Voices ResourcesA website for the worldwide community around the journal Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy

|History| |Legal Status of the Profession| |Methods and Approaches| |Introduction, Methodology and Content|

 

History

The early development of music therapy as a subject of study was in the 1970s in the School of Musical Didactics in the Italian Conservatories as part of studies in the Psychology of Music. In 1978 the first private school was established Cittadella, in Assisi. Many other associations were established since that time. Some 10 years ago a group called CONFIAM tried to gather together very different schools and associations from around Italy. This has been a difficult task because some courses are run for six months and some take 4 years. As well as this, there are many differents methods practiced etc. different applications etc.

In 1996, just before world congress in Hamburg, the Scuola Europea di Musicoterapia was founded and the novelty of this school was that it was the first programme to be accredited (regularly) by Ministry of Employment. At the end of every year of study the students get a qualification, as follows:

• 1st year Assistant of Laboratory on music therapy
• 2nd year Operator in music therapy
  
  (these first years are reserved to students that have only high school diploma)
• 3 rd year Expert in Musical Activities Specialized in music therapy
• 4th year Music therapeut
  
  (these second years are reserved to students that have high school diploma and diploma of Conservatory).

In addition, Scuola Europea di Musicoterapia (S.E.M.) was the first school with laboratories (there are about 20 in different regions) to permit students to begin practice with disabilities.

In some of the conferences, S.E.M. invited Lutz Neugebauer and David Aldridge. After 1996 a number of other groups of associations began in Italy: FIM, APIM etc...

In 2000 the Conservatory of Music in Pescara, which has university status, organized the first course accredited by the Ministry of Universities; a postgraduate diploma in Music Therapy (reserved to students that have diploma in Didactic of Music. This diploma can only be taken after an instrumental diploma, then the students might have high school diploma, conservatory diploma and diploma in Didactic of Music to access this post graduate course. This course graduated fifteen qualified practitioners in 2003. In january of 2004 begin, at same conservatory, the only degree level program in Music Therapy.

Legal Status of the Profession

In order to evaluate the position of music therapy in Italy today, we need first to understand the legal constraints which govern professional activities practiced in this country. The Italian State has established that for any profession, the practitioner must possess precise professional qualifications as defined by specific regulatory legislation. This legislation not only determines the parameters for professional requirements but also lays down the criteria for professional practice, the code of conduct, legal protection, etc..

In Italy, therefore, a profession is recognized as such only if properly defined by governmental legislation. As often happens, however, there are exceptions to this rule. Professions may obtain official recognition from individual Ministries or Government Departments but lack specific legislation (more than 200 professions are recorded as being without regulatory legislation). There exists, for instance, a degree course in Sociology but the profession of Sociologist is not covered by any legislation.

After this short but essential foreword, we can now turn our attention to music therapy itself. The Italian State has not as yet drawn up specific regulations governing the activity of music therapist although a number of Ministries have officially recognized the professional qualifications offered by the following organisations:

1. A three-year degree course in Music Therapy at the State Music Academy "Luisa D'Annunzio" in Pescara
2. A three-year degree course in Art Therapy (music therapy is included as a single module on the course) at the University of Rome
3. A four-year course in Music Therapy at the Scuola Europea di Musicoterapia [European School of Music Therapy]

The first two courses are recognised by the Department for Education and Research, the third is recognised by the Department of Employment and Professional Training. What does this mean? To take part in a competitive state exam or to be employed by a public organisation with specific work contracts, it is necessary to be in the possession of qualifications which are legally recognized by the Italian State. In Italy it is the case that if a music therapist is not accredited they can work in public practice, but it is not the case that their contract could state that they are a music therapist. Where a music therapist has completed an accredited training, in public practice they are considered a music therapist or expert in music therapy This, therefore, is the situation of music therapy in Italy in legal terms.

Methods and Approaches

From the methodological point of view almost all the various technical and practical approaches to be found world-wide are available in Italy (Nordoff-Robbins, Benenzon, Tomatis. Orff, etc.). The S.E.M and the Degree Course offered in Pescara have devised their own modus operandi. Even though training programmes and courses which are designed, planned or implemented at any one time are limited to a so-called integrative function, they must not and cannot, as stipulated by the legislation, stray very far from the content framework laid down by this legislation and described in Ministerial Programmes of which an overview is provided below.

This means that these courses should cover core content, with perhaps minor differences, such that any student in any class will achieve the same set objectives, within the scope of Musical Education, which aim at the discovery, knowledge, assimilation and production of sound. Didactically, the specialist, in collaboration with the teacher responsible for the Music Education module, assistants and teaching staff, will produce a richly detailed programme the teaching aim of which is not limited to social, physical and behavioural interrelations but also extends to the "cognitive" field so that everyone, whether with special needs or not, will be positively stimulated in whatever is perceived as the discovery and assimilation of sound. These are not, therefore, special programmes, but programmes suited to anyone. Methodologically, the approaches and techniques chosen by the teaching staff, specialists and practical assistants will be simply, in the words of Aucouturier, "applicational nuances" and no more.

We have drawn inspiration for the development of methodologies and subject content specific to Music Education, as will be explained below, from concepts and practices which have been tried and tested both in musical science and in psychopedagogy.

Introduction, Methodology and Content

What do we mean by "musical knowledge". Let us look for a moment at the context of the small child about to be educated and guided along the path of conscious discovery of sound as defined by this particular discipline? First and foremost, it is important to remember that children of nursery-school age have already experienced three or four years of a world full of sound emanating from various sources, both natural and otherwise, such as the television, CDs, entertainment, department stores, in the street, at the railway station, etc. But what do we really mean by "musical knowledge"?

Let us reflect for a moment on the meaning of "sound" and then of "music". The child, as we have just mentioned, from the first months of life, thanks to the sensori-motor activity which differentiates this early period of growth from later periods, tends to explore objects which produce "noise".

Initially, the baby perceives its surroundings; it imitates them, repeating over and over gestures and sounds until they are completely assimilated. The baby uses sound events unconsciously and it will be the task of the mother and later the teacher to find ways of helping the child gradually to conquer consciously the reality of the sound of which it has long been aware. The educator will interpret all this, as we have already mentioned, in terms of specific structures which we define as "natural" in that they relate to the physical and intellective growth of the child. These structures, which are identifiable in the "global method", comprise, in short, in teaching a cultural object, in our case sound, naturally, starting from the perception and daily use by the child of this same phenomenon of sound.

"Exploration" means trying to discover and understand all that is unknown and hidden; "benefit" means being able to enjoy something, in other words to possess or be able to make use of that something. Through the exploration and perception of sound we can benefit from its use during growth until we are able to produce and, therefore, create and invent, to "make music", without necessarily being musicians, understanding and appreciating music as we do any other artistic object.

From the methodological viewpoint, according to R. Cattell and what he described as the I.H.D. (Inductive, Hypothetico-Deductive reasoning) structure and the theory of Piaget, a pattern of behaviour appears towards the child's second year of life which goes beyond the early stage of sensori-motor intelligence. This later stage involves the evocation of something which is absent and invisible. This implies the creation of special structures or the use of "differential signifiers" which can refer back to elements no longer present. The five behaviours including deferred imitation, symbolic play, drawing, mental images and verbal invocation are reached by the child more or less at the same time. Drawing on this theoretical basis, we can devise schedules or methodological structures by which music as sound, as defined by the musical education discipline, will take shape as a result of the symbolic and motor activities indicated above. We would therefore have:

• A motor language (linked to schemas or sensori-motor activities)
• A practical object language (linked to reality and therefore the objects which the child perceives through movement)
• A graphic language (linked initially to signs, then to drawings and finally to images)
• A verbal language (linked to words)

Sound linked to signs, for example, to colour, to any object or situation will be interpreted according to individual sensitivity and, situated in a given space, will emerge and both extensive and precise forms will take shape.

At the beginning, the focus will be ambient sound which will be analysed so that the sounds produced by man and originating in objects created by man such as, in order of complexity, didactic instruments, popular and cultured instruments can each be discovered. Within this framework, activities and exercises will be taken from the methods devised by authorities in the field of music pedagogy such as Dalcroze, Willems, Goitre, Kodaly, Orff, etc..

As far as content is concerned, having identified general objectives in relation to the methods described, exercises relating to the teaching of improvisation defined as the exploration of the phonatory apparatus will be devised. For the voice, this includes onomatopoeia, and speech organised in tonal and non-tonal sequences. Reproduction will involve learning songs taken from children's folk literature and, where possible, more cultured literature. This will all be preceded by learning musical coding through the gradual discovery and interpretation of the tools which communication through sound makes necessary. Specifically and in reference to the teaching of notation, the child will be given the opportunity to invent graphics relating both to the creative experience and to the exploration of physical acoustic phenomena. The technique of improvisation will focus also on motor activities relating to sound, initially giving space to free expression then through imitation and representation and finally organised in ordered musical structures, such as the echo, the ostinato, the canon, the rondeau, etc..

As regards the teaching of creativity, with reference to sound, the child will be given the opportunity to experience the complexity of the structure of music in order to stimulate the development and activation of psychological and operative mechanisms which will be spontaneous and original but adhering to the principles of musical science. The student will then be stimulated, through the teaching of composition, to discover and define a personal methodology, to set up projects and, of course, to carry them out.

For the practical teaching of instruments, the student will be introduced to physiological and psychomotor situations connected with the playing of instruments, relating to sight playing, accompaniment by ear and improvisation. The possibility of playing music together and learning an instrument will be considered, assessing the social and affective element necessarily present in the class situation for this particular kind of activity.

For the teaching of listening, training will refer specifically to how to listen sensitively and intelligently to musical works to help the student to express his or her own interpretation of sound but also to be aware of the composition, parts and technical structure behind a study so discovering the meaning of melody, harmony, backing and also rhythm, volume, timbre, pitch, etc. which already form part of his or her experience. This will include the message transmitted by the author, collocating it where possible in the respective period of history. Other threads such as "music and advertising", "music and the environment", etc. can be organised as and when the class requires them. The whole will be planned where possible to take into account other curricular subjects to emphasize the principle of interdisciplinarity and the substantial difference between this and pluri-, multi- and transdisciplinarity. Study of the voice and song may be organised in connection with components of Italian language teaching, including poetry, theatre, and sentence, clause and phrase structure which are identical in musical composition. In other fields, drawing on physical education, for example, the psychomotor aspect of rhythmic structure may be examined, or fundamentals such as pitch, volume, space, time, number and the concept of quantity which are also part of the world of sound and music can be studied.

Each area will then be divided into sections and organised according to the various models which can be derived and constructed from the field of Music Pedagogy.

Our research has shown that by building on the Foundation Project, taking for example a class with one or more disabled or special needs students, a number of special elements can be picked out for this synoptic area (some similar to the programme described above) which can be used as the need arises over the year.

These include:

1. entry analysis
   
   1. report on the student
   2. report on the class which the student will join
2. behavioural analysis at the start of the school year
   cognitive and neuropsychological analysis at the start of the school year
   interrelational and affective analysis at the start of the school year
3. individual predictive analysis (structured within the scope of scholastic integration, and for the teaching area of music therapy)
   
   1. special needs of the researcher
   2. interests of the researcher
   3. model construction (project)
   4. formulation of a hypothetical programme (F.H.P.)
   5. integrative teaching steps for music-therapy taken from the F.H.P.
4. description and implementation of the teaching programmes hypothesised above
5. behavioural analysis at the end of the school year
   cognitive and neuropsychological analysis at the end of the school year
   interrelational and affective analysis at the end of the school year
6. final report

In Table 1 the reader will find the synoptic table of the steps detailed above to be used as a reference for formal integration in the teaching of music therapy.

Table 1: A synoptic table of the steps to be used as a reference for formal integration in the teaching of music therapy.

It will analyse the situations and attitudes of children or young people who have been attending the music therapy laboratory, perhaps for some time, or are about to commence this new experience in these particular programmes which are specific to people with disorders of a physical, psychic or behavioural kind, recognised as such in conformity with national legislation (104/92).

An outline of the programme will be provided in the F.H.P. while the activities will be set out as micro-objectives in teaching units which, in this case, will be indicated as music therapy components designed and conceived for inclusion in a process of integration so that all the students, including anyone with special needs, will follow a single programme which is valid, therefore, for the entire class, no-one excluded. The documentation will include grids which refer to the physical, behavioural, neurological and social situations, abilities or special needs of all the students together with further observation registers specific to the students identified by the medical and scholastic team as having particular difficulties.

The operator, as already mentioned above, will draw up the various programmes, defined within the music therapy teaching framework, not as distinct courses but establishing the content which is to be proposed, extrapolating carefully from the topics of the Ministerial Programmes as indicated by the legislators. The aim will be to facilitate the paths and learning of the students, paying special attention to detail, modifying and toning down methodologically any aspects and structures which may prove to be more complex and difficult so that the proposals are clear and respond to the realities and needs of the entire class.

Though designed with particular reference to the age band of children attending nursery and primary school, this programme may also be extended to students of the junior and middle schools. An analysis of the content suggests that further projects directed at older students can be devised using more complex and multifaceted criteria.

While referring clearly to our own experience, these considerations are justified by the fact that, generally speaking, the many different stages of growth, in the sense of physical and mental evolution, fit into an ordered progression and are organically incorporated, developing over time along with other transformations, from childhood to adolescence and beyond.

The teacher of Musical Education obviously will not explain to students who are no longer in their infancy that the sum of the value of two minims is 4/4 but will verify in practice whether the student, this time in a context of the meaning of the passage of time, can represent this concept through movement (motor language), for example, and the spoken word (verbal language). Drawing on the teaching unit no. 10, taken from the course described at the beginning on voice training and song, a teacher may take a poem of Leopardi, Quasimodo or Montale, all authors who are not usually considered to belong to children's literature, which, recited in different ways, would mean far more to a group of adult students than these works would have done as they used to be presented in the past. Research proposed in class by the language teacher together with the teacher of music education, on, for instance, the musical, pictorial and in certain cases the graphic features of texts, would make the images and worlds of poetry clearer and more accessible for students, touching and moving them to participate in the meanings expressed and described. Professional training courses for teachers of music education, also at curricular level, could be organised and developed in each school, in collaboration with the Music Department of the Conservatory. These courses could be designed along the following lines:

1. awareness and further investigation of "cognitive and socio-affective" issues within the remit of educational psychology as applied to music education
2. awareness of new musical approaches including those focusing on perception, rhythm, the characteristics of sound, listening to music, etc.
3. the identification and planning of special interdisciplinary programmes such as music and the environment, music and society, music and advertising, etc. to be implemented later and with the students' collaboration, perhaps at their request, and with the support of organisations outside the school (theatres, community centres, day centres, religious organisations, hospitals, etc.)

This proposal will be further structured as required on the basis of the requirements of the local schools and surrounding area.

How to cite this page

Ferrone, Anna Maria (2004). Music Therapy in Italy. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 12, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=country/monthitaly_june2004