Synthesis Sunday: Mercedes Pavlicevic and Music Therapy In Context

This is a (semi) new series of blog posts that are designed to get me back in the habit of reading about my chosen profession. I am hoping that reading a bit more regularly will get me back into thinking more deeply about what I am doing with my professional life. It also gives me some structure, which I know that I crave and which allows me to explore my creativity.

Welcome to the first post.

I'm not exactly sure how I will settle into writing about these texts and articles that I read, but I can tell you a bit about how I start. When I read music therapy texts, I keep a stack of post-it notes next to me. If something makes me think, I write it down (along with a reference of where to find it again) and stick it on a page of my notebook. I use one color of post-its for quotations, another for definitions, yet another for things to investigate further, and one more color for random thoughts or synthesis - for those "A-ha" moments.

Once I have finished the article or the chapter or the process, I take the notes and transcribe them into a permanent notebook. Then I journal a bit about what I've learned about myself and music therapy.

So, here we go.

Through my work in various music therapy settings, I've had the pleasure of working with some truly great music therapy minds. For other tasks and things, I've had the opportunity to read lots of information from other great music therapy minds. I am pleased to say that I think that Mercedes Pavlicevic is firmly in both groups - those that have written very good information and is someone who is fun to work with.

Full disclosure - I have not been less than half a globe away from Ms. Pavlicevic, but I have spent time with her online, and I enjoyed both her discussion and the opportunity to get to know her a little bit. 

Today, I am going to start the process of wading through Music Therapy in Context: Music, Meaning, and Relationship.

From page 1:

"Although music therapists from diverse theoretical and practical backgrounds define distinctive priorities, music is at the heart of all music therapy."   ~ Mercedes Pavlicevic

I have been wanting a way to unite all of us music therapists into a coherent group since I first learned about the great split here in the States in the 1970s. Since unification (in 1998 - also here in the States), I've had several interactions with people who took a look at where I live and automatically decided that I was not someone to waste any time on and have told me those thoughts - all because of the split that happened in the 70s, not because I deserved such a response, but because I was linked to people (long dead) who argued once upon a time. Those types of interactions have led me to look for similarities rather than differences as music therapists.

Don't we all keep music as a focus of our interactions with clients in our roles as music therapists? If we don't, are we truly being music therapists? We may be acting as therapists, but are we acting as music therapists?

Do you see why I both enjoy and tend to avoid this type of reading? It makes me think more deeply about what I am doing in my music therapy clinic and interactions.

From page 17:

"I believe that theory must be useful to practice, rather than being, and becoming, self-important, clever, inaccessible and creating its own paradigms and horizons."  ~ Mercedes Pavlicevic

I interpret this from the context of developing music therapy theoretical foundations and find that link between the theory and the clinical practice of the concepts is very important. A theory is good and fine, but if it does not incorporate well into the day-to-day interactions of music, therapist, and client, then the theory is not relevant.

The several chapters of this book that I read and took notes on helped to reinforce some of the ideas that I have about the role of music in music therapy. It challenged others and gave me a whole slew of names to look up and read more about. That's the problem with learning - it never ends.

I think my favorite quotation from the second chapter of this book is as follows:

"It seems however, that music therapists listen 'therapeutically.' Not quite to music as music, nor to structure to structure, but to the person portrayed in the spontaneous music-making."  ~ Mercedes Pavlicevic, p. 25.

Hmm. So what does this mean to me, in my music therapy room, making music with my clients?

Someone asked me this week something about my music listening habits. I was using one of my favorite world music albums (Planet Drum by Mickey Hart) with clients to encourage both percussion instrument play and relaxation. I stated that I liked the album but didn't really relax when I was listening to music. Everyone else was yawning - one of the reasons that I like Planet Drum - I can predict when everyone will entrain and when the iso-principle will take over. I wasn't yawning, and the folks in the session were confused by the thought that I wouldn't respond to music the same way they did. They were even a bit more confused when I said that I didn't listen to music much outside the music therapy session.

What? A music therapist who doesn't listen to music? Yep. That's me. For relaxation, I prefer talk to music. Or, I make my own music.

Anyway...

When I am engaged in musicking with my clients, I am listening, but I am listening to musicality, to patterns, to meaning, to timbre preferences, to tempo, to novelty. You get the idea. When I am listening to my own preferences for music, I hear the same types of things unless I can turn off that side of my brain and just get into the music.

That's all for today...except that I have some new folks to examine. Here's the list: Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Helen Bonny, Carl Dalhaus, Igor Stravinsky, Eduard Hanslick, Leonard Meyer, John Blacking, Nicholas Cook, Mary Priestley, Gary Ansdell, Grout (the music history book), Charles Pierce. Susanne Lange, McNamee, Martin Stokes, Nordoff/Robbins, Dowling & Harwood (I already have this book), John Baily, Leslie Bunt, Bengtsson, Gabrielsson, John Sloboda, Howell, Cress, & West, Atik, Jane Davidson. The good news? Some of these folks are not new to me, but I haven't really done more than just surface exploration of them, so it is time to go a bit deeper. That thing about learning never ending? Here we go.

Thanks for coming with me on this ride.



Pavlicevic, M. (1997). Music therapy in context: Music, meaning and relationship. London: Jessica Kingsley.

**UPDATE: When I originally published this post, I wrongly attributed the publication to the wrong company. This post has been changed to reflect the correct information. Always check your sources, folks. Always check your sources.