Music Psychology

Although research in music psychology, education and therapy has expanded exponentially in the 21st century, there is something of a ‘black hole’ around which much of the discourse circles: music itself. While writers have largely been occupied with what people think about musical engagement, the little musical analysis that exists has tended to be at a low level compared to the sophisticated non-musical exploration that is present. This highlights the tenuous connection between musical enquiry in the context of the humanities and that occurring within the social sciences, the one exception being the partial intersection of music theory and psychology. Here, however, progress has largely been in one direction, with something of the objectivity that characterizes psychological research reading across to music analysis, and taking the form of what has been called ‘empirical musicology’. This book takes a further, reciprocal step, in which certain of the techniques of empirical musicology (in particular, the author’s ‘zygonic’ theory) are used to inform thinking in the domains of music-psychological, educational and therapeutic research. A new, interdisciplinary sphere of endeavour is sketched out, for which the term ‘applied musicology’ is coined. The book adopts a phenomenological, inductive approach, using the analysis of hundreds of real-life examples of musical engagement and interaction to build new theories of musical intentionality and influence, and to shed new light on our understanding of aspects of music perception and cognition. This book is intended to lay the foundations upon which a new category of interdisciplinary work will be built.

Music therapy is an internationally recognized field of professional evidence-based practice. Qualified music therapists use the engaging, non-verbal aspects of music to create relationships in which therapeutic goals can be pursued and needs of clients addressed. This book focuses specifically on the ways that music therapists provide support for the development of the special and necessary bond between parents and their infants, where some vulnerability is experienced. In the book, music therapists from four countries, Australia, Ireland, the UK, and the US describe their practices with reference to contemporary theory and research. Throughout, the chapters are illustrated with case material. The focus in each chapter is on the need for this work, the theoretical underpinnings of the practice, and the music therapy practice itself. The book is arranged in three sections. The first section covers work in therapy sessions with children and their parents. The second section describes programmes where the music therapist leads a group of parents with their infants, such as the renowned Sing & Grow in Australia. The final section presents work with medical patients and their families including in the neonatal intensive care unit, and for cancer patients.

This book was first published in German in 1911. The text sets out a path-breaking hypothesis on the earliest musical sounds in human culture. Alongside research in such diverse fields as classical philosophy, acoustics, and mathematics, Stumpf became one of the most influential psychologists of the late 19th century. He was the founding father of Gestalt psychology, and collaborated with William James, Edmund Husserl, and Wolfgang Köhler. This book was the culmination of more than twenty-five years of empirical and theoretical research in the field of music. The first part of the book discusses the origin and forms of musical activities as well as various existing theories on the origin of music, including those of Darwin, Rousseau, Herder, and Spencer. The second part summarizes his works on the historical development of instruments and music, and studies a putatively global range of music from non-European cultures to demonstrate the psychological principles of tonal organization, as well as providing a range of cross-cultural musical transcriptions and analyses. This became a foundation document for comparative musicology, the elder sibling to modern Ethnomusicology, and the book provides access to the original recordings Stumpf used in this process. This book is available for the first time in the English language.