Bach as a template for understanding the therapist-client dialogue at the heart
of clinical improvisation.
The Aesthetics of Improvisation

Lee presents the idea of clinical improvisation as searching. It is a creative process in which
the therapist’s search for “clinically and artistically appropriate music” (p. 24) reflects and
parallels the search of clients “to find their place in the world and in the musical interchange”
(p. 25). The essential clinical process can be subsumed within the artistic process that it is
based upon.
Effective clinical improvisation requires the therapist to find the right balance between
composition and improvisation, and hence between structure and freedom. Musical
improvisation, clinical or otherwise, has a universal foundation: Themes are stated, repeated,
developed, and “presented to make a coherent whole” (p. 22). The freedom provided by
spontaneous creation within structure is inherently therapeutic, according to Lee, because the
experiences of individual freedom created by collective improvisation in nonclinical contexts
is also active in the clinical setting. They provide “clients the opportunity to be free of their
pathology and/or illness” (p. 25). This characteristic of improvised music is considered to be
the cornerstone of AeMT.
In this and many other ruminations, Lee finds commonality between clinical and nonclinical
musical processes. Moreover, these areas of commonality are seen as essential aspects of
music that determine its clinical efficacy. And it is the clinical saliency of these shared
musical factors that establishes the music-centeredness of AeMT.
COMMUNITY MUSIC THERAPY

Community Music Therapy is a “context-based and music-centered model that highlights the
social and cultural factors influencing Music Therapy practice, theory and research” (Ansdell,
2002a, p. 109). The approach was first presented in an online article (Ansdell, 2002b) and
then more fully developed through a text devoted entirely to it, Community Music Therapy,
coedited by Mercédès Pavlicevic and Gary Ansdell (2004).52 The principles of the approach
represent an attempt to create a treatment framework for music therapy practices that currently
lie outside the consensus model of practice in the boundary area between traditional music
therapy and community music.
The ideas and practices of community music may not be familiar to all readers. In the
United Kingdom, community music is defined as a “participatory music-making activity in
which the community musicians work with a given community to enable them to make music
which is inspired by their own interests and ideas” (Atkinson, cited in Ansdell, 2002a, p.
116). Although the professions of music therapy and community music diverged in the latter
half of the 20th century, they “originated from a common belief in musicking as means of
working with people” (p. 117).
Ansdell puts forth the idea of community music therapy to extend the parameters of
recognized music therapy practice and to provide a theoretical and professional context in
which practices that many music therapists are already engaged in can be contained.
Moreover, his work is important in clarifying the differences and boundaries between the
practice of music therapy and community music.
Because it is rooted in the commonalities between clinical and nonclinical music-making, it
is natural for Community Music Therapy to assume a music-centered stance. Ansdell
(2002a)53 discusses a number of areas in which Community Music Therapy differs from the
traditional model, three of which are particularly related to the music-centeredness of the
approach.
In the area of professional identity, “Community Music Therapists see their expertise as
primarily musical rather than psychological or medical” (p. 133), distinguishing themselves
from the consensus model of music therapy that locates professional music therapy practice
within the health care professions. Through this musical identity, the community music
therapist is primarily concerned with creating opportunities for individuals and milieus to
engage in musicing. As a therapist, the community music therapist is primarily concerned with
removing barriers that prevent a person or community milieu from engaging in musicing.
Rather than view themselves as practicing a form of medical or psychotherapeutic
intervention, community music therapists see themselves more as a “therapeutic musician in
residence” (p. 133). A strong belief in musical communitas as an important factor in
community music therapy means that relationships between therapists and clients are as equal
as possible and are mediated primarily by moral guidelines rather than professional ones.
Whereas traditional music therapy takes place in private spaces with clearly defined
boundaries, “the Community Music Therapist typically works wherever music or music-
making is needed” (p. 134). There is no necessity to work in private spaces set apart from the
general and public life of the community. Because it is natural for music to be a part of public
community life in an institution, for example, it is therefore natural for the music therapist to be
part of this public community life.
The music therapist works with the community that clients find themselves a part of with
“the overall aim being to increase the musical spirit of community, and to enhance people’s
quality of life within it” (p. 134). Continuing the ethic that the music therapist’s use of music
can closely parallel its nonclinical use, in Community Music Therapy, performance can be a
natural expression of progress made during more private work. It can also be an enactment of
the “spirit, values and hopes of a circumstantial community” (p. 134). This permeability of
boundaries and the absence of a necessity for confidentiality is a consequent of the primary
music-centered belief that what music offers to people in clinical applications can be very
similar to what it offers in nonclinical settings.
This idea is embraced by Ansdell, who says that “Music Therapy must work in the ways in
which music itself commonly works in individual and social life” (p. 13 6). In this focus,
Community Music Therapy is built upon a holistic understanding of musicing as leading
people both inward in exploration of their inner lives as well as outward “towards
participation and connection in communitas” (p. 136). Participating in music naturally leads
people to want to share musicing experiences with others, and Community Music Therapy
recognizes that music therapists can take responsibility for establishing these contexts rather
than leave it to the client’s resources alone or to other musicians in the community.
CULTURE-CENTERED MUSIC THERAPY

Culture-centered music therapy (Stige, 2002)54 is not itself a music-centered approach to
music therapy. In fact, it is not a specific approach at all, instead representing a fifth force in
music therapy akin to the previous forces characterizing the development of psychology, such
as psychoanalysis, behaviorism, humanistic thought, and transpersonal psychology (Bruscia,

2002). However, there are central premises of culture-centered thinking that lend conceptual
support to the idea of music-centered therapies that bear noting in the present text.
For Brynjulf Stige (2002), the activity of music therapists goes far beyond a
conceptualization of working with individuals and small groups on issues of a primarily
individual character. Instead, the goals of therapy can include enhancing the relationship
between the individual and the surrounding culture as “therapy is partly about learning how to
enter a culture, find your way in it, and sometimes even new ways ‘beyond’ it” (p. 215).
Because the significance of music is not just in its private, personal meaning but in its cultural
significance as well, music therapists are drawn more into interaction with social entities and
areas of interaction that partake of nonclinical meaning-making contexts. Stige argues
forcefully for the relevance of musicology for music therapy, implicitly arguing that concepts
from nonclinical areas of music study are clearly relevant for music therapy
The development of the human individual not only takes place within a culture, but also
involves coming to terms with the culture:
The human path to individuality thus goes through culture and the collective…. We need to
consider the relevance of cultural processes when working individually. The relational
notion of health advocated above therefore leads us to an examination of learning through
participation in cultural and social contexts, (p. 214)
For Stige, it is important for music therapists to become more aware of all the contexts in
which music therapy occurs and to understand the creation of meaning that takes place in
music therapy sessions on more levels of analysis and experience than have traditionally been
acknowledged. He argues that music therapists are engaged in practices that embed them in the
community in rich and important ways, and yet that do not fit into the traditional understanding
of the domain of music therapy work.
Stige’s ideas include expanding the traditional notion of music therapy as primarily a
private affair taking place behind closed doors in a private room on a regular basis. Many of
the ways in which his expansive definition redefines the field provides conceptual support for
a variety of music-centered practices. This is not to say that such support is part of Stige’s
agenda. Instead, it is a natural consequence of the ideas he puts forward.
His definition of music therapy is “situated health musicking in a planned process of
collaboration between client and therapist” (p. 200). The term situated health musicking is
key to Stige as a contrast to conventional definitions of music therapy that portray it as “a
means to therapeutic or health-related ends” (p. 201). Stige’s definition shifts the emphasis to
“music as dialogic medium and situated activity in relation to health” (p. 201). Things that
constitute a health concern include “relationships to other individuals, groups, and
communities, as well as to cultural values, practices, and narrative representations” (p. 210)
And “means and ends are not dichotomies in music therapy, but are aspects of the same
process in systems of change, and it may make perfect sense to suggest that music therapists
work in order to promote musicking” (p. 191).
In allowing for the use of music as a therapeutic medium, Stige’s formulation can support
the concept of bringing a client into experiences of musicing as a legitimate clinical focus. In
recognizing that the focus of a therapist’s work can include bringing a client into relationship
with culture and cultural values, Stige similarly provides a foundation for practices that allow
therapists to legitimately interact with their clients in venues other than the private therapy
room and with focuses beyond that of intrapsychological conflict or enhanced physiological
functioning.
In the area of explanation, Stige argues that “there is no legitimate foundation for a music
therapy theory neglecting the conventional and social aspects of musicking” (p. 105). These
aspects of musicing have been studied for the most part from disciplines outside of music
therapy, such as ethnomusicology. In general, Stige puts music therapy practices on a
continuum with other uses of music in society and creates an expansive notion of therapy that
not only includes but at times demands engagement with social bodies and external
communities that have rarely been worked with by more traditional music therapists.
In a number of ways, taking into account the important considerations advocated by
Culture-Centered Music Therapy leads directly to some of the central practices that
characterize music-centered work. These include conceiving of the human engagement with
music as musicing; supporting the idea of public performance as an aspect of therapy;
establishing practical connections and conceptual links with what have traditionally been
considered nonclinical arenas of music-making; drawing upon essential aspects of music that
go beyond traditional notions of health, therapy, and cure in formulating explanatory theory in
music therapy; and allowing that personal development sometimes requires public
opportunities for musicing within social contexts.
* * *
There are many areas of overlap among the contemporary approaches of aesthetic music
therapy, community music therapy, culture-centered music therapy, and music-centered music
therapy. This proliferation of ways of conceptualizing music therapy attests to the fact that the
profession is in a new stage of development, one that seems to be characterized,
paradoxically, by increased consolidation and differentiation. Seemingly disparate practices
and beliefs are being gathered under overarching frameworks in a way that makes the
profession more cohesive; at the same time, there are increasingly more ways of labeling
one’s work as a music therapist. This aspect of choice is certainly an advantage for music
therapists seeking to bring their core beliefs and preferred practices into a more encompassing
explanatory framework. As long as music therapists do the difficult conceptual work of
constantly refining, differentiating, and exploring the ramifications of these different
contemporary approaches, the proliferation of approaches will be useful in offering greater
clarity to our work as opposed to being counterproductive by adding unnecessary conceptual
labels.
51One exception is Aesthetic Music Therapy (Lee, 2003), which is the work of an
individual. However, Lee asserts that he is not attempting to provide a new theory for music
therapy. Instead, his choice is to present an exploration of philosophical issues and case
materials “that address topics necessary for defining a music-centered approach to clinical
practice” (p. xvii) in a manner that is not dissimilar from the present publication. For this
reason, Lee’s work is more of a framework than a model; hence the inclusion of his work in
the present chapter.
52Although clinicians from a wide diversity of theoretical orientations are practicing
Community Music Therapy, much of the initial impetus for its conceptualization is originating
with practitioners trained in the Nordoff-Robbins approach. This is not a historical accident,
as there were elements of the original Nordoff-Robbins work that lend themselves to such a
conceptualization. For example, the original Nordoff-Robbins team worked with a more
flexible set of boundaries than is typical of contemporary music psychotherapists, and it was
not unusual in group work that preparing works for public performance would be a focus of
sessions (Aigen, 1998).
53The balance of the quotations in this section are from Ansdell (2002a).
54All unreferenced quotations in this section are from Stige (2002).
Part III
A Philosophy of Music for Music-Centered Music Therapy
Theory

INTRODUCTION TO PART III
A Philosophy of Music for Music-Centered Music Therapy Theory
As discussed in chapter 2, proposals for foundational music therapy theory have been based
on an assertion that a particular framework can account for all relevant phenomena in a wide
variety of domains of music therapy practice. So if all music therapy incorporates human
behavior, or if all music therapy involves the human brain, the arguments go, then behavioral
learning theory, or neurological science, must be the foundation for music therapy treatment.
However, one can agree with the premises of such approaches, that all music therapy requires
the presence of human behavior and neurological processes, without agreeing with the
conclusions, that the concepts and explanatory models associated with these domains of
inquiry are relevant outside the specific areas of practice from which they originate.
For while active musicing takes place through human behavior, this does not mean that it is
a form of action devoid of intention, intelligence, and motivation toward aesthetic expression
and experience, qualities that do not figure into explanation in behavioral psychology. In short,
as a form of intelligence-in-action, musicing is not subject to the contingencies of behavioral
conditioning.
And while there is no musicing without a brain, this does not imply that an understanding of
the neurological correlates of musical experience and phenomena will shed any light on the
mechanisms of music therapy processes across a wide spectrum of practice. Previously, I
argued that saying that all music therapy theory has to be based on brain science is like saying
that it is necessary to understand the atomic properties of the circuitry in a computer in order
to understand how a word processing program operates. Insight into the functional aspects of
the word processing program is provided by the codes written by its programmers, not through
an understanding of the material properties of particle physics. Similarly in music therapy,
neurological information cannot provide insight into the nature of clinical processes when one
is concerned with human motivations, intentions, and experiences.
There is significant value in developing music therapy theory that originates in and is
adequate to music, a view embraced by theorists across the spectrum. This suggests that it is
the nature of how music is experienced and conceptualized that is the element most common to
all types of music therapy, rather than the specifics of behavioral theory or neurological
processes. And this in turn makes a strong case for the viability of music-centered concepts as
a source for general theory in music therapy.

In chapter 2, Carolyn Kenny’s ideas on general theory were discussed. The theoretical
constructs offered throughout part III are offered in the spirit of Kenny’s conception of a
general theory that both accounts for diverse areas and types of practice and at the same time
speaks to the uniqueness of music therapy processes. Also originating in Kenny’s (1982) work
is the specific strategy taken here of looking for conceptual consistency between theories of
music and ideas from other disciplines that support music therapy theory.
An approach to human understanding known as schema theory or metaphor theory has a
prominent role in the present section. As was mentioned previously, this approach was
developed by Mark Johnson and George Lakoff (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Johnson, 1987;

Lakoff & Johnson, 1999) and has been disseminated into a wide variety of scholarly areas
such as the following: literary analysis; politics, law, and social issues; cognitive and clinical
psychology; mathematics; cognitive linguistics; and philosophy (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980,
Afterword, 2003). It has also been applied extensively to music through studies of greatly
varying depth and scope. These include journal articles and book chapters (for example,
Saslaw, 1996; O’Donnell, 1999; Johnson & Larson, 2003, Zbikowski, 1998; the entirety of
Volume 22/23, 1997-98, of Theory and Practice, Journal of the Music Theory Society of New
York State), books (for example, Zbikowski, 2002), and doctoral research studies (for
example, Cox, 1999).
I would like to make a few comments about the reasons for employing this system of
thinking in a book concerning music-centered music therapy.
I originally encountered schema theory as a form of musical analysis. The fact that music
theorists, musicologists, and music philosophers were finding it so useful in illuminating the
nature of a wide variety of types of music55 suggested that it could be equally fruitfully applied
to music therapy, and that to do so would be consistent with music-centered foundations
because it was an approach drawn from music studies.
Much of this book is an argument for the inherent clinical value of musical experience. This
is based on the idea that musical experience can be self-justifying in the sense that an
understanding of its benefits does not require either reductive analysis into behavioral,
physiological, or psychological constructs, or generalization into nonmusical areas of
functioning. As an approach to understanding the most basic processes of human cognition and
experience, schema theory provides a firm foundation for gaining insight into the meaning-
making activities constitutive of musical experience in a way that both maintains the integrity
of the whole musical experience and also simultaneously connects the mechanisms of this
experience to more global human capacities.
Schema theory demonstrates how much of human thought is metaphoric in nature, something
that naturally extends to the way that music therapists construe clinical goals. For example,
when a music therapist employs a goal such as increasing impulse control, this implies a
metaphoric understanding of human actions as being directed by a physical force that requires
containment and/or redirection, much as a dam holds back the force of a body of water.
Schema theory holds that our experience of music is similarly mediated by the same
metaphoric structures that operate in other areas of human functioning and that music may have
a unique role in creating these structures of experience. Thus, schema theory can be an
essential part of demonstrating the connection between the constituents of music and musical
experience on the one hand, and the balance of human functioning on the other. Specifically,
understanding the metaphoric basis of how therapists conceive of clinical goals will provide a
means for connecting them to musical processes through the shared metaphors of which they
partake.
Because of this belief in the nonliteral and metaphoric foundation of much of human
knowledge, in schema theory linguistic understandings do not occupy a privileged role in
organizing experience and furthering knowledge acquisition. Schema theory is based on the
idea that much of human knowledge rests on a set of cognitive schemata that originate in our

embodied experience in the world rather than in our verbal reflection on such experience.
Experience itself has a strong cognitive component in this view.
This perspective relates in important ways to the music-centered philosophy of the present
book. It puts musical experience and communication on a par with other forms of human
relating and shows how musical experience and expression possess cognitive import. These
considerations speak to essential aspects of music-centered thinking concerning the self-
sufficiency of musical experience as clinical experience. In sum, the first reason to employ
schema theory is that it provides central components of an epistemology congruent with music-
centered theory.
The second reason relates to its specific view of music and the way that it complements
Victor Zuckerkandl’s philosophy in providing a broader and stronger foundation than would be
afforded by either perspective on its own. Put in an overly simple way, schema theory
examines how we experience, conceptualize, and talk about music in order to gain insight into
the nature of music. Zuckerkandl examines the tonal, harmonic, and rhythmic elements that
constitute the nature of music to see what the results of such an investigation can tell us about
the nature of human beings and the reality that we inhabit. Thus, we can think of Zuckerkandl
and schema theorists as standing on opposite poles, staring at each other across a great divide,
with each of their conceptual systems building a bridge toward the other.
Reflecting these considerations, the contents of part III are structured in the following way:
In chapter 8, schema theory is introduced, the rationale for its inclusion in the present work is
expanded upon, some of its implications for music therapy are drawn, and the view of music it
suggests is shown to be appropriate as the basis for general, music-centered music therapy
theory. In chapter 9, Victor Zuckerkandl’s ideas about music are discussed with two intentions:
(1) to provide a view of tonal phenomena that complements the areas of focus in music
undertaken by schema theory; and (2) to provide the conceptual-musical foundation for some
of the music-centered ideas discussed previously, such as quickening.
Although taken together the two approaches deal comprehensively with essential questions
about music and musical experience, this is not to say that there are not some differences
between them. Therefore, chapter 10 involves a brief reexamination of both schema theory and
Zuckerkandl’s theory, with the intent of expanding upon their implications, reconciling some
apparent contradictions, and demonstrating that the remaining differences between them will
not inhibit their value in helping to us to gain a greater understanding of music therapy
phenomena.

55While
O’Donnell (1999) and Johnson and Larson (2003) apply schema theory to the
music of the Grateful Dead and the Beatles, respectively, Brower (1997-98) applies it to the
music of Edgard Varèse and Saslaw (1997-98) considers Schoenberg’s work through this
perspective.

CHAPTER 8
Music Therapy and Schema Theory
INTRODUCTION TO SCHEMA THEORY

In their publication Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980)
introduced a philosophical perspective on human cognition, experience, and communication
that has been influential in a number of spheres of inquiry, including linguistics, philosophy,
cognitive science, clinical psychology, and music theory. Their investigations are based on the
idea that “our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is
fundamentally metaphorical in nature” (p. 3). For them, “the essence of metaphor is
understanding one kind of thing in terms of another” (p. 5). One of the important ways in
which Lakoff and Johnson depart from conventional thinking about metaphor is in claiming that
the analysis of metaphor involves much more than the study of language. Instead, they argue
forcefully that “human thought processes are largely metaphorical” in essence (p. 6).
For example, recall the metaphor of music as a river from chapter 3.1 used that metaphor to
explain that in transcendent musical experiences the music can seem to disappear because one
becomes the music so thoroughly. Did that metaphor help you to better understand my point? If
not, that is the fault of a metaphor, which is to say that it is the writer’s fault. If so, that
demonstrates the value of metaphor in general. It provides an understanding that is conceptual
and not just poetic in character as is commonly believed. In Lakoff and Johnson’s view,
studying the ways that we employ metaphor in verbal language can provide insight into the
nature of human experience and the basis of human thought and action.
Throughout their publications, Lakoff and Johnson demonstrate that metaphor is not just a
literary device. Instead, metaphors are general vehicles for conceptual thinking in all aspects
of human cognition and communication. Consider some everyday examples of metaphoric
cognition and speech: I’m under pressure. He’s a sharp thinker. This piece of writing is well
focused. This type of metaphoric conceptualization is so ingrained in our thinking that we
often do not even think of it as metaphoric.
The foundation of metaphoric thinking is found in image schemata. These are dynamic
cognitive constructs that serve to organize and integrate human experience and that originate in
our universal human experience as physical beings in three-dimensional space Those
mentioned by Saslaw (1996) that are particularly relevant to music include CONTAINER, UP-
DOWN, CENTER-PERIPHERY, LINK, PART-WHOLE, FORCE, FRONT-BACK, PATH,

SOURCE-PATH-GOAL.56 Figure 1 provides Saslaw’s graphic representation of these
schemata.
Schemata “are constantly operating in our perception, bodily movement through space, and
physical manipulation of objects” (Johnson, 1987, p. 23). Although they are presented here
graphically for illustrative purposes, “image schemata are not rich, concrete image or
mental pictures…. They are structures that organize our mental representations at a level more
general and abstract than that at which we form particular mental images” (Johnson, pp. 23-
24).

They are all experienced directly and are of two types: those that originate in our
relationship to our bodies, such as CONTAINER, CENTER-PERIPHERY, FRONT-BACK,
and PART-WHOLE; and those that originate in our orientation to the external world, such as
LINK, FORCE, PATH, SOURCE-PATH-GOAL, and NEAR-FAR. Schemata connect many
different types of experiences that share the same structure. This explains why we use similar
language for different types of phenomena.
The domains that we physically experience, such as our bodies moving in space, are where
we form image schemata. Other domains, such as the realm of human emotions or music, are
less concrete. We apply schemata by using in these latter domains image schemata derived
from more concrete domains of experience.57 The mappings take the form of metaphors, such
as in our descriptions of emotional states.
Figure 1. Diagrams of Image Schemes
These are called “cross-domain mappings” (Lakoff, cited in Saslaw, p. 220), and they occur
when we extrapolate from a directly experienced domain to a more abstract one, such as is
done in the transfer from experience of physical space to mental state. For example, moods and
other mental states are often conceptualized in terms of the spatial representations of IN-OUT
or UP-DOWN. Consider some examples: I’m feeling up (or down or low or high). My spirits
sank. I’m in a fog. I was depressed but I’m coming out of it. Even the use of the term feeling to
indicate an emotional state is an example of cross-domain mapping, as a word that indicates a
physical sensation or something perceived by the sense of touch is used to represent a
psychological state. This usage is further extended when we talk about how when certain
feelings are evoked from us we describe it as being touched by someone or something.

Also, consider how the schema of SOURCE-PATH-GOAL—which will be discussed in
more detail in the application to music therapy—indicates how “human purposes are
understood in terms of destinations and achieving a purpose is understood as passing along a
path from a start to an endpoint” (Saslaw, p. 220). Again, these understandings are reflected in
the language we use: “One may go a long way toward achieving one’s purposes, or one may
get sidetracked, or find something getting in one’s way” (Saslaw, p. 220).
Schema theory demonstrates that the particular way we use mappings are natural and
nonarbitrary. They result from commonalities in the structure of the experience in both
domains:
To account for why some metaphorical mappings are more effective than others, George
Lakoff and Mark Turner proposed that such mappings are not about the imposition of the
structure of the source domain on the target domain, but are instead about the establishment
of correspondences between the two domains. These correspondences are not haphazard,
but instead preserve the image-schematic structure latent in each domain. (Zbikowski,
2002, p. 70)
Because of the rational basis for the way mappings are implemented, they can be used to
expand our knowledge and understanding of different domains of experience. Moreover, they
demonstrate how much of our conceptual knowledge has its origins in the particular ways that
our bodies operate in the physical world:
Via mappings of this sort, we can use our understanding of the bodily source domain (such
as motion through space) to reason about some abstract target domain (such as abstract
reasoning). We appropriate our knowledge of the source domain to construct parallel
knowledge claims about the target domain. In this way even our most abstract concepts are
tied via metaphor to embodied meaning structures. (Johnson, 1997-98, p. 95)
Schemata are strongly implicated in all meaning-making activities engaged in by human

beings, primarily through the way that they organize experience into something that can be
comprehended. And “in order for us to have meaningful, connected experiences that we can
comprehend and reason about, there must be pattern and order to our actions, perceptions, and
conceptions. A schema is a recurrent pattern, shape, and regularity in, or of, these ongoing
ordering activities” (Johnson, 1987, p. 29).
Although it originated in an area of linguistic analysis, many characteristics of schema
theory render it particularly applicable in music therapy: (1) It maintains a broad-based notion
of meaning that includes a holistic understanding of human beings relevant to musicing; (2) It
places value on human beings as active constructors of their experience and reality in which
activities such as music-making can play a primary role; (3) It is particularly well suited to
revealing the nature of music and musical experience, and to considering the nature of music
as equivalent in importance to other domains of human functioning. In the remainder of this
section, I will discuss some these aspects of schema theory with an eye toward their relevance
for music therapy.
(1) The notion of meaning is relevant in different ways in a variety of music therapy

contexts. Schema theory provides a means for connecting the various ways that the term
meaning is construed. Schemata establish a continuity between functional, everyday acts of
meaning construction and the existential sense of meaning that can be the focus of therapy
sessions. Schemata are implicated in both and are, in fact, what integrates them. Johnson
(1987) describes this view of meaning:
Meaning is a matter of human understanding, regardless of whether we are talking about the
meaning of someone’s life, the meaning of a historical happening, or the meaning of a word
or sentence. A theory of meaning is a theory of how we understand things, whatever those
things might be…. The hypothesis of the unity of the notion of meaning is not an insistence
on a single unified literal concept “meaning”; rather, it is a commitment to the existence of a
series of connections among the various senses of “means.” It is a commitment to the
conviction that we are unified human beings and not a cluster of autonomous modules, (pp.
176-177)
This notion of meaning provides a way of understanding a wide range of music therapy
focuses as existing on a continuum, thus supporting general music therapy theory. By providing
opportunities to engage in the creation of meaningful experience, music therapy can create the
template for all types of intellectual, cognitive, and linguistic processes. In this view, aspects
of music therapy that are commonly thought to be particular to educational focuses—for
example, teaching language, identifying body parts, or learning one’s name through music—are
not seen as fundamentally different from various psychotherapeutic focuses in music therapy,
such as the more existentially based quest for meaning in life engaged in by disabled and
nondisabled clients alike.
Whether we are considering situations as diverse as a developmentally delayed child
singing his own name for the first time, an adult with schizophrenia seeking a sense of
coherence in life, or an elderly person with dementia trying to establish order in an
increasingly fractured experience, the ability to organize their worlds through the operation of
these embodied schemata is involved. As Johnson (1987) observes, “they give comprehensive
structure and definiteness to our experience and connect up different experiential domains to
establish a measure of coherence and unity in our understanding of our world” (p. 37). Schema
theory thus links meaning and meaningfulness, emotion and cognition, body and mind. All of
these traditional dichotomies are integrated in this body of theory, and this is another reason
why it has such great potential for contributing to general theory in music therapy.
(2) Because they are not static constructions applied on percepts but are instead essential
aspects of human functioning that govern our interaction with the world and each other,
schemata are consistent with the view of music as an activity, as something people do, as
musicing. Schema theory views human beings as actively constructing the nature of their world
and experience. Rather than being a rigid template that forces experience into its mold, a
schema is part of the interaction between human beings and their various realms of experience.
A schema is most accurately thought of as
a continuous structure of an organizing activity. Yet, even though schemata are definite
structures, they are dynamic patterns rather than fixed and static images, as their visual

diagrams represent them. They are dynamic in two important respects. (1) Schemata are
structures of an activity by which we organize our experience in ways that we can
comprehend. They are a primary means by which we construct or constitute order and are
not mere passive receptacles into which experience is poured. (2) Unlike templates,
schemata are flexible in that they can take on any number of specific instantiations in
varying contexts…. It can be modified to fit many similar, but different, situations that
manifest a recurring underlying structure. (Johnson, 1987, pp. 29-30)
Such a conception of human beings is very much congruent with the aspect of music-
centered thinking in music therapy that emphasizes the importance of the client actively
engaging in processes of musicing. Consider the parallel line of thinking in this quote from
Paul Nordoff:
He [the child] becomes an active partner in therapy. You’ll not just pour in therapy to him
like spoonfeeding a baby, no indeed. You are making it possible for the child, through his
music child, to become a co-active therapist with you and together you create the therapy.
(Aigen, 1996, p. 25)
This view emphasizes that it is in the cognitive organizing operations of the mind that one can
locate active musicing. Therefore, schema theory is equally applicable to receptive music
therapy approaches such as Guided Imagery and Music.
(3) In general, schema theory argues against the superiority of linguistic understanding over
other types of understanding by showing that there is a strong nonliteral component to it.
Because the same set of schemata underlie verbal communication and other aspects of human
experience and interaction, the various means of interaction are considered equivalent.
Schema theory thus supports the following notions, all of which are fundamental aspects of
music-centered thought: Musical understandings are not fundamentally different from linguistic
ones in the sense of resting on foundations less central to human functioning; the creation and
appreciation of music involves the operation of the same embodied cognitive constructs as
does verbal understandings; and the foundations of musical experience are just as central as
linguistic ones in establishing a sense of coherence and meaning and life.
Zbikowski (2002) forcefully argues the claim for the commonality of the foundations of
linguistic capacities and musical ones, asserting that “musical understanding relies not on
specialized capacities unique to the processing of patterned sound but on the specialized use
of general capacities that humans use to structure their understanding of the everyday world”
(p. vii). Johnson (1997-98) extends this claim by drawing out the implications for musical
experience of the idea that human understanding proceeds from our embodied experience:
Once we give up thinking about concepts, meaning, and inference patterns as existing in
some purely mental disembodied realm of abstract relations, we can start to move beyond
the false dualisms of mind/body, mental/physical, cognitive/emotive, science/art, and so on.
Our best theories are not meaningful because they inhabit a ghostly intellectual realm of
disembodied forms and abstract meaning; rather, they are insightful for us precisely because
they are tied to our embodied experience and understanding. On this view, then, musical
meaning is not some second-class citizen forced to dwell outside the pristine realm of

cognitive meaning; rather, it is paradigmatic of the way meaning emerges for us as
embodied creatures. The fact that music inhabits this realm of meaning gives it its profound
power to affect and transform us through its internal motion and dynamic properties, (p.
100)
This conception of music speaks to the integrative power of schema theory and why it is
both broadly applicable and congruent with music-centered thinking. It transcends treatment
categories, clinical focuses, and other divisions of music therapy work. Thinking through
schema theory in music therapy renders traditional divisions inactive; they just do not abide
music-centered thinking because they have come about from fundamentally different ways of
thinking about music therapy.
Schema theory says that musical faculties are shared by other meaning-making domains.
Thus, to be in music, to experience it, to understand it (not linguistically but musically) is to
already be drawing upon the same capacities that create meaning in other realms of human
experience. This speaks to the overall question of generalization. In this view, experiences in
music therapy are already of general importance in their essence because the human capacities
they rely on are the same ones active in other domains of human functioning.
Schema theory also provides a means for integrating the understanding of music with the
experiencing of it. As Johnson (1997-98) says, “the very same patterns of bodily perception,
activity, and feeling that structure our musical experience also structure our conceptualization
of it” (p. 95). This is important for two reasons: First, it means that the modes of
musicological analysis undertaken within schema theory provide insights into how music is
both created and experienced; they are not mere intellectual exercises without relevance for a
holistic understanding of musicing. Second, through understanding the particular schema
operating in a given musical interaction, we can gain insight into the nature of client
experience in music therapy, something that is vitally important for the many music therapy
clients who are not able to report this for themselves.
In his discussion of musical forces and melodic patterns, Steve Larson (1997-98) invokes
two primary musical metaphors: MUSIC IS MOTION and MUSIC IS PURPOSEFUL. He
makes the following observations about them:
We not only think about music but also think in music in terms of the MUSIC IS MOTION
metaphor. We not only talk about notes as passing tones, we experience them as traversing a
path that connects points of departure and arrival. We not only talk about melodic leaps, we
experience them as gathering energy, skipping over a more connected path and landing
somewhere. We also think about music and think in music in terms of the MUSIC IS
PURPOSEFUL metaphor. We not only talk about the dissonance that wants to resolve, we
also experience a desire for it to resolve, (p. 57)
This links the concepts of musical analysis with the phenomenal experiencing of music. It
provides the basis for believing that the products of analysis are keys to understanding musical
experience. In understanding the clinical uses of music, it is as important, if not more so, to
apply how it is experienced rather than what it is. In fact, it may not even make sense to talk
about what music is apart from our conceptions of it because we cannot even talk about it

except in terms of our metaphorically based descriptions.
Because applying schema theory to music means adopting a position where the
experiencing and understanding of music are integrated, schema theory warrants a cognitive
view of music that supports the idea that when people are musicing, when they are engaged
with music in any way, they are exhibiting the presence of mediating cognitive capacities that
are essential to all aspects of human functioning. This is a vitally important claim for music
therapists because it provides a means for inferring the presence of cognitive capacities in
disabled individuals who may not exhibit the presence of such capacities in any other way.
Johnson and Larson (2003) express the view that
[we] cannot clearly separate our understanding and conceptualization of music from our
experience of it. We do not merely experience a musical work and then understand it. There
is not experience first, followed by our grasp of the meaning of that experience. Rather, our
understanding is woven into the fabric of our experience. Our understanding is our way of
being in and making sense of our experience, (p. 78)
The crucial phrase here is our understanding is woven into the fabric of our experience. This
means that meaning does not emerge from postmusical reflection on experience, and that
experience is not formally and experientially separate from the meaning-making activity. It
says that the meaning processes are implicated in the musical experience itself. They are not
just brought in upon later reflection. Meaning is in the experience because meaning-making
cognitive processes are necessary for the experiencing.
Considering how meaning-making activities are inseparable from musical experience is an
important support for general music-centered theory in music therapy. The understanding of
music evidenced in the person’s engagement with it is the clinical rationale. This goes a long
way to explaining why verbalized or other types of insight are not necessary for understanding
the meaning of the musical experience, because musicing itself is a meaning-generating
activity.
Another way in which schema theory illuminates the significance of musical experience is
by showing how it can be an alternative medium in which schemata can first develop. In his
description of the work of Candace Brower, Zbikowski (1997-98) claims that it “shows how
our experience of music may inform, and perhaps even shape, our image schemata: that is,
under certain circumstances, music may represent the primary source or experience, rather
than a target domain which we structure in terms of a more familiar source domain” (p. 10).
This observation is of primary importance in considering the rationale for schema theory in
music therapy, and in music-centered music therapy theory. It says that experience in music can
provide the template for the creation of cognitive constructs and processes that underlie
fundamental aspects of human understanding in all other domains.
Two music therapy studies that incorporate schema theory corroborate these claims. The
research of Henrik Jungaberle, Rolf Verres, and Fletcher Dubois (2001) suggests that the
specific schemata operative in the linguistic sphere are also indigenous to music and music
therapy processes. And Gabriella Perilli’s (2002) research into the developmental literature
leads her to the conclusion that because experiences of music and sound are such important
parts of a child’s early life prior to the development of verbal language, “sounds and music

contribute to the formation of nonverbal imaginative [sic] schemas” (p. 420). She goes on to
argue that these early experiences of sound and of music contribute to the development of
cognitive structures that develop in and with verbal language. As an example of the
fundamental role of musical experience in developing metaphoric concepts that help us to
understand and communicate the nature of our experience, Perilli cites examples in which
human relations are described through musical terms, such as when people are “not in
harmony” or “in tune” with each other (p. 427). Thus, to extend the logic of Perilli’s
reasoning, by employing image schemata to illuminate music therapy process, we may be
employing constructs that actually originate in early music experience.
IMAGE SCHEMATA IN MUSIC AND MUSIC THERAPY

I would like to reemphasize the rationale for applying schema theory within music-centered
theory. A number of considerations have guided me in this decision, all of which speak to the
possibility that schemata are naturally present in our experience of music. These involve (1)
the way in which image schemata can connect music therapy processes to broader human
concerns and areas of inquiry; (2) the fact that schemata are so clearly present in our
descriptions of music; and (3) the beginning research in this area that suggests that schemata
are not only indigenous to music therapy processes, but also that early musical experience may
actually play a crucial role in the way that schemata arise. Thus, it may be that early musical
and other aural experiences are integral to the ways that human beings conceive of and
communicate their experience in the physical, psychological, and social domains.
(1) The value of musicing may be self-evident for those who participate in the experience,
clients and therapists. But as long as there are pragmatic, social, or economic reasons to
explain the value of the process to those without experiential knowledge of it, it will be
necessary to connect music therapy processes to other fundamental human processes and
concerns. In the case of schemata, the fit appears to be a natural one with many fruitful areas of
application.58
The application of image schemata to music therapy process is warranted by the way they
mediate musical experiences. They function to organize sounds into meaningful aggregations of
tone and, as such, are implicated in all musical experiences in the clinical and nonclinical
domains. They also serve to link musical experiences to our lives outside of music and can
play an important role in explanatory theory, in which this type of linkage is important. The
linkage flows in two directions, as the use of schemata can help us to see musical experiences
as part of life outside music and to experience our lives outside music in its musical character.
(2) It is almost a given that verbal language does not well capture or convey the nature of
musical experience. This is no reason to abandon linguistic explorations of music or to
despair of gaining insight into its fundamental nature. One tack is to take the perspective of
Zuckerkandl (1973), who observes that we can “say in words what it is that words cannot
say” (p. 63). Another strategy is to adopt Lakoff and Johnson’s view of language as a key to
understanding human experience and look at how we talk about music, not just what we say
about it. The how holds insight into the latent constructs of music derived from our experience

of it. Examining the choice of metaphoric language reveals how we think about music, which
is based on our experience of it, which in turn is based on the properties of music itself.
Therefore, examining the language we use in describing music and musical experience can be
an important avenue for gaining insight into its nature and, hence, its clinical value.
Even a cursory look at the language we use to talk about music reveals the pervasiveness of
the schemata proposed by Lakoff and Johnson; it is nearly impossible to say anything about
music without using them. The fact that the qualities of particular schemata best convey our
experience of music supports their use in music-centered music therapy theory. So while the
concept of schemata did not emerge from the study of music in a historical sense, it just as
well could have in a conceptual sense, a claim that would be difficult to make for other
frameworks such as the psychoanalytical and behavioral ones.
(3) Both Jungaberle et al. (2001) and Perilli (2002) have begun discussing the mechanisms
of music therapy process and its areas of benefit through the language of image schemata.
Jungaberle et al. (2001) assert that the use of this framework can play a role in integrative
theory because metaphor analysis integrates the “traditional view of a categorical polarity
between ‘emotional’ and ‘cognitive,’” and they point to several areas of theory “that resolve
that ‘polarity’ under the idea of integrated representational systems” (p. 6).
Perilli’s (2002) focus is somewhat different. She identifies two distinct roles for metaphor
in psychotherapy: “The first is to find ways for the client to describe, represent, and
communicate the self and its own unique psychic structure (a self-representative metaphor);
the second is to acquire new knowledge about oneself and the world through some type of
growth or creative effort (a knowledge development metaphor)” (p. 433). In fact, she locates
the primary value of the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music in the fact that it is “a
quintessential example of the metaphorical process, and as such is naturally conducive to
effecting change in an individual” (p. 445).
My own view is that schemata are not just of cognitive importance but also represent basic
emotional, psychological, and developmental needs and aspirations of human beings. For
example, experiencing oneself as being part of a whole, part of something larger than oneself,
is something that gives to most people an enhanced sense of purpose in life. Similarly, when
we imagine our lives as being on a path to a goal, our daily life struggles acquire greater
meaning. We are better able to cope with difficulties in life when the struggles are experienced
as a means to an end.
The need to experience PART-WHOLE relationships or the dynamic of the SOURCE-
PATH-GOAL schema are ways to experience essential human needs addressed in therapy. One
way of looking at the value of music therapy experiences is to consider the nature of the
schemata underlying them. These can provide experiences that are lacking in client’s lives,
particularly those experiences needed for meaning creation, health, development, and self-
actualization.
The following material is not intended to be an exhaustive examination of how image
schemata can be applied to music in general or to music therapy in particular. The focus is to
provide an example of how this can be done and to consider the explanatory power that is
thereby gained. Four representative schemata will be examined, two that originate in relation

to our experience of our own bodies and two that relate to how we experience our bodies
moving in space.
Up-Down (Verticality)
Our experience of verticality is prominent in mapping our experience as physical beings in
three-dimensional space onto music. A variety of aspects of music are naturally described by
this schema. Some of the most common ones include pitch (high or low tones), tempo (an up-
tempo piece), groove, (to get down in the groove or to float above the groove), volume
(coming up is to get louder, bringing it down is to play softer), harmonic movement (the return
to the tonic chord is indicated by the term cadence or fall), and pulse (such as in the up-beat
and the down-beat of a measure).59
Often, those aspects of music that are described by the same end of the polarity seem to
belong together. For example, it is harder to play softly and quickly than it is to play loudly
and quickly. Similarly, in many styles of popular music a solo builds in intensity as fast, loud,
and tones of greater frequency—all of which exist at the up or high end of the schema—often
constitute a climax.
One way this schema can be applied to music therapy is when the clinical focus is
enhancing a client’s connection to the consensus view of reality. Consider two terms that
appear commonly in clinical goals: Therapists can work toward helping a client become more
grounded or to achieve a better reality orientation. In the use of both of these terms, we are
extrapolating from our experience as beings in physical space and projecting these qualities
onto a person’s inner life and social functioning.
To literally be grounded is to be tethered to the Earth, and therefore connected to a point of
stability. And the term orientation refers to locating or placing oneself relative to the points of
the compass. When we use these terms in clinical contexts, we are actually using them
metaphorically. What therapists desire for their clients that is expressed through this language
is for them to be “oriented to” reality and to do so in a way that provides a firm basis for
acting in the world.
When we are literally lost in the physical world, we have no orientation to compass points,
and we do not know which direction to move in. To feel oriented in three-dimensional
physical space requires orientation to the force of gravity. Without a sense of up and down, we
feel as if we are disoriented, floating in space. This is a physical analog of the mental state of
individuals such as autistic children or adults with dissociative disorders who are often
considered to not be well oriented or well grounded in the world. Just as being literally
grounded means that one is subject to the force of gravity in a way that orientation is enabled,
being grounded in a psychological sense means that one is aware of and influenced by the
psychological and social forces that allow for psychological and social orientation to be
established.
Establishing a sense of UP-DOWN or HIGH -LOW can be the first step in establishing an
individual’s orientation in the world. Through musical experiences of UP-DOWN, a person
who is disoriented physically, emotionally, or socially can begin to achieve a better sense of
personal orientation in these different spheres of human functioning. This is because the two

experiences—that is, being grounded physically and being grounded psychologically—share
common elements. Becoming oriented in tonal space can establish a template for becoming
oriented in one’s psychological and social domain as well.
Another way in which this schema maybe applied in music therapy is by providing a means
for enhancing one’s mood or sense of self, or altering one’s consciousness. First, let us
consider how important this schema is by examining its uses in everyday language. To be on
top of things is to be aware of and in control of one’s circumstances; to be moving up in the
world is to be progressing in one’s career; to be feeling up is to be feeling good; to have a
higher position socially or vocationally is to be in a position of authority. It is clear that being
up is generally a valued position in society.
To feel down is to be feeling depressed or sad; to lie low is to stay hidden, unseen; a lowly
job is generally one without value in society. Generally, experiences and positions to be
avoided are described by words connected to the down end of the schema.
Now consider a physically disabled individual who must use a wheelchair because of
some congenital condition. This person may have never had the experience of becoming
vertical that is enjoyed by toddlers when they first learn to stand and walk. This person has not
had the same physical experience of becoming vertical, of getting a physical perspective of
being “on top of things.” It is an open question as to how this may have affected the
development of the VERTICALITY schema for such an individual.
But what we can see is how experiencing being up through music can be a compensatory
experience for the deficits in physical experience. This person can feel uplifted through music.
This can offer a means for emotional experience through experiences of UP-DOWN that might
otherwise not be available. In every way that being up is a valued experience, this person can
now begin to have some of those types of experiences through experiencing being elevated in
music.
Moreover, some of forms of music therapy, such as Guided Imagery and Music, incorporate
the idea of altering consciousness as part of its clinical efficacy. Typically, this is thought of as
elevating or raising consciousness so that the change in consciousness that facilitates the
work of the therapy shares something with the physical experience of up. Moreover, once one
is in the altered state and experiencing imagery, experiences of both ascent and descent are an
important part of this work, and it is clear that it is through the various aspects of music that
exist on the UP-DOWN continuum that this alteration of consciousness is achieved and then
worked with clinically.
Part-Whole
Part-whole relationships are most apparent when considering how music is organized in its
tonal, structural, textural, and rhythmic dimensions. In the area of tonal relationships,
individual pitches are considered to be part of a scale, key, or chord, all which represent the
whole. The sound of individual instruments is part of the whole represented by the sonic
texture produced by the joining of multiple instruments, so we talk about the string section or
the rhythm section. Individual players are part of a section that in turn is part of the entire
orchestra or ensemble.

The temporal aspect of music is also divided into part-whole relationships when we
consider how the single measure represents a whole that is separated into parts such as
quarter-notes and half-notes, and that the note value which occupies the entire measure is
called a whole. When we consider how music is arranged, individual simultaneous musical
parts often blend into a unified whole, whether we are considering classical counterpoint or
the arrangement of parts in a funk band.
And last, the temporal presentation of music is often conceived in part-whole relationships.
This is true in areas as diverse as a pop song consisting of a verse, chorus, and bridge, or the
various sections or movements of a classical work. Part-whole relationships are ubiquitous in
almost all kinds of music.
Lakoff and Johnson (1980) discuss how the integration of human experience into coherent
wholes is dependent upon the use of “experiential gestalts” that get integrated into
“multidimensional structured wholes” (p. 81). The cognitive ability to build disparate
experience into coherent wholes originates in our experience with our own bodies that have
parts that can be controlled independently. The part-whole structuring that we learn in relation
to our bodies is imposed upon events in the external world, thus bringing greater coherence to
them and enhancing our understanding of, and ability to interact with, the external world. Thus,
understanding how the PART-WHOLE schema works is necessary to understanding how
human beings create a sense of meaning that brings coherence to one’s life.
It is possible to think about the needs of many music therapy clients in terms of inadequate
part-whole relationships. The experience of musical part-whole relationships in music therapy
has a primary value in fostering intra- and interpersonal integration and connection. All
clinical needs that relate in some way to inadequate integration or connection of any kind can
be understood in terms of this schema.
Individuals born with physical disabilities that inhibit their motoric functioning may have
an impaired sense of part-whole relationships as a result. For such people, the whole (of the
body) is not “whole” (in the sense of being complete). The (body) parts may not be well
integrated and not working in concert. (Interesting how the same word that labels a musical
performance also signifies the nature of cooperative human activity.) As a result, the physical
limitations could have secondary consequents in inhibiting cognitive development, particularly
as it relates to the integration of experience. In music therapy, successful incorporation of
musical experiences built upon part-whole relationships can offer an alternative domain in
which to develop this construct so essential to the integration and differentiation of ongoing
experience into meaningful wholes.

On the psychological level, clients can suffer from an inadequate integration of the various
parts of their selves. Different personality theories talk about psychological splits between
psychic structures or modes of functioning. Without adopting any one psychological system, it
is still possible to consider how the separation of thought and affect, or thought and action, for
example, is something that characterizes people as diverse as autistic children, individuals
with psychiatric disabilities, or normally functioning adults with an inadequate sense of
personal gratification in their lives.
The integration of a person’s inner life is something that can be conceived in terms of the

development of enhanced part-whole relationships that characterize musical experiences,
compositions, and improvisations. In a way, this is taking Aldridge’s (1989) idea of the body
as a symphonic entity and extending it into the psychological domain. The same types of part-
whole relationships that determine a well-functioning human body also characterize a person’s
psychological functioning.
Similarly, many music therapy clients do not have adequate connections to other people,
social structures, or anything larger than themselves or the limits of their own world. Those
individuals who are relatively more disabled may not be capable of having a job, religious
identity, family relationships, spiritual belief system, or commitment to organizations that
represent shared values that give to most people a sense of belonging. Just as a single person
is a whole that is constituted of parts that require integration, individual people are also parts
of greater wholes. The experience of belonging to a social, religious, familial, or tribal group
contributes to a sense of purpose and meaning in life. For many music therapy clients, creating
music with other people may be the only way in which they have an opportunity to experience
this type of identification and its attendant feelings of purpose.
Considering the two dimensions of intra- and interpersonal relating separately does not
mean that they are separate. Certainly it can be seen how facilitating someone’s inner
integration can ease the way for enhanced social functioning, and the degree to which one
achieves greater integration into social structures certainly presents enhanced opportunities for
inner development. Human development along the lines of the PART-WHOLE schema is the
primary element, and it is something that is then reflected in these multiple dimensions of
functioning. And last, when social integration is considered a mirror process of intrapersonal
integration—rather than being dichotomous with it—the rationales for contemporary
frameworks such as culture-centered music therapy and community music therapy can become
more clear.
Source-Path-Goal
This schema is implicated when any musical phenomenon suggests a destination. In
considering the various forms of music in the Western tradition, Keil (1994b) observes that it60
is applicable in different ways in forms of classical music that generate embodied meaning
based upon syntactic and architectonic principles as well as in styles such as jazz that focus
more on process, engendered feeling, and vital drive. In the former, the goal may be
understood as a particular musical event; in the latter, the goal may be better described as the
achievement of a particular state.

Again, we can see this schema in the way that we talk about music. A few examples will
suffice to make this point: Certain tones in a melody or scale lead to other tones; one chord in
a composition can point to another chord; a melody as a whole traces a tonal path or
contour; transition or pivot chords help us to get from one key to another.
As will be discussed in the following chapter, Zuckerkandl’s philosophy of music suggests
that this schema is present in the scales constituting much of Western tonal music, although
there is the peculiarity of the source and goal being identical.61 It is the presence of this
schema within its constituent materials that allows actual compositions or performances of

music to embody the schema and that links the micro level of musical phenomena with the
macro level of broad musical forms. This schema is present within musical themes and
melodies, and in the way that they are varied compositionally or in performance. It can also be
seen in modulations of key and in cadences. Copland’s (1953) explanation of musical form
tacitly embodies this schema and relates it to the sense of flow in music:
Form must have what in my student days we used to call la grande ligne (the long line)….
To be properly understood in relation to a piece of music, it must be felt. In mere words, it
simply means that every good piece of music must give us a sense of flow—a sense of
continuity from first note to last.… A great symphony is a man-made Mississippi down
which we irresistibly flow from the instant of our leave-taking to a long foreseen
destination, (p. 24)
The long line must give us a sense of direction, and we must be made to feel that that
direction is the inevitable one. (p. 68)
The PATH schema is present in music whenever there is flow or movement. Adding SOURCE
and GOAL to the schema provides direction and therefore purpose to the movement.
As was mentioned previously, these schemata are important components of cognitive
development and emotional development, particularly those processes related to developing a
sense of self. And because they are related to the way that the body relates to itself, and the
way that the body is perceived in relation to motion in physical space, it is clear that for
children who are impaired physically, and therefore do not have the experiences that would
normally contribute to the developing of schemata, it is essential to be exposed to alternate
means for developing them.
For example, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) cite Jean Piaget’s speculations that infants first
learn the concept of causation through the physical manipulation of objects in their
environment, such as when they pull off blankets, throw bottles, and drop toys. For therapists
who work with disabled children, this observation brings up a central question: What about
infants who for reasons of physical or cognitive disability are either unable to manipulate
objects in their environment or unable to construct the repeated observations into a coherent
internal theory of causation? It would seem as though the disability, besides imposing its own
inherent limitations, also impairs the child’s development through these secondary effects.
Consider a basic type of action engaged in by most young children when they become able
to crawl and then walk: They repeatedly move away from and back toward a parent or other
caregiver. Once children acquire the power of self-locomotion, they use it to move away from
and back toward something familiar and safe. (This is discussed in chapter 13 as a
developmental analog of the rondo form.) Again, beginning at a specific point in space and
moving along a path that is defined by a specific direction, e.g., either away from or back
toward, appears to be a primal way of developing the concept of SOURCE-PATH-GOAL.
Johnson (1987) elaborates on how the PATH schema is an integral part of being able to
formulate and realize human goals and purposes:
This definite internal structure for our path schema provides the basis for a large number of

metaphorical mappings from concrete, spatial domains onto more abstract domains. Let us
examine the way the path schema grounds the metaphor PURPOSES ARE PHYSICAL
GOALS. Here goals are understood as end points toward which my various physical
actions can be directed. In the metaphor we are thus understanding very abstract purposes
(such as writing a book, getting a Ph.D., finding happiness) in terms of the performance of
various physical acts in reaching a spatial goal. (p. 114)
The PATH schema is pervasive in terms of providing a template for the satisfaction of human
aspirations, from the most minute to the most grand. Developing a concept of it and mastering
the dynamics of this construct would seem to be an essential task in life. Yet, in an important
way, acquiring this construct is dependent upon the conscious control of the motion of one’s
body through space.
Moreover, this schema represents an essential mode of developing autonomy,
independence, and a basic sense of self. The process of cognitively and emotionally
separating oneself from the external world and from one’s parents is supported by the act of
physical separation. A child who can control his own motor function and who can deliberately
move way from a parent is in the process of fully realizing his separateness as a being. This
development of autonomy, of realizing oneself as a separate being with a unique capacity for
intentional action, appears to be intimately related to the physical motor skills.
Now consider a severely physically disabled child who may not have use of his or her
limbs. This child is not able to deliberately crawl away from a parent. This child is not able to
have the typical experiences that support the development of the capacity for intentional action
and the resulting feelings of being a separate and autonomous being.
For this child, to be able to live in music, within the forces that reside in music, and thus
experience the schema of SOURCE-PATH-GOAL, is to have experiences that can provide the
sense of purpose and intentionality that otherwise are dependent upon physical functioning.
Experience within this schema can activate an awareness of one’s will and sense of self.
Recall how this schema was described as a means of understanding human aspirations and
purposes. Music may be an alternate way for children to develop a concept of intentionality,
striving toward a goal, and achieving it. Whether it is in the striving to reach one tone from
another or the organic unfolding of a session-long improvisation woven together by thematic
elements, music therapy may be the only means for such a child to develop a sense of will and
the awareness of self that goes along with it.
Container (with Inside, Outside, and Boundary)

This is also a pervasive schema in music with countless examples of phenomena that are
described as things that one can be in or out of while listening to, performing, or composing
music.
Musical forms are described this way, as when one says of a piece of music that it is
written in sonata form or in a 12-bar blues. In addition to these general forms, parts of
specific works of music are described as something to be in or out of, as when players talk
about being in a certain measure or in the verse or chorus of a song. And, by extension, if parts

of compositions are something that one can be in, so can the work as a whole. This is
indicated in the way that the term introduction has a double meaning in musical contexts. An
introduction is presented at the outset of a piece of music and has a temporal dimension as
something that exists at the beginning. Yet, introduce also means “to put inside or into; insert
or inject” (American Heritage College Dictionary, 4th edition, 2002, p. 728) and in this way
also indicates that it is conceived as something that places the player or listener inside
something. In fact, in current parlance in pop music circles, an intro begins a piece while an
outro is something that concludes it. When a piece is finished, the container is exited.
Tonal centers and scales also are described this way, as when musicians ask What key is
this piece in? or What key are we in?62 Certain tones are in the key and other ones are outside
of it. A melody or motif can function as a container as well, when we identify certain tones as
constituting the melody. Styles and idioms are also described this way and can function as
containers. A piece is composed in a given style, and jazz players are often described as being
inside players or outside players depending upon the degree to which they adhere to stylistic
conventions regarding melody, harmony, and phrasing.
Musical grooves are also described in this schema, as players or pieces themselves are
said to be in the groove or in the pocket. Similarly, one can be in or out of rhythm, and thus
the tempo and metric organization of music can function as a container. And, of course, in the
tonal realm, singers and players can be in tune or out of tune. There may be many other
examples along these lines.
In considering the developmental significance of this schema, we can think about how
infants develop a sense of their own body and what role this realization plays in the
development of a healthy self. As anyone who is around babies can attest, any object within a
baby’s grasp will eventually wind up in its mouth. This seems to be a primary way of
developing notions of the body as a delimited container in which objects that are outside can
be brought inside. It is a primal way of developing the notion of a container with a boundary,
inside, and outside.
Once this concept is established, one can begin to establish the sense of me-not me, as the
container is me, everything outside the container is not-me, and the boundary represents the
separation from (as well as the connection to) the outside world. Thus, the experience of the
body as a CONTAINER appears essential to the development of an autonomous sense of self.
In many ways, the fundamental cognitive operations of the human mind involve processes
of categorization. Lakoff and Johnson assert that “in order to understand the world and
function in it, we have to categorize, in ways that make sense to us, the things and experiences
that we encounter” (1980, p. 162). But what is a category if not a conceptual container in
which certain things and experiences belong, from which others are excluded, and on the
periphery of which still others remain? Thus, the CONTAINER schema is not just fundamental
to the development of an autonomous self, but it also underlies all possibility for conceptual
thinking.
Hence, this schema is relevant in many music therapy applications, as many diverse types
of clinical needs in the cognitive, affective, social, and motoric realm can be met by the way
music provides the experience of a CONTAINER.63 In exploring the clinical applications of

this particular schema, it is helpful to first consider its various aspects:
There are at least five important entailments or consequences of these recurring
experiential image-schematic structures for in-out orientation, (i) The experience of
containment typically involves protection from, or resistance to, external forces…. (ii)
Containment also limits and restricts forces within the container…. (iii) Because of this
restraint of forces, the contained object gets a relative fixity of location.… (iv) This
relative fixing of location within the container means that the container object becomes
either accessible or inaccessible to the view of some observer.… (v) Finally, we
experience transitivity of containment. If B is in A, then whatever is in B is also in A.
(Johnson, 1987, p. 22)
Throughout the discussion in this and subsequent chapters, various entailments of this schema
will be highlighted.
Fearful, fragile, or exceedingly anxious clients have an emotional need to feel particularly
held in the music. These can be people who have been abused or traumatized in any way,
including psychologically, physically, or because of a medical crisis. The musical
CONTAINER, in its protective entailment, can provide a safe haven for people for whom life
itself is felt as dangerous.
The conditions of merged clients without a clear sense of self can also be understood as a
deficit in clear emotional and conceptual experiences of a CONTAINER. This can include
people such as autistic children and adults with schizophrenia or dissociative disorders.
Establishing a sense of container with an inside, outside, and boundary between can be an
important step in developing a clearer and coherent sense of self. This area of clinical focus
can be understood as a combination of entailments ii-iv. Taken as a group, they all support the
development of a heightened and more integrated sense of self as a person’s psychic forces
become directed inward, thus increasing self-awareness.
There are also people who do not have a clear notion of boundaries. This can result in
patterns of behavior characterized by intruding on others or allowing inappropriate intrusion
into one’s own intrapersonal sphere. The experience of the containing element of music can be
a first healthy experience of boundaries and a means for developing a more differentiated
sense of self and other, and it can contribute to the development of more functional social
behaviors to reinforce this realization. Once one experiences oneself as a bounded container,
there is the possibility of experiencing others in this way and thereby learning to treat others
with greater respect.

However, it would be a misconstrual of the present work to see it as equivalent to a
psychoanalytic notion of a psychological container that by definition is a nurturing and
positive experience. For while a CONTAINER can provide a positive function, sometimes it
is an inhibiting element in a person’s life and therefore must be exited. For example, while a
container can support what is inside it, it can constrict its movement as well, as portrayed in
entailment (ii) above. Consider how the military strategy of containment serves to restrict the
freedom of movement of those entities being contained.
It is possible that disability, or any other limiting human circumstance, can represent a

CONTAINER that a person desires to enlarge or even exit. For some disabled people, their
sense of self as a disabled individual can be experienced as a container that constricts their
functioning to a narrow and unrewarding range of human experience. Music can provide a
means for enlarging and/or exiting a dysfunctional container.
For example, in analyzing the opening of Vèrese’s Density 21.5, Brower (1997-98)
concludes that the initial three bars can be understood as an “expanding container” as the low
C# “stands apart from the action carried out above it” (p. 45), represented by ascending and
descending leaps and step-wise movements. Brower says that the parallel to this notion is
Guck’s description of the phrase as an “opening wedge” (p. 45). Proceeding with the
expanding container metaphoric analysis, Brower goes on to note that later in the piece,
pitches that were initially approached in a more difficult, labored manner are attained more
easily and in a quicker fashion because the tonal world has been opened up through the
expanded CONTAINER.
The notion of music unfolding as an expanding CONTAINER is a central part of the
analysis of this historically important piece of music. It is also a way of describing clinical
music therapy interventions that are at the core of the Nordoff-Robbins approach. Consider
this description of some of Paul Nordoff’s seminal work with an 8-year-old sightless and
nonverbal boy named Mike whose life is constricted by the nature of his impairments:
As this beating gains in impetus, the piano follows an ascending motif in an oblique motion
that creates a feeling of expanding the experiential space in which the music and the
musicians are living. It also seems to create an experience of stretching oneself beyond
internal limitations—to the degree that Mike can live in the music Paul and he are creating
together he will thus experience a transcending of his own limitations. (Aigen, 1998, p.
196)
The clinical-artistic management of tone and melody create a musical CONTAINER that is an
analog of the client’s world. When this tonal world is expanded, when the CONTAINER is
enlarged, the client’s world is similarly enlarged. This is a prime example of how the musical
analysis effected through schema theory provides a direct link to the clinical value of that
experience.
I would like to add one caution about the application of schema theory. When we use
orientational categories of experience with the physical world to describe other experiential
realms, we use concepts in a way that is different from how they are used in their originating
context. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) use the example that when there is a rock in our visual
field, and we see a ball between us and the rock, we say that the ball is in front of the rock,
even though, unlike people or automobiles, the rock has no side that is inherently its front.
The situation is the same when we consider how the CONTAINER schema is applied.
Relative to our purposes, we can conceive of things in the world as being containers or not.
We can, for example, conceive of a clearing in a forest as being a container and understand
ourselves as being in the clearing, or out of it. Being a container is not an inherent property
of that place in the woods where the trees are less dense; it is a property that we project
onto it relative to the way we function with respect to it. Relative to other perceptions and

purposes, we can view the rest of the forest outside the clearing as a different container and
perceive ourselves as being in the forest. And we can do both simultaneously and speak of
emerging from the forest into the clearing. (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 161)
These are important considerations to keep in mind in any application of schemata to music
therapy, particularly as we consider how different aspects of music can function as a
CONTAINER. People have physical, psychological, and social needs to be in containers as
well as to transcend them. The way that a particular element of music functions and thus
should be construed is context-dependent and related to the individual client and course of
therapy.
In chapter 14, it will be illustrated how at times a melody can be a CONTAINER, at times
it can be a conveyance from one CONTAINER to another, and at still other times it can be a
means for experience that exists outside of the separations that inhere in a CONTAINER. Thus,
none of the statements in the present work about the clinical applications of different aspects
of music should be understood as exclusive categorizations. Rather they should be understood
in the spirit in which Lakoff and Johnson discuss them, that relative to specific human
purposes, different objects, events, or processes can function in certain ways captured by the
metaphor we use to describe them.
TIME-AS-SPACE, FORCE, AND MOTION IN MUSIC

Music exists in time, but the predominance of the terminology we use to discuss it is based on
spatial constructs. This is a consequence of the fact that time itself is often construed in spatial
terms. Saslaw (1997–98) details how this type of cross-domain mapping influences the way
we experience and talk about music:
Our understanding of music is particularly affected by the fact that our concept of time
seems to be structured by, or at least inextricably linked with, our physical experience of
space. This is the source of the omnipresent mode of speaking and thinking of music as
movement toward various spatial locations, as expressed in statements like, “the motion to
the dominant,” “arriving again at the tonic,” “vacillating between C and F#,” etc. Since time
is structured spatially, attributes of movement in space are imputed to it; time spans become
distances, one encounters detours (i.e., delays) or gets blocked from one’s destination, and
various applications of forces are required in order to initiate and sustain motion, (p. 18)
Johnson and Larson (2003) consider the primacy of time concepts in understanding how we
experience music. They assert that in order to understand “metaphorical concepts of tonal
motion, we must first understand our concepts of time, all of which are profoundly metaphoric.
We typically conceptualize the ‘passing’ of time metaphorically—as motion through space” (p.
66). They go on to highlight the basic metaphoric systems for the spatialization of time, that is,
the understanding of time through spatial constructs.
The two vast metaphor systems, “MOVING TIMES” and “MOVING OBSERVER,” define
most of our spatialization of time. Notice that they are figure-ground reversals of one

another. In the “MOVING TIMES” metaphor, the times are the figure moving relative to the
stationary observer (as ground), whereas in the “MOVING OBSERVER” metaphor, the
observer is the figure moving relative to the time landscape (as ground), (p. 68)
As an example of this metaphoric understanding of time, consider how we face or look

toward the future, while prior events recede into the distant past. And, although my own
knowledge of physics is too rudimentary to explore the connections more deeply, on some
levels of analysis in physics our concepts of space and time are considered to be two ways of
describing the same thing. Perhaps there is a profound insight about the nature of the external
world hidden within our experience of music.
Johnson and Larson (2003) make a strong argument for the idea that notions of physical
space and motion are integral in how we experience, and hence talk about and understand,
music:
Our claim is that people have no robust way of conceptualizing musical motion without
metaphor and that all reasoning about musical motion and musical space inherits the
internal logic of such metaphors. If this claim is correct, and if the source domain for
musical motion is motion in space, then the way we learn about space and physical motion
should be crucial to how we experience and think about musical motion, (p. 68)
Considering how particular aspects of music described by different spatially based

schemata can provide insight into the nature of music. For example, the tonal value that
identifies a key can be described either as the root or as the tonal center. In the former
characterization, the UP-DOWN schema is invoked as a root typically exists below that which
grows out from it; in the latter characterization, it is the CONTAINER schema that is invoked
because only a discrete object or physical space can have a center and a periphery.
We tend to think of directions of up and down as being absolute, but of course these are
relative judgments. The spatial direction that is up in New York City is quite different from the
direction that is up in Tokyo and, strictly speaking, the direction that is up is different for any
point on the Earth. Thus, what is up is defined not by an absolute direction but by that direction
that is opposite from the force of Earth’s gravity. Up is the direction that moves against the
dominant force in operation; down is the direction that moves with the force. And consider
how moving upriver means to move against the flow of the current and to go downriver is to
move with the flow. Thus, the UP-DOWN schema is not acquired as a result of learning
specific directions, such as east-west or left-right, but is instead developed by the experiences
of forces. This explains why a person completely without sight could still acquire the concept
of up-down.
In gaining insight into what we mean by talking about a particular tone value as the tonal
center of a key, it is helpful to think about the center point of a planetary body such as the
Earth. Just as any movement from the center of the Earth is up not because of the spatial
direction of the movement but because all motion from the center is up, any tonal motion from
the key center is simultaneously a dynamic up.64 And thus motion from any scale tone back to
the root/tonal center is a movement down. Thinking about harmonic motion can make this point

clearer. We still talk about a movement from dominant to tonic chord as a cadence (fall)
regardless of whether the particular tones played are higher in the tonic chord than in the
dominant chord.
The fact that the identifying tone of a key is described both as a root and as a center
suggests that the situation in music is similar to that of space.65 That is, human beings perceive
a force in music, the origins of the force are conceptualized as a center, and all movement
away from the center and against the force is conceived and experienced as up. The linguistic
analysis supports the fundamental notion of music-centered theory of a force that resides in
music that can be directed with clinical intent.
In Jungaberle et al.’s (2001) study, interviews with music therapy clients revealed that
spatial metaphors were the most prevalent type of metaphor used in descriptions of musical
experiences in music therapy. Also common was the description of music as “a force, a
power, or an energy that could ‘move’ something” (p. 10) such as hidden feelings.
Interestingly, there were two types of images in this area that the authors describe as being in
opposition to each other: (1) Music is a means of bringing inner things out into the open and
(2) Music is a means to find access to the inner world. In the former image, the movement is
from in to out; in the latter image, the movement is from out to in. It is possible that these
metaphors are more accurately categorized within a spatial schema such as CONTAINER
rather than that of FORCE, because of the strong emphasis on in and out.
The authors of this study also corroborate the notion that the study of music therapy from a
musical perspective involves a conceptual relationship that flows in two directions. While
they believe that the application of spatial metaphors to music reflects the transfer into musical
experience of a concept developed outside of music, their research also revealed that the
conceptual, metaphoric transfer operates in the opposite direction as well. When people began
describing their extramusical life through concepts from music, “then the issues of life are
treated as if they were issues of music” (Jungaberle et al., 2001, p. 12). Examples of this type
of transfer can be seen in the use of the term good vibrations to “stand for positive emotional
contact” and when “musical ‘harmony’ functions as an example for peaceful coexistence of
people” (p. 12). Out of this analysis the authors provide a notion that could certainly play a
role in music-centered theory:
There are elements of the vague and fluid intramusical world transferred into our life
worlds: that means we are ‘hearing things out of’ music and into the every day realm. If the
experience coming from the musical scene is transferred to every day life, music may
become a metaphor we learn by. (p. 13)
One salient point here: The process of personal self-exploration that characterizes some
forms of psychotherapy or personal growth in general is often thought of as one that involves a
delving into, a movement of consciousness from the periphery of our being, self, or psyche, to
its center. If music is a phenomenon that conveys a force of attraction that exerts a pull toward
its center, it is natural that to align human consciousness with this force and to move with it is
to move into the center of our beings as well. This is one way of conceptualizing how
becoming or identifying with music naturally promotes the fundamental processes of therapy.

Concepts of FORCE are present in other kinds of musical analysis,66 but they are
particularly important in those that originate in schema theory because of the prevalence of the
application of force in our movements as bodies in physical space. Steve Larson summarizes
some important ways the FORCE schema is construed in the tonal aspects of music:
Three of these forces I call “gravity” (the tendency of an unstable note to descend),
“magnetism” (the tendency of an unstable note to move to the nearest stable pitch, a
tendency that grows stronger the closer we get to a goal), and “inertia” (the tendency of a
pattern of musical motion to continue in the same fashion, where what is meant by “same”
depends upon what that musical pattern is “heard as”). (Larson, cited in Larson, 1997-98,
p. 57)
The idea of tonal motion presupposes something that moves. Brower (1997-98) discusses
Arnheim’s concept of a melody as one that is consistent with the concepts of musical force and
motion:
Arnheim describes a tonal melody not as series of discrete tones, but as a trajectory of
motion carved out by a single tone in musical space. According to Arnheim, this motion is
experienced as arising from impulses originating within the tone itself, and carried out
under the influence of magnetism and gravity, (p. 38)
Although a melody consists of discrete events in time, in our experience of tonal motion we
experience these events in time as marking the path of a single object through space. The
motion of a melody can be understood as reflecting an interaction of the various forces active
in the musical realm. Thus, this motion is experienced as carving a path in musical space.
While this theme will be taken up in subsequent chapters, it can be noted here how the
aspects of music that allow it be experienced as an interplay of forces producing motion in
space have important implications for music therapy. A common strategy in schema theory is
to examine the source domain of a metaphor to gain insight into its domain of application. In
the case of paths, Brower notes how
we can gain further insight into the nature of musical pathways by considering their physical
counterparts. Pathways are a familiar and pervasive feature of our spatial world, serving to
connect important points within it. They tend to have certain properties such as smoothness,
straightness, solidness, and predictability. They are pre-existent and of relatively fixed
position, being either constructed or worn over time through repeated motions from one
point to another. Because pathways are designed to facilitate goal-directed motion, we

associate them with intentionality, both in their construction and in their use. (p. 41)
Thus, by their very nature, melodies as paths support the experience of intentionality. Many
areas of disability can be conceptualized as a deficit in the ability to conceive of oneself as an
acting agent in the world with the ability to act in accordance with one’s will. The experience
of musical paths can help to awaken consciousness of self and develop the possibility for
intentional action.
Consider the solar system and the motions of planetary and celestial bodies as a closed

system for a moment. The motion of the Moon can illustrate the three types of forces that
musical tones are subject to. For example, inertia would cause the Moon to move in a straight
line, so that when it departs from this motion we infer the existence of other forces; the
musical analogy to magnetism can be seen in the Moon’s orbit around the Earth as the nearest
stable “tone”; and gravity proper can be seen as the pull exerted by the Sun as the central
point of the solar system.
The pathway (that course of motion predicted by the action of forces) of the Moon’s motion
and its trajectory (its actual course of motion) are identical. Because the motion of the Moon is
accounted for by the actions of these three forces, the mechanical explanation in terms of
impersonal forces is adequate.
Similarly, tonal melodies are subject to the three forces of motion described by Larson.
However, actual musical melodies do not mechanically follow formulae. In considering the
experience of music as akin to a physical path, Brower (1997-98, p. 41) makes this distinction
in a way that helps explain our experience of music, while also providing important
considerations for explanation in music therapy:
The mapping of musical pathways onto physical ones yields insight into another important
aspect of melodic organization, namely, the relationship between underlying and surface
melodic motion. This can be explained metaphorically by distinguishing between a
pathway and a trajectory of melodic motion. In pursuing our goals in the physical world,
our course of motion may sometimes diverge, intentionally or unintentionally, from the
pathway laid out for it. Yet, even when our motion veers away from this pathway, we
remain conscious of its continued existence and its purpose in leading us to a particular
goal; as a result, we want to return to it. In a similar way, when the trajectory of a melodic
line departs from the pathway that underlies it, we tend to experience feelings of instability
and tension accompanied by a desire to return. Schenker describes the expressive force of
such departures as follows:
In the art of music, as in life, motion toward the goal encounters obstacles,
reverses disappointments, and involves great distances, detours, expansions,
interpolations, and, in short, retardations of all kinds…. Thus we hear in the
middle ground and foreground an almost dramatic course of events. (Schenker,
cited in Brower, p. 41)
For both Schenker and Brower, tonal pathways are the courses that melodies should take if
they were determined solely by tonal forces. Trajectories are actual melodies created by
human beings. It is in the way that melody departs from a strict determinism that musical
meaning arises. It is in the nature of these departures and excursions that music exists and that
allows it to be meaningful for human beings. The departure from the mechanical is what
awakens consciousness and makes music meaningful.
This is one of the prime reasons why the nature of the music matters in music therapy and
why a creative melody, for example, is important aesthetically as well as important clinically.
This is because it is in the aesthetic component of the music—that is, the departure from the
mechanical or the way that the mechanical is used—that meaning lies, whether this meaning is

considered of aesthetic import or of personal, psychological import.
Moreover, and this point will be elaborated on in subsequent chapters, what constitutes the
actual goal of the trajectory of a musical melody, phrase, or cadence is context dependent. As
Brower (1997-98) explains, it is not the case that tonal stability alone determines the nature of
musical goals:
We might infer that “platform” pitches are likely to be interpreted as goals, by virtue of
their stability, leaving intervening pitches to be interpreted as steps along a pathway leading
from one goal to the next. Yet, further reflection reveals that the tonal stability of an event
by itself is not enough to identify it as a goal, though its stability may contribute to our
experience of it as a goal. For … in everyday life we alternately pursue opposing states of
stability and instability, tension and relaxation. In tonal music, this is reflected in motion
leading away from a tonic followed by motion leading back to it, motion toward the apex of
a musical phrase followed by motion toward its cadence, (p. 43)
Musical goals can be points of stasis and points of unrest. This reflects the human need for
alternating experiences of freedom and structure, stability and instability. In music therapy, this
leaves the way open for the role of creativity, and for the meaning of music and musical
experience to be individually determined. But this recognition of the individual and context-
dependent elements does not invalidate other claims about music regarding its possession of
objective or more universal properties. What it does do is demonstrate the how both aspects
of human musical experience play an important role in determining its artistic and clinical
value.
Similarly, there are multiple metaphoric constructs that are relevant for any particular
aspect of music—for example, Johnson and Larson’s (2003) seemingly opposing accounts of
musical motion, one in which the observer moves through the musical landscape and one in
which the observer is stationary as music moves by him. The authors note this situation but do
not see it as damaging to their theory:
The absence of any core literal concept of musical “events” should direct our attention to
the ways we imaginatively conceive of the flow of our musical experience by means of
multiple metaphors that provide the relevant logics of our various conceptions of musical
motion and space. There is no more a single univocal notion of musical motion than there is
of causation, and yet we have gotten along reasonably well by knowing when a specific
metaphor for causation is appropriate within a specific context of inquiry, (p. 80)
This multiplicity of musical structuring agents will be a strength of the theory in its
application to music therapy. First, it will allow for differential application into widely
different treatment domains with their associated methods and conceptualizations of clinical
goals. Second, it will accommodate a wider variety of human experiences and clinical
processes; it can more effectively represent the processes for greater numbers of client. Third,
it will abide a greater variety of types of music. Fourth, it will have greater applicability to
varying levels of analysis. Fifth, it can be applied to more spheres of treatment, from a single
episode in an individual session to a course of therapy, to group work, to community work.

SCHEMA THEORY AND AREAS OF BENEFIT IN MUSIC THERAPY
Although this point has been made previously, I would like to highlight Saslaw’s (1997-98)
portrayal of the relation between the human body and human powers and styles of
conceptualization:
Recent research in cognitive science … based upon observation of human language and
behavior, coupled in the last few years with neurobiological research from Edelman and
others, proposes that direct, physical knowledge of the world plays a significant role in the
structuring of our conceptual entities. In this way abstract elements of thought are shaped by
human physiological characteristics. Examples include being oriented “vertically” to the
ground when we walk, having two arms and legs on both “sides” of our bodies, and sensing
forces such as gravity at work as we move in and interact with the world, (pp. 17–18)
To review the fundamental implications of these ideas, here are two examples: (1) Because
of the basic verticality of the human body, we develop the notions of up and down and then
apply these concepts to other domains, such as human emotions or the tonal realm of music.
Our modes of conceptualizing these domains result from the relation of our bodies to the
external world. (2) Because we possess bodies with two equally balanced, symmetric sides,
we experience equality of gravitational forces and balance in a specific way. We then take this
idea of physical balance and apply it to many other domains of human functioning, such as
when we seek a balance of opposing viewpoints in a political debate, or when we seek to
establish balance in a work of visual art or a musical melody, or when we seek to achieve a
balance of work and leisure in our lives. The way that we conceive of the political functioning
of human societies and our way of appreciating art and our way of construing the type of life
we seek to establish can all be seen as originating in the sense of balance we obtain because
of the particular construction of our bodies.
Now I would like to talk about music therapy, music therapy theory, areas of benefit in
music therapy, and how they all relate to image schema theory. First, I would note that there
are two distinct areas of client benefit in music therapy that can use schema theory as a
conceptual support: (1) those that are clinically compensatory in nature in that they
compensate for areas of disability or address areas of need exacerbated by disability; and (2)
those that are nonclinical in nature in that they provide benefits that are common to nonclinical
uses of music. In this present section, I would like to focus on the first group.
If it is true that the nature of the human body and the way that it functions is so essential to
the development of cognitive categories and strategies, including those involved in

establishing meaning, then it is clear that musical experience can provide an alternative
experiential domain to the physical in which the disabilities are not present or rendered less
constricting. The benefits of this alternative experiential domain are twofold: In the conceptual
and intellectual realm, the domain of music can be a place where schemata can develop and
differentiate. In the affective realm, the domain of music can provide different and healthier
ways of experience within the various schemata.
Music therapists work with many different kinds of people whose difficulties and clinical
needs relate in different ways to the physical body. Because the nature of the present work is

suggestive rather than comprehensive, I would just like to sketch out a few ways in which
thinking through schema theory can provide insight into music therapy processes.
First, we can think of anyone with physical problems of any sort that impair any aspect of
motor function. This would include anyone with paralysis in the extremities who is prevented
from having the typical physical experiences of moving about in the world under personal
volition or moving parts of one’s body in any volitional act, even while staying stationary. The
general idea here is that when physical disability prevents the typical interaction with the
physical world that is naturally part of cognitive development, music can provide an
alternative domain in which the cognitive development can occur.
Second, there are people who may have secondary physical impairments not directly
related to motor function that lead to serious restriction in motor functioning. For example,
someone who is visually impaired, but whose motor functions are unimpaired, will have a
different experience of moving in space and hence of schemata such as FORCE or SOURCE-
PATH-GOAL. These schemata are essential ones in formulating intentions and purposes in the
world and learning how to effect their realization. Again, it is possible that through music
these schemata can be developed more fully, or they can acquire a more positive association.
For example, for visually impaired individuals the idea of a path from one place to another
will be much different than it is for a fully sighted person. It may be something that is fraught
with dangers of the unknown. It is possible that this experience of paths in physical space as
dangerous entities could have a negative effect on one’s ability to embark upon a rewarding
life path. Music can provide a different experience of pathways as places where the
unpredictable elements can be learned to be enjoyed.
Third, there are people with organic illnesses such as schizophrenia or autism that can
cause disturbances in one’s relation to one’s body. Dissociative disorders can cause one to
experience parts of one’s body as autonomous entities. Thus, all types of physical experiences
are colored by the distorted relation to the body. The power of schemata to integrate
experience and to provide healthier part-whole relationships in music can be important in
these types of clinical applications.
Fourth, there are disturbances that may be more emotional in nature, such as eating
disorders, that can cause atypical relationships to one’s body. It would seem reasonable to
assume that a person with an eating disorder such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia is going to
have different experiences of the body than other people, and therefore may have a much
different CONTAINER schema. This is an example where, through musical experience,
particular schemata that may have negative or health-impeding associations can be

reconstructed in a healthier way.
In sum, the compensatory function of schemata in music equally addresses those with
physical, sensory-motor, organic, and/or emotional and behavioral disabilities. This is one of
the most important qualities that qualify it as a strong basis for general theory in music therapy.

56Following standard
usage in publications on schema theory, the present text will use
uppercase letters when a word refers to the schema of the same name.
57In noting the
human tendency to “conceptualize the nonphysical in terms of the
physical,” Lakoff and Johnson (1980, p. 59) state that they are not claiming that physical
experience is more basic than any other type, such as in the emotional or cultural domain.
Moreover, there are suggestions that music can also be an originating domain for certain
schemata.

58Henk Smeijsters(2003) adopts a similar strategy in his attempt at creating general
music therapy theory through his use of Stern’s “vitality affects,” a construct that has as its
primary value its crossmodal applicability. However, Smeijsters draws strict dichotomies
between aesthetic and stylistic factors of music on one hand, and factors that make the music
psychologically relevant on the other hand. Thus, his approach to theory clearly opposes
central aspects of music-centered thought.

59Musicianswho use rhythms that emphasize beats two and four in a four-beat measure
(such as rock and roll) refer to these beats as back-beats, and rhythm section players are
alternately described as playing ahead of or behind the beat, thus implicating a FRONT-
BACK schema as well.

60Keil
does not mention the schema by name, although he appears to be referring to a
similar idea in his discussion of “teleological or goal-directed music” (1994b, p. 53).

61The
scale can be understood as a CYCLE schema: “A cycle is a temporal circle. The
cycle begins with some initial state, proceeds through a sequence of connected events, and
ends where it began” (Johnson, 1987, p. 119).

62Notice these two variations of the metaphor: In the former, the musical composition is
something that is within the container provided by tonality; in the latter, it is the players
themselves who are located within the tonal container. An important clinical consideration is
whether atonality is best construed as a type of container or as an experience beyond the
boundaries of a container. The answer that is most congruent with schema theory is that both
states of affairs are possible, with individual factors determining which one is operative for a
given person in relation to a particular musical experience. But just asking the question in this
way demonstrates the relevance of schema theory for clinical music therapy practice.

63In fact,
Mary Priestley (1975) has developed a holding technique that she says is also
known as containing. In it, the therapist creates through music a safe container that can hold
the client’s powerful emotional expression.

64Zuckerkandl’snotion is that in a scale, for example, in moving from low to high pitches
(as low and high are commonly understood) one is continuously moving higher in tonal space;
yet once one passes the tone representing the interval of the fifth, the upward tonal motion is
actually a movement downward in the dynamic field because the goal of the motion is now
being approached rather than being moved away from.
65In fact,
Brower (1997-98) notes that “the downward pull of musical gravity reinforces
our orientation toward the tonic, causing us to experience the tonic as both center and ground”
(p. 47).

66Such as those of Heinrich Schenker and Arnold Schoenberg (Saslaw, 1997-98).

CHAPTER 9
Zuckerkandl’s Dynamic Theory of Tone
Essential to music-centered theory is to have a fundamental notion of music upon which to

build clinical theory. This is of particular importance when the theory is proposed as a general
one. In the previous chapter, schema theory in music was used to support the development of
music therapy theory in a wide variety of treatment domains and clinical models. In the present
chapter, I would like to take the investigation of music one step further in order to broaden the
musical platform upon which we are erecting a music-centered music therapy theory. This will
be done through and examination of some of the ideas of Victor Zuckerkandl (1956, 1959,
1973).
Zuckerkandl is a curious figure in literature on music. Although his publications address the
most profound and fundamental questions about the nature of music, there is a paucity of
contemporary references to his work in mainstream music theory, musicology, and music
philosophy. He was born in 1896 Austria, studied music theory and piano, and received a
Ph.D. in 1927. He worked as conductor and music critic, and taught music theory as well. In
1940, he came to the United States; in the ensuing years, he held a variety of faculty positions
at different colleges and universities. Twice he received three-year Bollingen fellowships,
during which time he developed the ideas contained in his three primary publications
(Zuckerkandl, 1973).
There are a few reasons for including his ideas in the present work. First, Zuckerkandl
considers questions at the most fundamental level of musical analysis. For example, schema
theory describes the different types of forces active in music, beginning from the assumption
that people experience different tones in a scale with varying levels of stability. Zuckerkandl
addresses the question of why this is so. He seeks to create a theory to account for the basic
facts of musical experience. In this way, his investigations complement those undertaken by
schema theorists, addressing some questions at a more fundamental level than those undertaken
by existing schema theory.
Second, in certain readings of his work, it may appear that his ideas conflict with those
from schema theory. However, both Zuckerkandl and schema theory have something to offer
music therapy theory, and part of my purpose is to articulate their respective contributions,
highlight the areas of agreement and difference, and begin the conceptual work of reconciling
these differences into a more comprehensive view of music than is afforded by either
approach on its own.
Third, Zuckerkandl has addressed many of the most fundamental questions about the nature
of the tonal phenomena constituting music in ways that music-centered music therapists have
found useful.67 References to his work are found in the thinking of Helen Bonny (1978b), the
teaching of Paul Nordoff (Robbins & Robbins, 1998; Aigen, 1996), research studies of
Nordoff-Robbins work (Aigen, 1998), and contemporary applications of, and developments
from, the Nordoff-Robbins approach (Ansdell, 1995; Lee, 2003). In a telling coincidence,
given the breadth of Zuckerkandl’s writings, Paul Nordoff (Robbins & Robbins, 1998, p. 32)
was drawn to the same quotation from Zuckerkandl that Helen Bonny was drawn to and
included it in his teaching as well: “Musical tones are conveyors of forces. Hearing music
means hearing an action of forces” (Zuckerkandl, 1956, p. 37). This quotation succinctly
presents one of Zuckerkandl’s central ideas about music. The fact that previous works in
music-centered theory have found support in Zuckerkandl’s thinking suggests that these latent
connections can be rendered more explicitly.
Last, Zuckerkandl’s ideas about the basic building blocks of music, such as the origins of
scales, have clear relevance to music therapy practice in a wide variety of domains. Again,
the fact that his thinking was seen as relevant by the originators of two prominent music
therapy models suggests the potential for broad applications. Further, in subsequent chapters
these ideas will be presented in a way that serves to integrate clinical phenomena that appear
quite disparate on the surface.
I imagine that as most readers proceed through this section, examples counter to some of the
points made may come to mind. Such counterexamples can serve to delineate the boundaries of
applicability for the theory without undermining the basic coherence of the ideas discussed.
Also, the detailed exposition of Zuckerkandl’s thought is due both to the complexity and
profundity of his writing, as well as my own belief that music-centered music therapy theory
has to be first and foremost grounded in the ontological status of music. Although I have been
reading Zuckerkandl’s publications for over 20 years, I still struggle with gaining a clear
understanding of some of his ideas. Readers who are intrigued by his beliefs are strongly
encouraged to seek out his publications, where his arguments can be absorbed in their entirety.
FUNDAMENTAL ASPECTS OF ZUCKERKANDL’S THEORY
Zuckerkandl’s investigations into the nature of music are based on a broad, philosophical
intention.
How music is possible—to understand this will be our chief task throughout this study.
When Kant put his fundamental question, “How is natural science possible?” he did not
seek to know if it is possible (he saw that it existed); he sought to know what the world
must be like, what I must be like, if between me and the world such a thing as natural
science can occur. What must the world be like, what must I be like, if between me and the
world the phenomenon of music can occur? How must I consider the world, how must I
consider myself, if I am to understand the reality of music? (Zuckerkandl, 1956, pp. 6-7)
Thus, Zuckerkandl is as much interested in the nature of humankind as with the nature of
music. He is concerned with what the facts of music can tell us about human beings and our
relationship to the world around us, including what we can know about it. In elevating music
to such a central role, Zuckerkandl clearly provides a sympathetic figure to music-centered
therapists whose commitment to music includes how they use it as therapy, but goes beyond
this as well to include their fundamental ideas about their own existence and values and how
these values influence their relationship to other people and the natural world.
Zuckerkandl (1956) believed that any conception of the nature of reality, time, and space
has to account for the facts of music; otherwise, it is an incomplete one. He also recognized
that the common view of music in the 20th century was that it provided an antidote for the
mechanical aspects of modern life. He characterized this view as one in which it was thought
that
music should provide nourishment for those functions of man which the one-sidedness of
modern life threatens with atrophy; the dream of a better and purer world, a world of ideal
beauty, might give at least temporary release from the bonds of a purely material reality, (p.
363)
Zuckerkandl was critical of this remedial view of music because “the moment music becomes
the voice of the ‘other’ world, musical experiences can no longer challenge our concept of
reality,” and he very much wanted to understand music in a way that it was part of the fabric of
life in general (pp. 363-364). Thus, in establishing continuity between musical and nonmusical
experiences, and in considering musical experience to be equally important to any other type of
experience in helping human beings understand themselves and their world, Zuckerkandl’s
thinking (in this respect, at least) is consistent both with schema theory and with the basic
premises of music-centered music therapy theory.
Zuckerkandl (1956) begins his investigation into the nature of music by seeking an
explanation for the structure of the tonal music of the Western world. He starts from the
observation that listeners hear dynamic qualities in tonal relationships that reflect states of
equilibrium and tension. Depending upon their place in a given key center, different tones
point to various other tones as a means of restoring musical equilibrium while lessening
musical tension. In contrast to words, which gain their meaning from what they point to,
musical tones gain their meaning from the unique quality of their pointing (to the tonic). Their
meaning is “in the pointing itself” (1956, p. 67) rather than in an external referent.
Moreover, he argues that the dynamic qualities of tones are not directly dependent upon
their physical properties, because these qualities are not apprehended when the tone sounds in
the absence of tonal context, a tonic. Thus, he can say that “when meaning sounds in a musical
tone, a nonphysical force intangibly radiates from its physical conveyor” (1956, p. 69). In this
way, the musical tone is similar to a religious symbol because “in both, a force that transcends
the material is immediately manifested in a material datum” (1956, p. 69). To Zuckerkandl, the
facts of music have profound philosophical implications, as they speak to questions about
what the external world is composed of and what types of knowledge of it humans can
acquire.
Zuckerkandl (1956) believes that there is motion in music. The motion that we hear is the
sound of changes in the dynamic field that provides the objective reality of music. The
simplest case of musical motion is that which is apprehended in hearing a seven-tone major
scale.
In hearing the scale the listener hears motion, although it is not random or undirected
motion but motion that reaches a goal. The final tone is not just heard as a cessation of the
scale but as its destination. The initial tones of the scale are heard as a moving away from
until the fifth tone is reached; the fifth represents the transition point at which a departure from
becomes an advance toward. The motion from 1 to 5 takes place against the dynamic force;
the motion from 6 to 8 (octave) is motion in line with the dynamic force seeking equilibrium. It
is as if in moving from 1 to 5, one is rolling a heavy ball up a hill and thereby acting against
the forces of gravity; when reaching 5, one achieves a temporary resting point at the top of the
hill; and in moving from 5 to 8, one is now moving with the natural forces as they want to
flow, just as allowing the ball to roll down the opposite side of a hill releases the energy
stored in it. (1956, p. 97)
It is a curious paradox of music that the origin of tonal motion in the scale is simultaneously
its destination. Because the octave relationship of 1 and 8, both scale degrees possess the
same dynamic quality. Therefore, in music,
the schema must be departure from… advance toward… arrival at the point of departure as
goal. In the course of this motion, then, the departing becomes a returning. The direction of
the motion at the beginning appears changed into its opposite at the end. (1956, p. 97)
To Zuckerkandl, “to hear music is to hear motion” (1973, p. 140). However, it is not the
type of motion ascribed to material entities that involves a change of place. Instead, it is the
type of motion we ascribe to the psyche known as emotion that involves a change of state.
Moreover, he distinguishes between animate motion and inanimate motion. The former
refers to a type of movement that is initiated by inner forces; it is self-directed. The latter
refers to a type of movement that is caused by being acted upon from without; it is caused by
external forces. A person intentionally lifting his arm is exhibiting animate motion because
such motion is indeterminate; a rock falling to the ground is exhibiting inanimate motion
because it is completely determined by external gravitational forces. Animate motion can only
be directly perceived by the organism that originates the motion. When we observe other
sentient beings in motion, we can only infer that it is a form of animate motion. Zuckerkandl
believes that music is unique in that it is the only type of animate motion that is not itself of a
living thing, although it is dependent for its existence on living beings.
Zuckerkandl discusses the role of motion in music in its tonal rather than its rhythmic
aspects. This is because he is concerned with motion that is heard only, rather than rhythmic
aspects of motion that have a tactile and visual component. In contrast to the other types of
motion in music, the only way to perceive music, to grasp its tonal motion, is to be in motion
with it:
There is, however, such a thing as music, tonal motion, audible living motion. In music I
experience an animate motion which is neither my own nor someone else’s, and which I
perceive directly, rather than through the intermediary of a body whose motion it would be
—pure self-motion, bound to no body, no “self.” The act of perceiving this motion must
itself be a motion…. Hearing tones, I move with them; I experience their motion as my own
motion. To hear tones in motion is to move together with them. Thus, not just the tones I
hear are “in motion”; hearing them, too, is “in motion.” (Zuckerkandl, 1973, p. 157)
The artistic effect of music that is based upon melodic construction and harmonic cadences
is due to “the freedom of their motion measured by this norm” (p. 99). In other words, the
power of melody and harmony is due to the way that they play with and against the
fundamental forces of the tonal world. In expressing their freedom from these forces, such
musical declarations simultaneously validate their existence.
APPLICATIONS TO MUSIC THERAPY
Some applications of Zuckerkandl’s ideas to music therapy were presented in chapter 6 in

relation to the idea of music as movement in Guided Imagery and Music and in Ansdell’s
notions of quickening. Moreover, some of these ideas are further developed in chapter 11,
where the capacities of music to quicken one’s spirit and body are looked at in the broader
view of how they contribute to the development of the human self. Some of the material in the
present section is relevant to this theme, whose discussion begins in chapter 6 and is continued
in chapter 11. Other of the implications are not developed further in the present work, but they
are consistent with these other ideas and potentially fruitful for future applications to music
therapy.
Zuckerkandl clearly believes that all of the questions regarding the nature, origins, and
essence of music can be rationally explored because we have at hand the facts of music
against which to evaluate different ideas and theories. He is not naive in this regard and
acknowledges that these facts require interpretation. Nevertheless, his philosophy does not
lead to the type of purely relativistic view of music that would render any theory about music
inadequate as a foundation for responsible, clinical music therapy practice.
Zuckerkandl believes in the idea of homo musicus. That is, music is an essential attribute
of humanity as a whole, not merely a trait of selected individuals. Therefore, a relationship
with music, in some way, is required for people to be fully human. If true, this is a powerful
rationale for music therapy of any kind, but particularly for music-centered forms of practice.
Because the relationship to music is considered an essential aspect of an individual’s
humanity, no nonmusical rationale is required to explain the benefits of music therapy
treatment.
Human beings as a species need music, and the tonal system was created out of this need.
But Zuckerkandl is clear in saying that although created by man, the arrangement and sequence
of tones is no more arbitrary than is the sequence of numbers. In fact, Zuckerkandl draws many
parallels between music and mathematics and sees both domains as being created to help
satisfy the need for human beings to both fully experience and fully understand the external
world.
The fact that music is a human creation and yet is not arbitrarily arranged can be difficult to
grasp. And yet it is this interesting synthesis that keeps Zuckerkandl’s theory from falling into
one or another traditional dichotomy that would restrict its usefulness.
Because of the human origins of tonal music, Zuckerkandl asserts that the ability to hear
music is dependent upon a music-specific cognitive capacity to detect motion in dynamic
fields. The musically competent listener can detect changes in state in a dynamic field.
Otherwise healthy people without this capacity will not experience tones as music. Disabled
individuals might retain the capacity to experience music if this specific capacity is active or
has not been damaged. Because this ability is separate from other cognitive skills and not
necessarily dependent on language-based or reasoning skills, disabled people with serious
cognitive impairments can, through music, demonstrate the presence of cognitive capacities
not detectable through other means. This also can be both a powerful rationale for music
therapy treatment as well as an explanatory tool in understanding its efficacy.
Zuckerkandl’s theory of tone supports the notion essential to music-centered practice that
the nature of musical interventions is always important clinically. Whether they are using
composed or improvised music, live or recorded music, active or receptive techniques, music
therapists are always manipulating changes in a dynamic field. These changes have inherent
experiential effects, as Zuckerkandl describes them in terms such as moving out, returning,
surprise, delay, etc. Because of these inherent properties, the description of a clinical
intervention in musical terms always has clinical relevance. The dynamic qualities of tone are
always being manipulated in clinical music, regardless of whether this is being done
deliberately or with clinical intention. The experiences of motion (directionality, willfulness
of the tone, resolution, anticipation) inhere in the tones. If music is experienced at all, it is
through these qualities that determine the human experience of music.
The idea that tonal experience has an essence that leads to common experiences on an
intersubjective basis underlies some of the general aspects of music-centered music therapy
discussed in chapter 5 and some of the foundations of Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy and
Guided Imagery and Music discussed in chapter 6. Because of this belief, in these approaches
the construction of music is important clinically, even to the point of how chords are voiced.
That tones have a life of their own and communicate forces we typically associate with
sentient beings is taken advantage of in these forms of practice. The previous discussions
highlighted that when music is present as a third element with its own demands, gratifications,
and will, the therapist can use these properties, thus avoiding personalization of dynamics that
can evoke complex transference and countertransference dynamics.
Instead, the client has a primary relationship to the music, can meet expectations of the
music, and can get inherent rewards from the music. Thus all of the various possible
experiences, defenses, and motivations can be worked out regarding this nonpersonal entity
that nonetheless contains some of the dynamics typically associated with human relationships.
This does not mean that relationship dynamics are not present, but just that through the
conscious, directed use of forces in the dynamic field of music, therapists have another tool
that can avoid problematic dynamics, circumvent defenses, and help clients to transcend
normal limitations, when these are felt to be more important or more suitable for a particular
client than would be the working through of these issues through the dynamics of the therapist-
client relationship. When these issues are worked out in relation to a third element, the
therapist can remain an ally in the process.
Zuckerkandl’s metaphysical conception of the tonal world has potential to be an integrating
force in music therapy theory, and some preliminary steps are made in this direction in
chapters 13 and 14. Here, I will suggest in what directions these ideas will be developed later
in the text.
In Zuckerkandl’s idea that tonal impetus is simultaneously a departure from and an advance
toward, we can see connections to the archetypal theme of the “Hero’s Journey” and to the
“myth of the eternal return” (Eliade, 1959). In this latter notion, time itself is circular; each
New Year’s Day, for example, is a return to the primordial forces of creation, to the
sacredness and purity of creation. And in the former concept, it is noted that many “Hero
Myths” involve a return by the hero to the place set out from, although the hero has been
transformed. The trip is not to get somewhere but to undergo a process and return in a different
state of being.
A Jungian perspective holds that the “Hero’s Journey” is the journey of self-actualization
undertaken by all people as we live our lives. We “come back” to ourselves, but what we
come back to is transformed as a result of the journey. These ideas can be fruitfully applied in
music therapy theory because Zuckerkandl’s notion is a way to integrate a music-centered
conception of music therapy with more psychodynamic and/or symbolic conceptions because
the same archetypal themes identified by Jungian analysis could be seen as also expressed in
the purely musical realm.
OBJECTIONS TO ZUCKERKANDL’S IDEAS AND SOME RESPONSES
There are three fundamental types of objections to Zuckerkandl’s ideas, and he treats each of
them extensively and convincingly. While these arguments are too involved to be detailed here,
I would like to sketch out some of his strategies. In this way, the skeptical reader may be
convinced to hold in abeyance some of these objections in order to be able to better follow the
argument of the present text.
(1) Whatever their perceived shortcomings, Zuckerkandl’s ideas do give an adequate
accounting of why music is heard as it is. To take a concrete example, the sense of resolution
perceived in the movement from 2 to 1 or 7 to 8 is present because there is a real lessening of
tension in the dynamic field. It is up to those who disagree with Zuckerkandl to give an
alternate explanation for this known phenomenon of music.
Zuckerkandl takes up the associationist position, the alternative to his, that the reason we
perceive completion is merely because we hear these motions more frequently in music. Thus,
the associationist would argue, we project our inner state onto the tonal world when we
ascribe any inherent qualities to their motions. We expect 1 to follow 2 not because anything in
2 points to 1, but because we have heard this motion so many more times than we have heard
other motions from 2. And we feel resolution when 1 or 8 is reached because most of the times
that we encounter these tones, there is an actual cessation of the music.
Zuckerkandl uses both the construction of music and its historical development to counter
these associationist claims. In examining how melodies are actually constructed, it is not true
that 2 leads to 1 more times than it leads to other tones. Further, 1 is followed by other tones
many more times than it is followed by nothing or a cessation of the music. The actual
construction of musical melodies completely contradicts the associationist position.
Similarly, the associationist cannot explain the necessity to raise the 7th tone one half-step
in the ascending form of the minor scale. The necessity of moving from 7 to 8 actually
contradicted the prevailing custom at the time, which was to move from flat 7 to 8. While
Zuckerkandl’s position can explain this historical development, it is completely unexplainable
through associationist principles.
(2) In contemporary thinking, Zuckerkandl’s ideas can be criticized as a form of cultural
imperialism if one assumes his ideas are only applicable to tonal music in the Western
tradition while he claims a broader applicability. Because other types of music do not embody
Zuckerkandl’s principles, this is taken as a refutation of his position. However, Zuckerkandl
clearly understood the cultural parameters of his ideas:
The basic feature that distinguishes one music from another is the selection of its tonal
material. Each music makes it own selection of tones or, to be precise, of tone relations; it
selects a specific order of tones. This selection constitutes the tonal system of that
particular music. Some civilizations have more than one tonal system, more than one kind of
music. Western music for the last 2,500 years has been thriving on one selection, one tonal
system…. The barriers between music and music are far more impassable than language
barriers. We can translate from any language into any other language; yet the mere idea of
translating, say, Chinese music into the Western tonal idiom is obvious nonsense. We can
take a course and learn the Chinese language; but we must actually live the Chinese music
and to a certain extent become Chinese if we want to understand the Chinese tonal language.
The favorite quotation about music as the universal language of mankind only betrays a
naive tendency on our part to think of ourselves, the representatives of Western civilization,
as representing all of mankind. (1959, pp. 17-18)
So it is clear that Zuckerkandl is not intending for his ideas to be applied outside the field
of his investigation, Western tonal music. In fact, by implying that to understand an unfamiliar
type of music one must be acculturated and that understanding music is to be acculturated, he
has anticipated some contemporary intellectual developments.
Further, Zuckerkandl takes up the objection that because members of a culture unexposed to
Western music will at first not hear the forces to which he alludes, and then through a process
of gradual exposure begin to hear the dynamic qualities of tone, this in itself validates the
associationist position that the perceptions of dynamic qualities result from projections of the
mind onto the raw, physical tones.
His response is of the general contour that there are many ways of being in something, and
the way that dynamic quality is in a tone is in no way analogous to how a word signifies an
object or an idea: “Tones … have completely absorbed their meaning into themselves and
discharge it upon the hearer directly in their sound” (1956, p. 68). The dynamic quality is
apprehended in tone similar to the way that a religious symbol evokes an experience of a
deity. “We hear forces in [tones] as the believer sees the divine being in the symbol” (p. 69).
The inability of the dynamic force to be perceived by all is no more an argument against its
existence than is the inability of a nonbeliever to perceive the divine within the symbol an
argument against the believer’s faith. An individual from a non-Western culture who does not
hear the same thing a Western ear does “has not yet given the symbols sufficient opportunity to
impart to him the significance they contain” (p. 70). Such an ability to perceive the qualities
says no more against their existence “than blindness says against the existence of light, or an
absence of metals against the reality of magnetism” (p. 70). The fact that the ability to perceive
the force has to be learned is not proof in and of itself that it is learned by associationist
principles.
(3) Zuckerkandl’s invocation of the force of magnetism provides an opportunity to discuss a
last type of possible objection to his ideas: that they are unconventional mystical beliefs
similar to religious teachings that cannot be validated and therefore have no place in scholarly
discourse about music. Moreover, they seem counter to commonsense ideas about the nature of
the world.
But how mystical are his ideas? Zuckerkandl readily embraces the idea that the facts of
music lead to many conclusions about the world, but primary among them is that there is an
immaterial layer of reality that nonetheless influences and interacts with the material plane of
existence. He acknowledges that many of his ideas conflict with commonsense notions of
reality. But he overtly differentiates his view from that of a religious view of the world, not in
the content of the beliefs but in the empirical nature of how those beliefs are arrived at.
The musical view of the universe differs from the religious view in that it is attained not
through faith and revelation but through sense perception and observation. The purely
dynamic, the nonphysical element of nature, which we encounter in the musical experience,
is not God. Yet no such abyss separates the two as separates the religious and scientific
views of the universe…. To think of the musical view of the universe as a bridge between
the scientific and the religious views is not sheer nonsense. (1956, pp. 374-375)
In many ways, we can see parallels in Zuckerkandl’s writing with some ideas from the
history of science, and while this observation does not automatically lend credence to his
ideas, it does suggest that they are capable of rational discussion, support, and/or refutation.
For example, consider the force of gravity as it was proposed by Newton. By saying that
two physical bodies acted on each other through a distance without any intervening medium—
after all, space is a vacuum—Newton himself was accused of reintroducing mysticism into
science. His detractors felt that nothing could be more mystical than to say that two physical
bodies act on each other without any apparent means of doing so. Yet, Newton’s ideas
explained the human experience of the physical world so well that his ideas were accepted.
Zuckerkandl’s ideas about the relationship between tones in music are not inherently more
mystical than Newton’s ideas about the relationship between physical bodies.
Moreover, the building blocks of the physical world, atoms and molecules, can exist in
varying configurations, some of which are more stable than others. There is a natural force that
seeks to establish states of equilibrium on the atomic and molecular levels. Zuckerkandl’s
ideas that there are tonal relationships that vary in their levels of stability, volatility, and
equilibrium are on their face not inherently more mystical than attributing such qualities to the
constituents of the physical world.
In terms of challenging common sense, what can it mean when Zuckerkandl says the
departing becomes a returning? How can one rationally understand a statement that describes
a motion as simultaneously moving away and moving toward the same thing? Again, to draw a
parallel to physics, such a statement describes the state of affairs if space itself is curved.
Physicists have hypothesized that just as leaving a location on the Earth and traveling in a
straight line will bring someone back to the same location, because of the three-dimensional
curvature of the planet, space itself may be curved so that in leaving Earth and moving out into
space one will eventually return to Earth. Thus, a notion whose meaning may be
counterintuitive and hard to grasp in discussing musical motion is quite similar to how
physicists have speculated the physical world to be.
Interestingly enough, Zuckerkandl’s view of dynamic tonal directionality as inherently
cyclical and nonmaterial is not so different from the view advocated by schema theory. For
example, Brower (1997-98) observes how
when we map structure from the physical world onto music, we adapt its features to those
of the musical domain, some aspects of which—like the cyclic structure of pitch space—
have no direct counterpart in the physical world. For melodic forces to be experienced at
all requires a leap of the metaphorical imagination.68 (p. 41)
Thus, Zuckerkandl’s views about music lead to similar conclusions as those undertaken by an
approach to music whose scholarly credentials meet contemporary standards.
Throughout his writings, Zuckerkandl acknowledges that his ideas challenge commonsense
views of the nature of reality and the conventional philosophical stance that humans gain
information about the world exclusively through their sense organs. However, he does not rely
on the faith of his readers but instead is constantly appealing to the facts of music as a
validation for his perspective. As well, he continually finds support in notions of time, space,
and reality that emerged from 20th-century physics.
Thus, ultimately his ideas can be rationally challenged because his lone and consistent
source of evidence is music itself.
67A complete ontology of music should consider its rhythmic and timbral components as
well. That these topics are not covered in the present text is not a statement that they are any
less important. Among the many authors who address these other elements are Charles Keil
and Steven Feld, whose work was referenced previously.
68Thisis an important observation for music therapy because it shows how a person who
is disabled or who has his functioning severely impaired is demonstrating significant
imaginative capacities just in the ability to experience the dynamic properties of a musical
melody.
CHAPTER 10
The Status of Musical Force, Motion, and Space: Reconciling Schema
Theory and Zuckerkandl
At first glance, it may appear that Zuckerkandl’s thinking and schema theory are diametrically
opposed. After all, for Zuckerkandl it appears that musical space, motion, and force are real
phenomena that humans discover through music. They are not human creations. In schema
theory, these phenomena are creations of human minds and without autonomous existence.
Thus, it is fair to consider how these seemingly opposed ways of thinking could be integrated
into a single theory of music. The ensuing discussion is motivated by a sense that they can be
brought closer together than initial appearances suggest and that to do so would be helpful to
the creation of music-centered music therapy theory because the two approaches have unique
contributions to make.
Zuckerkandl’s strategy of looking to the music itself as a source of explanation for the
human experience of music might be considered to be outdated. Given the ascendancy of
constructivist epistemologies in a variety of academic disciplines, it may seem naive to even
maintain a concept of music “itself,” much less look to the properties of a music so conceived
for an explanation of how humans experience it. Moreover, in music studies during recent
years there has been a potentially fruitful turn to cognitive theories in which the human mind
actively shapes tonal materials into what we experience as music rather than passively
receiving the music. Thus, trends in musicology, psychology, and philosophy would seem to be
moving in a direction that makes these two seemingly opposed ways of thinking even more
different from one another.
However, both schema theory and Zuckerkandl possess certain elements that make such a
reconciliation possible. In this chapter, I would like to address how to think about the
differences between the two approaches in a way that both narrows the gap between them and
also points the way to further reconciliation of their differences.
I will do so through a brief examination of the ontological status of the concepts discussed
in both schema theory and Zuckerkandl’s theory and show that there is more of a similarity
than what appears at first glance. In so doing, I hope to show that the ways of thinking, while
not completely compatible, have similarities that contribute to music therapy theory in
different ways and that at least suggest that to use both theories in a single music therapy
approach, e.g., music-centered theory, is not to erect a conceptual edifice on a foundation with
inherent contradictions.
In philosophy, ontology is the study of being or of what exists, and epistemology is the
study of knowledge or of what humans can know about what exists. While these distinctions
seemed reasonable at one time, philosophical thinking evolved to a stage where some
philosophers argued that all that humans can know are the contents of their own experience, all
that we can study is experience, and therefore it does not make sense to talk about the study of
what exists apart from what we can know. This argument is felt by some to undermine the
rationale for considering the ontological status of entities because in this view it is
meaningless to discuss what a thing is in itself apart from what we can know about it.

Zuckerkandl (1956) clearly takes an ontological perspective on his investigations into the
nature of music. He considers four existing areas of inquiry and dismisses each of them in turn
as having nothing to add to his study into the nature of tone: These include music theory,
acoustics, aesthetics, and the psychology of music. He argues that the psychologist does not
“inquire into music as such. He is predominantly interested in what takes place in the person
who hears music” (p. 13). While acknowledging the importance and legitimacy of such
investigations, Zuckerkandl clearly distinguishes them from concepts “indigenous to the tonal
world” (p. 14). Because they come burdened with specific assumptions necessitated by their
conceptual origins, all of the questions initiated within the assumptions of the four areas of
inquiry “will forever remain external to the musical phenomenon; our answers will not point
to its inner core” (p. 15).
However, Zuckerkandl is a human being and must have some avenue for approaching
music. This avenue is the actual experiencing of music, the hearing of it, not just the analysis of
it on paper. Throughout all of his writings, in order to buttress his ideas about music
Zuckerkandl constantly appeals to, and makes claims about, how humans hear music. We hear
things like the dynamic qualities of tone, tonal motion, high and low in auditory space, and, in
general, we hear the language of tones.
His argument against the ideas from nonindigenous domains of inquiry is that the nature of
“musical experience nowhere suggests them” (1956, p. 15). What Zuckerkandl actually wants
is a theory of music that accurately accounts for how humans experience music as music. It is
this adequacy to experience that is Zuckerkandl’s primary criterion in supporting a particular
notion of music. But he is of the philosophical persuasion that one can draw a meaningful
distinction between a psychology of music that is purely concerned with what happens inside
the skin of a human being, and his own indigenous investigations of music that uses human
experience to make claims about the entity that resides outside this skin.
To sharpen the similarities and apparent differences between schema theory and
Zuckerkandl, we can say the following: Both systems of thought recognize the primacy of
musical force, motion, and space in experiencing and understanding music; both systems of
thought assert that a comprehensive understanding of the nature of music has important
implications for how human beings consider themselves, the world around them, and how they
gain knowledge of the world; both systems of thought believe that a theory of music creation
must also be a theory of musical understanding and experience; both systems of thought
recognize the imaginative capacities evoked by music as well as the nonphysical nature of the
qualities of music perceived by these capacities; and both systems of thought place a value on
preserving in their theories the phenomena of music as experienced.
The differences come down to this: Are the attributes of tone manifest in experiences of
force, motion, and space qualities of tones or do they originate in the human mind? While
Zuckerkandl would probably align himself with the former assertion, schema theory appears to
lean toward the latter statement. It is the exploration of this issue to which the balance of the
present chapter is devoted, first looking at schema theory and then returning to Zuckerkandl’s
theory. And just to remind ourselves why this topic is so important for music therapy theory, it
is essential to understand the basic nature of the qualities of music and musical experience
before we use the qualities in any type of music therapy theory.

REVISITING SCHEMA THEORY: THE ONTOLOGICAL STATUS OF SCHEMATA
Similar to Zuckerkandl’s theory, schema theory also is concerned with a conception of music
that is adequate to how human beings experience it. This is one of its strengths as it relates
both to the composition and experiencing of music. In both domains, the materials the
composer and musician are working with are the same things that constitute the listener’s
experience.
Addressing the question of the reality of schemata also affords additional opportunities to
examine the clinical relevance of this material. While it is not our primary focus here, I will
be making some further comments about how the way that schemata are construed contributes
to their relevance to music therapy.
Cox (1999) promotes the view that music is connected to other aspects of human
functioning through the mechanisms of schemata:
Comparison of music to things other than music is fundamental to musical meaning.
Comparing the difference of musical sounds to the difference of vertical locations is one
systematic, logical way of understanding musical sounds…. If comparison of music to
things other than music is fundamental to a concept as basic as musical ‘pitch’, then we
must reexamine the line between ‘musical’ and ‘extra-musical’ meaning. The ‘extra-
musical’ realm is where we get not only text painting and signs of gender, but also where
we get ‘pitch’, ‘ascent’, and ‘descent’, (pp. 50-51)
Cox argues against the notion that music has inherent properties and inherent meaning. It is
legitimate to question whether this conflicts with the idea discussed previously that the
presence of objective qualities in music renders strong support for music-centered thinking.
While the two positions cannot be unequivocally reconciled, I do not think that the conflict is a
fundamental one if Cox means that music has no properties that would be there without humans
to experience it. My view is that the inherent qualities of music are those that are not due to
specific, individual psychological histories but that are present by virtue of being constituted
by human beings who share common modes of conceptualization. In other words, the
objectivity is not an absolute objectivity but one that is objective within the realm of human
experience.
In schema theory, music is connected to extramusical life by virtue of the fact that it is
music; no other specific or individual referential connections must be made for this
relationship to be established. Transferring this idea into the clinical realm means that the
meaning or clinical significance of the musical experience may be contained completely
within the music. This is because musical experience automatically has within it constituents
that connect it to our extramusical lives. It may not be necessary to translate this experience
into words for these connections to be present. Thus, schema theory supports one prime aspect
of music-centered thinking.
Attempting to develop the applications of schema theory to practical concerns in music
therapy stimulates a variety of questions about schemata: Do schemata exist? Do they inhere in
the entities in which we perceive them or are they mere metaphoric projections of the human

mind? Are musical forces and musical space real, or are they just convenient constructs for
explaining aspects of human musical experience?
Schema theorists propose answers to such questions that split traditional philosophical
dichotomies. As such, the answers are not simple, yet they hold great value for application to
music therapy, particularly in developing general, music-centered theory. Johnson (1987) has
dealt extensively with the question of the reality of schemata, engaging in extensive
explorations of the reality of FORCE when applied to social or perceptual phenomena. He
indicates that the qualities captured through metaphoric, cross-domain mappings are real, but
not in the same sense that they are real in the originating context. Thus, the aspect of music
described by the word force is not force as understood in the physical sense, but it is still real:
In a purely mechanical system, such as a steam-powered electrical generator, balance can
be described entirely in terms of “physical” forces. An ecological system manifests a
balance of physical forces also, but its equilibrium consists, in addition, of social forces
that are not physical in any literal sense. For instance, in the migrations of animals on the
Serengheti Plain, the desired equilibrium requires both a balance of forces of nature (e.g.,
heat, rain, wind, sun, etc.) and a balanced social interaction among the members of the
system. These social forces are real, but are understood via metaphorical projections from
the schemata for physical force, (p. 88)
And further:
To say that a specific image schema (say, the out schema) exists is to say that some of our
experiences have a certain recurring structure by virtue of which we can understand them.
(p. 102)
Image schemata are not “internal” representations of “external” realities; rather, they are
recurring patterns of organism-environment interactions, and so they exist in relation to our
ongoing, relatively stable experiences—experiences that can be shared by other people
who have bodies and brains like ours and live and act within environments like ours. (M.
Johnson, personal communication, March 15, 2004)
Thus, image schemata are neither solely in the external world nor are they mere projections
of the human mind. They come about from the specifics of the interaction between human
beings and their physical, social, and psychological environments. The qualities of specific
schemata arise because of the way in which they enhance human functioning. They provide
what “we need to survive and flourish in our world” (Johnson, 1997-98, p. 97).
Schemata are no more projected onto experience in the domains they are applied to than
they are in the domains from which they originate. They can be understood as necessary
constituents of human experience. And it is this idea of being experientially real from which
schemata derive their ontological status:
When music manifests a SOURCE-PATH-GOAL structure, it can be experienced as going
fast or slow, meeting obstacles, seeking goals, overcoming blockages, faltering, recovering,
and surging ahead. We do not merely project these image schemas on music, any more than
we project them on our ordinary bodily experience. Instead, image schemas are part of the

structure, and define the quality of, our musical experience as such. They are in the music
as experienced; they are the structure of the music. And they have meaning because they are
partly constitutive of our bodily experience and the meaning it gives rise to. (Johnson,
1997-98, p. 98)
Schemata exist in music, but they also exist in the human mind because the phenomenon of
music only emerges in the human consciousness that can reconstitute sound waves into musical
events. Johnson and Larson (2003) describe how musical phenomena of central importance to
music therapy—such as musical motion—can simultaneously be real and metaphoric:
Musical motion is just as real as temporal motion and just as completely defined metaphor.
“Music moves.” We experience musical events as fast or slow, rising or falling, creeping
or leaping, pulsing and stopping. The reason that musical motion is “real” is that, as
Hanslick (1986) said more than 150 years ago, music exists only in our “aural
imagination,” that is, only as experienced by us. Music is not the notes on the scores. Nor is
it merely the vibrations of air that we hear as sounds. It is, rather, our whole vast rich
experience of sounds synthesized by us into meaningful patterns that extend over time. This
experience of musical motion is no less real for being a product of human imagination—
which is our profound capacity to experience ordered, meaningful patterns of sensations,
(p. 77)
It is this strategy of locating the human mind as the place where music exists that allows
schema theory to split some of the traditional philosophical dichotomies regarding objective
and subjective phenomena. Without the contribution of human cognition, all that exists is
patterned frequencies of sound. Music (receptively and productively) is a product of the
cognitive capacities of humans. Without this, there is no such thing as music, much less any
attributes of music such as agency, force, or motion. However, because qualities such as
motion are a condition of musical experience, not something projected onto music by humans,
these attributes are as real as anything else. They exist at the “intersection of organized sounds
with our sensory-motor apparatus, our bodies, our brains, our cultural values and practices,
our music-historical conventions, our prior experiences, and a host of other social and cultural
factors” (Johnson & Larson, 2003, p. 78).
They are real because those things that result from the engagement of humans with the
external world are as real as anything else that exists. They are not real in the sense of existing
apart from human beings’ cognition and experiencing of them, but the same can be said of the
content of any concept, scientific or otherwise, or even the content of sense perceptions such
as of color or heat.
Schema theories of music are cognitive theories because they recognize that human beings
are active constructors of their own musical experiences; in musicing, we do much more than
perceive structures that inhere in an external stimuli. Cox (1999) posits that it is actually the
universals of human physical characteristics and spatial experience that account for the fact
that our experience of music is so similar that we believe it to be objective:
Temporal space and musical space, motion along paths through these spaces, and the nested

spaces within them emerge only in the mind of the observer. Although these imagined
spaces are intimately tied to, and possible only because of, actual phenomena such as
musical tones, the spatiality of the temporal and tonal relations is imaginary. Even the
spatiality of ‘be-fore’ and ‘aft-er’ is imaginary…. The apparent objectivity of temporal
space and musical space emerges from the fact that most of us share a similar hominid
embodiment and the same basic embodied experience of motion through space. The shared
objective observations about temporal and musical motion and space are actually shared
subjective experience and shared metaphoric logic, (p. 222)
The phenomenon of music in this view is a shared construction. It is a powerful unifier of

human beings, producing feelings of connection and communitas. The reason why it can be so
powerfully shared is just because it is a construction, a product of human minds, and it is a
product of human minds that have a tendency to experience the world in a common fashion.
Musical experience is a reflection to us of our shared communal nature.
If music were not a construction, its shared elements might be trivial or at least not be the
basis for being such a powerful clinical vehicle. For example, we do not typically experience
such powerful experiences through experiencing the force of gravity together because this is a
real force of the physical world. The fact of music’s human construction, or rather the central
role of the human mind in fashioning physical sounds into music, is central in understanding its
clinical efficacy.
Brower (1997-98) recognizes that in applying schema theory to music something is lost and
something is gained. In her investigation of the phenomena of PATHWAY, BLOCKAGE, and
CONTAINMENT in Vèrese’s Density 21.5, she notes that because the linguistic formulations
used in the description of the piece “must have been thought by human beings and can only be
understood by human beings,” this means that “we will have to give up the idea that musical
structures exist in the world objectively.” What is gained, however, is the “reassurance that
we as theorists, listeners, and performers are not incidental discoverers of musical truths, but
rather we are a necessary factor of their existence” (p. 28).
Schema theory provides a comprehensive context that offers insight into the human
contribution to music and musical experience. As music therapists become better acquainted
with this material, and apply it in their own clinical domains, we will gain insight into a
variety of clinical processes within music therapy across a wide range of treatment domains
and methods of working. The constituents of musical experience are the common elements of
our fundamental experiences as human beings. This realization can explain the universal
appeal of music in nonclinical applications and the power of its efficacy in the clinical
domain.
The ideas of Cox and Brower show how the aspects of schemata that originate in the human
mind are one of the primary things that affords many of the most profound uses of music in
therapy. As such, their perspectives are important for the purposes of the present work.
However, it is Johnson’s more nuanced view that will enable us to draw schema theory and
Zuckerkandl’s theory closer together. Specifically, it is his recognition that schemata arise in
the interaction between humans and their environment that is important. Thus, the specific
qualities of musical schemata arise not solely as an imaginative projection nor solely as a

reflection of inherent qualities of an external entity. The specific nature of musical schemata
such as FORCE, MOTION, and SPACE owe equally to the interactive encounter among human
bodies, human minds, and the world of tones.
Johnson’s view is not a simple ontological one. He considers that schemata are real, and
therefore have ontological status, but he also maintains a belief in a pluralistic ontology. It is
pluralistic because there are multiple, mutually incompatible schemata that are present in
music.69 It is an ontology because the schemata do exist. He says that observing that the
ultimate determination of the presence of a particular schema in a work of music is influenced
by the context is not to say that it is only determined by context, that it is subjective, or that it
is arbitrary.
In their exploration of metaphors of musical motion, Johnson and Larson (2003) take up the
notion of a pluralistic ontology of musical metaphors. For them, there are a number of
schemata essential to music and that exist in the music and yet which are mutually exclusive of
each other. For example, they note how the moving landscape metaphor, in which the
perceiver moves, and the moving music metaphor, in which the perceiver is stationary, are
contradictory. Critics of schema theory portray this as a deficiency in the theory and as
evidence that it is incorrect and that schemata do not exist. As discussed in chapter 8, Johnson
and Larson respond that this variability of application is accepted in other areas (such as in
varying notions of causality) and the present author amplified their view by saying that this
multiplicity of application will actually be a strength in using schema theory to build general
theory in music therapy.
RECONCILING SCHEMA THEORY AND ZUCKERKANDL
In trying to grasp Zuckerkandl’s theory, I find myself wondering if he means that musical forces
are real in the same way that physical forces are real, or in the same way that the metaphoric-
based schemata are real. Fortunately for those wishing to understand his thinking, Zuckerkandl
takes up the metaphysical implications of his ideas about music when he observes that “the
forces that act in the tonal world manifest themselves through bodies but not upon bodies”
(1956, p. 365). These forces require a physical event to manifest, but unlike the way that the
force of gravity acts on physical bodies, with tonal forces the physical event is just the
“conveyor of the action; it is not itself the action” (p. 364).
For example, if a given tone is sounded in isolation there is no dynamic force conveyed.
When this same tone is sounded in the context of a scale or melody, the force is present. In
both cases, the actual physical event is identical, but only in the latter is the dynamic force
present. Zuckerkandl puts forth this type of evidence to both argue and illustrate his point that
the tonal force is conveyed through the physical but is not present in it in the same way that a
magnetic force is ever present in a magnetized object.
Zuckerkandl constantly asserts that the facts of music demonstrate the presence of a
nonphysical reality, and he puts this forth as one of the most profound implications of his
reflections on music. Yet, he constantly retreats from any type of mystical position, instead
discussing how music is an essential part of the natural world and that all of the ways that his

study forces us to consider novel conceptions of motion, time, space, and force are completely
consistent with the view emerging from the world of physics in the 20th century, when he did
his writing.
Because schemata arise in the environment-organism interaction, they are as much in the
environment as they are in the organism. They owe equally to the nature of human beings and
to the bodies and world that we inhabit. Zuckerkandl takes up the notions of inner world and
outer world in a way that comes tantalizingly close to this aspect of schema theory.
Zuckerkandl (1956) reports that “it has been said that inner and outer world meet in
melodies” (p. 368). He agrees with this but clarifies the statement in saying that “it would be
more to the point to say ‘penetrate each other’” (p. 368). While this meeting takes place in any
type of sensory experience, Zuckerkandl believes that in contrast to visual and tactile
experiences that reinforce the distance or separation between the perceiver (inner world) and
the outside world, experiences of tone operate in just the opposite manner, making one
“conscious not of distance but of communication, even of participation” (p. 368). Tone
penetrates into the listener in a way that transcends the notion of inner and outer.
Traditional notions of inner and outer worlds are not natural distinctions, but instead result
from subsequent reflections on practical experiences. It is only in meeting the demands of
practical and physical necessities that “I and world, face each other like two mutually
exclusive precincts on either side of an impassable dividing line” (1956, p. 368). But for
Zuckerkandl, the human encounter with music is not an encounter with the physical or
practical. It is an encounter with the nonphysical or “purely dynamic” as he describes it. In the
case of the encounter with musical tone
the quality “out there” is replaced by the quality “from-out-there-toward-me-and-through-
me.” Instead of setting off two precincts from each other and presenting them as mutually
exclusive, this encounter causes them to penetrate each other, participate in each other. The
distinction between “inner” and “outer” has by no means disappeared; it has been
transformed in a manner best expressed by a diagram:
“inner”|“outer”; two precincts separated by a dividing line become direction

and counter-direction of an encounter. (1956, pp. 368-369)
For Zuckerkandl, different types of human encounters lead to different types of experiences.
If the encounter is one with physical entities, which appears to us through tactile or visual
means, or is of utilitarian concerns, then it is the dividing line between inner and outer that
becomes emphasized. What is encountered in this way will be conceptualized as something
“out there,’ existing independently of ‘me,’ ‘in itself’” and it becomes known “‘objectively’”
(1956, p. 369).
However, when the encounter is with an entity of a “purely dynamic nature, the mere idea
of ‘objective, knowledge becomes meaningless: an encounter characterized by an

interpenetration of I and world cannot produce an ‘object,’ that is something existing
‘independently of myself’” (1956, p. 369). Zuckerkandl then goes on to draw a parallel with
modern physics and alludes indirectly to implications of the uncertainty principle. He notes
that physicists accept that at certain subatomic levels of observation the independence of
observer and thing observed disappears and that they do not call this the limit of knowledge
but instead revise their conception of knowledge to fit their experiences. Similarly, he
believes that the nature of musical experience can cause us to revise basic conceptions of
knowledge.
Thus, notwithstanding first appearances, Zuckerkandl’s theory is very much in line with
contemporary epistemologies that are critical of objectivist claims of knowledge. More
importantly for the present work, his recognition that human awareness is necessarily
implicated in the experiencing of tone as music is congruent with the constructivist aspect of
schema theory. Zuckerkandl explicitly accepts the interaction between knower and known that
characterizes contemporary epistemologies, particularly those such as schema theory.
Zuckerkandl takes this thinking further and explains that it is mistaken to equate the “inner”
of “inner world” with “in me,” and to equate the distinction “inner world-outer world” with
“psychic-physical.” Because tones come from without and yet have an inner nature, because
they have a dynamic quality that is conveyed through their physical manifestation yet is not
identical with it, this demonstrates that the external world has both a physical dimension and
an inner dimension, just as human beings have a physical body and a nonphysical psyche. The
“inner world” extends in two directions, existing just as much outside people as it does within
people. Just as people have an inner and outer dimension, so does the world itself:
The boundary is not vertical, running between self and world, but horizontal, running
through both; as a psyche, I belong to the great context of the world’s within, neither more
nor less than, as a body, I belong to the great context of the world’s without…. It is not
because music expresses or reproduces psychological experiences that we recognize in it
the voice of our “within,” but because music brings to expression the mode of existence of
the world that is of the same nature as my “within,” my psyche. (1956, p. 370)
Schemata partake equally of the external environment and of human beings. They are the
dynamic structure of our experience in the world and, as such, they are what allow us to
interact with the world and conceptualize about this interaction. They can be considered to be
the inner portraits of the human encounter with the world, and because their nature is as much
due to the nature of the world as to the nature of human beings, and because they themselves
are not material yet arise from conditions of experience in the material world, they can be
considered to be the structure of what Zuckerkandl refers to as the “inner” aspect of the world,
an aspect that extends equally into human beings and into the physical world. Indeed, they are
the vehicles that make the encounter possible. Schemata such as FORCE, MOTION, and
SPACE take the form that they do because they accurately characterize the overlap of human
consciousness and the external world.
To conclude the present discussion, let us examine the concept of force, consider how it is
conceptualized by schema theory and by Zuckerkandl, and see how this proposed integration

of the two approaches works when concretely applied to a specific concept.
In schema theory, notions of force and balance are intimately connected.70 We learn balance
through our bodies, such as when we first become able to stand upright or first learn to ride a
bicycle. Balance is also implicated in learning how to maintain our body’s equilibrium, and it
is understood as achieving equilibrium, whether we consider our temperature, our hunger, or a
myriad of other physiological processes. In this sense, achieving and maintaining balance
means bringing opposing forces into a state of equilibrium.
Johnson (1987) applies this way of thinking to Rudolf Arnheim’s ideas about perceptual
balance. Just as the toddler learning to walk learns to distribute weight around an imaginary
central vertical axis to achieve balance, human beings construe visual stimuli to be similarly
composed of an imaginary distribution of forces. For example, a drawing of a square with a
black disk in its center appears to be balanced, while displacing the disk to the upper right
corner of the square makes it appear unbalanced. However, if a second disk is added in the
lower left corner of the square, balance is reestablished. Thus, Arnheim posits that there is an
underlying structural skeleton that portrays how dynamic forces are distributed in our visual
field.
Johnson (1987) addresses how to consider the ontological status of visual balance and
force in a way that is consistent with the precepts of schema theory:
While it is true that we say the disk(s) is (are) balanced or unbalanced, the balance does not
exist objectively in the figure drawn on the page, as if the balance were just there to be
passively perceived by anyone. The disk on the white square is only balanced in our acts of
perception. So Arnheim’s “hidden structure” exists only relative to sentient perceivers.
However, since all humans have the same perceptual hardware, more or less, it will usually
make perfectly good sense to speak of the balance being in the perceived object…. What
Arnheim calls the “forces,” “tensions,” and “hidden structures” active in my perceptual
grasp of balance or lack of balance in the figures are clearly psychological or perceptual
forces, (p. 79)
Johnson goes on to note how using the term force in this sense is metaphoric because these
forces do not manifest on physical objects. However, the metaphor is an apt one because the
visual stimuli act on the psychological balance of perceivers in a way that resembles how
physical objects affect our physical balance. This way of construing human perception is not a
simple matter of projecting a schema originating in experiences of bodily balance onto a
perceptual stimulus. “There is a further dimension involved, because we no longer have

‘weight’ or ‘force’ in the gravitational physical sense. Instead, we have some complex
metaphorical (but very real) experience of visual weight and force” (Johnson, 1987, p. 80).
For purposes of the present discussion, I am taking Johnson’s points about visual force to
be true for auditory force such as is experienced in music. There are two important points
illustrated in this examination of the notion of force in schema theory: First, although the
underlying structure of hidden forces and the consequent sense of balance is constituted in the
act of perception, the universality of the constituted experience warrants discussion of the
phenomena as existing independently of the individual perceiver, which they do because they

are present in all perceivers. Second, because of the resemblance of the experience in the
perceptual realm to our experience in the physical realm, the use of the common term force is
warranted.
Zuckerkandl was not naive philosophically and was conversant with ideas in the
philosophy of science regarding the ontological status of theoretical entities. He refers to the
ideas of P. W. Bridgman in saying that “force is not an ‘operational concept’—something that
we, as thinkers, add to the observed phenomenon in order to explain it” (1956, p. 372). He
understands that Bridgman put forth the notion of operational concepts whose only value lay in
their ability to account for observed phenomena rather than being intended “to represent a
reality in its own right” (p. 372). But in his summary, Zuckerkandl characterizes his discussion
about music as one that concerns “forces that are active in tones and tonal systems and whose
reality makes music possible. Man has not created these forces; he discovers them” (p. 375).
In further effecting this reconciliation of schema theory and Zuckerkandl, there are some
additional points that the preceding material allows us to make.
First, for the schema theorist to say that the sentient perceiver is necessarily involved in the
existence of perceptual forces does not create an incompatibility with Zuckerkandl because
we have already seen how he acknowledges the interaction between the knower and known in
the process of learning about the world.
Second, is this situation any different from any perceptual phenomenon, even one that is
less problematically said to inhere in the external world such as color or tone? Are not
sentient beings necessary for the perception of these attributes as well? Without a retina to
receive light waves or an eardrum to receive sound waves, neither color nor tone would exist
either. So to say that the presence of a perceiver is necessary for the existence of perceptual
forces is not to distinguish them in any meaningful way from other types of perceptual
phenomena.
Third, in saying that perceptual forces are intimately tied to and are properties of
perceivers, we are not saying anything that impinges on their ontological status because all
forces, physical or metaphorical, are properties of some thing. Gravity has ontological status
because it acts on all physical bodies. But something requires physical form for gravity to
manifest. So gravity does not exist in itself; it exists in relation to physical bodies. Gravity is
only present when there is a physical object from which it can emanate and one upon which it
can act. Is this fundamentally different from saying that tonal forces are present only when
there are beings present to experience them?
A schema theorist can accept Zuckerkandl’s discussions of force as real, if metaphorical.

The fact that there is not a physical force present does not make the experience of force any
less real. If any use of the term force other than to mean physical force is considered to be
metaphorical, than this could be a meeting place for the two theories.
But would Zuckerkandl himself accept the schema theorist’s view of his theory? My
suggestion is that he would because all of the crucial elements are there: The schema theorist’s
account would include the most important elements of Zuckerkandl’s view of force as real,
nonmaterial, and absolutely essential to any description of music. For Zuckerkandl, without a
notion of force the actual constitution of musical works becomes unintelligible. Similarly,

schema theorists say that schemata such as FORCE are not projected onto the neutral template
of tone in musical experience but instead constitute the very fabric of this experience.
One last possible area of disagreement between the two theories concerns this notion of
discovery versus creation. Zuckerkandl is adamant that human beings discover the forces in
tone rather than create them as a post-hoc reflection on musical experience in order to make it
better understandable. But to discover something implies that it is present without the human
consciousness, waiting to be uncovered. Is this consistent with the basic view of schema as
existing primarily as human modes of understanding? Is there a way to either interpret
Zuckerkandl’s view or construe schema theory in this regard in a way that the two views
would be compatible about the origins of phenomena such as musical force, motion, and
space?
We can understand this question in terms of the debate in the philosophy of science between
realism and fictionalism or instrumentalism that was described in chapter 1. Recall that in the
realist view, the theoretical entities posited by scientists are intended by them to actually exist,
to be real. In the opposing view, theoretical entities and processes are consciously considered
to be mere calculating or heuristic devices; they help human beings understand and make
predictions about the world, but they are not considered to be real or to actually exist. We can
see that Zuckerkandl clearly falls into the realist camp on the nature of phenomena like musical
force and motion, so the question is how to regard the schema theory notion of the origins of
these phenomena. Is it more akin to the realist view or the fictionalist/instrumentalist view?
We have already seen repeatedly that schema theory asserts the reality of schema; they are
real patterns of human experience that both result from and determine how human beings
interact with, and gain insight into, their physical, psychological, and social environments.
They are not meant to be convenient explanatory fictions. Yes, they are created by sentient
perceivers in their acts of perception and interaction, but these are the first-level users, as it
were. Schema theorists, however, discover their presence through systematic and scientific
investigation.
On one hand, there may appear to be an irreconcilable difference with Zuckerkandl in this
regard. He is adamant that music—or, more accurately, the tonal material from which man-
made works of music are fashioned—is a phenomenon of nature. Yet, it is possible to admit
the human source of musical forces and still consider it as a product of nature in the way that
is important to Zuckerkandl.
Zuckerkandl is most concerned with putting forth an understanding of musical force where
it is seen as not arising as a deliberate fiction added on to the phenomenon of music in a post-
hoc manner. And even though schema theory holds to the human origins of musical force, it
also agrees that concepts of force are not just present as post-hoc rationales for musical
experience. Instead, the experiencing of force is part and parcel of the musical experience as it
occurs for listeners, composers, and players.
The necessary leap to make in order to reconcile these two viewpoints in this regard is to
consider the locus of human consciousness while engaged in musicing as much as a part of
nature as anything else studied by scholars and scientists. When we consider the human
perceptual process in this way—which is at the core of schema theory—we can understand the

notion of musical force as a real part of nature in a way that, if it is not a natural outgrowth of
Zuckerkandl’s thinking, is at least not in opposition to its fundamental tenets. The fundamental
issue is that in the act of experiencing music, both Zuckerkandl and schema theorists want to
say that the experience of force, motion, and space is real, natural, and not just added to the
experience as a post-hoc rationale. Construing each of the theories in the ways described
above allows them to reach a reasonable accommodation to each other. And recognizing the
reality of musical force, motion, and space allows us to utilize them in an explanatory capacity
in music therapy theory.

69Johnson’s stance is similar to that taken in certain qualitative research approaches such
as Naturalistic Inquiry (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) that talk about the idea of multiple, constructed
realities. In this view, the human contribution to the nature of reality does not make it any less
real.

70This entire discussion of balance, force, and visual perception is from Johnson (1987,
pp. 74-80).

Part IV
General Music-Centered Theory

INTRODUCTION TO PART IV
General Music-Centered Theory
Taken together, the contents of parts III and IV include those topics that a general music therapy
theory should address, based upon the four dimensions of analysis described in chapter 3. The
material on schema theory and Zuckerkandl considers the tonal, harmonic, rhythmic, and
timbral elements of music and the ways that they are constituted by the human mind. In part IV,
other dimensions of music relevant for music therapy are considered: (1) the artistic and
ritualistic forms in which musicing occurs; (2) the human experience of music; and (3) the
interactional processes involved in the creation of music and the social contexts in which it is
used.
A broad music-centered theory should be able to accommodate different ways of
conceptualizing and implementing music therapy. These types of conceptualizations include
those of (1) pure, indigenous, music-centered practitioners who do not look to other
disciplines for supportive constructs; (2) practitioners who find conceptual support in various
ideas from the study of nonclinical music; (3) practitioners who draw from various types of
psychotherapy frameworks; (4) practitioners who employ ideas from different types of cultural
studies such as the relevance of ritual and shamanic uses of music; and (5) practitioners who
integrate their music therapy thinking with considerations from physiology.
While it may not be possible to draw all of the various implications of the theory presented
below for these various realms, the theory will successfully meet the criteria of a generalized,
integrative, music-centered one, to the extent that there are considerations in it that directly
speak to these various ways of thinking about music and music therapy. The content of the
remaining chapters addresses this primary goal.
Chapters 11 through 14 incorporate material that is relevant to many dimensions of music
therapy practice, although there is not a one-to-one correspondence between a particular
chapter and area of application in music therapy. For example, for those music therapists
whose work incorporates a focus on the physical body, the material on music, motion, and
quickening in chapter 11 will be particularly relevant. And, for clinicians who conceive of
their work as a form of music psychotherapy, the material on music and emotion in chapter 12
and music and transformation in chapter 13 will be particularly relevant.
I am in sympathy with the view that different areas of music therapy practice involve the
mind, body, spirit, and emotions, and that just because one is doing music psychotherapy, for
example, this does not mean that the human body is ignored, and just because one is focusing
on music rehabilitation, this does not mean that human emotions are irrelevant. Because the
topics I have focused on cut across traditional divisions within music therapy, I have not
organized the material by realm of application. The nature of the applicability of these ideas
will be determined by individual readers and clinicians. As my focus is on an integrative
theory, i.e., one that can reveal commonalities in practice across a wide spectrum of treatment
domains and clinical philosophies, it makes more sense to present the material this way,
although, as stated at the outset, my belief is that there is sufficient material applicable to
abroad enough number of domains in order to qualify the theory as general in character.

CHAPTER 11
Clinical Applications of Musical Force and Motion: Quickening and the
Creation of a Self
The detailed exposition of Zuckerkandl’s thinking and schema theory provides another layer of
explanation for the phenomenon of quickening as applied by Ansdell (1995) and discussed in
chapter 6. Ansdell noted that many people with physical impairments can overcome or
circumvent them while musicing. His idea is that the motion in music is imparted to the person
musicing. And the point was made that this is not a purely physiological process but one that
animates the person’s spirit, which in turn animates the body.
Life, motion, and the capacity to experience oneself as an agent in the world capable of
purposive action are all intimately connected through the shared use of the term animate.
Being able to control one’s physical body, to move one’s body as a consequence of one’s will,
is not something that is necessary only to meet the physical demands of life. Being able to do
so has important influence on developing a healthy self-image as a person capable of having
an impact on the external world.
Any property of music that facilitates physical movement and control over one’s body has
profound implications for one’s psychological development and functioning as well. The
present chapter explores this theme through expanding on Ansdell’s basic formulation in light
of the detailed examination of Zuckerkandl’s thinking and schema theory. Specifically, I will
consider how the way that music manifests force formed by the SOURCE-PATH-GOAL
schema facilitates physical movement. This quickening of movement leads to the development
of a sense of personal agency, which in turn provides a blueprint for the development of a self
for people whose disability, trauma, or illness has impaired this sense of self or impeded its
development.
Ansdell has two motivations in presenting his ideas. The first is to provide a rationale for
why music stimulates motion—and not just any motion, but a type of fluid motion that we
associate with living things and intentional, aesthetic expression. The second is to do this in a
way that goes further than a pure physical explanation in which patterned sound frequencies
directly stimulate brain activity resulting in motion. For Ansdell, it is a necessary part of his
explanation to understand that the body is quickened or stimulated to motion as a consequence
of the spirit or will being activated.
Many needs of people in therapy can be characterized by a deficiency in will. Music

reestablishes the connection to will by infusing the person with the experience of animate
motion and will-directed activity. This is because, as Zuckerkandl asserts, music is the only
type of animate motion that is perceptible beyond itself. “It is through identification with the
forces and intentionality in tonal motion that one’s motivation and capacity for willful action is
stimulated” (Aigen, 1998, p. 293). This helps overcome, circumvent, and remediate physical
impairments, motoric compulsions, cognitive obsessions, and emotional constrictions, all of
which produce limitations that can be characterized by immobility, the absence of motion, or
the lack of freely chosen motion. When a physically impaired person has a limb moved by
another person, that person is being moved from without, and this reinforces the sense of being

an inanimate object that is controlled by external forces. When that same person is stimulated
to movement by music, the possibility for being an agent of animate motion is awakened
within.71
Johnson (1987) discusses how the FORCE schema is an integral one in enabling both
physical survival and a sense of meaning that emerges from activities related to our interaction
with the physical environment:
In order to survive as organisms, we must interact with our environment. All such causal
interaction requires the exertion of force, either as we act upon other objects, or as we are
acted upon by them. Therefore, in our efforts at comprehending our experience, structures of
force come to play a central role. Since our experience is held together by forceful activity,
our web of meanings is connected by the structures of such activity, (p. 42)
Moreover, the experience of force is composed of a constellation of attributes that

constitute its overall structure:
First, force is always experienced through interaction. We become aware of force as it
affects us or some object in our perceptual field…. Second, our experience of force usually
involves the movement of some object (mass) through space in some direction. In other
words, force has a vector quality, a directionality…. Third, there is typically a single path
of motion…. Fourth, forces have origins or sources, and because they are directional,
agents can direct them to targets…. Fifth, forces have degrees of power or intensity….
Sixth, because we experience force via interaction, there is always a structure or sequence
of causality involved…. Forces are the means by which we achieve causal interactions.
The agent of the causal sequence can be either an animate and purposive being, or it can be
a mere inanimate object or event, (pp. 43-44)
The components of the FORCE schema are all apparent in music, and the way that they
appear has implications for music therapy.
First, if music is considered as force, and if force is necessarily experienced as interaction,
and further, if this force is sensed as originating from a purposive being, then when a person
(such as an autistic child) can perceive the force, this can create a template for interaction
between purposive beings where none existed previously.
Second, we have seen how motion is essential to a conception of music and that this motion
is not random but is governed by the attributes in the tonal field. All motion is motion toward
or away from a tonal orientation point and thus musical force has the requisite quality of
directionality. Because this quality of directionality supports the experience of musical force
as originating from an intentional and purposive being, music can awaken the sense of
intentionality within a person as well as enhance the experience of others as possessing this
quality. The presence and manipulation of tonal force can create within someone the sense of
agency because the presence of force implies an origin. Because human intentions are
experienced and conceptualized as directional movements in space toward particular
destinations, the directionality of musical force enhances one’s experience of oneself as
capable of acting with intention.

Last, the quality of strength of force is relevant to tonal tension and resolution. There are
varying levels of tensions and resolution that are built in many ways in music. For example,
tonal intervals in both the simultaneous (harmonic) aspect of music and its sequential
(melodic) structure are used to create tension and resolution; some forms of popular music can
build great tension and achieve significant release through the way that the rhythmic aspects of
music are managed; and even in lyric music, such as songs, tension can be created in the
relationship between music and lyrics, such as when the implications of the musical
components are at variance with the linguistic content of the lyric.
In all of these cases, the fact that the force can be managed at varying levels both initiates
and results from a causal sequence of actions that all serve to awaken one’s sense of purpose,
intentionality, and, hence, sense of self. The manipulation of tonal force awakens one’s sense
of self. In chapter 8, the fact that melodies and other tonal motions are perceived as paths was
cited as one reason why intentionality is experienced in music. Paths in the physical world are
associated with particular destinations and the fulfillment of human intentions; hence, this
aspect of paths is mapped onto music.
This is where the different aspects of the metaphors of musical motion come into play. We
often say that we are moved by the music when a piece of music affects us on an emotional
level. Yet, through the phenomenon of quickening, we can also see that there is an application
in music therapy where the way that music facilitates an actual physical movement is of
primary importance.
Schema theory asserts that it is not an accident that the same word move is used in both of
these senses. The use of a common word is taken as evidence that there is an underlying
experiential and conceptual connection between the two senses of the word. Ansdell’s
insistence that the quickening of the spirit is necessary for the quickening of the body can be
seen as reflective of this idea. Johnson and Larson (2003) directly address these two uses of
to move when applied to music.
So when we say that “music moves” and that “music moves us,” we do more than make a
pun. This is another important instance of polysemy. Just as we pointed out previously that
“way” has multiple metaphorically related senses, so too does “move” in it application to
musical experience. The “MUSIC AS MOVING FORCE” metaphor helps to explain why
we use the word “move” to mean these different, but related, things, (p. 76)
Once we realize that the fact that we use the same word move is not an accident, we can
consider the various dimensions of movement in the physical/spatial domain in order to gain
insight into its musical manifestations. Johnson and Larson (2003) undertake such a strategy in
their detailed look at metaphors of musical motion, particularly in their exploration into how
musical experience appears as movement across a landscape:
The “MUSICAL LANDSCAPE” metaphor emphasizes only movement over a landscape. It
does not focus explicitly on the cause of the motion. As with physical motion, I can either
move myself (purposefully) over and through a landscape, or else I can be moved by forces
beyond my control. These two different sources of motion will thus produce two different
metaphoric scenarios, one in which “I move” over the landscape and the other in which “I

am moved over the landscape…. Other extensions and variations are possible, too.
Consider the way in which the metaphoric scenario in which “I move” through the musical
landscape can be combined with the basic metonymy, the “PERFORMER IS THE MUSIC
PERFORMED.” The performer then creates the musical path as she moves, (p. 76)
Although Johnson and Larson are talking about general rather than clinical experiences of
music, their analysis has important implications for theory in music therapy. They demonstrate
that our common way of speaking about music conveys an identification of player and music.
Becoming the music is a common way of understanding the relation between human beings and
music. And this becoming, whether as a listener or player, allows the person to experience
things such as establishing an intentional path and traveling along it to one’s goal. I have
already discussed how important this can be clinically, and Johnson and Larson’s discussion
establishes this aspect of music to be as central in nonclinical experiences of music as in
clinical ones.
According to Johnson and Larson, there are three major ways that we experience and learn
about motion: “we see objects move, we move our bodies, we feel our bodies being moved by
forces” (pp. 68-69). They further discuss the implications for understanding music of this last
mode of experience:
The third major way we experience physical motion is when physical substances and
entities like wind, water, and large objects move us from one point to another. In music the
metaphorical force is the music itself, moving the hearer from one location (state) to
another (different) state. If music is force, then it has causal effects. The idea of musical
forces is thus a special case, via metaphorical extension, of what Lakoff and Johnson
(1999) called the “LOCATION EVENT STRUCTURE” metaphor. According to the
metaphor, “STATES ARE LOCATIONS,” that is, metaphorical places that an entity can be
“in” or “at.” (p. 75)
Because it deals with the nature of events and causation, the Location Event Structure
metaphor is one of the most central aspects of schema theory and of the philosophy of the
embodied mind developed by Lakoff and Johnson (1999, p. 179). In it, we can see in more
general terms many of the components of the way that music is experienced and conceptualized
in the present work:
THE LOCATION EVENT STRUCTURE METAPHOR
States Are Locations (interiors of bounded regions in space)

Changes Are Movements (into or out of bounded regions)
Causes Are Forces
Causation Is Forced Movement (from one location to another)
Actions Are Self-propelled Movements
Purposes Are Destinations

Means Are Paths (to destinations)
Difficulties Are Impediments to Motion
Freedom of Action Is the Lack of Impediments to Motion
External Events Are Large, Moving Objects (that exert force)
Long-term, Purposeful Activities Are Journeys
Of course, it is not only musical states that are conceived as locations; human emotional
states are seen in the same way as well. Recall the examples of being in a depression or
coming out of a dream. We can also consider Zuckerkandl’s notion of motion in music as
change of state rather than change of place as consistent with this metaphor. The structure of
this metaphor allows us to consider all of the ramifications of considering music a force
because it changes our inner state, although this change is often conceptualized as a change of
location.
Cox (1999) used this metaphor extensively in his detailed study of the metaphoric logic of
musical motion and musical space. He notes that “in STATES ARE LOCATIONS, we
anticipate not only the arrival, but also the new state of relations that results from that arrival.
Anticipated events can thus be understood as anticipated states” (p. 226). For example, in
everyday spatial movement we associate the change to a new location with a change in state.
Our trip home after work means that we anticipate the state of relaxation and thus our path is
seen as one from stress to relaxation; it is experienced as a motion between two experiential
states.
Mapping this onto musical experience means that we not only anticipate a specific event
(arriving home, arriving at the cadence or at the tonic, etc.) but that we also anticipate a
change of state at the musical “place” at which we arrive. Motion is as much change of state as
it is change of place. And to relate this to the primary focus of the present chapter, once the
state is changed, physical motion becomes possible. Whether it is conceived in emotional,
cognitive, or physiological terms, the inner state of the person causes the immobility. Once the
state is changed, so is the immobility because it is causally related to the experiential state that
is transformed by the music.
The way that we sense motion in music itself facilitates the ability to be moved by and with
it. According to Zuckerkandl (1973), we perceive motion in music by moving with it, just as
the mercury in a thermometer detects heat by becoming warm. He observes that the ear is a
special organ with unique functions that contrast to other senses, such as vision:
The ear is not a reflector but a resonator of music (p. 158). Just as the skin is exposed to the
surrounding air, so the ear is exposed to sound …. Colors do not color us in the same way
as warmth warms us, but tones “tone” us and tonal tension “tenses” us…. Like an infinitely
sensitive hand on a tautly stretched membrane, the ear lies on the tensed surface of the tones
—this time sensitive only to nonphysical tension, not to physical vibrations. The ear is like
a hand that inner life holds out to outer life, expecting to make contact with it and knowing
itself to be spiritually alive in the contact…. The kind of hearing that moves with the tones
draws me into their motion; by being heard, nonmaterial living processes characterized by

states of tension become something perceived, something known, (pp. 159-160)
A person whose personal difficulties can be conceptualized as a form of emotional,

cognitive, or physical immobility is by definition moved by the music because in experiencing
music he or she is moving with the music. Just as the (e)motion of the psyche is a change of
state while the motion of the physical body is change of place, the type of movement
characteristic of music is a change of state in the dynamic field. The following discussion
expands upon the notion that music is uniquely suited to activating the body through the psyche.
When music therapy works for people whose difficulties can be described as immobility (of
any type), it is because the capacity for motion has been reestablished by the musical
experiences.
In his discussion of melody, Zuckerkandl (1973) recognizes a profound connection between
music and life. He observes that although a melody “creates itself step by step, wresting its
form from the void” (p. 146), upon completion it nonetheless becomes a reflection of lawful
activity. In other words, there is a necessity to its structure that only becomes apparent when it
is fully realized. He observes that this same type of law, described as “freedom in prospect,
necessity in retrospect,” is also characteristic of the processes of life. Thus, he can say that
“what is distinctive of music is the fact that in it this law governing life (in a higher sense)
becomes audible” (p. 147).
He then considers different forms of motion and differentiates between inanimate motion
that results from inertia or the action of outside force, and animate motion which is directed
from inside. While the former type is always determined by external circumstances, this latter
type of motion is always indeterminate.
For Zuckerkandl, tonal motion is animate motion and, as such, its course is not
predetermined. Although it is determined by an inner impulse, the “self of the “self-motion” of
tones is not an “I.” Instead, it is the dynamic quality of the tone that determines the motion.
In discussing the “self that hears motion,” Zuckerkandl says that “apart from pathological or
extreme cases, self-motion is always perceived” (p. 155), in the sense that the person who
moves is aware of himself as the cause and origin of the motion. The phenomenon of self-
motion can only be self-perceived because the self-motion of others is something we infer, not
perceive directly.
In contrast to Zuckerkandl, music therapists are interested in pathological and/or extreme
cases. This can either be an overt lack of awareness such as with an individual with catatonic
schizophrenia, an autistic child, or a comatose patient, or it can be in a less extreme way in the
sense that all people are unaware of certain parts their self. Many obstacles for clients can be
traced to an inadequate sense of self or a deficit in self-awareness.
Zuckerkandl’s ideas about music suggest that it can produce unique ways of experiencing
the self and activating the will.
According to Zuckerkandl, tonal motion is animate motion. It the only way of experiencing
self-motion that does not originate in our self. In other words, the impetus for tonal motion lies
outside of human beings within the phenomenon of tone, and yet we nonetheless know this as
animate motion because of the way that we experience tonal motion by moving with it. The act
of perceiving tonal motion is itself a motion.

Music therapists know that the perception of tonal motion is not dependent upon a strong
preexisting sense of self because of frequent encounters with disabled or otherwise impaired
individuals who respond strongly to the tonal dimension of music. This is one of the bases for
Ansdell’s application of the idea of quickening as an aspect of music therapy theory.
To review Ansdell’s notion, he observes how the quickening quality of music works by
imparting energy or enhanced vitality to a person. The music works therapeutically not through
the mechanical application of force but by imbuing a person with enhanced liveliness and
motivation, and it is this enhancement of the spirit that shows as enhanced movement of the
body.
Ansdell cautions against looking for purely physiological explanations for physiological
phenomena. He notes that sound and music can both be either physiologically arousing or
calming and that it is a mistake to look at isolated aspects of music (such as its rhythm or
pitch) for an explanation of its clinical efficacy. He asserts that it is the holistic phenomenon of
music taken in combination that is responsible for its benefits. In his view, a purely
mechanistic or physiological explanation will always be deficient if it doesn’t consider how
music moves the body by stimulating emotion.
Ansdell invokes the experience of the author and neurologist Oliver Sacks72 to introduce
his concept of kinetic melody. Sacks broke his leg while hiking alone in the mountains of
Norway. He easily might have died, as no one knew where he was. Although he was able to
fashion a splint with an umbrella, because of nerve damage he could not move his leg. He then
imagined a performance of Mendelsohn’s violin concerto and was able to walk with the
music. The melody existing in his mind was enough to facilitate the movement of his impaired
body.
The explanation for this phenomenon lies in Ansdell’s recognition that the quality of motion
in music shares the quality of motion of living things. These are things like flow, continuity,
coordination, purpose, and direction. As Ansdell notes, music can lend to the body some of its
own qualities of organization and movement. The suggestion in the present text is that this is
possible because, in Zuckerkandl’s terms, music is animate motion.
While other examinations of the role of music in physical rehabilitation tend to focus on its
rhythmic dimension, the present theory leans equally on the tonal dimension, particularly as it
is experienced through melody. Ansdell (1995) develops the idea of how melody is implicated
in understanding how music facilitates movement. He notes that while rhythm supports the
continuity of motion, melody lends direction and purposefulness to motion. The movement of
melody is directional as tones point to other tones in various ways. In melody, we perceive
purposefulness through experiences of tension and resolution. In this way, melody supports the
development of the capacity for intentional action.
According to Ansdell, phrasing is the integrator of rhythm and melody. The way tones are
played in time, their phrasing, reflects a musical logic. He notes how musical phrasing is
similar to the process of breathing. Each phrase is self-contained; each phrase has an onset, a
peak, and a moment of turning when the inhalation becomes an exhalation; and each phrase has
a point of transformation where the dynamic direction is reversed. Moreover, all physical
functions have a phrased aspect. This includes movement, breath, and speech. The way a

person can be drawn into musical phrasing can therefore enhance other aspects of motoric and
speech functioning.
It is an interesting paradox that it is only by giving over to the forces in music that one can
experience the associated enhancement of will and subsequent increase of freedom of
movement. It is necessary to learn to trust music itself in order to obtain its benefits. This
process of learning to trust music was discussed in Aigen (1998) in clinical studies of the
early Nordoff-Robbins work, where it was noted that it was the “act of yielding to the music
which ultimately provides … a greater capacity for willful action because it is what helped to
transform … previously compulsive patterns into music-making that was more self-directed”
(p. 78).
In the section on musical values of the present work, surrendering to the music as an
important musical value relevant to the work of music therapists was discussed. If music was
only a culturally arbitrary arrangement of sound waves, it would be merely an object of
external manipulation with no inherent qualities or inner goal-directedness. Music requires
surrender because of its animate properties. Because of its goal-directed essence, music
demands that people come to terms with it in a way that is similar to how we engage with
other people.
Gary Ansdell (1995) has talked about a similar coming to terms with in his discussion of
Martin Buber’s view of human relationships:
[Buber] brought attention to the difference between what he called ‘I-it’ relationships in
contrast to the ‘I-Thou’ type: between a world to be used and a world to be ‘met’. In the
former the people or things we come into relationship with remain objects to us—to be
experienced, used, and manipulated. They always remain an ‘It’ to us and, though we may
influence them, we do not allow them to influence us in return and therefore remain
untouched by them. In comparison, it is possible to have a very different relationship with
the world that confronts us—whether this be an object, a work of art, a person, or God. In
an ‘I-Thou’ relationship, there is a real ‘meeting’ within an intimate relationship, the
outcome of which is that each side somehow changes the other, (p. 67)
Ansdell goes on to describe how music can function as the medium in which such I-Thou
relationships, described by Buber as the Between, can be forged. “Within this ‘musical
between’ a relationship can come about which is primarily in the music, established in the
improvisation from the first time a musical contact is made, and developed through to the point
where a true ‘meeting’ can come in the music” (p. 68).

I would like to extend Ansdell’s proposal with the idea that in music-centered work, clients
can also develop an I-Thou relationship to music.73 This is what is involved in learning to
trust the music, giving over to it, and allowing oneself to be changed by it. At times the music
is a Between for the interpersonal meeting, at other times the therapist functions as the
intermediary in establishing the client’s relationship to music. Music-centered work is unique
in recognizing this second type of relationship as an equally important aspect of music therapy.
Kenneth Bruscia agrees in this characterization of the importance of the I-Thou construct in
explaining the nature of music-centered work, and also believes that its application reveals

connections among different models of music therapy practice:
The conception of the client’s I-Thou relationship to music represents the same idea as the
pure music transference in Guided Imagery and Music (GIM). The ultimate experience in
GIM, the most healing and transformative one, is the I-Thou relationship between client and
music. This is the essence of music-centered GIM, and I believe that it is true for Analytical
Music Therapy (AMT) and Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy (NRMT). The intensely
intimate relationship between client and music is where all the work is done in music-
centered practice and it is what integrates the models of GIM, AMT, and NRMT. (K
Bruscia, personal communication, February 23, 2004)
Developing an I-Thou relationship to music facilitates the acquisition of a form of tacit

knowledge known as “implicit relational knowledge” (The Boston Change Process Study
Group, cited in Garred, 2004). This type of knowledge is fundamental to change processes in
therapy, as a change in implicit relational knowing implies a change in the self. Garred
suggests that crucial moments in creative music therapy processes lead to a “decisive change
in this relationship towards music” (p. 195) and that this type of change implies a change in
the sense of self. Thus, relating to music as a Thou opens up the possibility that the mode of
experience in interpersonal encounters that characterize therapy processes and that typically
only occur between people can be active in the client’s encounter with music.
It is not just that the client in music therapy has a fully developed sense of I-ness and then
through the encounter with a Thou learns that other entities have a similar internal life. Instead,
it can be the encountering of something as a Thou that helps to stimulate the development of the
client’s own sense of I-ness. It is as if there is some obstacle within the person that prevents a
full development of the sense of I and that through the encounter with the external Thou the
client’s own internal sense of I-ness is awakened.
Recall Zuckerkandl’s notion that individual human beings and all that is not-me both
partake equally of the inner and outer dimensions of the world. In music, the world’s
inwardness is brought to our awareness. Because musical experience necessarily involves this
experience of the inner dimension of things, it can awaken within us awareness of our own
inner natures. And it can do this for all people, disabled, traumatized, or not. But when
disability, illness, or trauma inhibits the normal development of the inner sense of self that
typically arises in social interaction, because music partakes of the inner aspect of the world
and because humans can develop an I-Thou relationship to music, music therapy experiences
can provide the opportunity for the development of a sense of self that cannot happen in any
other way.
The music therapist’s art consists of creating opportunities for musicing in which the
dynamic forces of music can be encountered by the client in an I-Thou relationship. And the
music-centered therapist embodies this relationship to music in two ways: first, in the way that
clinical musical interventions are made with a consciousness of the dynamic forces inherent in
music; and second, in the way that the therapist’s own life represents an I-Thou encounter with
music as the therapist’s destiny is determined by it— because as music therapists, “we are
also bound to the laws of music, tying our own destinies … to the dynamic play of forces

which lie at its heart” (Aigen, 1998, p. 319).

71For
a further discussion of the nature of will in music and its connection to music
therapy processes, see Aigen (1998), pp. 76-78 and pp. 287-294.

72Detailed in his 1986 book, A Leg to Stand On.

73Rudy Garred (2004) also claims that “entering into the attitudinal mode of I-Thou
specifically in relation to music” (p. 102) is an essential part of the dialogical perspective he
offers as a foundation for music-based theory in music therapy.

CHAPTER 12
Music and Emotion in Music-Centered Thought
Any general theory of music therapy has to address the question of the relationship between
music and human emotions. The importance of human emotion is obvious in certain domains of
music therapy practice, such as music psychotherapy. Yet, in other areas of practice, human
emotions are crucial as well. In music and medicine, emotional experience is an important
aspect of physical well-being and recovery; in music therapy and rehabilitation, the motivation
provided by musical experience can. be drawn upon to enhance cognitive or motor function;
and the same can be said for music therapy in special education, where learning is enhanced
by the motivation toward musical experience. In short, whether or not human emotion is the
area of direct clinical focus, it is always implicated in music therapy practice. Thus, while the
discussion in the present section is primarily assuming a context of psychotherapeutic
applications of music therapy, these speculations are relevant in other areas of practice as
well.
In psychodynamic music therapy theory, music is often represented as either expressing or
symbolizing an individual’s emotions, feelings, and patterns of relating to others. None of
these positions, taken alone or in combination, can provide an adequate accounting of the
relationship between music and human emotional life in music-centered music therapy
practice. This is not to say that music does not express or symbolize emotion in music-
centered practice; it is to say that there are other possibilities as well for the relation between
emotion and music, and that a music-centered position recognizes that at times these other
relationships are central in understanding the clinical efficacy of music.
This issue will be examined through the various positions taken on the nature of music by
philosophers of music. I would like to go into some detail on these positions before discussing
the implications for music-centered theory.
The relationship between art forms in general and human emotion has historically been
examined by philosophers of art. Traditionally, there have been three primary positions
espoused: formalism, art as expression, and art as symbol. In the formalist theory, human
emotion plays a very small role in the meaning of art because formal properties of the work in
question—such as its unity and variation—determine its aesthetic value. In the expression
theory, a work of art is considered to be the emotional expression of the artist, where
expression refers to an outer manifestation of an inner, emotional state. In Western philosophy,

which typically examined Western music in the classical tradition, it was the composer’s
emotion that was expressed in the music, although it is clear that both the musician’s emotions
and those of the listener could be considered in this way as well. And those who believe in
art as symbol assert that music is more appropriately thought of as a formal representation of
human emotion than being a direct expression of it.
Some of the differences among psychotherapeutic models of music therapy practice can be
understood in terms of where they stand on the question of the relationship between music and
emotions. For example, some psychodynamic approaches to music therapy consider music to
be symbolic of specific unconscious emotions. Humanistic approaches as well as some

psychodynamic approaches often include the value of music as a vehicle for expressing human
emotion, where expression is understood as a cathartic release of feeling. And while no music
therapy approach is strictly formalist in its theory, both Guided Imagery and Music and
Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy tacitly admit the relevance of formalist considerations in the
attention paid to aspects of music such as its unity, variation, and development.
Discussions of the role of emotion and emotional expression in music therapy have been
undertaken from a music-centered viewpoint in publications such as Ansdell (1995) and those
of the present author (Aigen, 1995a; 1998). From a music-centered perspective, the view that
music in music therapy is primarily used for self-expression—here understood as a cathartic
release of emotion—is an inadequate formulation. While it is acknowledged that the emotional
component is present in music, musical acts of expression go beyond the pure release of
personal feeling or even their symbolization.
The cathartic letting of emotion requires no artistic form or materials. Cursing when we
stub a toe, laughing at a joke, and crying at some sad news are all reflexive acts that are not
mediated through an artistic medium. Once we undertake to play, sing, or listen to music, we
have entered a realm that necessitates the involvement of creative, cognitive processes that are
not required for the seemingly automatic acts of self-expression. As Ansdell (1995) notes, the
shared product created when two or more people make music together requires a type of
listening not required by sheer self-expression. The fact that people in music therapy are
actually making music together demonstrates that what is happening must go beyond the
release of emotion.
In addition to incorporating listening and cognitive processes, musical expression occurs
through external, objective conditions, whether this is a musical instrument, a musical form, or
the patterns of interaction developed by therapy dyads and groups. These external conditions
provide “both the resistance to discharge as well as the vehicle for transformation of the
emotional energy that is otherwise dissipated through mere discharge” (Aigen, 1995a, p. 245).
In eclectic and psychoanalytic formulations, such as those of Tyson (1981), the musical form
exists to provide an excuse or permission for the cathartic release of emotion that might
otherwise be too shameful or not acceptable to the superego. In music-centered approaches,
these external conditions are the very factors that transform the drive to externalize emotional
experience into something that can be used for human development.
Music therapists who assert that the verbal interpretation of musical experience is always
necessary for it to have therapeutic value tend to do so because they are working toward
emotional release or expression that may have momentary value but no lasting therapeutic
value. In these approaches, the musical experience must be interpreted or otherwise processed
to be of clinical value. On the other hand, music-centered therapists recognize that musical
expression already represents the transformation of emotional energy because in it emotional
energy has been used to engage in social and creative activity ministered through external
conditions. The therapy has already occurred in the music because music involves so much
more than the cathartic release of emotion. In a music-centered perspective, one important role
of human emotion is to provide the motivation to engage in musical activity with others and
move one’s activity, consciousness, and expression outward.
Music-centered therapists want to create music with their clients not because doing so will

allow some other fundamentally nonmusical process to occur, but because of the inherent
therapeutic value of musicing together. Emotional self-expression is relevant in a music-
centered framework when this is understood as an act of taking the energy in emotion and
using it in a transformative way to establish connections to others via the external conditions
represented by the conventions of the particular art forms of music. However, when the term
expression is meant merely as the cathartic release of emotion, such a construct is not
particularly relevant in a music-centered framework.
As was discussed previously in the present work, the traditional expression theory has a
major drawback for which it was attacked in the philosophy of art. In it, music conveys an
experience that was first experienced nonmusically. In this view, we do not listen to
appreciate the music as music but merely to gain the emotional experience it communicates.
Moreover, the experience conveyed by a piece of music is not dependent on hearing that
piece because the composer or musician had the experience before writing or playing it. That
which gives music its value—the experience transmitted from composer or musician to
listener—is separated from the music itself. Music becomes a tool to arouse a nonmusical
experience in the listener. In music therapy approaches that consider the music to be a means
to achieve nonmusical changes and experience, adopting the expression theory poses no
particular conceptual challenge. However, in the music-centered position, where music is not
used to a nonmusical end, it is clear that the expression theory is conceptually incompatible.
The representational view or the idea of music as symbolic of emotional life received a
full exposition in the philosophy of Susanne Langer (1942). Langer wanted to preserve the
connection between music and emotions, although she argued against the view that “music is
an emotional catharsis, that its essence is self-expression” (p. 74). She objected to it based on
her belief that “sheer self-expression requires no artistic form” (p. 175), and she also felt that
the variety of interpretations that pieces of music bear weighs against there being a universal
emotion cathected through a piece of music. She believed that music could be used to ventilate
subjective experiences and for catharsis, but this was not its primary function.
Langer believed that music expresses things inexpressible in any other way, and that
knowledge consists of more than just the capacity for reasoning. Feeling (affect) has a
cognitive component and plays a role in knowledge. While “feelings have definite forms
which become progressively articulated” (p. 81), verbal language is a poor medium for the
expression of feelings. On the other hand, music is a form of symbolization that is especially
well adapted to the explication of feelings, even though it lacks the property of denotation.
Langer takes all the arts as Significant Form, with the term emphasizing that something is
signified in works of art and that their importance is not just in their sensuous characteristics.
In answering the questions of What does music signify! What type of meaning does it
embody! Langer says that the music presents emotional content symbolically. For her, “music
is not the cause or cure of feelings but their logical expression” (p. 176).
Langer is clear, however, in saying that music does not symbolize individual feelings but
rather feeling in and of itself, and she quotes Richard Wagner, who clearly conveys this idea:
What music expresses is eternal, infinite and ideal; it does not express the passion, love, or
longing of such-and-such an individual on such-and-such an occasion, but passion, love or

longing in itself, and this it presents in that unlimited variety of motivations, which is the
exclusive and particular characteristic of music, foreign and inexpressible to any other
language. (Wagner, cited in Langer, pp. 179-180)
The more generalized expression of the form of feelings can be confused with the
representation of individual feelings because “its subject-matter is the same as that of’ self-
expression,’ and its symbols may even be borrowed, upon occasion, from the realm of
expressive symptoms” (Langer, p. 180). In music, however, the elements of personal feelings
are formalized through artistic distance. The distance does not imply an impersonal or purely
intellectual consideration. Instead, it allows for insight. We can apprehend through a symbol
what was not previously articulated. This is because aspects of the inner life of humans have
formal properties similar to those of music, including “patterns of motion and rest, of tension
and release, of agreement and disagreement, preparation, fulfillment, excitation, sudden
change” (p. 185).74
Music expresses what words cannot, so it is the basis for a different kind of knowledge
about feelings. “Because the forms of human feeling are much more congruent with musical
forms than with the forms of language, music can reveal the nature of feelings with a detail and
truth that language cannot approach” (p. 191). Music reflects the morphology of feelings, and
dissimilar feelings can share a similar morphology, thus accounting for the fact that music can
be variously interpreted. “The real power of music lies in the fact that it can be true to the life
of feeling in a way that language cannot; for its significant forms have that ambivalence of
content which words cannot have” (p. 197). Rather than conceiving of music as a medium of
interpersonal communication, Langer thinks of it as vehicle for insight into the nature of our
affective selves. To her, music makes emotions conceivable.
Langer takes up the psychoanalytic theory of aesthetics, which she believes has much to
recommend it, and her criticism of it sheds some light on differences between music-centered
music therapy and other forms of clinical practice. To her, the psychoanalytic view of artistic
activity characterizes it as “an expression of primitive dynamisms, of unconscious wishes” (p.
167). But while the psychoanalytic view provides insight into “why a poem was written, why
it is popular, what human features it hides under its fanciful imagery,” it nonetheless “makes
no distinction between good and bad art” (p. 168). It offers no criteria for providing any
basis for considerations of the artistic value of a work of art.
In psychoanalytic or other nonmusic-centered forms of music therapy, this is not a problem
and is even a virtue, because aesthetic factors are considered not only irrelevant to the clinical
value of music but at times actually impede the clinical process (Lecourt, 1998). But in music-
centered approaches, the artistic value of the music created or used in the therapy process is
important in considering its clinical usefulness. This is why Guided Imagery and Music
practitioners use particular recordings and performances and Nordoff-Robbins therapists pay
great attention to clinical musicianship. And it is also why music-centered music forms of
practice require a theory of the relationship between music and human emotions that goes
beyond the expression theory and that can be used for the basis for a general philosophy of
music.
Peter Kivy’s (1989) work was discussed in chapter 5. He wants to preserve the connection

between music and human emotions in a way that does not fall prey to the deficiencies of the
expression theory. He believes that affective terms can apply to music itself and not just to the
composer’s or performer’s state of mind, or to the listener’s experience of music. He wants to
show how emotive descriptions can intelligibly apply to music even though he recognizes that
only sentient beings possess emotions, and that these terms can apply inter subjectively and
thus be more than just one individual’s assessment of a piece of music. Kivy’s project is
appealing to music therapists because, if true, it shows how public criteria can be formed for
assessments made about the emotional qualities of any piece of music, clinical or nonclinical.
As was discussed previously, Kivy is primarily interested in how music is expressive of
emotions. It is not that music does not express emotions. It often does. However, he believes
that the expressive of case is more important in understanding music because when we talk
about music with emotive terms we are generally referring to what it is expressive of rather
than what it is expressing.
He argues that the emotion that the music is expressive of is necessarily what we are
interested in when we talk about music emotively because our reaction to a piece of music
does not change when we learn about the composer’s state of mind when it was composed. If
we hear a piece of music as somber and brooding, he argues that this assessment does not
change when we find out that the composer was not particularly troubled during its
composition. Thus, it is not the composer’s emotional state that a piece conveys to us, but
instead it is more general attributes of human emotion that are conveyed.
Kivy’s theory explains why we can agree on what emotive characterizations fit particular
pieces of music without recourse to saying that it expresses the particular characterization.
This is because something like sadness is a quality of the music, not a power of the music to
do things to the listener. Once the emotional quality of the music is located in the music rather
than in the response of the listener, we can point to formal qualities of the music that represent
the emotion it is said to be expressive of.
Generally, listeners do not feel the way the music sounds. In Kivy’s view, listeners do not
feel the emotion the music is expressive of. This does not mean that the experience of listening
is without emotion because music can be expressive without being arousing of what it
expresses. It is the emotivist theory that holds that music arouses in us the feelings that it
portrays.
When Kivy says that “a piece of music might move us (in part) because it is expressive of
sadness, but it does not move us by making us sad” (1990, p. 153), what he is really saying is
that it is the way that the composer is realizing or commenting upon the emotional experience
being expressed that moves the listener. The sublime, delicate way in which complicated
existential concerns are expressed can itself be something that moves us to feelings of awe,
wonder, resignation, and joy. Or as Kivy (1990) describes it,
What… I am moved … by in the last movement of Brahms’s First Symphony is the beautiful
way in which the composer embodies the expressive properties of mournfulness, anxiety,
and expectation in his musical fabric (in the introduction) and then how, at just the right
moment, manages that gloriously joyous yet resigned and tranquil theme in C Major, (pp.
161-162)

We are moved by the way the composer manages the expression of emotion, but not moved to
the emotion that is being expressed.
So a piece of music can be sad or tranquil, but this does not mean that it is about sadness or
tranquility. Instead, the expressive properties highlight the musical ones, just “as color might
be used by the painter to emphasize contour or mass” (Kivy, 1990, p. 196). Kivy urges us to
separate what a music expresses from what it is expressive of. For example, music arousing
amusement in us is not necessarily expressive of amusement, music that expresses boredom
might yet be interesting and not arouse boredom in us, and we might love music that is not
expressive of love. In sum, the feeling we have about a piece of music is not the feeling the
music expresses.
All of these observations support the position that the expression theory alone does not do
justice to the way that we experience and value music because we listen for the experience of
hearing the music, not just to have a nonmusical experience conveyed to us. And because it is
not based on a predetermined notion on the relationship between artistic expression and human
emotions, the music-centered position can accommodate a broad understanding of the
relationship between the two.
There are at least four different dimensions of music and musical experience that are
relevant to human emotions, and the quality of the emotion connected to a single piece of
music in each dimension can be different. The expression theory covers only one of these
dimensions, and any music therapy theory dependent upon it will not able to consider other
types of music-emotion relationships.
In music-centered thinking, there is no a priori limitation on the emotion-music relationship,
and therefore there are greater possibilities for understanding what gives the music clinical
value to the client. In considering a client’s music, we have to separate what it might be
expressing for the client, what it might be expressive of based on its structural characteristics,
what emotion the entire musical experience can produce in the client, and what emotion it
might evoke in the therapist.
In a music therapy context, the music might (1) express a client’s emotion, (2) be
expressive of an emotion different from what is expressed, (3) evoke an emotion in the
therapist that might be different from the emotions in (1) and (2), and (4) create an emotional
experience in a client that is different from any of the first three emotions. For example, a
client might create a melody in a slow tempo with many descending steps and with an implied
minor tonality. It is possible that the music (1) expresses tender feelings toward a family
member, while it (2) contains formal characteristics of sad music, (3) evokes feelings of
poignancy in the therapist, and (4) leads to feelings of pride on the client’s part for creating
something of beauty.
Because it is not committed to the idea that music is primarily a form of self-expression in
music therapy, the music-centered position can accommodate all of these possible
relationships between music and emotion. Music can have important emotional benefits for a
client, regardless of whether it happens to be personally expressive or symbolic of
unconscious feelings. The general engagement with music relates to human affective
experience in a number of dimensions, and by not restricting its theory of music to being a

form of emotional release or personal expression, the music-centered position offers a variety
of opportunities to clients.
In the expression theory, the listener gains an understanding of the music by being moved to
the emotion being expressed. The only way a therapist can understand the emotional content of
the music is through his or her inner emotional response. However, in considering other ways
that music and emotion relate, such as in the case of being expressive of emotion, we detect the
emotional quality in a more public way based on its musical content. This has implications for
establishing the objectivity of clinical judgments. If the emotional content is a quality of the
music rather than a power of it to do something to us, this seems to open up greater
possibilities for articulating the rational basis of clinical judgments regarding the affective
nature of a client’s music.

74In many ways, Langer’s ideas are the intellectual precursor of Daniel Stern’s concept of
“vitality affects” that have been cited frequently as the basis for music therapy theory in
current literature, such as Pavlicevic (1997) and Smeijsters (2003).

CHAPTER 13
Musical Form, Development, and Transformation
MUSIC AND THE LIFE FORCE

The common origins of words and the multiple uses of particular words often provide insight
into the similarities between concepts that have become differentiated over time. Consider
how to animate something can mean both to give motion to something and to give life to
something. There is a strong connection between motion and life and, as the detailed
exposition of both Zuckerkandl’s thinking and schema theory has shown, between motion and
music. Music and life are connected through the phenomenon of motion. Music generally, and
tone specifically, are intimately connected to the life force present within all living things.
The idea of music as manifesting a life force is part of a tradition in the philosophy of
music. In the way that composers who advocate positions that stem from this perspective
articulate their ideas, we can see that it is consistent with view of music from schema theory.
For example, Saslaw (1997-98) notes how the writings of both Heinrich Schenker and Arnold
Schoenberg “show significant evidence of underlying force schemata in their authors’
conception of music. In fact, due to their strikingly similar conceptions of organicism, both
authors often employ specifically biological terms, referring to life forces at play in musical
works” (p. 18). Saslaw goes on to locate Schenker’s views on how music develops within his
fundamentally biological sense of music:
For Schenker, the materials of music derive from the “chord of nature,” the vertically
presented first five members of the harmonic series…. As Schenker describes the force that
sets into motion the horizontalized version of the chord of nature, we see that he tends to
clothe it in biological terms:
The fundamental structure shows how the chord of nature comes to life through a vital
natural power. But the primal power of this established motion must grow and live its own
full life…. We perceive our own life-impulse in the motion of the fundamental line, a full
analogy to our inner life. (Schenker, cited in Saslaw, p. 19)
The idea of perceiving a life-force in music and recognizing aspects of the inner life of
humans in the development of musical compositions is certainly relevant to music therapy.
Marcia Broucek (1987) identifies varying attitudes to the life spirit as an important way of
determining the focus of a music therapist’s work. As to the question How alive do you feel?
she speculates on three primary ways people would answer:
Some would answer with vehement opposition, hating life, angry at what has been dealt
them, or despairing of life’s value. Others might respond with apathy, ranging from barely
tolerating their daily existence to being mildly indifferent to life’s vicissitudes. And still
others would proclaim an intensity for living: hungry to try new things, seeking new
understanding, eager to be involved, cherishing life as a gift. (p. 50)
The three positions are respectively described as “opposition to life, indifference to life,

and eagerness for life” (p. 50), and the therapist’s work varies accordingly:
For persons who are against life, our challenge is to revive the life spirit, to tap into each
person’s health and restore belief in the value of life. For clients who are indifferent to life,
our challenge is to sustain the life spirit, to feed and encourage a suppressed or dormant
belief in the creative potential of life. For those who embrace life, our challenge is to
nurture the life spirit, to offer avenues for expansion, learning, and growth, (p. 51)
Determining a client’s attitude toward the life spirit and formulating clinical interventions
accordingly is one way of conceptualizing music therapy practice that is more congruent with
music-centered practice than is crafting interventions based on psychoanalytic interpretations
or psychological diagnoses. There is no more fundamental layer of a person’s being than that
represented by his/her basic stance toward being alive. By conceptualizing clinical needs in
these terms, the therapist can create musical experiences that directly address the most
fundamental reasons why people are in therapy. When music is conceived as a vehicle for
connection to the life spirit, and clinical needs are conceptualized in terms of the person’s
problematic relationship with the life spirit, a specific and unique role is carved out for music
and musical experiences that does not require translation into other systems of thought for its
clinical value to be understood.
For people whose needs relate to an insufficient connection to the life spirit or to an
inadequate means of managing it, musicing provides a healthy patterning based upon its
connection to the life spirit and its manifestation of processes basic to the healthy maintenance
of life. These processes are manifest intrapersonally and in a person’s relationship to his or
her environment.
Most music, clinical or otherwise, takes place within musical form. In music-centered
thinking, the particular form that the music of the session takes is as important as in nonclinical
musical contexts because the overall experience of the session is a musical one. For the
experience to be an emotionally satisfying one—one that has within it a sense of completeness
and that can be impressed upon the mind and play a role in the development of the self—its
elements have to fit together in an organic way that typifies works of art.
One way of looking at the form of a music therapy session is to consider how the
confluence of music and therapy gives rise to unique clinical forms. This way of thinking
recognizes that the form that the music takes in a music therapy session is itself an important
clinical intervention; it is not merely a container in which the clinical-musical interventions
take place.
The particular construction of musical forms is one way of managing patterns of tension and
release in music. Rather than seeing these forms as arbitrary stylistic conventions, in music-
centered thinking these forms are considered to have important developmental and
psychological foundations and implications. The particular ways in which they manage tension
and release are analogs of the same processes that typify human development.75
For example, consider the rondo form (A-B-A-C-A-D, etc.), a ubiquitous one in many
styles of music. In it, there is a specific and regular pattern of the familiar alternating with that
which is unfamiliar.

There is a similar pattern in the development of the human self connected to motoric
autonomy that echoes the rondo. When young children become able to crawl, they acquire the
ability to move away from and return to their primary caregiver. In unstructured play
situations, young children will first spend time with the primary caregiver in order to acquire
sufficient security before moving into the external environment. The child will then crawl
away and explore novel aspects of the environment until contact with the unfamiliar produces
too much tension, at which point the child will return to the primary caregiver in a process
known as refueling (Mahler, Pine, & Bergman, 1975). The tension caused by the unfamiliar
experience is resolved through contact with the familiar.
The healthy development of the child’s self requires the ability to learn how to safely
manage these rhythms of tension and resolution as seen in contact with the familiar and the
unfamiliar. The same pattern of alternating familiar and unfamiliar experiences is at the root of
the musical experience of the rondo. And interestingly, while initially the child must physically
return to the caregiver to reestablish contact and effectively refuel, in subsequent stages of
development the refueling can take place with eye contact alone and thus can take place at a
distance. Musical themes can be similarly referenced at a distance when they are played in
altered or embellished forms, yet are close enough to the original to function as the theme.
Lisa Summer (1995) has explicitly discussed how the structure of Mozart’s K311 Theme
and Variations can be understood as a parallel “re-enactment of the mother-child dyad in
which the mother creates a healthy environment for her child’s optimum physical and
psychological development” (p. 37). She considers the opening theme “as the
musical/psychological home base from which each variation is derived” (p. 41). Through the
first three variations one can see a child (melody) who is becoming successively more
autonomous from the mother (the accompaniment):
The child (the melody) of Variation III … travels further and more smoothly than in
previous variations. The melody in Variation III returns only once, briefly to the original
symbiotic Theme. This reveals the profile of a child who is able to master the tension of
being away from the mother for longer periods of time, with only minimal “refueling.”
Rather than returning to the original Theme as in previous variations, the mother-child
profile of this variation is characterized by a more sophisticated refueling through its
rhythmic unison of mother and child: in each step the melody is independent and self-
absorbed, yet it has the unison rhythmic support of the accompaniment underneath it.
Human development takes place within the same patterns of tension and release that
characterize musical forms. Music is a suitable vehicle for the development of the self
because its structural forms on the macro level of organization reflect its organization on the
micro level as templates for human development.
Similar to music, human development takes place through time and is described by the
same spatial metaphors.76 In discussing the sequence of the elements of musical compositions,
we talk not just about musical change but about musical development. In the choice of the
word development to describe what music does through time, we indicate that our experience
of music is of something being brought from latency to fulfillment. If it is to be a parallel
process of human development, then, music must develop, harmonically, melodically, in terms

of its complexity, in whatever way. Musical development is growth in the organic sense, not
just change.
That the course of music is conceived as growth has important implications for
understanding approaches to music therapy (such as Nordoff-Robbins and Guided Imagery and
Music) that emphasize how using music that exhibits development is an important part of an
effective clinical intervention. If music follows the laws of organic life, as time passes, it
develops. This becomes an essential activating metaphor for considering how musical
processes are effective facilitators of human growth.
Because human growth entails increased complexity, the passage of time for humans brings
increased wisdom and knowledge as we mature. Similarly, we impart an experience of
development and increased wisdom to a musical performance as it proceeds. As music
unfolds it develops, and as we identify with it we experience ourselves as similarly
developed.
The homology between musical form and human developmental patterns is not necessarily
a foundation for a general, music-centered music therapy theory unless additional assumptions
are made. One has to assert that the larger-scale forms, such as the rondo, are not only stylistic
conventions but also are connected in some way to a primary level of organization in music,
such as the fundamental forces active in tonal relationships. This assertion would preclude
saying that the rondo and other fundamental forms have evolved because they are artistic
manifestations of the developmental human pattern. Placing the developmental pattern in a
primary position clearly would not be a music-centered position because it would reduce
music and music therapy phenomena to phenomena of developmental psychology. But it is
possible to say that alternating patterns of tension and resolution are fundamental natural
processes that are manifest in both music and human development. This puts the
developmental and musical phenomena on equal footing, something necessary to a music-
centered theory.
Learning to manage alternating patterns of tension and resolution is not only relevant to the
individual human child in relation to developmental milestones, but it is also characteristic of
all life forms in their relation to the totality of their social and physical environments. John
Dewey observed that the constant change in the relationship between an organism and its
environment is characterized by a temporary imbalance followed by the reestablishment of
equilibrium. According to Dewey (1934), “life grows when a temporary falling out is a
transition to a more extensive balance of the energies of the organism with those of the
conditions under which it lives” (p. 14).

In other words, well-adapted organisms exist in balance with their environments.
Environments change, which causes tension for the organism. Those organisms develop and
flourish that can learn to benefit from the resolution of the tension caused by the ever-changing
demands of the organism/environment relationship.
Moreover, these changes in the relationship between the organism and its environment have
a rhythmic character. In the most basic biological processes, we can observe how states of
balance and harmony are achieved through the mastery of rhythms of tension and resolution:
This progressive reclaiming of balance and harmony after periods of tension and conflict

contains a consummatory element that Dewey describes as being an essential feature of
aesthetic experience…. The processes that represent the furtherance and development of
life on the biological, social, and emotional level necessarily contain aesthetic features.
The aesthetic is essential to our healthful embrace of life. (Aigen, 1995a, p. 242)
And the patterns of tension and release that characterize music are paradigmatic examples
of this aspect of aesthetic experience. The most basic processes of musical construction and
musical experience are therefore patterned after, or more accurately, are analogs of the
processes necessary for life to flourish.
Another way that aesthetic, psychological, and ecological processes are related is through
models of what represents a healthy system in each domain. The similarity between the
processes that promote the healthy development of the individual and processes that
characterize a healthy ecosystem can be seen in the way that energy is managed in both
systems. In both domains, optimal functioning is characterized by the free flow of energy
among its constituents. Such a view that healthy psychological functioning is indistinguishable
from healthy ecological functioning is consistent with the world views of pretechnological
societies that see the same forces as active in both realms, as well as in the modern,
psychological world view, which holds that we create in our external environment a reflection
of our internal lives.
Although an ecosystem is in a constant state of flux characterized by the continual
movement of energy (nutrients) through the system, there is an overall state of balance
allowing each plant and animal species continued survival through occupying unique
ecological niches. The optimal state of an ecosystem is one of dynamic balance; its continuity
and stability are paradoxically maintained by constant change. When the totality of living
things is considered in its unity, then we can see that the more diverse and differentiated the
forms of life in an ecosystem, the better the chance life has to maintain its existence.
Healthy human functioning is also characterized by the ability to maintain a flexible
response to the ever-changing demands of one’s own internal development, as well as to those
of the external society. Essential to growth is the ability to maintain a flexible self-image in
order to allow for the changes characteristic of emotional development. Paradoxically, the
stability of our identity is then dependent upon our adaptability to constant change. We
maintain our healthy functioning by allowing our being its natural transformation. The diversity
of life supported by a healthy ecosystem is mirrored by the manner in which the healthy
individual relates to and develops the myriad facets of the personality.

Conversely, in both the psychological and ecological realms, problems are caused by
energy becoming bound and unavailable for further transformation or use. In the environment
we can see this in the form of nuclear waste and nonbiodegradable matter. The energy
constituting these substances has reached a dead end and cannot be transformed and
rechanneled back into the system.
The parallel for the individual can be seen when pathology causes energy to become bound
in a psychic structure, part of the body, or particular mode of functioning. For example, in
Jungian terms, a destructive complex results when a psychic structure becomes inflated due to
its attraction of excess psychic energy, as when an overabundance of energy in the persona

causes one to overidentify with his/her social role and lose an inner sense of self. Extreme
pathology is marked by a rigid experience of, and response to, the world. As with the
ecosystem, the coalescing of energy into immutable forms within the individual impairs the
functioning of the whole and ultimately can cause its total breakdown.77
The life spirit can be understood as a force of nature that allows all living things to coexist
in a state of dynamic balance, whether this is an individual organism, a social group, or an
entire ecosystem. The health promoting force is one and the same in all domains.
Carolyn Kenny (1982) makes this connection explicit and draws its implications for music
therapy. For her, “nature is not only that which can be observed, but a vital force which
somehow manages to keep the elements in balance and harmony and must therefore have
wisdom far beyond our knowledge” (p. 47). It is possible to think about music—as the sound
of sacred, once-living substances—as the voice of wisdom in nature. It is the vehicle by which
we contact that force of nature that maintains a dynamic balance in both our inner and outer
worlds. To truly understand music is then to understand the maintenance and enhancement of
life itself. In the way that it models the flow and transmutation of energy in various forms of
tension and resolution, music is the sound of the life force.
Understanding the essence of music in this fashion is one way of providing a music-
centered foundation for music therapy practice. It explains why musicing qua musicing is a
life-embracing activity and congruent with goals of therapy, whether in the physical,
behavioral, physiological, psychological, or spiritual domain. When bringing a client into a
state of musicing is understood as an activity that connects a person to the basic processes of
life itself, no nonmusical clinical rationale is needed to explain the human value of music
therapy.
MUSIC AND TRANSFORMATION
Notions of time can be linear or cyclical. Different facets of human individual and social
development have a cyclical metaphysical basis that is also shared with music. Similarly,
phenomena of transformation are central to music and to human development. Hence, an
important task for the creation of music-centered music therapy theory lies in examining the
congruence between how phenomena of transformation are manifest in music and human
development. The connections between the two areas can be highlighted using the concepts of
myth and ritual.78
Music, myth, and human development are connected by the idea of transformation. Kenny
(1982) observes how this is true for the individual and for the social group, as she establishes
the connection between individual development and the death-rebirth myth:
At the core of mythic events was transformation. The heroes would return or die, but
always transformed in body and/or spirit, endowed with new gifts. An entire people would
begin life again, but in a new land, becoming transformed within their new environment.
With transformation, a type of death and rebirth are always implied. For this is the process
of adaptability and change, (p. 57)

The “Hero’s Journey” is a primary myth concerning human development. According to Jung
(1956), the hero “is first and foremost a self-representation for the longing of the unconscious,
of its unquenched and unquenchable desire for the light of consciousness” (p. 205). In this
myth, the protagonist leaves from home, undergoes a test or engages in a struggle, earns
something valuable, becomes transformed, and returns home.
Kenny connects music to the narrative themes of myth in observing that the tension-
resolution dynamic of music reflects the death-rebirth myth. One way music facilitates human
development is by providing access to the powers of this myth that is central to human
development. In order to grow we must change, and in order to change we must allow for
many partial deaths in our lifetime as prior ways of seeing ourselves give way to new images
of self. As Kenny (1982) describes them, the processes of tension and resolution exist on many
levels in music and give rise to different degrees or levels of transformation: “Each day can
be considered a series of transformations through our various activities, or as the many
overlapping motifs in some musical piece. One’s entire life might have one major
transformation. Or both of these circumstances may happen simultaneously” (p. 62).
One can identify specific moments in music where tension is resolved, where death
becomes rebirth, where the paradox of dying into a new life can be represented. The moment
of death and rebirth is simultaneously the moment of transformation. It is because of this
ability to embody transformational processes that seem paradoxical when described verbally
that music is such a powerful mode of therapy:
Music and myth both acknowledge and accept paradox. The point of transformation in
Chopin’s E minor prelude [the G natural tone in the melody played in measure 17] represents
both death and rebirth in the same chord, moment, or space. Both exist together and become
one another. For at the moment of rebirth, another death has in fact begun. (Kenny, 1982, p. 64)
The transformational essence of music is present on the largest scale of musical forms,
within specific phrases, and in something as basic as Zuckerkandl’s (1956) concept of the
scale. Recall how in considering the motion present in a simple major scale, he observed how
the movement from scale degree 1 to 2 represents a “step against the forces in operation,
‘away from,’” while the movement from scale degree 7 to 8 “is a step with the forces in
operation, ‘toward,’ a step that leads to the goal” (p. 96). And although 1 and 8 have different
absolute values, they nonetheless share the same dynamic quality because of their octave
relationship. Thus, he concludes that “where we arrive is exactly where we started. The
schema must be departure from … advance toward … arrival at the point of departure as goal.
In the course of this motion, then the departing becomes a returning” (p. 97).
Kenny’s examination of the nature of tension-resolution in music, its application to human
life through the concept of the death-rebirth myth and hero myth, and Zuckerkandl’s
examination into the ontological nature of the forces perceived in tone are all linked by the
recognition that one’s starting point is identical with one’s goal; in the culmination of a
process we find the origins of a new one. Mircea Eliade (1957, 1959) called this the eternal
return. The death of each year is simultaneously the birth of another as we return to the time of
origins when the world itself is created anew: “It is by virtue of this eternal return to the
sources of the sacred and the real that human existence appears to be saved from nothingness

and death” (p. 107).
Both the transformation point of the fifth in the major scale and the tones that represent
moments of transformation in music embody the death-rebirth myth central to human
development. There is a coexistence of opposites and paradox in music that is homologous to
the truths of human life. Similarly, our birth as human beings represents the beginning of our
lives and the first step toward its end, our death.
The wisdom in realizing that origins and goal are the same in both music and life embodies
the insight that the value in life is the travel, the motion, the voyage, not the destination. As a
medium of experience, the purpose of music in music therapy is not a means toward a
nonmusical goal any more than the purpose of playing a piece of music is to get to its end,
goal, or destination, or any more than the purpose of life is in its ultimate destination. To
understand the deepest significance of music—either implicitly in appreciating it, or overtly in
being able to talk about it—is to have a spiritual insight that enriches every waking moment of
one’s life.
The first movements of the steps of the infant into the outside world are the first steps of the
“Hero’s Journey,” the same as the first steps of moving from scale tone 1 to scale tone 2 are
the first steps from the first tone of a melody to the second. The infant begins life with a sense
of merged identity, and the first step taken in developing an autonomous identity is also the
first step to the transcendence of this autonomy; the movement from the root of a scale to the
second degree is both a move away from and back toward the root; and the hero’s first steps
on the journey are also the first steps back home. The basic principle underlying the
significance of music for human beings is that all human activity is part of an eternal return to
origins.

75This topic is also discussed in Aigen (1998).

76As
an example, consider the title of a work by the present author, Paths of
Development in Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy (Aigen, 1998).

77The material in the preceding three paragraphs is from Aigen, 1991b.

78These themes are discussed in Aigen, 1998 (pp. 243-247).

CHAPTER14
Melody, Container, Transition
The present chapter has somewhat of an eclectic focus due to the way that it takes up some
themes introduced in prior chapters and develops them further to reveal latent connections
among them. The idea of merging with the music is prevalent in music-centered theory, and it
is certainly central to many of the points made throughout the present text. This chapter will
begin with a look at a certain type of merging that occurs in the way that people identify with
musical themes or melodies. This examination of melody will make use of the schema of the
CONTAINER, as we will look at the ramifications of considering a melody as a CONTAINER
in music therapy.
We will then look at the notion of transition as it relates both to music and to therapy and
locate some important commonalities that have a central role in music-centered theory. The
way that the course of music relates to the path of human lives will comprise the next area of
focus. And the chapter will conclude with a look at how the notion of expanding containers
can be used as a vehicle for connecting therapy processes to the most basic developmental
processes of human beings.
THE CONNECTION BETWEEN MELODY AND SELF-IDENTITY

A certain type of musical CONTAINER,79 a melody, is particularly relevant in music therapy
contexts, especially as it relates to issues of identity, transformation, and the ability to integrate
freedom and structure. Recall that when we discuss melody as a CONTAINER, we do not
mean a literal physical container but a phenomenon that functions as a physical container in its
essential aspects. Thinking about the functions of a physical container provides insight into the
function of a musical melody as a CONTAINER.
In exploring the nature of a container, I would like to return to our river analogy. A flowing
river is an undifferentiated moving mass of water. Imagine now that we dip a container into the
river and draw out a liter of water. This liter of water is now separate from the
undifferentiated, ongoing flow of the river. The container allows us to consider this particular
liter of water as a discrete entity that persists through time. Moreover, the container allows us
to transport the water through space; we can carry it with us to various locations. Without the
container, all that exists is the dynamic, flowing, undifferentiated phenomenon of water; with
the container, we create a separate, autonomous body of water.80
So when we think about musical CONTAINERS, we should look for the same types of
functions. We should look for how the musical entity serves to create an autonomous entity
from an undifferentiated mass; we should look for how it allows us to create something that
endures through time and that moves through space without losing its integrity and without
being absorbed into an undifferentiated mass.
Melody is important as a CONTAINER because it is so deeply connected to the human self.
Melody identifies a piece of music and provides orientation to the listener. Melody can

undergo transformation—such as embellishment, variation, extension, and recontextualization
(in new harmony)—and still retain its identity. In general, when a melody has some extra tones
added, we hear this as an embellishment of the original melody, not as a new entity.
Similarly, our sense of self can undergo transformations—either temporary ones such as
changes in feeling states or moods, or permanent ones as when we mature or change in
fundamental ways—and still retain its identity. We still feel that we are the same person who
has undergone a change. We do not literally become a new person when undergoing such
changes.
Melody is often the agent in music. It is the source of intention, striving, and goal-seeking.
Similarly, our sense of self, our I-ness, is something we perceive as the acting agent. In
significant ways, melody can provide the analog for the enduring self, that aspect of our being
that endures through time and that undergoes various changes.
In music, to the extent that we can identify with or become the melody as it is embellished,
developed, or extended, we experience ourselves as similarly transformed. The fluidity,
flexibility, drama, movement, and directionality of the melody become the fluidity, flexibility,
drama, movement, and directionality of the self. In a music therapy context, when a client is
able to be in the music, the musical movements, intentions, goals, structures, and explorations
become the movements, goals, and explorations of the self.
Descriptions of the dynamics of a melody can also be understood as potential descriptors
of the self. As a theme is enhanced, a person can experience himself similarly changed. As a
theme is used to explore unfamiliar territory and become adventurous—either by being recon-
textualized harmonically, by establishing an origin for improvisation, or by serving as the
constant in a rondo form—a person is simultaneously exploring unfamiliar territory or parts of
himself. This is how a theme becomes a vehicle for self-exploration. And as a theme assumes
grace, beauty, or flow, a person can experience himself in this way through identification with
the theme.
In sum, there is a latent human theme within each musical theme. Identifying the clinical and
musical theme with each other is an idea proposed by Clive Robbins:
We are considering theme in more than just its usual musical meaning of a melody. We use
the word in the sense of a musically realized communicative subject of especial meaning to
a client, or group of clients. Such a theme bears a specific content, or focus, that is realized
through the configuration of the compositional elements of its music and the verbal language
it expresses (most, but not all, themes have sung language). A theme then has a purpose, a
meaning, or an action that is embedded in its gestalt, to acquire an experiential

effectiveness for a particular client, or group of clients. (C. Robbins, personal
communication, March 1, 2004)
A theme that may or may not include lyrics can be conceived in this way because there are
qualities of striving, reaching, leaving, arriving, and delay in tones themselves, qualities that
we normally attribute only to consciousness and volition. These dynamics of the tones become
appropriated by the person so that the musical theme and the clinical theme become one.

TRANSITIONAL MUSIC AND TRANSITIONS IN LIFE
Shaugn O’Donnell (1999) has used image schemata to conceptualize the alternation of structure
and freedom in musical improvisation, specifically in analyzing the improvisational structures
of the rock band Grateful Dead. This band developed a unique approach to the presentation of
popular music. Over a number of years, they evolved a concert format consisting of two sets,
the second of which could consist of approximately 90 minutes of uninterrupted music.
Usually, this took the form of sequences of songs with improvisational sections within the
songs and between the songs. While some of the improvisational sections were very open and
free-form in parameters such as feel, tonality, and rhythm, others were based on rhythmic
and/or melodic motifs that characterized the songs from which they emerged or toward which
they were headed.
O’Donnell combined the SOURCE-PATH-GOAL and CONTAINER schemata in analyzing
their music. The songs were CONTAINERS, and the improvisations or transitions were
PATHS from one container to another, or what O’Donnell refers to as uncharted territory.
Figure 2. Pathways
In this framework, the song is the CONTAINER and the music outside of the song, that is,
the music that links different songs, is outside of the CONTAINER. The song-not song
distinction is like the psychologically essential distinction of me-not me.
Various developmental theories talk about how the human psyche is created in an
undifferentiated state. Boundaries are unclear, and one is in a merged state with the external
world. The process of development consists of a progressive differentiation of one’s self from
the external world in the physical, psychological, and social sense. One learns the limits of the
physical body and that one’s emotional experience is somewhat idiosyncratic and not
necessarily the same as others.
As was mentioned previously, creating a sense of identity is initially a process of
establishing a CONTAINER with boundaries. All that is outside the CONTAINER is not-me,
and that which is within the CONTAINER is me. Music and music therapy can play an
important role in the development of the self because of the ability of particular
CONTAINERS, such as melody or song, to facilitate the inception of separateness.
However, this is a unique kind of separateness that is connected to a greater whole and yet
is still malleable. A musical theme is a discrete entity when it sounds in a larger piece of
music, yet it is still part of this larger piece, whether we are considering the theme of a sonata
or one song in a continuous set of popular music. The separateness is always held within a
greater wholeness. As was discussed in terms of the transformation of melody, the identity of
musical entities can be flexible and responsive to context, a quality also necessary to a healthy

sense of individual personal identity. The specific ways in which music manages the identity
and transformation of its musical elements are precisely what is needed for healthy human
development.
Psychological development does not end in our childhood with the construction of a
healthy, differentiated self. The task of the second half of life is to rediscover the wholeness
and connection to the not-me that one spends childhood growing out of. In other words, the
developmental psychological task of the second half of human life is a mirror image of our
initial task. It is to reclaim the sense of wholeness and connection to the social, psychological,
and spiritual world from which we originate. Our task can be seen as reestablishing the
connections to not-me that were severed in order to develop an autonomous sense of self.
Music is uniquely suited to facilitate this process precisely because of the considerations
just mentioned: namely, the malleability of its constituents and its ability to simultaneously
abide connection and separation. The ability of a musical motif to be simultaneously separate
and yet part of something larger embodies the way that adults require an autonomous sense of
self that is yet part of a larger whole. And it is the membership in something larger that gives
the constituent a greater meaning and purpose, both in the musical and nonmusical dimension.
In the language of schemata, I would say that human development requires both the inhabiting
of CONTAINERS as well as the ability to be able to move between them. Certainly it is
possible to think about human lives as paths that travel from CONTAINER to CONTAINER in
which the connective material consists of transitional times.
While this can be true in many ways, an example would be the CONTAINER provided by
being in college. While in college, one’s life is held by specific tasks, responsibilities, and
structures. Upon completing one’s education, it is not uncommon to enter a period of transition
in which the former stability is disturbed and life becomes more of an unknown. Then the
establishment of a particular job or career path can serve as a CONTAINER again.
The music that occupies the space between musical containers is known as transitional
music or music that occupies a transitional space (Aigen, 2002).81 Transitional music takes us
from one container to another. Transitional music either links an experience that repeats in
some way, as in a rondo from, or mediates a change from one type of musical experience to
another, as was the case with the Grateful Dead concerts in which transitional passages could
link quite different types of songs.
Transitional music is less structured with a less clear musical identity than is the music of
song forms or other musical compositions. In it, there is a sense of passing from one strongly
characterized music to another. As a result, this music can have more of an ambiguous
character, and certain tonal, rhythmic, and harmonic rules might be suspended. The precise
qualities of transitional music are context-dependent within a style. For example, if a
particular style has characteristic rhythmic grooves, the transitional music may be more
idiosyncratic in this dimension and assume atypical rhythmic elements.
There are two ways of thinking about transitional music that bear discussion in relation to
music therapy. One way is as a vehicle that links disparate musical experiences. Within a
musical flow or musical logic, it gets us from a musical here to a musical there in an
unplanned, creative way. With the Grateful Dead or other bands that employ an

improvisational approach, transitional music can be a means to link songs in order to create a
seamless musical experience. When the Grateful Dead used transitional music in this way, the
musical qualities of these improvisations did not stray far from the musical parameters of the
songs that they were moving from and toward. Such an enlargement of form can enhance the
artistic and aesthetic gratification of the audience and emphasizes the value of musical
experiences as a form of communal ritual.
In music therapy, an example of this type of transition music can be seen in the early work
of Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins with their client Indu (Aigen, 1998). In Indu’s sessions,
Nordoff and Robbins created session-long improvisations that existed as a seamless whole.
When the improvisation that began the session ended, so did the session.
The form of the session comprised three primary sections connected by two transitional
sections: Opening, Transition to Work, Work, Transition to Closure, Closure. The three
primary sections of Opening, Work, and Closure each had particular tasks related to the
clinical focus. The purpose of the transitional sections was to effect the change from one
musical-psychological state to another. They were essential in creating together with the client
a clinical-aesthetic form.
Another way of thinking about transitional music is as a destination in its own right. Here, it
becomes a medium of experience, not just a means to get elsewhere. This type of transitional
music can be said to exist more outside the CONTAINER. It is no longer just a functional
musical tool to link music with a clearer focus or identity, such as is embodied in specific
melodies or songs. With the Grateful Dead, the Transitional Space became a place to be as
well. This type of music could abandon all conventions of harmony, tonality, rhythm, and even
texture, as it could be composed of auditory feedback or other unconventional soundings from
instruments. In this music, what is most highly valued is the way that it can embody values
such as fluidity, flexibility, adventure, creativity, and spontaneity. This was music that defied
convention.
An example of the ability to identify with a melody and then to engage in this second type of
transitional music was revealed with the client Lloyd, who was discussed previously (Aigen,
2002). Lloyd was 27 years old when starting music therapy. He had serious impairments in the
areas of language, behavior, and self-help skills, yet he also had a pronounced musical
sensitivity. With Alan Turry as his primary therapist and the present author as co-therapist, an
extensive course of music therapy developed wherein popular styles were used
improvisationally.
One primary vehicle in his therapy was a modal theme in E Dorian. The theme provided
safety, identity, security, and a sense of what was occurring when it was played as something
that had been done before. This is an important aspect of ritual, particularly those with
elements perceived as threatening, because it establishes a sense that We have done this and
survived intact. We also speculated that the melody provided an identity and experience of
constancy for Lloyd that he did not feel internally. The melody developed over time as a
vehicle to explore many facets of music itself, our musical relationships, Lloyd’s internal
world, and our own group musical identity.
Initially, Lloyd could not stay with any musical interaction for more than a few seconds.

Moreover, most of the music we created together had a very constant tempo, dynamic level,
and neutral emotional character; could not be unpredictable in any way; and did not emphasize
qualities such as intimacy and introspection. Whenever the music was spontaneous,
unpredictable, or more expressive, Lloyd would often end his participation and run out of the
session room.
However, Lloyd eventually developed to the point where he did not just tolerate but
actually enjoyed long, introspective improvisations with dynamic musical and emotional
changes. Our belief was that the E Dorian theme functioned as a CONTAINER for Lloyd, in
the physical, emotional, and cognitive realms. Physically, Lloyd did not feel compelled to
move around or leave the session room while we were engaged in this music; cognitively, his
attention was completely captured as he was held within the music; and emotionally, the theme
allowed him to come to terms with otherwise volatile feelings that caused him to strictly limit
the expressiveness of the music. The theory that explained Lloyd’s dramatic clinical progress
was that he identified with the melody as it represented a serious, introspective, and grounded
part of him neither experienced nor expressed in any other way. Just as the melody could be
expansive, serious, and explorative, so could Lloyd as long as he identified deeply with it.
When Alan first developed the E Dorian theme, it was a motif that constituted most of a
given musical interaction. The theme was played a few times by Alan on the piano, Lloyd
would participate by strumming the guitar, and after a few repetitions Lloyd would end the
music.
Gradually, we began extending the time in between repetitions of the motif. The music in
these spaces became more fluid, creative, mutual, and introspective, all of which were things
Lloyd could not experience at the outset of therapy. Over time, the relationship between the
melody and the transitional music reversed. The melody began to be done more quickly and
was used more as an entry point to get into the transitional space than as a form to be repeated
for its own sake. This allowed for a great variety of positive clinical experiences. In general,
the ability to live in the transitional musical space showed great clinical progress in that Lloyd
could better function without the external structure, he could abide unpredictability, and he
could identify with something with a fluid rather than inflexible identity.
MUSIC AND THE PATH OF HUMAN LIFE
Transitional Music and Liminality

Transitional music shares many of the qualities of liminality, the transitional mode of being.
Music in music therapy can provide for both freedom and structure, and the means for moving
between them. In the section of the present work on musical communitas, Turner’s (1966)
notions of two opposite but complementary modes of social functioning were described:
liminality and the status system. Liminality is the experience of ritual and is characterized by
qualities of transition, communitas, and sacredness, among other things. The status system
represents ordinary functioning and is characterized by the opposing qualities of state,
structure, and secularity.82

All human development takes place in a constant oscillation between freedom and
structure. This is true on the psychological level of the individual—recall the discussion of
refueling—and it is true on the sociological level as we consider various holidays, festivals,
and their accompanying rituals. The healthy maintenance and development of individuals and
societies requires that they be able to comfortably move between these two polarities.
The polarities of freedom and structure are essential aspects of rituals such as Rites of
Passage. A person undergoing a transformation ritual is in a transition from one social role to
another. The roles are states of being with clear and fixed identities. The transition time
between the fixed states is known as liminality; it incorporates a blurring of social roles and
distinctions. The individual’s identity is more malleable at these times.
As was discussed previously, the special feeling among people undergoing ritual together
is known as communitas. Life in structure is predictable, work-focused, routine, and involves
the facing of practical difficulties; life in communitas is largely pleasurable and rich with
affect. It can be felt as both magical and inspirational. The reason why healthy societies and
healthy individuals require both is that structure without communitas leads to mechanical,
uninspired, and empty social life and communitas without structure cannot handle the practical
demands of daily living in a society.
Sometimes cognitive, emotional, or physical problems can be understood as a deficit in the
ability to successfully navigate the pattern of movement between structure and freedom, and a
person might live exclusively at one end of the polarity. This can be seen equally in situations
where a generally creative or artistic person is not able to structure his or her life in a way to
use the creative skills as a basis for generating a living or obtaining gratification, and where
people who do well in structured or regimented situations are not able to be spontaneous and
creative in ways that bring an enjoyment of life.
It is also possible that disability or trauma can have consequences that inhibit a person’s
ability to successfully negotiate the back-and-forth movement of this pattern. That is, while it
is possible that a person’s difficulties in life can result from being stuck at one end of the
polarity, it may also be that someone is not able to integrate the two types of experiences into a
coherent sense of self. It can be the transition itself which is the most difficult element to
manage, rather than the quality of experience in freedom or in structure. In fact, many
difficulties in life arise acutely at transition moments, whether we are thinking on the small
scale of children in a therapy group who manage well in structured activities but who become
disruptive in the transition from one activity to another, or on the large scale of a person who
is unable to make the successful transition from one developmental role to another, such as
moving from childhood to adolescence or from adolescence to adulthood.
Consider some examples of how to think about typical clients seen by music therapists
through this framework. An autistic child who is perseverative, a traumatized person who is
afraid of the unknown, or a person with a psychiatric illness whose life is lived in rote or
automatic manner all can be thought of as individuals who are stuck in structure. On the other
hand, a hyperactive child, a person with manic-depressive tendencies, or a creative person
who cannot find a satisfactory outlet in social structures is someone stuck in freedom and
prevented from a more rewarding life because of an inability to function in structure. Consider
also a psychiatric patient or homeless person who can function within the confines of a

psychiatric facility or homeless shelter program but whose life outside the structured
environment is chaotic and unhealthy. Both of these people can be seen as bouncing back and
forth between extreme polarities of freedom and structure without an ability to integrate
structure into freedom when living outside of an institutional environment. For all people, and
in all situations, a satisfying means of experiencing the movement between the two poles is
helpful in facilitating human development and overcoming the effects of trauma and disability.
Structure and Antistructure in Musical Experience
Although the primary musical orientation of music therapists is a question open to empirical
study, it is safe to say that the majority of music therapy clients have a primary musical
connection to some form of popular music. Their attachment to music, their ideas about it, and
their expectations about its uses are most likely fueled by this relationship. It can therefore be
useful to examine analyses of popular music from a variety of scholarly orientations to locate
ideas that can either form the basis of music-centered theory in music therapy, or corroborate
theoretical notions developed from within music therapy practice.
A highly suggestive work of this sort is the study by Robin Sylvan (2002) who examined
the religious dimensions of popular music.83 Sylvan begins from an observation of the decline
in the role of formal religions and conceptions of God in Western civilization. He believes that
certain forms of popular music constellate religious experiences for their audiences, but
because conventional wisdom looks at pop music styles as “trivial forms of secular
entertainment” (p. 3), their religious dimensions are marginalized, hidden from view, and
misunderstood.
Examining how audiences relate to the music demonstrates its religious functions: (1) it
provides “ecstatic communion” and an “encounter with the numinous” (Sylvan, p. 4), the latter
of which is the goal of all religions; (2) it provides ritual and ceremonial activity to reliably
create the experience; (3) it offers a philosophy and world view as a context for the
musicoreligious experiences; (4) it provides experiences that become translated into a code
for how to live daily life.
In this way, certain forms of popular music provide a cultural identity, social structure, and
sense of community, rendering its function identical to that of religion. Sylvan recognizes that
it is often not (consciously) recognized as such by the participants, as it is rather “seen as a
form of entertainment with aesthetic, social, and economic dimensions” (p. 4). But analyzing
the relationship of listeners to their preferred musical forms reveals it as religion. This is not a
conventional religion grounded in a specific locale with an essential, defining truth, but a
postmodern type of religion consisting of “an eclectic pastiche of diverse musical, religious,
and cultural components” (p. 4) grafted onto a commercial enterprise.
Sylvan acknowledges that his thesis is dependent upon a broadly construed notion of
religion in which a contact with the numinous (religious experience) is the basis for all
religion. This contact is the impetus behind the edifice of religious structures that we more
typically consider to be religion. But contact with numinous is reflected in many areas of
social activity, not just in religious structures. Religion understood this way is pervasive in all

dimensions of the culture.
The emergence of popular music as a ground for religious experience has resulted from a
displacement of religious impulses. When formal religious practices do not provide contact
with the numinous, the religious impulse seeks satisfaction in other areas of cultural activity.
Sylvan asserts that for many people of Western culture, this religious impulse was transferred
to popular music.
Sylvan goes on to argue that the prime reason why music is the area in which this impulse
is realized is that it functions on multiple levels of human experience: the physiological,
psychological, sociocultural, semiological, virtual, ritual, and spiritual. These are the same
levels that religious experience functions on. Also, there are specific aspects of musical
experience that lend themselves to religious experience, including the way that the dualities of
subject-object, body-mind, and spiritual-material are transcended.
There are specific reasons why rhythmically based pop music is an area in which the
religious impulse is realized that relate to its origins in the music of West Africa. The West
African people who were brought to the Americas as slaves were forbidden from practicing
their religion. Their religious impulse was transferred to another domain, that of music. In its
original form, this music had an overtly religious function that was strengthened when it
became the carrier of the religious impulse in its entirety.
The styles of blues and jazz music originated in the music of these slaves from West Africa.
Because of this, blues and jazz carry within them “many of the musicoreligious practices and
experiential states of West African possession religions” (Sylvan, p. 7). All forms of
rhythmically based popular music—including many forms of rock and roll, hip-hop, rave, and
so forth—originated in blues and jazz music. Therefore, due to its origins, Western pop music
carries within it the capacity for religious experience, although it is hidden in a transmuted
form. And because the music has Western influences, its religious dimensions have European
influences as well.
Sylvan explains how rock and roll took over the popular culture in the 1950s. It gave birth
to a variety of musical styles and subcultures, and therefore several generations of Americans
have been influenced by the hidden religious sensibility at the heart of rock and roll and its
derivatives. This music is the perfect vehicle for the expression of a religious impulse that
cannot be realized in traditional religious forms because this impulse is present in the music’s
origins. Bringing about the religious experience is the purpose for which the music was
created.
In considering the implications of this thesis for music therapy, it is important to note how,
in a manner similar to that of music, therapy is also a place where frustrated religious needs
are projected. The processes and focuses of psychotherapy are similar to those of religion:
There are repeated ritual forms; it is based on a world view and value system; it focuses on
inner change; it promises an enhanced gratification in daily life; and it answers a quest for
meaning. Music therapy combines two domains, music and therapy, both of which are domains
in which religious impulse has migrated. Therefore, it provides a particularly powerful
constellation of the religious impulse.
In his study, Sylvan considers four musical subcultures; through field research, he examines

how the members of each community relate to their chosen music in a religious manner. These
include (1) the Grateful Dead and their fans, known as Dead Heads; (2) the dance music
continuum seen in house, rave, and electronic dance music; (3) heavy metal and metalheads;
and (4) rap music and hip-hop culture. While the entire study is worthy of note, it is Sylvan’s
explication of the Dead Heads’ experiences that is particularly relevant to the present
discussion.
Sylvan’s research revealed that “moments of peak experience, insight, revelation, and
epiphany” not only took place regularly at Grateful Dead concerts, “but that this was, in fact,
the goal of the enterprise” (p. 91). He identifies the second set of their concerts as the time in
which such experiences most typically occurred. Recall that these sets comprised a seamless
flow of structured songs and exploratory improvisations. In the heart of the second set was the
most experimental improvisation, often described simply as space. This has been described as
a musical environment without walls…. The song form is abandoned, and the very elements
of music may be called into question. The only mandate is to explore new territory …
where rhythm, tone, color, melody, and harmony can be explored without rules or
predetermination. (Bralove, cited in Sylvan, p. 93).
Jerry Garcia, the band’s lead guitarist, said that this set “has a shape which is inspired by the
psychedelic experience … It’s taking chances, and going all to pieces, and coming back, and
reassembling” (Sylvan, p. 93).84
Although the expansion of consciousness and self that took place was experienced as a
“mystical union with the whole universe” (Sylvan, p. 95), this does not mean that the process
was an easy one for the participants. In fact, participants often encountered difficult and dark
moments. The second set experience could be one of “disintegration, death, and rebirth”
(Sylvan, p. 97) as the participant’s self was disassembled as were the elements of music, only
to be reconstituted as musical consonance and song forms emerged from the dissonance and
chaos of space:
There was something about the movement from structure, that is, fairly short songs with a
fairly tight structure, more toward expansion and chaos, and then back to structure…. It was
a musical enactment of death and rebirth. Because you would start from structure, you
would move to total chaos and disintegration, and then you would return to structure, but
obviously not the same being that you were before you made the journey. (Sylvan, p. 104)
Sylvan identifies the sequence of disintegration, death, and rebirth in musical experience
with Turner’s (1969) model of the ritual process based on the sequence of structure-
antistructure-structure. In Turner’s model, “the initiate moves out of the structures of daily life
into a liminal state for an initiatic experience, often of a life-threatening nature, which is a
symbolic death to the old identity, and then returns to society in a new social identity” (Sylvan,
p. 98). In Turner’s model and in the Grateful Dead concerts, the most important phase of the
experience is the middle one, as this is where “the crucial experiences and information of the
ritual are imparted to the initiates” (Sylvan, p. 103). And the outcome of the process that
includes a personal transformation to a new identity is a defining aspect of both processes.

This same three-stage process inherent in human development appears in all of these
various guises. There is disintegration-death-rebirth in relation to personal individual
experience during the concert; there is structure-disintegration-structure in relation to the form
of the music presented; there is the basic process of structure-antistructure-structure inherent in
Turner’s form of ritual process. The dynamic of structure-freedom-structure in music therapy
with transitional music occupying the freedom stage can be seen as another manifestation of
this process basic to human personal transformation, a process at the heart of many therapy
encounters as well as an essential part of rituals and nonclinical musical experiences as
detailed above.
In discussing the effects of the experience upon people’s lives outside of the concerts,
Sylvan notes phenomena typical of religious experience, although they also appear highly
relevant to therapy contexts. Areas of impact include (1) experiencing moments of physical
and emotional healing, (2) connecting to more fundamental aspects of one’s being that in turn
affect life decisions, and (3) gaining knowledge of a way of being in the music that one
attempts to bring to life outside of music.
Each of these areas of benefit could be equally well described as eminently effective
outcomes of music therapy as well. Elucidating them here supports one of the notions central
to music-centered thinking, that there is a basic consistency between the value of music in
music therapy and in other social functions of music.
(1) Physical healing included reports across a wide spectrum “all the way from colds being
cured to healing lifelong chronic headaches to correcting major misalignment in the spine”
(Sylvan, p. 100). Emotional healing involved recovering from the pain of difficult personal
relationships such as divorces.
(2) The intense experiences at the concerts functioned to help the concertgoers connect to
central aspects of their being that guided them in concrete life decisions outside of the concert
context:
For me, Grateful Dead shows would remind me of my real self, as if I would get kind of
caked and blurred by too much daily experience and I would lose the recognition of my
original set of intentions about life. Then I’d go to Dead shows, and those would be
stripped away by the music, by the dancing, by the psychedelics, and I would see my
original face again. And I would say, “Oh yeah, that’s what my life is about, that’s what the
core narrative of my life is.” … And then I would come away from the show and resolve to
perform the day-to-day, concrete actions that would make that realization into a set of
changes (Sylvan, p. 101).
The participants in Sylvan’s research report how this type of insight into how to align the
structure of one’s life with the core aspects of one’s being had concrete effects, such as making
a decision about the necessity to effect a marital separation, move, or pursue a new vocation.
(3) The concert experience also helped people to feel a greater sense of vitality and
investment in being alive. It opened them up to experiencing life in a deeper and more
satisfying way:
It turned me back on to life, because I had really kind of given up on the possibility of life

being fulfilling and joyful and exciting, being completely alive. I felt so completely alive in
a really unadulterated way that I remembered what I felt like, what I was here for. I
remembered “Oh, okay. We’re here to be like this.”
For many people, the way of being that they experienced in the music was something that
they attempted to recreate in their daily lives as well. Their “goal was to return to the day-to-
day world in a new social identity and create a new structure which would more accurately
reflect the ideals glimpsed in the antistructure experience” (Sylvan, p. 113). Pursuit of this
goal influenced “major changes in relationships, jobs, and living situations” (p. 112) such as
were described above.
The antistructure improvisational experience provides experiences of self, others, the
external world, and reality that change how people see themselves and how they want to live,
even when they are outside the musical experience. As well as being an accounting of the
values driving this particular musical subculture, it is also an eminently suitable description of
the music-centered form of the generalization of benefits from within the music therapy session
to life outside it. One begins to live a life guided by the values inherent in spontaneous
musicing in communal settings oriented to the expansion of consciousness and self.
There is structure-antistructure-structure within the individual songs, within the concert
as a whole, and then in the rhythm of life, with the concert itself being the antistructure to
remedy or balance the structure of daily life. Music therapy sessions can perform the same
function as the antistructure experience of the rock concert, but, as with the concert, within the
basic antistructure experience represented by the session is a microcosm of the same
structure-antistructure-structure form. In fact, this template of structure-freedom-structure
will be used in the following section as the basis for a general model of the music therapy
process.
This dynamic is clearly seen in the early work of Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins,
particularly in the approach with their client Indu, the youth described previously whose
process provided the inspiration for a model of the music therapy session (Aigen, 1998). In
music therapy applications, a skill for music composition is essential to provide the structure
because without themes that repeat each time the experience is undertaken, there is no
recurring structure. Just as improvisational skill is necessary to provide the experience of
freedom or antistructure, the compositional skill is essential in providing the experience of
structure. And in the ability to improvise melodies, the two modes of being are integrated
within the therapist.

For the Grateful Dead’s audience, the strong emphasis on improvisation was an essential
aspect of the band’s appeal, as unconventional as this was in mainstream rock music. It was
looked at as “an access route to some kind of divine intelligence that reveals itself in a new
form each moment” (Silberman, cited in Sylvan, p. 100). The improvisational approach to
music carried within it an implicit message that “when you’re really looking at how it’s all put
together … there’s a kind of acceptance … of loss and of the transitory nature of beauty”
(Sylvan, p. 111). This approach to creating music was taken as a model for how to live one’s
life. It taught that experiences of grace, beauty, and inspiration could occur by approaching life
without preconceptions. The more open one could be to what might emerge in a given

situation, the more likely that “something unexpectedly beautiful will reveal itself (Sylvan, p.
112).
Many of the aspects of the musical experiences discussed by Sylvan are relevant to music
therapy processes, particularly within a music-centered perspective. I have already mentioned
a parallel between the experiential contour of the concert experience and that of the Guided
Imagery and Music session. Moreover, descriptions of participants’ experiences read as if
they might have emerged from a GIM session.
However, the central fact of improvisation in the concert experiences and the use of
composed music in Guided Imagery and Music raise a question of how applicable the two
experiences are to each other, something that is a given when comparing the former to active
improvisational approach such as Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy. The pattern of structure-
antistructure-structure will be manifested differently in a musical form that has improvisation
within it than in a form that is completely composed.
However, this is not to say that composed music cannot incorporate a pattern of structure-
antistructure-structure or structure-freedom-structure, because there are compositional
ways of suggesting the disassembling of expectation and convention that characterizes the
antistructure music. In fact, examining the similarities and differences in this dimension
between the two ways of working in music therapy is an important area of study.
Given the differences between the two ways of working in music therapy, it cannot be
assumed that the three-part model seen in ritual, popular music, and music therapy will be the
same in active music therapy approaches using improvisation and receptive approaches using
composed music, although I believe that there are enough similarities to say that the model is
relevant in both domains. This, however, is not to minimize the unique contribution of the
improvisational element, something that seems to help us to find value in the transient nature of
human life by facilitating the ability of a person to more completely inhabit the present
moment.
EXPANDING CONTAINERS AS METAPHOR FOR THERAPY AND FOR LIFE
Lisa Summer (1992, 1995) has proposed a theory for the mechanisms of self-actualization in
Guided Imagery and Music that is based on the specific elements of musical development in
the works of Western classical music and that has a parallel in the developmental theories of
D. W. Winnicott. Particularly important in Winnicott’s theory is the process of ego

development that takes place as children learn to master the feelings of anxiety provoked by
unfamiliar, challenging experiences. Through the concept of transitional space, a child is able
to engage in a process of internalization of that which was initially threatening or challenging,
just because of its unfamiliarity. In this way, a child’s world becomes enlarged as he is able to
assimilate an ever-widening sphere of human experiences. Summer (1992) explains this
process:
When a child encounters an unfamiliar experience, a new toy for example, this “not-me”
experience may at first produce anxiety. However, with support from the parent, this anxiety
can be a “call to action.” The child can be encouraged to play with this toy and to

incorporate it into his repertoire of comfortable, “me” experiences, and thus expand his
abilities, behaviors, and feelings—expand his sense of being in the world, (p. 47)
Summer goes on to note that music “creates a highly effective transitional musical space
wherein the client can experience, and then incorporate, new and sometimes threatening ‘not-
me’ experiences” (p. 47). The crux of her theory is considering how the composition of
Western classical music can be understood as a parallel to this three-stage process that (1)
begins with one sense of one’s self, (2) involves a transitional encounter with that which is
unfamiliar or threatening, and (3) concludes with an incorporation of the unfamiliar into the
sense of self.
Summer’s incorporation of Winnicott’s ideas is in the spirit of bridging theory discussed in
chapter 2. She does not propose that the value of GIM rests upon the processes articulated by
Winnicott; instead, his ideas about child development are invoked in a parallel fashion to help
her to better explain the mechanisms of the GIM process. This stance is made clear in her
insightful comments about how the composer’s management of musical materials in the sonata
form can be understood psychologically.
In discussing the development section of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth
Symphony, Summer (1992) notes how he
dissects, splices, and rearranges the musical elements of the exposition’s material … The
composer willingly destroys the contour of a beautiful melody in order to further develop it.
Phrases are fragmented in order to change their perspective. Rhythms are exploited or
interrupted in order to enhance the sonic message of the movement…. This reappraisal of
musical elements from the exposition to the development section of the musical sonata form
is a parallel for the therapeutic experience of the “me” and “not-me” experience. The
“consciousness” of the music is expanded, the “me” which characterized the exposition is
transmogrified in the intellectual process of the development, allowing the resultant “not-
me” to be less threatening, and hence more easily incorporated by the psyche, (pp. 49-50)
This recontextualization of previously presented musical elements is used as a

compositional staple. Summer (1995) also observes how it is utilized in Mozart’s K331 Piano
Sonata in a discussion of how the variations of this piece each relate to the original theme.
Particularly important are the comments about Variation II:
Mozart pulls the appoggiatura of Variation I down from the right hand, and places it in the
midst of what one would expect to be the standard presentation of the harmony in the left
hand. The result is an exquisite, dissonant harmony, a paradox of an accompaniment. What
was previously an adventurous, exploratory musical element now appears integrated into
the variation’s accompaniment, (p. 42)
The chromatic phrases, initially presented as a transitional element, as an unfamiliar element

of the music, are now incorporated into the familiar. What was initially outside the musical
CONTAINER of the melody, and therefore of the self living in the music, is now brought into
the CONTAINER, into the self, thereby enlarging it.

In a music therapy setting, songs, compositions, repeated melodies, and motifs can provide
the structuring element by functioning as a CONTAINER. They help orient a person, who,
when something familiar is offered, can have thoughts such as I know what I am doing, I am
in a familiar place, I am in this song now, I know what will happen next. This is a sense of
being in a familiar place with a known structure and clearly defined roles.
In improvisational music therapy work, musical passage points and other forms of
transitional music mediate between the different CONTAINERS (Figure 3-1, p. 299). They
provide the freedom in the structure-freedom oscillation. When a client identifies with a piece
of music, when the CONTAINER becomes a manifestation of self, the spontaneous and free
elements in the song become part of the person’s self-identity. The client can feel that I am
still in the song, but in a temporarily free part of it. The client is contained within the song
and the freedom is more easily managed.
Yet, musical transitions and passage points can also be used to navigate from one song,
composition, or improvisation to another, not just between sections of a song (Figure 3-2).
There is more uncertainty here, and the concomitant freedom is more challenging and therefore
potentially more rewarding. Now the CONTAINER is enlarged and becomes the session
itself, because the client is no longer in the song (Figure 3-3).
In the next larger framework, transitional music can occupy stages of a course of therapy
and mediate between elements of a long-term process, not just between the elements of a
single session. Now the CONTAINER is the therapeutic relationship or the therapy process,
depending upon the nature of the client-therapist relationship, the method of working, and/or
the particular client’s needs (Figure 3-4).
This type of process was clearly revealed in the work with Lloyd (Aigen, 2002). In this
study, the client’s process articulated one long arc from structure to freedom and back to
structure. The initial stage of structure was seen in the preponderance of simple tunes and
straight-ahead musical styles; the second stage, characterized by enhanced freedom, contained
improvisation on more fundamental levels of the music, the presence of flowing transitional
music, and the development of an individualized style that combined different characteristics
of the various popular styles employed in the first stage; the third stage, which involved a
return to enhanced structure, involved the use of highly structured styles such as polka and
reggae music. Interestingly, even within the freedom stage (stage 2), there was a
minimovement of structure-freedom-structure seen in (1) improvisation within recognized
musical styles, (2) jamming and improvisation within transitional music of no clearly defined
style, and (3) a cohering of the previous two trends into an individualized style, unique to this
client and therapeutic process.
In the final framework, perhaps suggesting a criterion for ending the therapy, the entire
therapy process is experienced as one of transition. The therapy process itself becomes a
process of transition, although one with elements of structure within it. The music in the
therapy functions as a transition from one stage of identity (pre-therapy) to another stage (post-
therapy). The CONTAINER is now life itself (Figure 3-5). For clients with less severe
problems, those who are nondisabled, the ability to function well with all life as the container
can suggest that the need for therapy has ended. For those with chronic needs who could
potentially benefit from therapy throughout the course of their lives, it can suggest a suitable

ending point for therapy.
I am tempted to say that the process begins with songs as CONTAINERS, but of course it is
more elemental than that. If we are considering improvisational music therapy, we can
understand the first level CONTAINER as the tonal interval. In Paul Nordoff’s
improvisational work, session-long improvisations could begin with a single, repeated
interval. Once this is established as a CONTAINER, the subsequent tonal, melodic expansion
is experienced as an expansion of the client’s world or CONTAINER.
The process then moves to where themes and songs are CONTAINERS, then to where
sessions are experienced as CONTAINERS, then to where they become a place where the
therapeutic process and/or therapeutic relationship is the CONTAINER, and then to where
ultimately it is life itself that can function as the CONTAINER in which the person can feel a
basic sense of security and embrace.
It is possible to conceive of the entire process of music therapy as being one where a
process of learning to balance and integrate experiences of structure and freedom through
music on progressively broader levels of experience eventually brings a person to a place
where these forces are internally balanced to the full extent of the individual’s potential. This
can be considered an underlying template of self-actualization through music in music therapy,
and it is a pattern that can be applied to many different types of people, with varying needs and
varying levels of functioning.
Therapy comprises the movement between structure and freedom that characterizes life. All
forms of musicing fit somewhere on the spectrum. Acquiring the ability to eagerly embrace the
constant back-and-forth movement on whatever level one is capable of, to use this movement
for personal development, and to integrate the experiences into a coherent sense of self can be
considered an orienting goal of much of music-centered music therapy.
The flow, spontaneity, and quality of being completely in the present moment that
characterizes liminal or transitional music can change over the course of therapy. In the study
discussed above (Aigen, 2002), these forms of music initially were purely functional in
mediating between more structured portions of the session. Eventually, this transition music
changed from a means for getting from one place to another to a medium of experience in its
own right. It became a type of experience that was directly sought for its unique qualities.
Initially, the structured elements of music are conceived as its goal; the transitional
passages bring us to the themes, and the improvisations serve to create transitions between
themes, melodies, motifs, or songs. Eventually, what was looked as a transition, merely as a
means toward an end, becomes instead a medium of experience. The musical transition, i.e.,
the path, becomes more significant than the actual goal.
All people require experiences of structure and freedom. Rituals that facilitate individual
development and the transmission of a culture’s wisdom are patterned in this way.
Communitas and structure alternate. Music embodies this principle.
Figure 3. Containers

The liminal state is one of transition. It exists on many levels. It is an experience of
freedom from expectations, from normal states. It is an experience of participation. In music
are tiny transitions. These gradually enlarge in therapy. The sphere of transition enlarges so
that we feel safer in more broadly formulated experiences of transition and freedom. We not
only feel comfortable in them but also come to embrace them as validating our reason for
living.
Eventually, life itself is experienced as one large transition, taking us from birth to death
(Figure 3-6). Learning to value the transitional state elevates our consciousness to where we
learn to value life as transition. Because we cannot influence the fact of our birth or prevent
our death, the source and goal of our lives is predetermined. What we can determine is the
path we take in between, so what should be valued is the path.
Much of the discussion in the present work concerning the idea that one’s end point is one’s
origin focused on how this brings us into the present moment. This could provide a greater
sense of acceptance of one’s position where change is not possible—for example, in a stroke
victim who will never recover the lost verbal or motor capacities. By cultivating an
appreciation of the present moment, music focuses people on what they still have, not what

they have lost.
A brief personal note: At the time of this writing, I have a client in music therapy, a man in
his mid-50s with complete expressive aphasia. He can say no words and cannot form
consonant sounds. After working with me for a few years, he has come to the point where he
can articulate a few different open vowel sounds and sustain them in a tonal manner,
approximating the melodies of the pop songs that we play together. One of his favorites is The
Girl from Ipanema. There are a number of places in the song where vowel sounds are held
over a duration of many measures, one of the few things that this client can do. When we are
holding the long vowel sounds together in that moment, we are equals. He is singing, he is
doing what is demanded of the music in that moment, his limitations are not focused upon in
that moment of singing. In those moments, to the extent that he can live fully in them, his
disability does not exist because it is not impairing what is demanded of him by the music.
Perhaps the spiritual insight about music bringing us into the present moment is one way
that it alleviates the suffering and loss of disabled people because it focuses one on the present
moment and enjoyment of it. And of course, in the spirit of the present book, this benefit,
which may be more apparent in a disabled person, is one and the same with the benefit that
music brings to the lives of nondisabled individuals as well.
Colin Lee (2003) has discussed the relation between musical phenomena and their
connection to the life force and to the process of dying. He asserts that although “music is a
life-giving force” (p. 187) it can also express and reflect the dying process. In considering the
basic substance of music, Lee cites Begbie’s idea that “links dying with the transient cycle of a
tone’s birth to its decline and conclusion” (p. 187).
This is consistent with Schenker’s view of descending melodic lines, which he felt “are as
much mortal as they are musical journeys” (Saslaw, 1997-98, p. 21):
Every linear progression shows the eternal shape of life—birth to death. The linear
progression begins, lives its own existence in the passing tones, ceases when it has reached
its goal—all as organic as life itself. (Schenker, cited in Saslaw, p. 21)
On the perspective of large-scale musical structures, Lee considers how the unfolding of a
piece of music is similar to the way a human life unfolds, particularly in the way that “the
beginning of a piece of music heralds the birth of a creative force that is fragile and new” (p.
187). Because “the life cycle of music is not unlike the life cycle of human existence” (p. 188),
music can support processes of living more fully and of dying.
Lee’s extensive experience has shown him how the aesthetics of music naturally facilitate
the movement from living to dying. And while he acknowledges that recorded or composed
music is often used at these times, he is particularly interested in the creative response
involved in improvising music to this process: “Improvisation is the core. The aesthetics of
relationship, music, and dying become one. Each is an extension of the other; every moment,
musical phrase, tone, glance, gesture, and nuance are embraced through the essence of music”
(p. 188).
Lee goes on to consider whether improvisation can “reflect the enormity of human
existence and its passing” (p. 189):

Improvisation as an embodiment of the unforeseen, as a window for limitless potential, may
be a channel to express the bounded reality of our existence. Having been with clients who
have directly faced their temporality, I have found repeatedly that improvisation cuts to the
core of human impermanence…. The transient nature of life can be accurately reflected
through improvisation. It is the balance between constraint and freedom that gives
improvisation its potential to discern both artistic content and its greater place within
human existence, (p. 189)
In a manner similar to that in the present book, then, Lee identifies the alternating pattern of
freedom and structure as a crucial one in explaining the value of music in music therapy. When
one realizes that life itself is a transition, it is possible to look at the palliative care that Lee
writes about as a microcosm of music therapy processes of a broader applicability. The
essence of music and of life as transition is illuminated in palliative care, and music is a
suitable accompaniment for this final transition in the same way that it facilitates all transitions
in life—indeed, in the way that it facilitates the transition that is life.
Depending upon one’s perspective, different musical elements can be representatives of
either structure or freedom. These judgments are not absolute. When an improvisational music
therapy session is structured around three or four themes with transitional music connecting
them, the melodies constitute the structure, the transitional music constitutes the freedom.
For Zuckerkandl, on the other hand, it is the dynamic field that is the unchanging structure.
The power of melody is in its freedom of movement. The fact that melody itself exists
embodies the freedom that is at the heart of music. To live in music is to partake of the balance
between freedom and structure and to learn to value the freely chosen path, not just the arrival
at the goal or destination.
So what is therapy? What is music therapy? Is it a path or a destination? Is it a transition or
a container? By way of an answer, we can think about how the Hero in the “Hero’s Journey”
always returns home, ending his journey where it begins; the scale ends where it begins; a
piece of music ends as it begins, in silence; our lives end where they begin. Because there is
nowhere to get to, literally nowhere else to go, life is about fully inhabiting the present
moment.
Yet in spite of this, as human beings we need both experiences. We want to feel free, and
yet we want to feel held; we want to experience the present moment as deeply as possible, yet
we also want to feel that life is more than just a string of inhabited moments and that our goals,
whatever they are, have significance.

Ultimately, we need both path and destination, transition and container. The unalterable
truth is that we all return to nonexistence and that we must reconcile ourselves to this. But we
still have a need to achieve our purposes while we are here, and we must find ways to do this
as well. It is the development, the achievement of purposes that allows us to be at peace with
our return to nonexistence. We then feel that we have done what we could while we were here.
Formulations that in the world of space are paradox, indeed nonsense—wherever we go,
we return; start and goal are one and the same; all paths travel back to their own beginnings
—are, in the world of tone, simple statements of fact. (Zuckerkandl, 1956, p. 104)

What is meaningful is having a path to walk. To live in music is to experience how the goal
is a means to achieve a path, not the reverse. This does not undermine the importance of either
one—it just reverses how we typically think about them. Music-centered music therapy is built
upon this basic truth of music and of human life.

79Throughout the
present section, when the term container appears in uppercase, the
container schema is being referred to; when it appears in lowercase, a physical container, as it
is commonly understood, is being referred to.

80Lakoff and
Johnson (1980) note that there are two different types of CONTAINER
schemata. They use the example that in getting into a bathtub full of water, the tub and the
water are both viewed as containers, with the former being a “container object” and the latter
being a “container substance” (p. 3). Although the present analysis does not differentiate
between the two, this is not to suggest that the differences between them are irrelevant in
applying these concepts to music therapy.

81This discussion of transitional music is framed primarily by the familiarity of the
present author with popular musical styles. Although my sense is that these comments are
equally applicable to other predominant forms of music, such as that in the Western classical
tradition, it will be up to other authors with greater familiarity with those types of music and
their applications in music therapy to determine whether this is true. Nevertheless, I imagine
that these comments, as well as the discussion of melody and identity are equally applicable in
forms of music therapy as diverse as Guided Imagery and Music and Nordoff-Robbins Music
Therapy.

82Theseideas are applied to clinical study of improvisational work in popular idioms in
Aigen (2002). The learning of musical skills and working on specific compositions are
examples of activity in the realm of the status system. Transitional music and improvisation in
general reflect experiences of liminality. Both types of experience are needed in life and in
therapy.

83All of the quotations from Sylvan are from this study.

84Helen Bonny has also identified the form of the psychedelic experience as an important
component of her template for the design of GIM sessions: “I observed a natural affective
contour created by a typical hallucinogenic drug trip, and used this affective contour in
designing musical programs for … drug therapy sessions. Later, in nondrug psychotherapeutic
contexts and for GIM work, I used this affective contour as the basis for designing music
programs” (1978b, p. 39).

AFTERWORD
Implications for the Societal Role of Music Therapy
Music-centered thinking places greater emphasis on the musical skills and attitudes of
clinicians and music therapy students because these are the primary tools of interaction and
because music is the primary domain in which client and therapist meet. However, it is not so
clear how music-centered thinking influences conceptualizations of levels of music therapy
work.
One response to the ideas presented herein has been to suggest that music-centered work
can take place only at an advanced level of practice by experienced clinicians who have
internalized many of the supporting frameworks made possible by psychotherapeutic or
generally psychological thinking (A. Turry, personal communication, February 1, 2004).
In contrast, if one takes into account Bruscia’s (1998) ideas about levels of practice in
music therapy, music-centered thinking might be conceptualized as suitable to a more basic
level rather than an advanced one. Bruscia describes the primary level of therapy as “any
practice in which music therapy takes an indispensable or singular role in meeting the main
therapeutic needs of the client, and, as a result, induces pervasive changes in the client and the
client’s life” (p. 163). While I hope that it is clear that I agree that music-centered work can
take an indispensable or singular role, I recognize that it may do so without inducing change in
nonmusical areas of functioning. Therefore, the way that music-centered thinking is being
construed in the present publication is incompatible with Bruscia’s conception that the level of
one’s practice is determined by the scope of change in the client. To repeat a point made
earlier, scope of change can be indicant that fundamentally important therapeutic work is being
done, but it is to me a secondary indicator, not always the direct target of a therapist’s
intention.
Music-centered thinking also suggests other disciplines for scholarly collaboration, such as
ethnomusicology and the philosophy of music, to shed light on universal and particular musical
processes and structures. Thinking in a music-centered way supports relationships with other
disciplines characterized by a dialogue of equals rather than by consideration of the other
disciplines as providing foundational constructs for music therapy. The relationships should
be characterized by a mutual influence in which music therapists investigate what other
disciplines have to offer in illuminating issues central to music therapy practice, while also
contributing to the knowledge base of these other areas of scholarly investigation. In

considering disciplines such as music philosophy and ethnomusicology that examine the nature
of musical experience and its uses in society, it is clear that no notion of the nature of music or
of its uses in society can be complete without considering the nature of music in music therapy.
Music therapists thus have an obligation to interact with these other disciplines.
There can be difficulties inherent in the application of music-centered thinking in certain
domains. I imagine that there are many music therapists who feel a basic affinity for this way
of thinking but who cannot imagine applying it in a practical way within their particular work
setting. It is possible that individuals in a position to control access to and the funding of
music therapy services would be skeptical of this approach.

In spite of the pragmatic reasons that may weigh against using music-centered thinking, I
still think it is of value to develop this approach. It is always better for a profession to be
diverse, as this is what gives it strength, and music-centered thinking enhances this diversity.
Moreover, society does change, and there is no possibility to create a niche for music-centered
thinking if we do not develop it in both its theoretical and practical dimensions. Last, it may be
that the beliefs of music-centered practitioners are true and that their practices are beneficial
ones. If so, we have the obligation to pursue truth and the benefit to clients, regardless of the
(con)temporary practical difficulties of doing so.
In the health-related and educational settings where many music therapists work, it is
certainly possible that there are significant numbers of administrators in a position to control
access to music therapy services who may be sympathetic to explanations of the benefits of
music therapy within a music-centered rationale. However, there maybe more individuals and
social institutions that require different types of rationales that explain the benefits of music
therapy in nonmusical terms.
It is not disingenuous to explain these areas of benefit, such as increased self-esteem or
enhanced motor functioning, even though the music therapist may consider these to be
secondary consequents of the work rather than its direct target. The fact is, music therapists
frequently observe many positive nonmusical changes in their clients, ones that are present
primarily in the music therapy session or that may be apparent elsewhere as well. Pragmatic
concerns should dictate how one describes the potential and actual benefits of music therapy
to different individuals and in different settings.
However, it is important that music therapists acknowledge to themselves that these choices
are done pragmatically and that there is a more fundamental area of human experience in music
that exists at the core of their work. We cannot let our decisions taken for pragmatic reasons
lead us to forget what is often the more fundamental reality at the heart of our work.
When we consider the broader society beyond that of academia or of the health
professions, the music-centered approach can serve to bridge music therapy with other uses of
music in society, putting it on a continuum with these uses rather than as something set apart. It
establishes music therapy as a specialized application of music rather than as a specialized
medium of therapy.
Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins recognized early on that the creative, music-centered
practice of music therapy had implications far beyond the therapy milieu. Their pioneering
clinical forays represented new discoveries about music as much as they illuminated new
discoveries about the potentials of disabled children.

A musician who makes the decision to enter music therapy… once he begins to work as a
therapist he will find new dimensions, new horizons and depths in the art of music itself
rather than in musical compositions. What he discovers when he experiences the art of
music as therapy will shed new light for him on all music. (Nordoff & Robbins, 1971, p.
141)
Because it is primarily concerned with what happens when human beings create music
together, music-centered thinking establishes commonality and equality between the recipients

of music therapy services and other people in society. As was discussed throughout the present
book, music is a vehicle for experiences of beauty, transcendence, connection with others,
flow, communitas, personal sources of strength, and expression. Music therapists provide
these essential experiences to people who cannot create the grounds for their emergence on
their own. But when we look at the categories of experience provided by music therapists, we
can see that disabled people gain the same things from music that others gain. Music-centered
thinking can serve to emphasize the common bonds of all human beings, and because musicing
is considered to be a fundamental aspect of being human, it affirms the basic humanity of the
individuals with whom music therapists work.

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Author Index
Aigen, Kenneth, xix, 24, 26, 28, 29, 34, 40, 50, 57, 59, 70, 73, 74, 75, 94, 96, 97, 99, 103, 104,
105, 109, 111, 113, 116, 118, 120, 131, 143, 145, 146, 147, 154, 173, 191, 200, 242, 250,
253, 257, 267, 269, 270, 272, 274, 282, 283, 285, 293, 298
Aldridge, David, 24, 32, 149, 183
Amir, Dorit, 84
Ansdell, Gary, 22, 24, 30, 31, 51, 56, 67, 70, 72, 84, 86, 90, 94, 105, 110, 116, 118, 122, 143,
148, 151, 154, 155, 156, 206, 241, 249, 250, 256
Bergman, Anni, 268
Bergstram-Nielsen, Carl, 115
Bonny, Helen, xix, 47, 50, 115, 136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 206, 290
Brandalise, Andre, 50
Broucek, Marcia, 266
Brower, Candace, 165, 191, 195, 197, 198, 199, 217, 226
Brown, Sandra, 70, 71, 118, 137
Bruscia, Kenneth E., 17, 23, 24, 47, 48, 49, 50, 95, 130, 251, 252, 305
Bunt, Leslie, 30
Clair, Alicia Ann, 31
Copland, Aaron, 185
Cotter, Vance, 35
Cox, Arnie W., 164, 222, 225, 226, 246
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi, 67, 106
Dewey, John, xix, 57, 270
DuBois, Fletcher, 176
Eliade, Mircea, 213, 274
Elliot, David, xix, 22, 56, 65, 68, 106, 107, 108
Erdonmez, Denise, 24
Feld, Steven, 206
Frankena, William, 77
Garred, Rudy, 53, 57, 58, 64, 65, 124, 251, 252
Gaston, E. Thayer, 24, 36, 47, 54
Glaser, Barney, 34
Gormley, Dan, 88
Guba, Egon, 227
Hadley, Susan, 134
Hadsell, Nancy, 24
Hesser, Barbara, 50, 86
Johnson, Mark, 164, 165, 167, 168, 172, 173, 174, 175, 182, 185, 186, 189, 191, 193, 194,
200, 223, 224, 225, 227, 231, 232, 242, 244, 245, 246, 278

Jung, Carl, 273
Jungaberle, Henrik, 24, 176, 178, 195, 196
Keil, Charles, 26, 73, 74, 184, 206
Kenny, Carolyn B., xix, 24, 37, 39, 40, 51, 102, 164, 272, 273, 274
Kivy, Peter, 19, 99, 260, 261, 262
Kowski, Juliane, 115, 118
Kuhn, Thomas S., 8, 9, 14
Lakoff, George, 164, 167, 168, 182, 186, 189, 245, 246, 278
Langdon, Gillian S., 82, 83
Langer, Susanne, 27, 138, 258, 259, 260
Larson, Steve, 164, 165, 175, 193, 194, 196, 197, 200, 224, 227, 244, 245
Lathom, Wanda, 24
Lecourt, Edith, 95, 260
Lee, Colin, 24, 50, 58, 70, 71, 72, 137, 151, 152, 153, 154, 206, 301, 302
Lincoln, Yvonna S., 227
Madsen, Clifford, 24, 35
Madsen, Jr., C. H., 35
Mahler, Margaret, 268
Marcus, David, 26
McMaster, Nancy, 84
McNiff, Shaun, 29
Meyer, Leonard, 138
Neugebauer, Lutz, 24
Nordoff, Paul, xix, 24, 28, 47, 78, 115, 143, 147, 307
O’Donnell, Shaugn, 164, 165, 280
Pavlicevic, Mercedes, 24, 27, 33, 70, 71, 73, 90, 116, 118, 137, 151, 154, 259
Perilli, Gabriela G., 176, 177, 178, 179
Piccinnini, Joseph, 83
Pine, Fred, 268
Priestley, Mary, 24, 35, 118, 119, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 189
Procter, Simon, 125
Ramsey, David, 94, 121

Robbins, Carol, 206
Robbins, Clive, xix, 24, 28, 47, 78, 115, 143, 147, 206, 279, 307
Ruud, Even, 24, 74, 77, 79, 80
Sacks, Oliver, 249
Saslaw, Janna, 164, 168, 193, 196, 200, 265, 266, 301
Scheiby, Benedikte, 115
Schneider, Edwin, 54
Schön, Donald, 14, 15, 66

Serafine, Mary Louise, 81, 82
Skaggs, Ruth, 50
Small, Christopher, 66
Smeijsters, Henk, 37, 177, 259
Stige, Brynjulf, 17, 24, 57, 90, 124, 151, 156, 157, 158
Strauss, Anselm, 34
Streeter, Elaine, 4, 50, 95, 118
Summer, Lisa, 54, 114, 141, 142, 268, 294, 295, 296
Sylvan, Robin, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 293
Taylor, Dale B., 4, 24, 25, 26, 35, 36, 37
Thaut, Michael H., 31, 35, 37
Turry, Alan, 143, 305
Tyler, Helen M., 24
Tyson, Florence, 18, 24, 35, 257
Turner, Victor, 102, 285, 291
Unkefer, Robert F., 54
Verres, Rolf, 176
Warja, Margrete, 50
Zbikowski, Lawrence, 164, 173, 176
Zuckerkandl, Victor, 42, 88, 138, 178, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 214, 215, 216, 220, 221,
228, 229, 230, 232, 247, 248, 274, 303

Subject Index
Aesthetic/Aesthetics: of composed music, 140–141;
experience, 100;
of improvisation, 153–154;
properties of music, 100
Aesthetic Music Therapy, 41, 58, 152–154
Aesthetic theory: art as symbol, 256;
expression theory, 98, 256, 258, 262;
formalism, 256
American Association for Music Therapy (AAMT), 50
American Music Therapy Association (AMTA), 18–19
Analytical Music Therapy, 41, 53, 115, 118, 119, 130–135, 137, 251, 252
Arnheim, Rudolf, 197, 231, 232
Band, The, 85
Basie, Count, 82
Beatles, 165
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 295
Behaviorism, 7, 25, 35, 66, 109
Bell, Catherine, 102
Berlin Philharmonic, 85
Bonny Foundation, 50, 51
Bridging theory, 26–27, 295
Bridgman, P. W., 232
Buber, Martin, 250
Chord of nature, 265–266

Clinical goals, 92;
musical expression of, 93–94, 100
Clinical music: and nonclinical

music, 69–75, 137–138
Communal experience, 101–104
Communitas, 102–104, 285–286
Community Music Therapy, 41, 154–156
Constructivist epistemology, 219
Container schema, 187–192, 194, 203, 277–284, 296–299
Countertransference, 38
Creative Music Therapy, 51, 149

Creativity, 97
Culture: and self-development, 157–158
Culture-centered Music Therapy, 41, 156-158
Cycle schema, 185
Darwin, Charles, 4, 5
Davis, Miles, 82
Death-rebirth myth, 273–275
Dewey, John, 59
Dissanayake, Ellen, 39
Dynamic form, 27
Ellington, Duke, 85
Energy: psychological and ecological, 270–272
Essential human experiences, 94, 121
Eternal return, 274
Expression theory, see Aesthetic theory
Flow, 106–108
Force (schema), 195, 196, 202, 223, 242, 243
Form of feelings, 259
Foundational theory, see Theory
Freud, Sigmund, 4
Garcia, Jerry, 290

Gaston, E. Thayer, 130
General theory, see Theory
Grateful Dead, 280, 283, 289–293
Grimes, Richard, 102
Guided Imagery and Music; xv, xix, 41, 48, 52, 53, 58, 63, 94, 109, 112, 114, 115, 129, 135–
142, 179, 181, 210, 212, 251, 252, 256, 269, 282, 290, 294, 295
Hero’s Journey, 213, 273–275, 302

Homo musicus, 211
I-Thou relationship, 250–252

Implicit relational knowing, 252

Imported theory, see Theory
Indigenous theory, see Theory
Inner music, 130–131
Inner world-outer world
distinction, 252; in
Zuckerkandl, 228–230
Intrinsic gratification, 106–107, 113
Invariants, in music, 73
Jazz, 70–74
Kant, Immanuel, 148, 207

King, B. B., 82
Kuhn, Thomas, 8–10
Life force, 301;

and organic musical development, 265–266;
attitudes toward in clients, 266–267
Liminality, 286
Linnaeus, 9
Listening: in music, 83–85
Location-event-structure metaphor, 245–246
Means and ends, 124, 248

Metaphor theory, see Schema theory
Miracle school of music therapy, 54
Mozart, Wolfgang, 296
Music: aesthetic dimensions of, 100–101;
as (shared) construction, 228;
communal dimensions of, 101–104;

dynamic qualities of tone in, 208–209, 212–213, 252;
elements of, 132–134, 139–140;
and emotional self-expression, 86, 97–100;
inherent/objective qualities of, 132–134, 146;
as means and media in music therapy, 56–65;
merging with, 95–96, 134–135;
nonclinical and clinical, 137–138
Music-as-therapy, 147–149

Music-centered music therapy: and aesthetic experience, 101;
analysis of music in, 114–116, 152–153;
basis in philosophy of music, 68–69;
client’s experience in, 92–93, 125;
clinical goals in, 93–94, 156–158;
communitas in, 103–104, 108, 155;
definition of, xx–xxii, 22–23, 51;
and explanation, 157–158;
and general theory, 40–41;
and holism, 120–122;
and indigenous theory, 29–34, 42, 52;
and maturity of the profession, 53–55, 65;
as a medium of experience, 57–65, 109, 117, 157–158;
merging with music in, 95–96, 134–135;
music taking on therapist’s role in, 112–114, 212;
musical thinking in, 95, 110–112;
musical outcomes in, 58–64, 109;
and nonmusical experience, 106–109;
origins of, 50–51;
performance and products in, 116–117;
and self-expression, 99–100, 256;
therapeutic relationship in, 113, 119–120, 121;
and verbal processing, 117–119, 257
Music child, 143–145
Music-in-therapy, 47
Music therapy: defining, 17–22, 31;
goals, 56
Musical: experience, 62–64, 208;
force, 138, 175, 195–196, 215–217, 227, 232;
form, 152–153;
form and human development, 267–270;
improvisation, 301;
intervals, 111, 132, 243;
landscape, 245;
melody, 175, 197, 199, 249–250, 277–280;
melody and identity, 277–280, 284;
motion, 138–139, 148–149, 175, 197–199, 208–210, 212, 224, 227, 228, 241–250;
scale, 209;
space, 227;
tension and resolution, 111;

world, 146–148
Musicality: innate quality of, 144–145
Musicing/Musicking, 43, 56, 59, 65–68, 126, 138
Musicology/New Musicology, 22, 26, 73
Neurology, 163
Newton, Isaac, 216
Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy, xv, xix, 40, 41, 52, 53, 58, 61, 62, 94, 99, 105, 109, 111,
114, 115, 117, 129, 132, 137, 141, 142–150, 191, 212, 250, 251, 252, 256, 269, 282, 283,
294
Paradigm, 8–10, 38
Participatory discrepancies, 26, 73–74
Part-whole (schema), 182–184
Path (schema), 280
Peak experience, 136, 289
Pentatonic scales, 132–133
Perceptual forces, 231–233
Physics, 7, 216, 228–230
Piaget, Jean, 186
Popper, Karl, 8
Popular music: religious dimensions of, 287–292
Psychoanalysis/Psychoanalytic thinking, xx–xxi, 4–5, 25, 36, 37, 44, 68, 260
Psychodynamic music therapy theory, 98, 255–257
Ptolemy, 7
Quickening, 148–149, 210, 241–250
Receptive creative experience (RCE), 134–135

Reductionism, 24, 120

Reflection-in-action, 15
Refueling, 285
Renoir, Pierre Auguste, 62
Rites of passage, 285
Rondo form, 267
Sacks, Oliver, 148

Schema theory, see individual entries for container, up-down, source-path-goal, part-whole,
cycle: and areas of benefit in music therapy, 180–184, 187, 189–192, 200–203;
cross-domain mappings in, 169–170;
and general music therapy theory, 42–44, 164–166;
integrative functions of, 182–183;
and meaning, 170–172, 174, 176;
and metaphor, 167–170
Schemata, 168–172;
connecting musical and extramusical experience, 177, 222;
descriptions of, 168–170;
developmental origins of, 168, 170–171, 176;
functions of, 177–179;
organism-environment interaction producing, 172, 227, 228, 230–231;
ontological status of, 220–235
Schenker, Heinrich, 196, 198–199, 265, 301
Schoenberg, Arnold, 165, 196, 265
Science: nature of, 3–10
Self-actualization/development, 28, 63, 79, 80, 106–108, 145–146, 156–158, 187–189, 294
Self-expression, 250–259
Self-identity, 103–104, 149–150
Significant form, 258
Sonata form, 153
Source-path-goal (schema), 184–187, 202, 224, 241, 280
Spatialization of time (in music), 192–200
Steiner, Rudolf, 130
Stern, Daniel, 259
Structure and antistructure, 290–294
Taylor, Cecil, 85
Theory: bridging, 26–27, 295;

fictionalist view of, 6–7, 10, 234–235;
foundational, 31, 35–40, 163, general, 35–40;
grounded, 34;
imported, 29;
indigenous, xv, 27, 28, 29–34;
realist view of, 6, 7, 234–235;
recontextualized 23–26, 30
Transference, 142

Transformation: in music and human development, 272–275
Transitional music/space, 282–285, 295–297, 299, 300
Transpersonal experience, 104–105
Tyson, Florence, 55, 151
Universalism, 78
Up-down (verticality schema), 179–182, 194, 201
Varèse, Edgard, 165, 191, 226

Vital drive, 73–74
Vitality affects, 259
Wagner, Richard, 259

Whitehead, Alfred North, 19
Will, 148–149, 248;
deficiency in disability, 148–149, 197–198, 242, 247
Winnicott, D. W., 294
Zuckerkandl, Victor, 166, 194–195, 205–217;

as basis for music-centered thinking, 148–149;
biographical information on, 205–206


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This work is dedicated to all the members and supporters of the

Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Foundation.

Aigen, K. (2005). Music-centered music therapy. Barcelona Publishers.

Aigen, K. (2005). Music-centered music therapy. Barcelona Publishers.

Part I: THE CONTEXT FOR MUSIC-CENTERED THEORY IN MUSIC

Part II: THE NATURE OF MUSIC-CENTERED THEORY AND PRACTICE

Musicing Requires Listening

Aigen, K. (2005). Music-centered music therapy. Barcelona Publishers.

Part III: A PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC FOR MUSIC-CENTERED MUSIC

Introduction to Part III

Aigen, K. (2005). Music-centered music therapy. Barcelona Publishers.

Part IV: GENERAL MUSIC-CENTERED THEORY

Aigen, K. (2005). Music-centered music therapy. Barcelona Publishers.

Aigen, K. (2005). Music-centered music therapy. Barcelona Publishers.

Aigen, K. (2005). Music-centered music therapy. Barcelona Publishers.

Aigen, K. (2005). Music-centered music therapy. Barcelona Publishers.

Aigen, K. (2005). Music-centered music therapy. Barcelona Publishers.

Origins of Music-Centered Thinking: Preliminary Observations

conceptual supports for music-centered thought.

Aigen, K. (2005). Music-centered music therapy. Barcelona Publishers.

Issues in Defining Music-Centeredness

Aigen, K. (2005). Music-centered music therapy. Barcelona Publishers.

Aigen, K. (2005). Music-centered music therapy. Barcelona Publishers.

Aigen, K. (2005). Music-centered music therapy. Barcelona Publishers.

Aigen, K. (2005). Music-centered music therapy. Barcelona Publishers.

Aigen, K. (2005). Music-centered music therapy. Barcelona Publishers.

Aigen, K. (2005). Music-centered music therapy. Barcelona Publishers.

You may be wondering why, in a book on music-centered music therapy, it is necessary to

In understanding the value of different kinds of theory in music therapy, it is necessary to

THE ROLE OF THEORY IN CONTEMPORARY MUSIC THERAPY

Provide the Foundation for Treatment

Advance and Disseminate the Skills and Knowledge of Practitioners

Theory can encode intellectual knowledge so that it can be passed on to others.

Create Directions for Research

Establish Links With Other Disciplines

A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR MUSIC THERAPY THEORY

In formulating professional communications, recontextualized theory seems to have its

bridging, or indigenous theory.11

METATHEORETICAL ISSUES IN MUSIC THERAPY

Indigenous and Music-Centered Theory

music therapy-specific theory, and in identifying indigenous theory with music-centered

Indigenous Theory and Grounded Theory

Foundational Theory and General Theory

General Theory and Music-Centered Music Therapy

therapy for that matter.

WHAT IS MUSIC-CENTERED MUSIC THERAPY AND HOW HAS IT DEVELOPED?

A conceptual differentiation that is particularly related to the present discussion is represented

Bruscia’s conceptualization illuminated some of the differences in practice of approaches to

The music-centered perspective cannot be represented simply, as there is no official

MUSIC AS A MEDIUM: ONE BASIS OF MUSIC-CENTERED THEORY

In portraying the presence of music-centered theory as a step forward in the maturity of

MUSICING AS THE CORE OF MUSIC-CENTERED PRACTICE

knowingly, (p. 50)

THE NECESSITY OF A THEORY OF MUSIC AS A BASIS FOR MUSIC-CENTERED

CAN A NOTION OF MUSIC DERIVED FROM NONCLINICAL CONTEXTS BE THE

music-listening skills to be essential to the music therapist’s improvisational craft.

values across temporal, geographic, or cultural boundaries. To do so is considered to be an

THE IDEA OF MUSICAL VALUES

music-centered music therapists would subscribe to these beliefs. Instead, my intent is to

MUSICING REQUIRES AN UNDERSTANDING OF SILENCE

MUSICING REQUIRES LISTENING

MUSICING INCORPORATES THE INDIVIDUAL WITHIN THE COMMUNAL

MUSICING INVOLVES SURRENDER

MUSIC CREATES CONNECTION