The Healing Power of Music by Tony Antolini

The Healing Power of Music

            On Sunday, August 26, I was invited to preach at St. John’s on the power of music to heal. Since then I have been encouraged to write a synopsis of what I said in that homily. The talk wasn’t written down but given only with an outline. What follows is not a word-for-word transcription of the homily but a condensation in order to fit the space constraints of Antiphon.

            St. Paul was a music booster. In his Epistle to the Ephesians 5: 19 – 20 he writes, “…be filled with the spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God at all times.” This gives us a clue as to how we might be able to be prayerful even when standard prayer recitation isn’t easy. In Romans 12, Paul writes, “My dear brethren, meet the demands of this time. Be joyful in hoping, be patient in affliction, continue prayer without ceasing.” It’s important to notice the last sentence of each of these quotations. They refer to ceaseless prayer, to giving thanks to God “at all times.” That’s where music comes in!

            There are several excellent books on the subject of music’s power to heal, help and keep us praying “at all times” although none of them is theologically oriented.  Don Campbell, the author of over twenty books on the subject, became well known with his 1991 The Mozart Effect which gave mostly anecdotal reports of students doing better academically who listened to or played the music of Mozart. Since then Campbell has done a great deal of research. The book most crammed with the results of his studies is Healing at the Speed of Sound, which he coauthored with Alex Doman, founder of Advanced Brain Technologies. This book presents scientifically documented evidence that music is unquestionably a healing force. I would add from the point of view of a church musician and believer that music is a gift of the Holy Spirit.

            Another writer on the subject is Oliver Sachs, author of Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. This delightful book is crammed with interesting facts about how the brain works with music and how music can solve problems for people who cannot communicate in a normal way. Mary Elizabeth Campbell observes in the July 2012 issue of The American Organist that national attention was focused on this when congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who had been shot in the head, received speech rehabilitation. “She made remarkable strides in regaining speech with music therapy, specifically a process combining words with musical phrases. Music requires the collaboration of more areas of the brain than virtually any other task, and combines both hemispheres in the process.”

            We also need to consider the opposite of music – noise. There’s an important book on that subject too: K.D. Kryter’s Handbook of Hearing and the Effects of Noise. The most important sentence in this book is: “The most pervasive pollutant in America is noise.” Kryter’s work is frequently cited in Campbell’s book and includes such statistics as the 2002 “Operation Silent Night” in New York City when a concerted effort was made to reduce city noise at night. The crime rate went down as a result. In a neighborhood plagued with drug dealers the police installed loudspeakers on top of an abandoned car and broadcast Beethoven String Quartets to the neighborhood. The drug dealers left the area.

            Music’s positive effects are all around us. Campbell states that 18% of Americans sing in some sort of group on a regular basis. This includes not just church choirs and community choruses but barbershop groups, congregational singing and informal singing such as Christmas caroling, camp songs, patriotic songs and folk singing. The media help with this. We see television shows extolling the fun and excitement of singing such as Glee, American Idol and Sing-Off. What all these activities do for us on a biological level is increase our endorphins and oxytocin. For music directors, organists and choral conductors it is evidence that people are getting in touch with their Higher Power or the Holy Spirit or Jesus or God or the Inner Light. What we call it or sense it to be is less important than acknowledging that music raises us up. For me it is the most convincing evidence that God does exist and is among us. I fall back on this when I am confronted with doubts in my own belief and I hear St. Paul reminding me to “pray without ceasing.”

            We see music breaking though barriers all over the place. Musicians have gone to war-torn Kosovo and brought Muslims and Orthodox Christians together through folk song. The same has been done between Shiite and Sunni Muslims in Iraq. In 1988 I personally witnessed the power of music to bring Americans and Soviet citizens together when the Rachmaninoff Choir toured the USSR the winter after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. We sang concerts of Rachmaninoff’s Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom to audiences who had never heard the work because of the Soviet government’s policy of “militant atheism.” The Holy Spirit was among us palpably.

            I have seen the power of music help my own stroke-afflicted mother communicate with me and make a little joke when she could no longer speak. We were at the Camden Health Care Center (predecessor to Quarry Hill) and she was scarcely able to utter a clear word. One afternoon, she began singing to me, “Falling asleep again; never wanted to.” It was her own humorous paraphrase of “Falling in love again; never wanted to.” I was thrilled. She had been funny, she had communicated that she didn’t want to fall asleep during my visit and she had done it with every word crystal clear. Music (the Holy Spirit) had “given her a mouth.”

            I have seen the same thing in nursing homes where people are completely wordless and sit curled into themselves seeming to have no contact with anybody. Down East Singers routinely goes Christmas caroling in such places. It’s common to see these “wordless” patients start to sing the words to carol after carol. A different part of their brain is helping them be a part of a group. Music is making it happen. The Holy Spirit is powerfully present.

            Music can also be healing to nations. Here are two examples: In 1915 Sergei Rachmaninoff wrote his most famous choral composition, The All-Night Vigil, often called the Vespers in the West. The piece is far too complex for most parish choirs to sing. He didn’t write it for church use. Russia was rapidly losing strength with horrendous losses during World War I. Rachmaninoff saw that writing this piece, filled with ancient chants so beloved by the Russian people, would possibly give them courage and hope in a dark hour. The following year a similar thing happened in England. Sir Hubert Parry was asked to set to music an 1808 poem by William Blake called “Jerusalem.” (Please see the history of this piece in the July Antiphon.) Parry’s setting was written to give the British hope during the grimmest hours of World War I.  It has been a beloved anthem not only in Great Britain but for many of us in the Western Hemisphere as well. On Sunday, August 26, we sang it at the end of the service. There were several requests that we sing it again soon. It stirred people in a powerful way even though we are not English.

            The German poet Johann Gottfried Seume (1763 – 1810) wrote the following lines that beautifully summarize the power of music to hold us together:

Wo man singt, dort lass’ dich ruhig nieder,

Böse Menschen haben keine Lieder.

My very loose translation of his words is:

Where there is singing, there the soul can rest at ease,

Evil people have no melodies.