As a result of my involvement in the Art and the transformation of space project, I've become the go-to guy in the School of Music on the topic of collaboration (which I find amazingly ironic, since I can't think of a single occasion beyond this class where I collaborated with anyone). I was asked to write an article for our College of Visual and Performing Arts magazine, Ampersand, about music and collaboration. Our publicity coordinator, Liza Muse (who is a fellow cyclist!), suggested an interesting approach based on a segment that she saw on CBS's Sunday Morning program. Here's the article in its present state.
Music, collaboration, and human nature
Music has long been a collaborative endeavor. Members of a chamber ensemble must collaborate as they shape the group’s interpretation of a new work. History abounds with great collaborations between musicians and other artists: Mozart and da Ponte; Verdi and Boito; Stravinsky and Nijinsky; Cage, Cunningham, and Rauschenberg; George and Ira Gershwin; Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Recently, musicians have begun collaborating with specialists outside of the arts in a variety of interesting ways. Musicians are helping to smooth political situations, they are helping teachers to effect change both in and out of the classroom, and they are helping medical professionals to heal the sick.
Musical diplomacy
The great jazz trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie and his band toured portions of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and southeast Asia at the request of the U.S. State Department in 1956. Gillespie and his colleagues were the first of many groups later labeled “Jazz Ambassadors.” Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Dave Brubeck followed in Gillespie’s footsteps, bringing their unique brand of American culture to heads of state, small communities, and schools in an attempt to cast America in a more positive light.
In a recent interview on CBS’s Sunday Morning program, Dave Brubeck recalls a particularly memorable moment in his career. President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev were in talks at a summit in Moscow when negotiations came to a standstill. Brubeck and his musicians got up to play and, before long, "The room started keeping time," Brubeck said. "All these people who almost hated each other were swinging, all together." Then Secretary of State George Shultz credits Brubeck and his musicians with “saving the summit.”
Teaching artists
The field of teaching artists has grown rapidly in the recent past. According to Eric Booth, a well-known actor and teaching artist, a teaching artist is “a practicing professional artist with the complementary skills and sensibilities of an educator, who engages people in learning experiences in, through, and about the arts.” Teaching artists are not music educators or arts educators, per se; rather, they generally seek to use their art to teach and to reinforce material presented in the regular classroom. Teaching artists might compose a song to help students remember spelling words or demonstrate musical instruments unique to a particular culture or region as an aid to understanding a different population.
Some teaching artists go beyond the traditional classroom in their efforts. Philadelphia’s BuildaBridge program is an “arts education and intervention organization that engages the transformative power of the arts to bring hope and healing to children, families, and communities in the tough places of the world” (buildabridge.org). The organization facilitates a variety of projects aimed at helping those in high-risk situations. Their projects include:
In every instance, the teachers use art as a tool to foster the development of healthier, more socially acceptable behaviors. Programs such as these help people learn to express themselves and to deal with difficult feelings in a positive way.
Music Therapists
The idea that music could be used to heal the sick goes back at least as far as the writings of Plato. The discipline as we know it emerged between the two World Wars, when doctors and nurses in veterans hospitals discovered that music eased the pain of wounded soldiers. Today, music therapy is a treatment option that is available as part of a treatment plan for a variety of ailments. In fact, since 1994, Medicare has considered music therapy a reimbursable service. Music therapists must complete an accredited degree program and be certified by the Certification Board for Music Therapists, a national licensing organization.
In his recent book Musicophilia, the neurologist Oliver Sacks offers several music therapy success stories. One patient, Samuel S., had lost his ability to speak following a massive stroke. Years of speech therapy had been unsuccessful in helping him to reclaim his ability to speak. A music therapist overheard him singing “Ol’ man river” one day; the melody was intact but he was omitting some of the words. After working with the music therapist, Samuel was able to reclaim some speech through singing and could eventually formulate short spoken responses to questions. Sacks presents several cases of music being used to animate patients immobilized by Parkinson’s disease. Those who could not initiate movements themselves could be coaxed into dancing; those who moved in an erratic and jerky fashion found their movements smoothed out when accompanied by music. Sacks also notes that music can impact the mood, memory, and behavior of dementia patients.
In conclusion, music has historically been rife with collaborations among other arts. In the last century, we have seen music venture outside of the realm of art and appear in collaboration with diplomats, teachers, and medical practitioners. Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker asks, “What benefit could there be to diverting time and energy to making plinking noises? ... As far as biological cause and effect are concerned, music is useless… It could vanish from our species and the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged.” Daniel Levitin takes precisely the opposite view in The world in six songs: he argues that music must be essential to human existence or natural selection would have left it behind eons ago. Music’s successful fusion with these other disciplines points to what many researchers are just now beginning to argue: that music not ancillary to human life—it is necessary.
[P.S. As a result of writing this article, I had a bit of a Usual Suspects moment, which I will share in a future post.]
Music, collaboration, and human nature
Music has long been a collaborative endeavor. Members of a chamber ensemble must collaborate as they shape the group’s interpretation of a new work. History abounds with great collaborations between musicians and other artists: Mozart and da Ponte; Verdi and Boito; Stravinsky and Nijinsky; Cage, Cunningham, and Rauschenberg; George and Ira Gershwin; Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Recently, musicians have begun collaborating with specialists outside of the arts in a variety of interesting ways. Musicians are helping to smooth political situations, they are helping teachers to effect change both in and out of the classroom, and they are helping medical professionals to heal the sick.
Musical diplomacy
The great jazz trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie and his band toured portions of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and southeast Asia at the request of the U.S. State Department in 1956. Gillespie and his colleagues were the first of many groups later labeled “Jazz Ambassadors.” Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Dave Brubeck followed in Gillespie’s footsteps, bringing their unique brand of American culture to heads of state, small communities, and schools in an attempt to cast America in a more positive light.
In a recent interview on CBS’s Sunday Morning program, Dave Brubeck recalls a particularly memorable moment in his career. President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev were in talks at a summit in Moscow when negotiations came to a standstill. Brubeck and his musicians got up to play and, before long, "The room started keeping time," Brubeck said. "All these people who almost hated each other were swinging, all together." Then Secretary of State George Shultz credits Brubeck and his musicians with “saving the summit.”
Teaching artists
The field of teaching artists has grown rapidly in the recent past. According to Eric Booth, a well-known actor and teaching artist, a teaching artist is “a practicing professional artist with the complementary skills and sensibilities of an educator, who engages people in learning experiences in, through, and about the arts.” Teaching artists are not music educators or arts educators, per se; rather, they generally seek to use their art to teach and to reinforce material presented in the regular classroom. Teaching artists might compose a song to help students remember spelling words or demonstrate musical instruments unique to a particular culture or region as an aid to understanding a different population.
Some teaching artists go beyond the traditional classroom in their efforts. Philadelphia’s BuildaBridge program is an “arts education and intervention organization that engages the transformative power of the arts to bring hope and healing to children, families, and communities in the tough places of the world” (buildabridge.org). The organization facilitates a variety of projects aimed at helping those in high-risk situations. Their projects include:
Using music therapy to help children impacted by the Haiti earthquake
Learning to make and play traditional Native American flutes as an illustration of Native American history and culture in Montana
Teaching students good behavior by having them attend professional live concerts
In every instance, the teachers use art as a tool to foster the development of healthier, more socially acceptable behaviors. Programs such as these help people learn to express themselves and to deal with difficult feelings in a positive way.
Music Therapists
The idea that music could be used to heal the sick goes back at least as far as the writings of Plato. The discipline as we know it emerged between the two World Wars, when doctors and nurses in veterans hospitals discovered that music eased the pain of wounded soldiers. Today, music therapy is a treatment option that is available as part of a treatment plan for a variety of ailments. In fact, since 1994, Medicare has considered music therapy a reimbursable service. Music therapists must complete an accredited degree program and be certified by the Certification Board for Music Therapists, a national licensing organization.
In his recent book Musicophilia, the neurologist Oliver Sacks offers several music therapy success stories. One patient, Samuel S., had lost his ability to speak following a massive stroke. Years of speech therapy had been unsuccessful in helping him to reclaim his ability to speak. A music therapist overheard him singing “Ol’ man river” one day; the melody was intact but he was omitting some of the words. After working with the music therapist, Samuel was able to reclaim some speech through singing and could eventually formulate short spoken responses to questions. Sacks presents several cases of music being used to animate patients immobilized by Parkinson’s disease. Those who could not initiate movements themselves could be coaxed into dancing; those who moved in an erratic and jerky fashion found their movements smoothed out when accompanied by music. Sacks also notes that music can impact the mood, memory, and behavior of dementia patients.
In conclusion, music has historically been rife with collaborations among other arts. In the last century, we have seen music venture outside of the realm of art and appear in collaboration with diplomats, teachers, and medical practitioners. Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker asks, “What benefit could there be to diverting time and energy to making plinking noises? ... As far as biological cause and effect are concerned, music is useless… It could vanish from our species and the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged.” Daniel Levitin takes precisely the opposite view in The world in six songs: he argues that music must be essential to human existence or natural selection would have left it behind eons ago. Music’s successful fusion with these other disciplines points to what many researchers are just now beginning to argue: that music not ancillary to human life—it is necessary.
[P.S. As a result of writing this article, I had a bit of a Usual Suspects moment, which I will share in a future post.]