Music as medicine:  Medics, musicians, and music therapists ask what gives music its healing power

Have you ever been at a concert and felt your mood shift inexorably in tandem with the music? Anyone who’s taken a pew at a Bobby McFerrin gig can attest to the sensory heights to which he lures his audience. Likewise, a slow air played with feeling on the pipes or the fiddle might entice a listener to a darker place that they hadn’t bargained on visiting – which might prove a welcome respite or induce an uncomfortable wince.

Musicians and music lovers alike have long recognised the healing power of music. That’s partly why we’re sometimes tempted to turn the volume up on Henryk Górecki’s Third Symphony, either to amplify an already funereal mood or to plumb emotional depths while in the company of greatness.

Earlier this month in Limerick [Ireland], medics, music therapists and musicians tossed their tuppenceworth into the ring in an attempt to gain some understanding of the relationship between music and medicine. The University of Limerick’s Irish World Academy of Music and Dance hosted this inaugural conference of the International Association for Music and Medicine in association with UL’s Graduate Medical School.

At a time when Leaving Cert students are being asked to view the arts and sciences as diametrically opposed career choices in their CAO forms, there was a refreshing lack of territorialism on view at this crossroads where medicine and music intersected in the unlikeliest of ways. Read Article

By Siobhan Long