When Music Is the Best Medicine

As a piano and drum player, I relate to music as another world. You enter this dramatic but sweet world of music. Sometimes I get so caught up in playing that I put behind all my pains and worries and just play. This can work for anyone. All you have to do is find your type of music and perceive it in your way. Every hospital should recommend this to their patients because music really does help overcome fears. Music is another world that might help many people.

as a childhood professional musician, I always like to feel music move me - physically. that's where black people have it - in 2010 we went to the Caribbean Festival in Brooklyn - maybe along the Eastern Parkway - and after we got over the jerk chicken being cooked in split drums - were amazed by the booty shaking going on everywhere while trucks loaded with distorting huge speakers pumped out chest-thumping beats. We stayed for several hours and I counted less than a dozen white people in a crowd estimated at 300,000 black people. I was thinking white people are really missing out on something here. I go to classical music concerts and am often the only one tapping my feet or moving my head to the beat. At an eisteddfod when I was about 12 a guy with a fierce competitive face intended to crush me - he went out and played a blazing fast piece intended to impress - he got a smattering of polite applause - I guess his face gave away his ugly attitude. I went out next and played a simple romantic piano piece by Edward MacDowell that evoked a rolling sea - it wasn't complex or difficult but my body naturally moved with the feeling of the music. I was amazed when I finished - the whole audience gave me a standing ovation ! The other day at childcare someone put a bluetooth portable speaker in the courtyard pumping out boppy music, and suddenly it was a happy place with tiny kids just shaking and grooving with the music - from bored to having a good time in seconds !

If more health care facilities provided Therapeutic Music for patients, they would find their patient satisfaction scores rising. This painless, non-invasive intervention not only helps the patient, it improves staff morale and impacts other patients within hearing range of the practitioner. I have been a Certified Therapeutic Harp Practitioner in hospice for the last 10 years and have experienced how live music at the bedside helps patients at the end of life relax and let go in comfort and with dignity. It also eases the grief of the family who are present. Thank you for a great article.

This is a terrific article. Thank you for highlighting that it was someone qualified in music therapy that you saw, not a musical volunteer. That you saw music altered to suit the patient, and played live for them, not a "greatest hits" playlist via headphones. It is the planned use of music that has the greatest benefit to each individual.

I was, for a time, a ward secretary in a state veterans' nursing home. Most residents were World War II and Korean War vets. Being a fan of swing and big band music, I brought some of my albums for therapists to play during exercise sessions. People who had been reluctant to participate started moving. Music is a miracle.

Ms. Gubar, The truths of this rich offering resonate deeply within me. Have lived through long decades with a family member who was tormented and damaged emotionally and psychologically. A major solace and comfort now that they are gone is the sweet awareness of the respite, relief and joy that listening to (in their case) classical music brought them. And, I might add, continues to feed my soul and my sanity!

The Carol Simon Cancer Center at Morristown Medical Center save my live, The Jeffrey Wacks Foundation there with its music therapy save my soul !!

A smaller application, but helpful, I always listen to music on headphones when I have dental work. Last time listened to Diana Krall, Live in Paris. It is a welcome distraction while blotting out the noise of the dental drill. It really helps me get through the procedures. Music is amazing.

Thanks as usual for your beautiful informative commentary. As a lover of language, music, and your wonderful columns I have become a fan, as I once was only of your wonderful literary and cultural criticism. Write on!

I am a 19 year survivor of node positive bladder cancer. I had music ready for each phase of treatment, pieces which I played repeatedly. During chemo sessions it was YoYo Ma playing Bach's Sei Lob und Preis mit Ehrean [from his Simply Baroque CD]. During surgical recovery it was the second movement of Bach's Double Concerto for 2 violins in D minor [Perlman & Stern]. And during a recent steriotactic breast biopsy it was the barn raising fugue from the film Witness [Jarre]. All heart opening in the yoga sense and very healing. One should always have a personal playlist.

Thanks for another informative and inspiring article. Readers are fortunate to have Prof Gubar writing these for the NYT!

“Witnessing people in circumstances that have conspired to warp their sensory faculties and to reduce them to passivity, music therapists offer patients perhaps the only activity conceivable — that of listening — as a pathway to becoming sensate and thus incontestably attuned to the animating realization of still being alive and responsive.” This sentence is gorgeous. The concept it expresses is nuanced and hopeful. I have an aunt suffering from aphasia. I’m going to suggest music therapy to help her access her lost words, even if that access is temporary.

The opera singer Marilyn Horne said that listening to music on her iPod helped her get through chemo related to pancreatic cancer treatments. Also, Helen Keller was both deaf and blind but learned to appreciate sounds, voices and music by touching the source and feeling vibrations. There is a famous photo of her in the Oval Office smiling at President Eisenhower as she placed her palm along the side of his face to "hear" him speak.

Lovely column! I learn so much from Prof Gubar about how to live richly and with joy.

Thank you Ms. Gubar for such a thoughtful and engaging article. I really enjoy how you write that music can music people’s spiritual, psychological, and aesthetic needs. The Nordoff Robbins Center for Music Therapy at New York University is an incredible place that people should know about.

Ms. Gubar, I always enjoy your essays. In my father's final years of Alzheimer's disease, music was the rare thing that gave him pleasure--and that made him come alive when he was fading into the disease. Thank you for this piece.