I now believe that if we teachers and parents of babies and young children began playing the music we love and the music that makes us truly happy we could develop a lifetime passion for music in those children. I am assuming of course that the music you really love is tuneful and has an emotional affect on you, almost bodily. Perhaps not all modern music will do that – have you ever listened to Cold Play for Children? Wow – it doesn’t do a thing for me. The music fits its name ‘cold’!
Last summer my brother and I were trying to choose suitable music for my mother’s funeral. We listened to some of her favourites on CD and clutched each other as we cried together. It was a very therapeutic experience for us both as we looked out onto her garden from her living room. However we deemed at least one tune too emotional for her funeral service, for us really.
In the end we chose the music from our teenage years when we gathered with our parents and other families to enjoy both The Beatles’ and Glenn Miller’s music. The Beatles, music from our own era yet our parents loved it, and Glenn Miller’s music from their own wartime experiences, music we had come to love too. My father and mother loved to dance together and it seemed fitting to remember those happy occasions at Mum’s funeral service. We chose ‘Here Comes The Sun’ by The Beatles to open the service and ‘In The Mood’ by Glenn Miller to cheerfully close it, both seemed appropriate – perhaps only to us who knew her well?
When my husband was in hospital in 1999 and in an induced coma I spent the 10-minute drive to the hospital each morning listening to Keepsake, a Gold Medal barbershop quartet from the early 90’s. One song in particular, ‘How Deep Is The Ocean’, always brought tears to my eyes. That was probably the only time I cried each day; barbershop harmony served a very therapeutic purpose.
When our sons compiled their list of songs for their first barbershop CD, recorded the following year, I asked them to record that song for me – they did.
We now listen to their mellifluous barbershop harmony both live, on CD and on youtube, as often as we can. Coupled with the videos of their barbershop youth chorus, we have plenty of real music to enjoy. I’ve even played one of my sons’ barbershop harmony songs to a 15-month old little girl – she got it – you can’t imagine how calm she was!
The other aspect of therapeutic music is that when you know those singing and you understand their passion for the music they perform, your musical and therapeutic experience is only enhanced.
Much as we all love a wide variety of music, for us what the voice, or multiple voices, produce in beautiful four-part harmony, is like nothing else. Instruments often override a beautiful voice.
Yet I do think four-part harmony is much like listening to an orchestra – each instrument adds its own facet to the whole.
Then again I also believe in singing with even larger groups – where it doesn’t matter which voice part you sing! That suits me quite well. I’d do quite well singing with a flash mob, just not doing the dance routines! The actual experience is singing beside so many people, as our oldest son did in Edinburgh this year. He joined with some 80,000 others in that Scottish city singing Olde Lang Syne just after ringing in 2012 – quite the once in a lifetime musical experience for him I’m sure.
Or as I did a year ago singing along, with my then 91 year old mother, to those well known Rogers and Hammerstein tunes from their famous musicals of the 50’s and 60’s. We had a very happy evening together; she, even with Alzheimers, remembered the words and melodies (!) and I am left with very fond memories.
Music needs to be in our lives therapeutically. It isn’t therapeutic if it is ‘prescribed’ by anyone else and doesn’t fit our own personal idea of making us feel wonderfully happy or even making us cry.
I believe that those without beloved music in their lives are truly bereft of the full range of emotional being.