Sound Language Of The Soul

By RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR

“Philosophy,” said Plato, “is the highest music.” He could, with equal accuracy, have said that music is the highest philosophy. How else can we explain the deep feeling that Plato’s teacher, the redoubtable Socrates, had for music? The wisest of Greeks, Socrates took to practicing the music of the Greek god Dionysus, while in prison, to ease his mind.

The cultures of antiquity believed that music could bring about a renewal of the divine balance that ideally characterises human life; that it could restore the harmony of the human psyche in times of disquiet and distress. Indeed, the ancients regarded all forms of sickness -- mental or physical -- as being ultimately musical problems.

A sick man, it was thought, had lost his inner strength: his harmony of being was said to have slipped from synchrony with the laws of the Cosmos, which was precisely the reason why music was used to bring about a patient’s realignment with the Cosmos in the form of universal sound.

Music Heals

Even more than medicinal herbs, the ancients placed their faith in the healing powers of music to cure illness. Music was used as a key healing method by the ancient Hindus, Chinese, Persians, Egyptians, and Greeks; indeed, Homer’s “Iliad And Odyssey” celebrates the moments when the spread of a plague is halted by sacred hymns and Odysseus’ wounded knee is healed by the “chanting of lays.”

It goes without saying that music was also used to heal emotional disorders by our forebears. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, often took his mental patients to the Temple of Asclepius, to make them listen to healing music.

To the sage Pythagoras, good music was associated with the rhythms of life. Paracelsus used the metaphor “musical medicine” to indicate a form of therapeutic music composed to deal with specific anomalies. This prefigured, in several ways, the idea of mediaeval minstrels playing music for patients in convalescence, fostering their recovery.

Also, not too long ago -- in the 19th century -- music was much used in a curative capacity, at an institution for the mentally ill near Naples, giving credence to William Congreve’s famous epigram: ”Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast.”

Calming Effects

Music, according to scientific thought, has a tranquillising effect on patients -- especially when they are tense, anxious and high–strung. What’s more, music is completely safe, without the deleterious side–effects of the very many drugs now in use. The big question is: how can one beat the “pill” industry with its influence over the healing profession?

Despite scepticism, modern music therapists have not lost hope. They are a small band, yes -- but, they have brought about a change. They are true pioneers in a materialistic world, being convinced about the potential capability of music to effect a wide variety of cures, in conjunction with, or apart from, conventional medical treatment. Their cause, fortunately, is being increasingly supported by the medical profession, especially by thoughtful physicians who relate quite openly to holistic, or comprehensive, therapy.

Universal Curative

As a universal curative, music has the power to affect the human organism at the deepest levels; it can heal the cause underlying the disease, rather than merely suppressing the visible symptoms as is often the case with most forms of modern medical treatment. Interestingly, even in our age of high-technology miracles, this gift of antiquity can more than hold its own.

Music has been found to be quite efficacious in alleviating the pain of a host of illnesses ranging from asthma, tuberculosis, cancer, headaches, hypertension, heart disease, brain damage, depression, anxiety, and hysteria. Some behavioural psychologists have even reported how the mentally disturbed have spent quiet nights, without sleeping pills, under the influence of recorded music.

If music can bring about such seemingly miraculous effects at the outer level, it can also move minds in more subtle ways: music played in certain modes can instigate violence and exploit the motives and weaknesses of its listeners, whipping them into states of frenzy and hatred.

But, equally, when used in its soft, soulful form, music can be soothing to the senses, invigorating listeners with a notion of the good, filling them with the purposes of the noble and the sacred. It can, in so doing, help create an atmosphere that is conducive to philosophical reflection too.

Ultimately, it can serve as a path into the spirit; by healing and calming the outer surface of the personality. It can also propel you into the discovery of your self. In so doing, it can act towards a gentle but, nonetheless, complete reorganisation of the self.
As Claudio Monteverdi, the first great composer of operatic music, phrased it, in his own timeless maxim: “The end of all good music is to affect the soul.”