MUSIC AND MEDICINE

MUSIC AND MEDICINE
Power of Music in life and health
Dr Suvarna Nalapat

The humanity of music ,value of musical expression ,contemplation and thought and transcendence of idea as expressed through sound are concepts that regrettably continue to decline in modern world.Music has become isolated from other areas of life,and is no longer considered as a necessary aspect of intellectual development .Just as in Medicine,the music world has evolved into a society of specialists who know more and more of less and less.The musical education has become increasingly specialized and limited .This educative system produce competent instrumentalists and vocalists who possess little knowledge or fundamental ability to delve into,comprehend ,and express essential substance of music.The student is advanced technically in executions essential for a professional musician just as a medical graduate .Nature of music is inexpressible except through sound.From this deep mystery of essential truth,current practice is moving away ,focusing more on the separation of physical dexterity to produce sound on an instrument/or vocalist and dissecting the music structurally and harmonically without concentrating on the active participation or experience of its power on living beings.This is because of overwhelming growth of music as a business in present times ,and I equate this to Medical business.Both requires a new impetus to its goals and deep understanding and an integration of these two disciplines brings about precisely this .
Listening with open ears and mind/heart is the first prerequisite for experiencing the power of music.This in Yoga is called Sradha .One can understand the depth of musical knowledge that allow oneself to enjoy it,(a thoughtful introspection called Manana) and also the intention and originality of the performer ,his/her approach to music and audience and how it is manifested in oneself and on audience behavior as a group/community and how the effect is sustained by the sradha of the listener as well as the genuineness of the perfomer/listener interrelationships.This observance of a public performance,and the continued criticism of effect of it on audience and also an appreciation of its various aspects for social benefit constitute a music therapy programme .Thus it is practical as well as contemplative ,insightful,and is not just a personal reaction to a sense object and its experience but an attempt to enter the heart of music through the performer and his/her motivations and the effects it produce on his/her listeners for improving physical,mental,intellectual and spiritual health .The obvious,the literal and readily understandable or graspable things are seen by all.But to have insight into the hidden meanings ,the rare jewels of musical repertoire regarding musical experience is not in the realm of all.It needs to be addressed in communications(books/speeches/media etc) so that everyone can at least have a basic knowledge of the depth of music in everyday life and in health .There are no two aspects of being human that are not related to one another.Therefore music and its relation to every other science and art of the land and to human life and health is essential for this integrated approach .Logic is inseparable from intuition,rational thought is inseparable from emotion ,because our brain is structured in that way .Music has both logic,science,and emotion .If we separate these elements in music ,what we are left with ,is not music but just a collection of sounds .That is why I said in the beginning that the music education for technical excellance is leading us to that realm in modern times.The principle of integration is there in acoustic balance to peace talks .While I was a 14 year old girl ,I was interested in the Four-Power summit meet for global peace and my elders were surprised that I am so much involved in a global peace treaty at that age .(One of my aunt’s letters –My aunt is the Padmabhooshan/Saraswathy Sammaan author BalamaniAmma-expresses that wonder).Probably when a seed germinates its inner qualities are expressed even in the sprout stage to show how it would develop into a tree .Intellectual and emotional balance is the homeostatic thermostatic balance we need as global citizens to enjoy a peaceful co-existence .Music as Saamaveda ,gives us this power .
Music is a cultural field .The interest in music is a dynamic changing phenomenon from infancy to old age as a continuous spectrum of superimposed tastes that develop right from the cradle/or womb .It is our daily life .
Many performers and celebrities are having mood changes and eccentricities recorded by several critics.Glenn Gould’s eccentricities and extraordinary performances are recorded by his fan and critic Edward Said .An intelligent audience cannot be satisfied by a loud and fast playing alone.There is a virtuosity of style,where we feel intellect as well as taste allied with formidable technical command.Premodern music festivals were symbolic rituals connected with agriculture,religion,astronomical events and modern music festivals like Markazhi festival in Chennai is commemoration of of such prehistoric,historic,premodern concepts of humanity .They have now become great commercial and tourist attractions too.Our dim anthropological past and the dazzling modern /postmodern existence are interwoven in such events .The tourists get a musical experience as well as a taste of our anthropological past and an enhanced enjoyment different from the routine life .The aesthetics of such music festivals is due to this integrated past and present in our memory and experience .Bits of original inspired and rare music making adds flavor to the experience for an intelligent and highly attentive listener .The festival music is for the multitudes,in a charming aesthetic locale with an extraordinary past ,at a specific astronomical moment for harvest,agriculture and devotional thanksgiving and worship of the divine.At festivals music is a part of the occasion and a long series of performances at a festival is like many records we have in our library –available,accessible,ready for instant use ..And it is very rare to find teaching and singing rare and new compositions in a festival season except by a few singers .Original performers have to include usual numbers for mass satisfaction and then ,include a rare and lost Krithi /composition for protection of that composition/krithi and for satisfaction of the ardent listeners .Only then we can do justice to the discipline of music ,apart from getting wide publicity as a performer .
New York has a Mozart festival. Guruvayur has a Chembai festival. Thiruvananthapuram has a Swathi festival. And Ohio and Thiruvayyar has Tyaagaraja festivals and so on . The Markazhi festival is different because it is a festival in the name of Markazhi (an astronomical and seasonal event in the subcontinent ) and not in the name of any individual singer .All singers are respected ,celebrated alike in Markazhi festival as torch-bearers of the discipline of Music .It is music that is celebrated and the astronomical anthropological season and hence is beyond regional histories and individual histories,yet encompassing both . This makes Markazhi festival different .This is so in the case of Navarathri festivals also .Each singer ,each piece of music is a homage or offering made by each singer at the feet of the divine Brahma and his consort/sakthi the Goddess of Vidya .There is a sort of Apourusheya vedic aspect in such a festival .In a festival in the name of a single singer this apourusheya vedic aspect may not there .But ,the shishya and the followers of each living Guru starts such festivals in honour of their Guru so that the style of the Guruparampara is not lost to posterity .
The language of music is expressive but mysteriously elusive too.Musicological analysis can describe changes in life,in styles,features of form,tonal palette ,logic and harmonic language of the work as well as the effects it produced for a better life and health .The connections in a meaningful way of the singers and listener’s lives and musical enjoyments and its sustained relationship only can explain the effect of music on a listener .It is a synthesis of all these .
We all know that Mozart’s six children survived infancy and that Mozart was always in precarious health and died in 36th year ,an exhausted ,pathetic man of acute rheumatic fever in December 1791 .Wearing sumptuous and gaudy clothings,inventing Adam as one of his wedding-document names,and a marked antipathy to France and an irrational fear of trumpets till age nine ,Mozart’s life history is far from any therapeutic effect on himself or his family .His relation with son Leopold was of disquieting emotions,rebellious and trying to conceal the wounds and powerless to change the course (pp193 Edward W.Said).
Recently I studied a case study on Beethoven by Dr John Dagga(1933),a musical genius but a man who suffered wide mood swings ranging to maniac-depressive and is said to be bad in everything except music.He was deaf(from 27th year),had continuous chronic intermittent fevers,recurrent musculoskeletal pains and in 1821 he had jaundice .In 1823 he had pain in eyes and photophobia,in 1825 haemoptysis and epistaxis and weight loss.He had severe inflammation of bowels ,a gross abdominal swelling developed with jaundice,pleurisy and diarrohoea and a marked leg swelling .Four time his abdomen was tapped and 12 litres of fluids removed each time.The fluid leaked continuously after one such occasion and Beethoven remembered “Moses striking a rock with staff to bring forth water “.Coma supervened later and even in the last stages of his illness he continued to compose his 10th symphony and he had no tremor in writing out the composition (though the writing trailed off at the right of the page).That is he had no hepatic neuroenchephalopathy .
The deafness was due to otosclerosis.He had skin abnormalities of his face which was scarred and coloured and simulated leprosy and atrophic discrete and confluent scars and tissue thickenings around lose and lower face.Dr Johann Wagner and the famous Dr Rokitansky performed postmortem on Beethoven.Despite the paracentesis there was four quarts of turbid fluid remaining in abdomen.The gut was dilated and gas filled.Liver shrunken half its size and beset with nodules ,the size of a bean.Spleen was double the normal size ,gall bladder filled with gravelly sediments.Pancreas indurated .
Macronodular cirrhosis,splenomegaly and portal tension will be the diagnosis in modern terminology .The guts were dilated due to ileus.Auditory nerves atrophied ,shriveled .But when grave reopened in 1863 and 1888 and skull got in several pieces,the temporal bones were missing .
Interpretations of chronic ulcerative colitis and chronic active hepatitis,sclerosing cholangitis,and an autoimmune multisystem disorder and an abuse of alcohol and Syphilis as cause of his multisystem involvement and autoimmune disease as well as deafness was interpreted .Mozart had a pauper’s funeral but Beethoven had a pompous showy one in Vienna .Beethoven died in his 56th year .In contrast to his genius creativity Beethoven was a physical and emotional wreck .He didn’t even had the good fortune to listen to his own beautiful music .Yet his Olympian musical energy ,imagination and innovation triumphed over it all to enrich music and enjoyment of music lovers.But ,certainly Beethoven did not enjoy the Beethoven effect ,and so was Mozart.In the life of ancient singers of India , this sort of dissociation of personal life from professional musical life is a rarity because for them music was a yogic sadhana ,merged in their lifestyle ,not just a hobby or a commercial passion alone .
This case history I quote ,just to show that being a musician alone does not keep us disease-free (just as being a doctor alone does not keep us disease-free).All the modern musicians have to think over this and learn to integrate the physical ,mental,intellectual and spiritual health in their personality so that both music as a discipline and music therapy for themselves for a better individual life will be of some use . Music is an ocean.Medicine is another ocean .When we integrate these two oceans ,a larger ocean and an ocean which is more than the sum of the two is born within us and I do hope the readers will be able to visualize that peaceful ,waveless,timeless ocean of Vidya within .
Ref : 1.The Healing Arts .An Oxford Illustrated Anthology .Ed R.S.Downie .Oxford University Press.page 60-68 A case Study: Beethoven (Reprint 1995)
2.Music at the limits .Edward W Said:Bloomsberry 2008