A PERSONAL ACCOUNT OF MY INTRODUCTION TO MUSIC THERAPY

When I was in undergraduate college at NYU, I've had the privilege of entertaining a varied course load that my school offered. Out of all of the interesting and though-provoking classes that I've taken at NYU, I'd had to say that the Intro to Music Therapy class I took in my junior year certainly takes the prize as the most interesting class I'd taken there. Before taking that class, I had no idea that music therapy was actually something that people specialized in and implemented in health institutions. I mean, I've always wondered about the healing properties of music since for example, if I was having a bad day, I could rely on putting on a song or artist that I enjoyed listening to and it would bring my mood up. Though, I never thought that the implications would be significant enough for such a practice to be warranted in actual treatment of patients. As a musician who did a cappella in college who was also studying premed, I felt that this class would cater to both of these interests. Nevertheless, I was very excited to start this course.

I quickly learned that this class was not only one of the more interesting courses I'd take, but also one of the most unique. For starters, the professor was a licensed music therapist first before an NYU professor, meaning the way that he would approach the class would be much different from any typical professor I'd had before. Every class, we'd have a group of readings on the healing powers of music to prepare beforehand and then we'd discuss the findings and talk more in-depth about them as a class, which doesn't really differ much from a regular class. What made it different was that every class ended with a jam session. The room we had class in had cabinets filled with different percussion instruments, which gave each of us, ignoring individual music capabilities, the opportunity to create music together and explore the healing powers of music firsthand.

All of the articles were quite eye-opening. A lot of times, simple music concepts are used and put into a clinical setting and then suddenly it takes on a completely different purpose. One great example: improvisation is a common technique used in the treatment for pain. More often than not, pain isn't voluntary; you don't control when and where you feel certain pains. This can also apply to psychological disorders such as anxiety and depressions, those who have it don't choose if and when to have episodes. What musical improvisation allows patients to do is to take control of something, as they have the power to control the tempo of their music, the direction their music takes melodically and how long it goes for. 

One thing I really appreciated about the course were the assignments. My professor didn't really care for grades in the sense that as long as we put effort into our written assignments and prepared the readings for every week, we were bound to do well; he cared more about us retaining and understanding the material he was trying to teach us. The majority of our written assignments had us reflecting on how what we learned the class has made us think about the music in our everyday lives differently, if it has at all. So there were no wrong answers, as long as you provided a well-thought-out response, that was all that was required. 

The most profound assignment we had, in my opinion, was a short presentation we had to give on a piece of music that had significant meaning to us. I was personally surprised by the piece that I'd chosen because it came to me in a revelation I had while pondering the readings we'd done. I ended up doing a presentation on the Intermezzo movement from the Carmen Suite. The Intermezzo is essentially a woodwind quartet (piccolo, flute, clarinet, english horn) with orchestra backdrop. What made this piece so significant to me was that I had the astounding honor of performing in a youth orchestra in middle school and we had done selections from the Carmen Suite, including the Intermezzo, at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center. As first chair clarinet that year, the clarinet solo portion of the Intermezzo fell upon me and along with my other first-chair woodwind musicians, we performed the Intermezzo on that beautiful stage with such grace and I still get goosebumps to this day hearing this movement because it brings me back to that stage and that moment when it was just the sound of my clarinet before the plucking of string instruments that filled the venue, even if it was just for a few seconds, I'd felt like the king of the world for just those few seconds. Flash forward many years later to my sophomore year of college, I'm far removed from my time spent in that youth orchestra; I'd even stopped seriously practicing and playing my clarinet because my busy college schedule just simply wouldn't allow for it and in all honesty, I'd chosen singing over clarinet as I pursuing a cappella in college. An old friend of mine and I decided to make a date to go to The Met and enjoy an opera. Though I was a classically trained vocalist when I was taking singing lessons in middle school and high school, operas were still a farcry from what I was familiar with, as in I could probably count the number of operas I knew on one hand. It just happened to be my lucky day that the opera set for performance on that night was Carmen, one that I was very much familiar with, but in that moment, had consciously forgotten that I knew the music since it had been a while since I'd played it. I distinctly remember immediately after an intermission, the plucking of string instruments began to play and then the emergence of a piccolo filled the vibrations of the auditorium and it all came rushing back to me. I'd been teleported back to the Alice Tully Hall stage, sitting in my tuxedo with clammy hands and ready to perform the Intermezzo. Following the piccolo, the clarinet takes over and I could subconsciously feel myself fingering the notes along with the piece as I sat in the nosebleeds. A rush of nostalgia and emotion came over me and it had almost brought me to tears as I remembered the time that I felt like I was on top of the world; a simpler time. Even as I write this recollection now, I switched over to YouTube just to listen to the Intermezzo again as emotions fill my mind. I can't believe that a single class project has had me go through a whirlwind of emotions.