Music as Medicine

This unique book is essential reading for everyone who acknowledges that music brings both solace and exhilaration, and that it has the power to make coherent sense of our wayward emotions. Anthony Storr, FRCP, FRCPsych, FRSL ..there is no doubt that, for some years to come, Musical Healing and Music as Medicine will both represent the indispensable point of reference for any reader who wishes to be fully informed and kept up to date with the relationship between the art of medicine and the art of sound. Medicina & Storia 'Horden's contributions to the volume he has masterminded are of exceptional quality. Ingenuously devised, they comprise not just a general introduction and a monograph chapter, but also a series of analytical commentaries placed before each of the book's three sections. They are elegant and erudite, informative but also questing a delight for any interested reader to absorb and ponder.' Social History of Medicine 'Many historical questions regarding the therapeutic power of music, its use in healing, its place in specific culture and others are addressed in this book in a systematic,scholarly and sceptical manner....this book is a valid contribution to the history of music therapy.' International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music This book [...] should prove of considerable value to ethnomusicologists concerned as they are among other issues with the question, What does music do for the humans whose music we study? And it should have particular value for those interested in documenting the use of music for healing within contemporary societies... very useful reading.' The World of Music

Peregrine Horden is Professor of Medieval History at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Contents: Introduction, Peregrine Horden; Musical solutions: past and present in Music therapy, Peregrine Horden; Part I: Ancient Literate Traditions: Commentary on part I with a note on China, Peregrine Horden; Music therapy in antiquity, Martin West; Jewish and Muslim traditions of music therapy, Amnon Shiloah; Music therapy: some possibilities in the Indian tradition J.B. Katz; Part II: Medieval Europe: Commentary on part II, with a note on the early Middle Ages, Peregrine Horden; Music and medicine in the thirteenth century, Christopher Page; Music therapy in the later Middle Ages: the case of Hugo van der Goes, Peter Murray Jones; Part III: Renaissance and Early Modern Europe: Commentary on part III, with a note on Paracelsus, Peregrine Horden; Marsilio Ficino, the second Orpheus, Angela Voss; Music, melancholy and medical spirits in early modern thought, Penelope Gouk; Curing man and the Cosmos: the power of music in French Renaissance poetry, Noel Heather; Musical treatments for lovesickness: the early modern heritage, Linda Phyllis Austern; Part IV: Tarantism: Commentary on part IV, with a note on the origins of Tarantism, Peregrine Horden; Ritualized illness and music therapy: views of Tarantism in the kingdom of Naples, David Gentilcore; Medical theories of Tarantism in eighteenth-century Spain, Pilar Len Sanz; Tarantism in contemporary Italy: the Tarantulas dance reviewed and revived, Karen Ldtke; Part V: Modern currents: Commentary on part V, with notes on nineteenth-century America and on mesmerism and theosophy, Peregrine Horden; Music as cause and cure of illness in nineteenth-century Europe, Cheryce Kramer; Shamanism, music and the soul train, Keith Howard; The music therapy profession in modern Britain, Helen M. Tyler; Index.