When reading this article, I decided to share how the hermeneutic philosophical concepts are considered in music therapy in general and in my country of Poland, and what my personal questions and wonders concerning this specific perspective are.
Since the article didn't explain what hermeneutics actually are, I will begin with some basic information.
The meaning of the term hermeneutics is so broad that it can be considered, according to Brynjulf Stige, to be a life problem rather then methodological issue. I would add: it is a life perspective and choice of the way we consider others and ourselves. The Greek term hermeneutikos means "regarding explanations," and it comes from the name of Hermes, who was a translator/ messenger from the gods to humans. Hermeneutic is then an art and theory of translating, explaining, and interpreting.
The key point in this perspective is "understanding," but not in a simple, literal manner. It is rather the understanding of symbolic representations; it is the looking for different levels of sense, allegoric and relative. To understand the persons in a hermeneutic way means to understand their languages, personal perspectives, times, and histories.
In music theory/history the context in which the artwork, the artist, and the interpreter exists is essential. Advocates of hermeneutics agree that the real sense and message of art can be read only through context-aware, time-wise, historical, and concrete interpretation.
This foundation can be a starting point for understanding hermeneutics and its relationship in music therapy.
Music therapy clients have their own, individual situations. Therefore, understanding their life condition is also crucial to deeply understand their music. But at the same time this music gives the therapist information about their individual situation. It is a constant loop of understanding their music to understand the individual, and understanding the individual to understand their music.
Going further into music therapy practice, why not try and find music, which is linked to particular experiences and feelings in a composer's life and present it to a client who is finding himself in a similar situation?
In Poland the pressure is put on the use of classical music in therapy. This is a great source of compositions which were written under well known circumstances, from Mozart's Requiem, filled with tragedy, irrational fear, and deep despair, to Beethoven's Pastrale Symphony, which expresses pure joy and love of nature. Assuming that human beings share emotional similarities, it is possible that the clients will be able to find a connection between themselves and the composer through the music, and that this music will be an excellent substructure for the following therapeutic relations.
The various music therapy techniques involving the use of classical music include those based on the psychological concept of projection. In Polish music therapy, the term projection is not used to refer to the original, Freudian meaning, where projection is a defense mechanism in which one "projects" one's own undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings onto someone else. The "Polish" meaning does not concern only undesirable issues, but the projected issue may in fact be anything an individual had in his/her own experience that he/she may not be aware of. "Projection" is used to describe the process in which people put themselves into something, considering that they are determining objective truth or only accidental association. In clinical practice, it is utilized especially with groups with emotional problems as a tool to reveal their feelings and subconscious biases during the assessment and therapy.
When I became familiar with the hermeneutic theory and the concept of projection, I started to think how complicated these problems actually are, and how these theories relate to each other. What people hear in the music and what people put into music? How much of the composer the music carries, and how much of the listener?
Just for fun I made a little experiment. I asked my two friends, who are non-musicians and know almost nothing about classical music, to listen to the short piece for violin and piano, titled Legend by Henryk Wieniawski (Polish composer and violin virtuoso of XIX century). I didn't give them the title. After they listened to it, I asked them to describe the character of this music. They felt insecure and a little bit confused, but finally came up with few different adjectives. Generally, three groups could be found in their description. The first included more positive emotions (happy, romantic, dream-like, love-like). The second included negative ones (sad, sorrowful). And the last one contained something which cannot be defined as positive or negative - nostalgia and longing. The piece in question was actually written on a special occasion. Young Wieniawski wanted to convince his future father-in-law that he was worthy of his daughter. Therefore, all the mentioned emotions could have been present in his music.
The next step in my "experiment" was asking my two non-musician family members to listen to the Legend. This time I told one of them, that a man, who was strongly in love and about ready to get married, wrote this piece to express his best feelings. The second person was told that the Legend was written after the death of the composer's beloved. This time they had no doubts. The first said that he heard romantic happiness, hope, and expectations for future, dreams that are being fulfilled. The second surely admitted, that music was really sad and dark, despair and sorrow were clear, and some bright points were determined as sweet memories. At this point I realized that suggestions could be a really strong factor for people without musical background, when it comes to listening to classical music.
So what did I find out from this quasi "experiment"? If you do not know much about the subject, you can project in it the only thing you know, and in this specific situation - you can hear what you were told to hear. But if you know and were told completely nothing, you may feel lost initially but finally find a way to understand it using your intuition.
I didn't expect any clear answer or even a direction for my wonders. But these results made me realize how complex and "mysterious" music perception is and how many fascinating questions can be asked about it.