Prelims

Half Title Page

MUSIC

Series Page

ARTS FOR HEALTH

Series Editor: Paul Crawford, Professor of Health Humanities, University of Nottingham, UK

The Arts for Health series offers a ground-breaking set of books that guide the general public, carers and healthcare providers on how different arts can help people to stay healthy or improve their health and wellbeing.

Bringing together new information and resources underpinning the health humanities (that link health and social care disciplines with the arts and humanities), the books demonstrate the ways in which the arts offer people worldwide a kind of shadow health service – a non-clinical way to maintain or improve our health and wellbeing. The books are aimed at general readers along with interested arts practitioners seeking to explore the health benefits of their work, health and social care providers and clinicians wishing to learn about the application of the arts for health, educators in arts, health and social care and organizations, carers and individuals engaged in public health or generating healthier environments. These easy-to-read, engaging short books help readers to understand the evidence about the value of arts for health and offer guidelines, case studies and resources to make use of these non-clinical routes to a better life.

Other titles in the series:

Forthcoming titles:

Endorsement Page

Music and the arts reach around all corners of the world and into all corners of our life and Dr Eugene Beresin details many aspects of their purpose and importance in his book Arts For Health: Music. I think this is important information to share and it reinforces what all of us musicians and artists already know…that the arts (regardless of their type), when done with the right intention, are healing arts.

– Jeff Coffin, 3x Grammy winning saxophonist, composer, educator, author. Dave Matthews Band, Bela Fleck & the Flecktones, Ear Up Records founder, The Mu’tet.

Music is certainly a pleasurable and universal part of the human experience, but is it really possible that harms could be assuaged through harmonies, symptoms soothed by symphonies, remedies found in rhythm? As an expert Harvard physician, healer, and musician, Dr Gene Beresin makes a forceful and persuasive case that the answer is a resounding, “yes” – scientifically elucidating and affirming music’s psycho-biological therapeutic effects and uncovering its power to heal. Informative, instructive, inspirational, students, clinicians, patients, and family members, will find solace and joy here.

– John F. Kelly, PhD, ABPP Elizabeth R. Spallin Professor of Psychiatry in Addiction Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Director of the Recovery Research Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA. Award-winning songwriter, singer, musician, and producer.

If you are in the group of people that think music is ancillary to your life – or extracurricular or non-essential – but have been waiting for someone to prove you wrong, look no further! Dr Eugene Beresin has comprehensively, and in simple language, dispelled any hypothesis of the kind in his book, Arts For Health: Music. From heartfelt personal testimonies to factual medical data, this book beautifully explains the effect music universally has on humanity and why it’s important for individual well-being. It is a must have for all music teachers, students and professionals, as it gives language to what we innately already know.

– Terri Lyne Carrington – Grammy Award winning, drummer/composer/producer/activist, who is played with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Stan Getz, Al Jarreau and many others.

Title Page

MUSIC

EUGENE BERESIN

The Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, USA

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2022

Copyright © 2022 Eugene Beresin.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

Reprints and permissions service

Contact: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the text, illustrations or advertisements. The opinions expressed in these chapters are not necessarily those of the Author or the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-83867-316-1 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-83867-313-0 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-83867-315-4 (Epub)

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my mother, Marcella Grace Beresin, who inspired my love of music and playing by ear. I was no match for her performance of Chopin’s Fantaisie Impromptu.

Contents

Series Preface: Creative Public Health

The “Arts for Health” series aims to provide key information on how different arts and humanities practices can support, or even transform, health and wellbeing. Each book introduces a particular creative activity or resource and outlines its place and value in society, the evidence for its use in advancing health and wellbeing, and cases of how this works. In addition, each book provides useful links and suggestions to readers for following-up on these quick reads. We can think of this series as a kind of shadow health service – encouraging the use of the arts and humanities alongside all the other resources on offer to keep us fit and well.

Creative practices in the arts and humanities offer a fantastic, non-medical, but medically relevant way to improve the health and wellbeing of individuals, families and communities. Intuitively, we know just how important creative activities are in maintaining or recovering our best possible lives. For example, imagine that we woke up tomorrow to find that all music, books or films had to be destroyed, learn that singing, dancing or theatre had been outlawed or that galleries, museums and theatres had to close permanently; or, indeed, that every street had posters warning citizens of severe punishment for taking photographs, drawing or writing. How would we feel? What would happen to our bodies and minds? How would we survive? Unfortunately, we have seen this kind of removal of creative activities from human society before and today many people remain terribly restricted in artistic expression and consumption.

I hope that this series adds a practical resource to the public. I hope people buy these little books as gifts for family and friends, or for hard-pressed healthcare professionals, to encourage them to revisit or to consider a creative path to living well. I hope that creative public health makes for a brighter future.

Professor Paul Crawford

Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to so many people who gracefully put up with my obsessive and repetitive questions and commentary about the content of this book – mostly my wife Michaela and my children, Jade, Caitlin, Glennon and Zack, along with their partners. I could not have produced this manuscript without the support and encouragement from the staff of the Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds at MGH both for the production of this book and for my intense focus on writing sound-tracks. I am indebted to my dear friends in our Band, Pink Freud and the Transitional Objects – David, Tony, Brad, Boz, Bill, Chris, and Kari, who continually inspire my playing and writing music. You are the backbone of a communal process that keeps my musical sensibilities alive and growing. Thank you. I am indebted to Paul Crawford for allowing me the time to write, extension after extension, as I had to deal with the pandemic through my work at the Clay Center and with my MGH medical students, residents, and patients. And I would be lost without my teachers Ben Cook and Earl Pughe, who gently and relentlessly push me to the limit on piano and guitar. Thank you all.