Music as therapy in early history

Progress in Brain Research
Michael H Thaut

Abstract

The notion of music as therapy is based on ancient cross-cultural beliefs that music can have a "healing" effect on mind and body. Explanations for the therapeutic mechanisms in music have almost always included cultural and social science-based causalities about the uses and functions of music in society. However, it is also important to note that the view of music as "therapy" was also always strongly influenced by the view and understanding of the concepts and causes of disease. Magical/mystical concepts of illness and "rational" medicine probably lived side by side for thousands of years. Not until the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries were the scientific foundations of medicine established, which allowed the foundations of music in therapy to progress from no science to soft science and most recently to actual brain science. Evidence for "early music therapy" will be discussed in four broad historical-cultural divisions: preliterate cultures; early civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel; Greek Antiquity; Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Baroque. In reviewing "early music therapy" practice, from mostly unknown periods of early history (using preliterate cultures as a window) to increasingly better documented t...Continue Reading

Citations

Feb 8, 2018·Developmental Neuropsychology·Lauren Julius Harris
Apr 3, 2016·Critical Care Nurse·Charlene SupnetDaiWai Olson
Jul 14, 2020·Omega·Marianne ViperEva Bojner Horwitz
Nov 27, 2018·Journal of Religion and Health·Elias E Mazokopakis
Jul 9, 2021·Trends in Cardiovascular Medicine·Jacquelyn KulinskiJerome L Fleg
Apr 7, 2021·Current Pediatric Reviews·Tatjana Páramo-CanoAna L Espinoza-Ramírez

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