Music is a sentient presence that speaks to us in many ways, formed through inspiration, composition, performance, and ultimately embodiment through listening. A true performance understands and conveys the heart of music, reaching beyond intellectual understanding and technical prowess. Each musical work tells a unique story that arises from the time period, culture, and society in which a composer lives. These forces coalesce with the innate personality and lived experience of the composer, who then condenses it into 'mathematic properties' for the purpose of notation and fundamental learning. The crucial period comes when a performer must interpret the notation and perceive the composer's intent. Once realised, the performer must travel back to the origins of influence and creation of the work (time period, culture, society, composer's personality and style) in order to fully understand the story. Once understood, the story further evolves through each performer's interpretation through the filters of their unique lived experience. One musical work, four different performers, four different interpretations and listening experiences. Wonderful!

 

Music, indeed all sound, has its genesis in audio physics, a foundation that is far removed from the essence of music, the heart. The physics of sound is not music. I have heard many times that music is like mathematics. Indeed, mathematics and music share many elemental properties. However, this notion is limiting. Yes, music contains 'mathematical properties' as identified in the compositional elements (timing, pitch, tone colour, volume, timbre, harmony etc). Furthermore, it employs the most visually complex notation of all, through mathematics to language. However these aspects are merely the alphabet, the multifaceted elements with which we construct musical words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and finally the story. In this way, the mathematical properties, the foundational elements of music, are similar to the constructs involved in the equations that form mathematical theory and the evolution of language. However, music goes beyond these constructs and has the ability to spontaneously evoke an unconscious emotive intensity that mathematics and language cannot. Both take time to evolve. Music is immediate, spontaneous, unbidden, and unconscious. It is the food of the fantastical. This is the true essence of music and the medium through which each musical work tells its unique story.

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What is music therapy?

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The field of Music therapy is an evidence-based discipline with a foundation of empirical and qualitative research. The practice of music therapy involves the implementation of music-based activities by a Registered Music Therapist with postgraduate qualification. The Australian Music Therapist Association states ‘music therapy is a research-based practice and profession in which music is used to actively support people as they strive to improve their health, functioning and wellbeing’. Music is used to bring about positive change to cognitive, physical, and emotional health.

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What is Music and Imagery?

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Music and Imagery is a holistic way to experience music. It is a receptive method of music therapy that involves listening to music whilst in an altered state of consciousness, similar to a relaxing meditation. Specially selected music and natural sounds are used to deepen the meditative state and evoke symbolic imagery. Music generated imagery may be experienced as a range of emotions, hidden memories, suppressed feelings, thoughts, visual and abstract images, body sensations, and transpersonal experiences.

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The meditative state allows the music to bypass the cognitive channels of thought, heightens awareness through the senses, and facilitates movement of material from the unconscious by enhancing recall and integration of unconscious memories with affective material arising through creative imagination. In essence, Music and Imagery makes the unconscious conscious.

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A typical Music and Imagery session involves deep physical relaxation, mental concentration, and a heightened attention to your emotions and feelings which emerge during the music listening period. A typical session involves a four-step procedure: 1) a relaxation induction, 2) a focal point that is usually a description of an imaginary setting, 3) the listening period, and 4) a post-listening period during which you are invited to draw a mandala and share and process your experience.

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The mandala

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In Music and Imagery, the mandala is a symbolic representation of psychic experiences in the form of an art work set within or upon a circular frame. It is drawn after the music imaging period and involves drawing any aspect(s) of the imagery experienced. Incorporation of the mandala into the practise of Music and Imagery evolved through research in the 1970s (refs available). It was found to extend the imagic experience and strengthen the link between the psychic intangible to the more concrete or tangible world. In Music and Imagery, the combination of imagery and art creates a union that enhances the therapeutic effects of both.