A Violin at Dusk
By Lizette Woodworth Reese (2014)
Stumble to silence, all you uneasy things,
That pack the day with bluster and with fret.
For here is music at each window set;
Here is a cup which drips with all the springs
That ever bud a cowslip flower; a roof
To shelter till the argent weathers break;
A candle with enough of light to make
My courage bright against each dark reproof.
A hand’s width of clear gold, unraveled out
The rosy sky, the little moon appears;
As they were splashed upon the paling red,
Vast, blurred, the village poplars lift about.
I think of young, lost things: of lilacs; tears;
I think of an old neighbor, long since dead.
Why do people listen to music?
Over the past several decades, scholars have proposed numerous functions that listening to music might fulfill. However, different theoretical approaches, different methods, and different samples have left a heterogeneous picture regarding the number and nature of musical functions.
Research reveals that people listen to music
To regulate arousal and mood,
To achieve self-awareness, and
To exhibit an expression of social relatedness.
The first and second dimensions were judged to be much more important than the third – a result that contrasts with the idea that music has evolved primarily as a means for social cohesion and communication. The implications of these results are discussed in light of theories on the origin and the functionality of music listening and also for the application of musical stimuli in all areas of psychology and for research in music cognition.
(Thomas Schäfer, Peter Sedlmeier, Christine Städtler, and David Huron. “The psychological functions of music listening.” Front Psychol. 2013; 4: 511.)
Research results have
showed that individual musical preference is influenced by
multiple
factors and that the psychological effects of music can be powerful
and wide-ranging.
Music therapy is an intervention sometimes used to promote emotional health, help patients cope with stress, and boost psychological well-being. Studies have shown that music can buoy mood and fend off depression. Some research even suggests that a person's taste in music can provide insight into different aspects of personality.
Listening to music can also improve blood flow in ways similar to statins, lower levels of stress-related hormones like cortisol, and ease pain. Listening to music before an operation can even improve post-surgery outcomes.
To summarize the growing body of empirical research on music therapy, a multilevel meta-analysis, containing 47 studies, 76 effect sizes and 2.747 participants, was performed to assess the strength of the effects of music therapy on both physiological and psychological stress-related outcomes, and to test potential moderators of the intervention effects.
(Speaking scientifically: Results showed that music therapy showed an overall medium-to-large effect on stress-related outcomes (d = .723, [.51–.94]). Larger effects were found for clinical controlled trials (CCT) compared to randomized controlled trials (RCT), waiting list controls instead of care as usual (CAU) or other stress-reducing interventions, and for studies conducted in Non-Western countries compared to Western countries.)
(Martina de Witte, Ana da Silva Pinho, Geert-Jan Stams, Xavier Moonen, Arjan E.R. Bos and Susan van Hooren. “Music therapy for stress reduction: a systematic review and meta-analysis.” Health Psychology Review. 2020.)
How can music do so much good? Music seems to “selectively activate” neurochemical systems and brain structures associated with positive mood, emotion regulation, attention and memory in ways that promote beneficial changes, says Kim Innes, a professor of epidemiology at West Virginia University’s School of Public Health.
Innes coauthored a 2016 study that found music-listening could boost mood and well-being and improve stress-related measures in older adults suffering from cognitive decline. Her study compared the benefits of music to those of meditation—a practice in vogue for its mental-health perks. She found that both practices were linked to significant improvements in mood and sleep quality. “Both meditation and music listening are potentially powerful tools for improving overall health and well-being,” Innes says.
If the idea of listening to music seems a lot more practicable to you than meditating, these findings are great news.
(Innes, Kim E. et al. “Effects of Meditation Versus Music Listening on Perceived Stress, Mood, Sleep, and Quality of Life in Adults with Early Memory Loss: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.” J Alzheimers Dis. April 2016 : 1277 – 1298.)
Science pretty much confirms that humans are hard-wired to respond to music. In The Power of Music, Elena Mannes explores how music affects different groups of people and how it could play a role in health care.
(Elena Mannes. The Power of Music: Pioneering Discoveries in the New Science of Song. January 29, 2013.)
Mannes tracked the human relationship with music over the course of a life span. She tells NPR's Neal Conan that studies show that infants prefer "consonant intervals, the smooth-sounding ones that sound nice to our Western ears in a chord, as opposed to a jarring combination of notes." In fact, Mannes says the cries of babies just a few weeks old were found to contain some of the basic intervals common to Western music.
She also says scientists have found that music stimulates more parts of the brain than any other human function. That's why she sees so much potential in music's power to change the brain and affect the way it works.
Physics experiments show that sound waves can physically change the structure of a material; musician and world-famous conductor Daniel Barenboim believes musical sound vibrations physically penetrate our bodies, shifting molecules as they do.
Barenboim shares his experience …
“Well known neuro-biologist and neuro-scientist Antonio De Marcio, has taught us many things about human emotion, about the human brain, and also about the human ear, and he says that the auditory system is physically much closer inside the brain to the parts of the brain which regulate life, which means that they are the basis for the sense of pain, pleasure, motivation - in other words basic emotions.
“And he also says that the physical vibrations which result in sound sensations are a variation on touching, they change our own bodies directly and deeply, more so than the patterns of light that lead to vision, because the patterns of light that lead to vision allow us to see objects sometimes very far away provided there is light. But the sound penetrates our body. There is no penetration, if you want, physical penetration, with the eye, but there is with the ear.”
American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) said it best at a Young Peoples Concert with the New York Philharmonic many years ago: “We’re going to listen to music that describes emotions, feelings, like pain, happiness, loneliness, anger, love. I guess most music is like that, and the better it is, the more it will make you feel the emotions the composer felt when he was writing.
(“Vibrations Surround Us: The Science of Music.” Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science. Fall 2010.)
To scientists, the performing ensemble produces an array of sound waves from its instrumental components-each of which produces one or more pitches with distinct timbres. To the artists, the different chords, cadences, and other musical components form patterns that we associate with variable emotions.
Sound waves directly affect emotions. Evidence proves these sound waves can even hearl. Dr. Concetta Tomaino, D.A., MT-BC, LCAT , a pioneer in the deployment of music to spark recovery in patients with severe disabilities. Dr. Tomaino is the co-founder, with the late neurologist Oliver Sacks, of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function (IMNF) at Beth Abraham Family of Health Services in the Bronx. Its mission: to study “music’s extraordinary power to awaken, stimulate and heal.”
During the 16 years Tomaino has worked at the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function with patients suffering from stroke, traumatic brain injury, and chronic diseases like Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis, Dr. Tomaino has seen music stimulate the memory of patients suffering from dementia; help stroke patients recover their power of speech; aid physical therapists strengthen the muscles of patients and extend their flexibility; assist Parkinson’s patients regain their ability to walk; and reduce severe anxiety in pre- and post-surgery patients.
Jed Levine, director of programs for the New York City chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association. Says, “There is evidence that the ability to hear and the ‘center for music’ remain active. At all stages of the disease, music can provide stimulation as well as solace and comfort.”
To break through to someone locked in dementia, Levine points out, a friend or caregiver must choose melodies that have particular significance for that person. The music that resonates most strongly for most of us, notes Dr. Tomaino, is the music we heard as teenagers – although “classical-music fanatics” respond most fervently to a particular opera or the work of a particular composer.
A 2001 study at McGill University clarified just how exquisitely particular musical taste can be. Ten classical musicians claimed that their favorite piece of music sent chills down their spine. This is quite likely, since music – like sex, cocaine, and other abused drugs, and food – triggers the area of the brain that releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with feelings of pleasure and reward.
The McGill researchers were intrigued: Would musicians get spine-shivers from other people’s favorite classical pieces? Would these “control” pieces trigger the pleasurable responses signified by changes in cerebral blood flow with the same intensity of emotion and arousal? Would they, too, spark what neuroscientist Daniel Levitin calls “goosebumps on the brain”
The answer was “no.” The participants found spine-tingling pleasure only in their favorite pieces. The moral: If musical taste is this selective, then it’s clear that a melody will stir or comfort or stimulate a patient with dementia – indeed, any patient – BUT only if it’s his kind of music.
(Valorie Salimpoor et al. “Musical chills: why they give us thrills.” Nature Neuroscience. 2001.)
To harness music's restorative power, people may share their pleasures of music with hospitalized or homebound friends or family members. A playlist of songs customized by a specialist to strike the strongest emotional chord is recommended. Research confirms that the patient's “kind” of music is best suited for maximum pleasure – research into a person's favorite pieces from his or her teenage years is highly recommended.
The Institute for Music and Neurologic Function’s Well Tuned: Music Players for Health program (a collaboration with another nonprofit, Music & Memory) can help you discover which songs will resonate with a patient. A licensed musical therapist will consult you by phone about the patient’s musical taste, then load an MP3 or iPod with a customized playlist of therapeutic music. Click here: https://www.imnf.org/services.
(Playlists can be created for individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia; Parkinson’s disease; depression; or anxiety.) For details and fees, visit their website. To donate your working iPod or MP3 player (with cable or dock) for this purpose, call the institute at 914-513-5292.
(Deborah Harkins. “Healing Power of Music.” NyCityWoman.)
My Two Cents
As a lifelong music aficionado, audiophile, and ex-mobile DJ, I believe strongly in the power of recorded and live music – both in the psychological and physical benefits.
Granted, many see it as an odd thing to see an entire species – billions of people all across the globe – playing with listening to meaningless tonal patterns, occupied and preoccupied for much of their time by what they call “music.” Our human auditory system and our nervous system are tuned for music. Perhaps we are a musical species no less than a linguistic one. But there seems to be in us a peculiar sensitivity to music.
Oliver Sacks, Clinical Professor of Neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, shares this interesting parallel …
“This was one of the things about human beings that puzzled the highly cerebral alien beings, the Overlords, in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel 'Childhood’s End.' Curiosity brings them down to the Earth’s surface to attend a concert; they listen politely and patiently, and at the end, congratulate the composer on his ‘great ingenuity’ – while still finding the entire business unintelligible. They cannot think what goes on in human beings when they make or listen to music, because nothing goes on within them. They, themselves, as a species, lack music.”
(Oliver Sacks. “The Power of Music.” Brain. 2006, 129, 2528–2532.)
Clarke likes to embody questions in fables. In this case the puzzling query is simple and direct: “What it is about music that gives it such peculiar power over us?”
With the help of Sacks, we can offer this frustratingly incomplete but vaguely scientific answer:
“There seems to be in us a peculiar sensitivity to music, a sensitivity that can all too easily slip out of control, become excessive, become a susceptibility or a vulnerability. Too-muchness lies continually in wait, whether this takes the form of ‘earworms' (involuntary, helpless mental replaying of songs or tunes, or snatches of music we have just been exposed to), 'musical hallucinations' (several voices or instruments heard simultaneously), 'swoons and trances' (musicogenic epilepsy), or music-induced seizures (special states of intense, involuntary, almost forced, attention).
“This is the other side of the otherwise wonderful power of music. How much this is due to the intrinsic characteristics of music itself – its complex sonic patterns woven in time, its logic, its momentum, its unbreakable sequences, its insistent rhythms and repetitions, the mysterious way in which it embodies emotion and ‘will’ – and how much to special resonances, synchronizations,oscillations, mutual excitations, feedbacks, and so forth, in the immensely complex, multi-level neural circuitry that subserves musical perception and replay, we do not know. We do not even know why, for instance, simple stroboscopic light displays can excite hallucinations, myoclonus and seizures, and this is an infinitely simpler matter than the powers of music …
“We have, as yet, scarcely touched the question of why music, for better or worse, has so much power. It is a question that goes to the heart of being human.”
(Oliver Sacks. “The Power of Music.” Brain. 2006, 129, 2528–2532.)
Perhaps, the need for music is best expressed in poetic form – here is the iambic pentameter of Pulitzer-Prize Winning American poet Elizabeth Bishop.
I Am In Need Of Music
Elizabeth Bishop [1911-1979]
I am in need of music
that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my
bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and
liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some
song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my
head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!
There is a magic
made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart,
that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness
of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in
the arms of rhythm and of sleep.
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