Gary Ansdell

Musical Elaborations: What Has the New Musicology to Say to Music Therapy?

In this article I review some of the latest books in what has been called the ‘New Musicology’. I also ask why music therapists and musicologists seem until now to have taken so little notice of each others work, but suggest that this situation is changing. Developments in critical thinking about music represented by the ‘New Musicology’ may be of particular relevance to music therapists searching for theoretical perspectives on their work. But equally the theorists of the ‘New Musicology’ could learn much from music therapy – which can be seen in many ways as a ‘laboratory’ for new thinking about the nature of music and its place in society.

Talking about Music Therapy A Dilemma and a Qualitative Experiment

This paper is designed as an introduction to a projected series on aspects of the meta-theory of music therapy. In common with pyschoanalysis (Mitchell 1993) and art therapy (Henzell 1995), music therapy inquiry is seeing an evolving reflexive trend which examines in several ways the nature of theory in the discipline — in order to clarify, contextualise and critically evaluate past and current trends (Aldridge 1990, 1993b; Aigen 1991, 1995; Ruud 1988). In the case of music therapy, meta-theory typically seeks to uncover the relationships between three domains: what music therapists do (praxis); what they say (discourse); and what they know (epistemology). This paper takes discourse as the starting-point and makes an introductory study of the nature of talking about music therapy. It centres its investigation on a simple qualitative-style experiment in which a group of listeners (of varying musical and music therapy experience) identify and describe a taped excerpt of music therapy. The results of this experiment are used to form the basis of a discussion about several commonly expressed ‘language problems’ in music therapy: the need for a ‘common language’; the verification of clinical data; describing musical behaviour and the boundary between description and interpretation.

Responding to the Challenge: Between Boundaries and Borders: A Response to Alison Barrington's Article Challenging the Profession

1. Are recent developments in music therapy (such as the Community Music Therapy movement) compromising a primary attention to peoples needs? 2. Are such developments also threatening the professional survival of music therapy? 3. Is the perceived critique of the hard-won achievements of music therapy professionalisation an unfair one? 4. What is the real challenge to professional music therapy now?

Book Review: Music — A Very Short IntroductionMusic – A Very Short Introduction by CookNicholasOxford University Press (1998) 143pp. £5.99 (Pbk) ISBN 0 19 285340 6

difficulties (chapter 6). I was uncomfortable with the authors constant and unnecessary reiteration that he is the founder of the approach, its methodology and the director of the training course. I feel that by doing so, the author irritates the reader and somewhat undermines his own integrity. This being said, I was fascinated to read this challenging and informative book by Paul Newham. I would highly recommend it to all music therapists and students who want to enter the mysterious world of the voice. This book certainly gives the reader every chance to have a deeper insight into this mystery.