Music has been around us whether you have noticed it or not. It can help us or destroy us depends on which way that we use it. For me, I rather choose the first option. So, This paper will tell the brief history of how music have been used as the ‘medicine’ to cure the illness (especially the ‘soul’) and show how music have changed people’s life by placing the hope and faith into their souls.
Music medication through history
About 40,000 years ago, archaeological found the earliest musical instrument. They believed that it is a tools to communicate for pre-human societies before they have invented the language. From that day, music have been used as a ‘tools’ in many ways such as make a bond to each human’s group, courting (especially by using their own voice), entertaining, but for the most importantly, use it as the ‘cure’.
Aboriginal people of Australia are the very first culture that used music for medication. They used ‘yidaki' as a healing tool by means of healed the broken bones, muscle tears and illnesses. In Ancient Egypt, Egyptians described musical incantations (the magic spell and charm) for healing the sickness. They have a long tradition of vowel sound chant and believed that the vowel sound were sacred and contained the powerful things for in order to priests.
There are also the record from the book of Travels ("Seyahatname") by the Ottoman historian Evliya Çelebi from the late of 15th century that wrote about the hospital in Turkish called ‘Darüşşifa’ that used a musical instruments and songs for the hetero illness. For examples, Neva (reed flute), Rast (wooden flute), Dügah (lute), Segah Çargah (fretless guitar) and Suzinak (cello) were good for mental illness. Rast could also used to play for convulsions and paralysis patient while heart diseases were treated by Zengüle, headaches through Rehavi, urological problems through Hicaz, and malaria through Uşşak.
Musical medicine in ancient Greek
Back in the past, Greek physicians also have been used music as the cure since ancient times. They always said that music pures the human’ souls. They used flutes, lyres, and zitters to treat the patients’ mental and insomnia. They also used the vibration to aid in digestion. They really study the effect and how to use the music properly (for examples, Plato in this Republic and Timaeus / Aristotle Politics) So, it definitely that music pervaded all of Greek life. Music is the gate that operate between visible and invisible world. Plato, Greek philosopher, said about how music change people’s thought by the voice that repeatedly by those who resist to change (the repeating cause people to do the same!).
Pythagoras, the Ionian Greek philosopher, he taught the use of flute and lyre as the first healing instruments. He was also famous as to have the ability to soothe both animals and people and believed that music contributes the health. He called his method as ‘musical medicine’. He said that the soul could be purified by the song that sung by the accompaniment of lyre. Pythagoras discovered that the seven modes of the Greek system’s music had the power to change the emotions. Music is also the ‘mathematics’ to Pythagoras he used the intervals and harmonics as they related to it. He made the string instruments that could be tuned to produce the consonant of each intervals and later on, Pythagoras have calculated other chromatic by using the simple ratios to create more complex intervals. He used all of these to lead the soul through the right direction that it should be, to make it have the ‘awareness’ of what they are in this divine world as they have harmonized to the universe.
Aristotle also made a fact about the music and emotions too. In his in his famous book ‘De Anima’ said that music which played by flute could make a really strong emotions and purify the soul. Human have imitated the sound of the nature through singing. There’s the old greek mythology called ‘Orpheus’ which is the story about Orpheus, the son of Apollo who risk his life by going the underworld to save his dead wife ‘Euridice’. Along of his journey he used the lyre and his beautiful and mesmerizing voice to lure the people (even the Gods) to reach his goal. This story have been adapted and many artistic pieces by the numerous composers. It because of how this story shown the power of music that can even conquer the gods among us all.
Church as Hospital in early Europe
Music have that much of power which is why people use it and many ways even as for the medication. In 5th century, The Monk or priest will be as the doctors and church was like the hospital. They chanting to makes the patients feels more relax and ease the pain from the wound or illness. Music helps the patients breath more stable and easier to treat the patients with the calm status.
Music to the others
Music have that, the power to change the world depends on who use it. If we can understand the true meaning of it, then we’ll see it. Here is the story of people who use the music to change their life into a great way.
One Man, One Symphony, and One Song
This story is about the man name Brian Palmer, he’s a homeless man who used his ‘voice’ to change his life and gives the hope to the others. There’s one project that called ‘Street Symphony’, it’s a community to engagement between the professional and homelessness in Los Angeles, American. Street Symphony have a believed that all people deserve to have a creative and expressive life.
There are around sixty thousand people who lived as the homeless in L.A. They don’t have a stable place to live and this big town treat them as the living trash. They are ashamed and deceased the feeling of the real human being. But this project is one of the lifebuoy to the people who need to feel the ‘hope’ inside their soul.
Palmer was one of this people but he got an opportunity to have a singing lesson and as the soloist to sing with this project, he sang ‘The people that walked in darkness’ from oratorio ‘Messiah’ which he have describe this as the story of his life and after that his life is like the phoenix that rise upon the ashes! Today he worked with the Street Symphony to help the people to get out from the darkness and see the light again.
Nathaniel Ayers, who had been a star double-bass student at Juilliard in the early 1970s before he got the paranoid schizophrenia which has forced him to drop out the university and changed his life as the professional musician to play on the street. But someone has reached to him and helped him which his story later became the famous book and film ‘The Soloist’
Their stories is just the few that have been revealed there are still many people who still in the darkness and it depends on us to notice it.
“The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light, and they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined” (Isaiah 9:2)
Messiah as the charity!
Messiah, the oratorio that written by George Frideric Handel, this piece was composed in 1741 (within a month) and premiered at Dublin during the Christian season of Lent which Handel conducted the piece by himself. The performance have one objective: The concert charity which to help and support two hospitals (Mercer’s Hospital and the Charitable Infirmary which were now no longer function but nowaday have been incorporated into St James’s and Beaumont hospitals) and to relief the prisoners. This charity concert was the very first one that made the artistic performance as the supportive and fund-raising to help the other in both way: The way that visible in this world (can see the amount of the money to help the others) and from invisible world (the music that about the resurrection and the hope which can free the soul).
Music for the soul to me
The reason why I do the topic about the music and the soul because it’s the reason why I become the musician. They are many things in this world that kind of have me a favor. Some people have great influence to me, some places have the memories of my old-self and new-self, and some melodies change the way of who I was and made me became ‘me’ today.
I used to be the shy girl who can’t even have an eye contact to anyone and always be quiet which made people bullied me when I was the child. I remember the first song that I have sung which is ‘Part of Your World’ from The Little Mermaid (That time I cried and sang at the same time because I was so scared and shy to sing) But I was really the first time in my time that I feel ‘free’ from myself. Music made me to ‘aware’ of who I really want to be thought Plato have said that music have the power to control people’s mind but it depends on who use it and what are they for.
Music helps human to find the ‘balance’ from physical by help people to know the ‘rhythm’ of their body and work on it probably, from their mind to keep the thought for the best way (there was no real good or bad way in this world because some inspect they might find bad in good one and good in bad one), and the most importantly from the soul which I think it was the significant one.
The soul is something that we can’t see but we ‘feel’ it, just like the oxygen. They are something that beyond our knowledge and very difficult to understand it completely. Sometimes people said it was something that didn’t even existed because of the groundless. But it is layered and also a mystery to be uncovered. In my opinion, music might be one of the tools to use it to understand the existing of the soul to make us as the human being.
For the last, music helped me to understand of who I am and what I really want to be. It might be hard to described of how I can know it but the simply answer that I can said is that ‘we just know it’. When we find the things that really have a meaning to us, we can’t explain it in a words but feels it as the music that made the melody without word. Music shows us the way to express the feeling that we could not describe it in the human language and we use our soul to understand it not from the brain. They release us from our prison’s body and made us know that there is no space for our soul. For me, music makes us see the truth inside our soul, They are the ‘key’ to unlock the soul and make us touch our real self in another dimension that ordinary people want reach it.
Source:
Alex Ross, “Handel’s Messiah, on Skid Row” The New Yorker pp. 1-8
Prof Desmond O’Neill, “What links the premiere of Handel’s Messiah in 1742 and Live Aid?” The Irish Times
อมาตยกุล พูนพิศ ““คลาสิคสังวาส” รวมบทความเกี่ยวกับดนตรีคลาสสิคในหลากหลายมุมมอง”, 4-12 สำนักพิมพ์วิทยาลัยดุริยางคศิลป์ มหาวิทยาลัยมหิดล 2010
A History of Western music eighth edition 12-14, 20-21