History and Heritage

An Essay Based on a Reading and Playing of Robbins & Robbins (Eds.). Healing Heritage: Paul Nordoff Exploring the Tonal Language of Music ¹.

By Brynjulf Stige

The Sound of Music Therapy

We come to music therapy with musical expectations. Clients do. Therapists do. We come to music therapy with expectations colored by our personal history of music, which is - of course - embedded in culture. I came to music therapy more than 20 years ago with quite mixed expectations: preferring music with a rough edge, strong rhythms, and bold discords, but also longing for - though maybe not so consciously - the soft sound of romantic songs. The first sound of music therapy I ever heard was Paul Nordoff's improvisations. He died the year I "discovered" music therapy and I never heard his live playing, but recordings of the clinical work he did together with Clive Robbins were presented to me by the Norwegian pioneers of music therapy, and I was immediately fascinated by the rough and romantic sound of his music.

In Norway we have an expression that goes: "To jump after Wirkola", an expression I most likely will have to explain to the reader, but which bears high relevance on my initial response to listening to Nordoff's music. As you may know, ski jumping is - or at least used to be - big in Norway. In the 1960ies Bjørn Wirkola was the best of the best of the ski jumpers, and he was so good that sometimes you felt very sorry for the poor sportsman that had to jump after him. The contrast was just embarrassing. If you know nothing about ski jumping and Wirkola you will get my point by trying to imagine how it must have been to jump after Bob Beamon's record smashing long jump in Mexico City in 1968. "To jump after Wirkola" has become a saying known by everybody in Norway, not only the sports interested, which are most people anyway. Similar "local" sayings have later developed in sub-cultures. For instance in the Norwegian jazz world of the 70ies and 80ies some would speak of "to play after Garbarek." The sound and phrasing of this supreme saxophone player was just so good that other musicians could get stuck. They were not able to copy him - if they wanted to - and the shadow created by his musicianship made it difficult for some to develop their own style.

"How could any music therapist play the piano after Paul Nordoff?" was my reaction when listening to the cases of "Edward", "Anna", and "Logan" in Creative Music Therapy (Nordoff & Robbins, 1977). Of course this was not my only reaction. I realized that music therapy is not a piano competition. I understood that although music always matters, it is not necessarily the piano skills that make the difference that music therapists search for. Still, when I started to study music therapy a few years later I felt there was a light to follow, but also a shadow to avoid. Tom Næss - my improvisation teacher and one of Nordoff and Robbins' students - helped me by having some of the same creative and communicative qualities as Nordoff had, but by being less "perfect".

I tried to develop my own style and to focus upon the needs of the clients I worked with. This process was also fueled by Even Ruud's theoretical reflections about the relevance and importance of taking the cultural background of the client into consideration. Thus, I have not been thinking about this shadow every day, every year, since 1977, but when reading and playing Healing Heritage, I was again reminded about it. When receiving the book in the autumn of 1999 I had for some time been working with the interpretation of clinical aspects of Nordoff and Robbins' work, by editing the "Edward"-series in the Nordic Journal of Music Therapy². Knowing that the musical and clinical aspects of Nordoff and Robbins's work were so closely linked, I warmly welcomed the chance given me to explore Healing Heritage: Paul Nordoff Exploring the Tonal Language of Music. I opened the book, started to read and to play, and I remembered the shadow. Things have changed; I no longer feel this shadow should be avoided. Over the years I have asked myself how I could deal with it, how I could walk through it to see what the light would be like at the other side, so to say. With the deep respect I have always felt for Nordoff's work, I have tried to combine the question "what can I learn from this man?" with "how do my thoughts on music differ from his?"

Historical Document

With Healing Heritage Barcelona Publishers and editors Carol and Clive Robbins have given us an important historical document. Paul Nordoff has influenced generations of music therapists to this day, and will continue to do so, and to have access to some of this man's ideas on music is significant for any clinician, teacher or researcher in our field. Until the publication of Healing Heritage such access has been limited. Some ideas on music are of course communicated directly and indirectly in the books that Nordoff and Robbins wrote together, but these comments are necessarily fragmented, since the focus of these texts was to present the clinical work. A privileged few have had a photocopy of Nordoff's "Talks on Music", or bootlegs of the tapes. The publication of Healing Heritage - which is based on "Talks on Music" - serves the function of making Nordoff's thoughts on music accessible to the public. It is a little bit like when The Basement Tapes of Bob Dylan and The Band finally were published in the mid-70ies, after years of rumors and bootlegs, except that we still have to wait for Nordoff's music. There is no CD accompanying Healing Heritage. We have his words written down and the scores of the music he played though, and that is already a lot.

Healing Heritage is an edited version of a series of lectures that Nordoff gave in 1974. The "Nordoff-Robbins Preliminary Training Course in Music Therapy" was arranged at the Goldie Leigh Hospital in London. Fifteen students participated in the course and formed an international group; seven of them came from the UK, the other eight came from Italy, Canada, Denmark and Norway. In addition to these fifteen students, Professor Alfred Nieman of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, a composer and teacher of improvisation that influenced Mary Priestley's work, also audited parts of the course and contributed to the explorations. This course was one of the few comprehensive courses that Nordoff and Robbins taught, and many of the students of that course have influenced the development of modern music therapy, for example, in the UK, Jean Eisler, Jane Gibson, Rachel Verney (London NR training course), and Elaine Streeter (Anglia University music therapy training course). This is also the situation in the Nordic countries. Among the two Danish students was Merete Birkebæk who later became one of the Nordoff-Robbins teachers at the Herdecke mentor course in 1978-1980. Among the four Norwegian students were Unni Johns and Tom Næss, who, together with Even Ruud, started the music therapy education in Oslo in 1978, the first full time music therapy education in any of the Nordic countries.

In "Talks on Music" Paul Nordoff integrated his many years of experience as a pianist, composer and professor of music with his 15 years of experience as a music therapist. Kenneth E. Bruscia writes in the Foreword to this book: "Healing Heritage is a carefully edited version of Paul Nordoff's "Talks on Music", a series of lectures given in 1974. I say carefully edited because Clive and Carol Robbins have been meticulous in preserving Paul Nordoff's voice, while also conveying his boundless passion for music and his unerring insights into its inner workings. But for me, this book is more than a monument to Paul Nordoff's enormous contributions to music therapy; it is a testament of the Robbins' dedication to their colleague, and a model of professional integrity for all of us to emulate".

These words capture much of my own response to the book, except that I find it hard to suggest that anyone has unerring insights into music's inner workings. This is because I think we need to speak of musics in plural and because I think music therapy is about humans working through music at least as much as about music working through humans. I agree with Bruscia though that Healing Heritage is a very carefully edited version of the famous "Talks on Music", and that Carol and Clive Robbins' dedication and respect for Nordoff's work is present in every line of the text. Indirectly then this text is also a monument of Robbins and Robbins' enormous contributions to music therapy.

The introductory chapter includes a short biography of Paul Nordoff, information about the course and the students. The Introduction also includes notes on the preparing of the text, which is based on Nordoff's own notes and on audio-tapes of the lectures. The eighteen main chapters are all "explorations" of musical elements, idioms and techniques: of scales; steps, skips and creative leaps; tonal directions; the life of the intervals; triads and inversions; seventh chords; tension and relaxation; musical archetypes; pentatonic harmonization; styles and idioms of improvisation; etc. The students' contributions to the explorations sometimes "come through", but not much. Tom plays a chord here and Unni gives a word or a response there, so to say. These are Paul Nordoff's lectures. They are "Talks on Music", not "Dialogues on Music."

Steps toward Sensitivity

To have access to the reflections of a man with such a close and developed relationship to music as Nordoff is no small thing. It took a long time for me to read and work through Healing Heritage. This is a book you read while sitting at the piano, since Nordoff gives many brief examples from the compositions of Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, and others. After having played the musical examples given in the text, and having read Nordoff's comments, I was inspired to look up and play through the complete compositions. In this way Nordoff's text functioned as a door opener, sometimes to music that was new for me, more often to music I knew but had forgotten, or music I knew but still could (re)discover.

The first Exploration - "Scales: Steps and Skips" - starts with a discussion that to me is confusing. One of the students - thinking, I presume, about the difference between the Aeolian and the Lydian mode, for example, - suggests that each scale has its own individual character independent of its pitch, while Nordoff (HH, p. 2 ³) claims that pitch matters because different overtones are produced. So far so good. The confusion - for me - comes in when Nordoff then plays the opening bars of Beethoven's Piano Sonata no. 21, op. 53, the "Waldstein" - first in C major as written by the composer, then in F major - and expresses: "You can't imagine it in F major! It's just inconceivable". Nothing more is said in the text about what Nordoff may have meant here. The next line is in fact "Now, let's go on", and I am left with few clues to Nordoff's message. Beethoven himself could conceive this motif in F major, as it appears in bar 90 of this sonata. Of course it then sounds different, but tonal instability and excursions to other keys - especially in the development but also in the recapitulation - is part of what makes the sonata form interesting. I am not suggesting that Nordoff did not know this, and I presume that his exclamation must have been related to the sonata and not to the motif. Could this sonata be conceived in F major? It would have been a different sonata. Could it be conceived in D major or B major? Are there any definite limits here? How much do we for instance care about the fact that the definition of the normal diapason has changed in history? To me it is not clear at all what Nordoff is trying to tell us with his "It's just inconceivable." Maybe he is saying; "Music is mystery", which to me makes sense for instance when it is interpreted as "Open up, listen to the music, to every aspect and every small detail of it!"

After having found my way around the hindrance of this opening section, I enjoyed the first chapter very much though. The title of the chapter may have created suspicions about atomistic explorations of scales and steps taken out of musical context, but this is not what we get. Nordoff discusses scale passages and skips in melodic construction, the scale as a musical statement, stepwise movements in the bass, etc., and all the way he illuminates through beautiful musical examples how musical context and use influences the experience of these elements. One of his points in this exploration is to stimulate awareness about the effect of balancing steps and skips in musical compositions. He shows how Bach in his Cantata 147 makes a melody that is "only" steps come alive through the use of steps and skips in the "embroidery" of the accompaniment. A few pages later he proceeds by playing the piano entrance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3, in C Minor. This entrance is in fact the C minor (melodic) scale repeated three times and then followed by the tonic triad. Nordoff exclaims: "The tonic triad! - which we've all heard five thousand times! But it's the way it's done, it's the context in which we hear it." In this way Nordoff demonstrates his sensitivity for musical context; music as an ecology in itself so to say. The elements of music are linked to each other in reciprocal influence. You change one element and you have changed the others and thus the experience of the whole. To define fixed meanings or functions to musical elements is therefore a problematic enterprise. This is not said in this exploration, but to my mind it is shown. If you can forgive me my puns: there is not much to skip in this chapter, it all sums up to steps toward sensitivity in music.

The next two or three explorations I found more problematic, and not so stimulating. Explorations two and three - also on steps and skips - are heavily based on a distinction between inherent directions and creative leaps that I do not get comfortable with. In the fourth exploration Steiner's interval concept is introduced. I will quote some of Nordoff's explanations of the concept: "... ...in the single tone we have absolute rest", "But with the minor second ... ... something begins to move. But you are still within yourself. This is an inner movement." "But with the major second ... ... the activity increases. Curiously enough... ... this is the beginning of activity, of inner movement, ... ... this is carrying that inner movement still further. And it is asking ... ... for something. This movement, this disturbance, wishes to find ... ... rest. It finds it in the minor third, ... ... " Etc. (HH, p. 36).

This concept is later referred to as "the Interval Concept" in several of the explorations in Healing Heritage and used as a foundation for many of Nordoff's explanations and arguments. Steiner's interval concept, not very valid in contemporary musicology, may be understood in the context of European history of music aesthetics, where rationalist attempts of "explaining" music have appeared from time to time. For instance; in the 17th century ideas about rhetoric figures in music were prevalent, and in the 18th century this was developed by theorists like Johann Mattheson who suggested that it is possible to give a detailed description of meanings and workings of scales, rhythms, intervals, and harmonies. Such ideas were of course challenged in the romanticism of the 19th century, but they have reappeared, for example in Steiner's writings and then in Deryck Cooke's The Language of Music from the late 1950ies (Benestad, 1976).

Steiner's interval concept is an atomistic concept, which to me makes it hard to defend. Events need environment to have meaning (Stige, 1998a). Where is ecology, use, and context in this interval concept? Of course, in trying to answer this we must remember that in real life situations the musical elements are not only experienced in musical contexts, but also in social and cultural contexts, which asks for even more cautiousness concerning statements about fixed meanings and functions of the musical elements. Another problem with "the interval concept" is of course the assumption that music is a language with lexical meaning. I consider it a paradox that Nordoff considered Steiner's classification of meaning in intervals to be so important. Generally we think of Creative Music Therapy as an approach where the improvisations are non-referential. The focus is meaning and therapeutic development created through musicking, not through verbal interpretations of the music produced. Why then the need for giving musical events a fixed verbal interpretation based on Steiner's interval concept?

I can give you just one example from Healing Heritage, from Exploration Six. In a discussion of Beethoven's opening motif in the Piano Sonata in E-flat Major, op. 81a, "Les Adieux", Nordoff states: "Beginning with ... ... the major third, which, as you remember from our concept, is an inner experience of balance ... ...and moving from this to the fifth... ... and you remember with the fifth we are standing, facing the world - and then... ... he takes a step further to the minor sixth. So beautiful. Still with the fifth beneath it ... ...so that you haven't gone very far, but you've taken a little step. ...<...>... And now the third... ... begins to move toward a larger interval, a tritone ... ... and it does ... ...to the minor sixth, and it moves still further out to an augmented sixth ... ... and we're left with two octaves ... ... Marvelous breathing in there, marvelous movement in there, from inner experience to outer experience through tension, which is a life experience. We're constantly doing this in our lives: moving from ourselves to something outside of ourselves. And if it has a real meaning, there is some tension in this movement from inner to outer" (HH, p. 47).

I think I can hear some of the tension, the breathing, and the movement Nordoff is speaking of. I also consider this to be very beautiful music (if it is performed well, that is). To me it is more than beautiful; it is meaningful in the deepest sense of the word. And I think there is beauty and meaning in Nordoff's verbal interpretation. When experiencing this I am not liberated from a history of reception, or from a personal history, though. The composer of this music is known for his personal struggles, and much of the history of reception has been about identifying personal struggles in his works. In my own life history I "met" Beethoven as an adolescent. His music knocked me up and struck me, compared to say Mozart's music, which I considered to be too nice and too soft. This was a time of struggle in my life, and at times I almost felt that Beethoven was the only guy that understood me. I am not saying that history of reception and personal history is all there is to my experience of Beethoven. There must be something in the music? Yes, but this something is always situated, and Steiner's lexical definition of the meanings of the intervals to me is a very unsatisfactory answer to this "there must be something." It closes for other readings or hearings of this music.

While reading and playing Healing Heritage this interval concept therefore frustrated me more than once. It did not overshadow the pleasures I also had when working my way through Nordoff's explorations though. Several of the explorations are so rich on beautiful musical examples and interesting observations and insights that a disappointing concept (or two or three) was not enough to stop me. One way of dealing with the interval concept, and other unsatisfactory concepts in the text, could be to forget about them, and to concentrate on the more living and charming metaphors also present in Nordoff's talks. I did not find that quite possible though, because these concepts are given such prominence in Nordoff's argument. An alternative strategy could be to reframe them and interpret them as educational tools. To take steps toward sensitivity in music clearly was one of Nordoff's aims with the London lectures. In the context of these lectures the interval concept may have enhanced the students' sensitivity and openness for the music. The students were invited to listen, and to listen in new ways, and they were given some words and images on their way that possibly could open new doors. I do not know. We will need to ask the students who were there if we want to find out how this actually worked for each individual in these specific lectures. Generally though, I will propose that concepts may work in this way. They may be sensitizing in specific contexts, without necessarily being categories to be generalized to other contexts (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 1994).

Heritage of Courage

I have always felt that it is a gift when someone reveals something about his relationship to music. It gives me a new understanding of the person and music involved, and it inevitably influences my relationship to both. Healing Heritage is a box full of gifts. I partly read the book "while sitting at the piano", but sometimes I just threw the book away, to pick up my Beethoven or Mozart. I needed to play through the whole piece that Nordoff's example was taken from in order to experience the musical context, or just because the music was so interesting. Other times I took Healing Heritage with me and went to the American rocking chair that I have bought myself, to dwell upon his words. Some of them are quite poetic and charming, as when he speaks of the ebb and flow of tension in Brahms' music or of the tonal fluidity of Schumann's Davidsbündler.

One of the unexpected gifts for me was Nordoff's comment on Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 11, K. 331, in A major, the Andante Grazioso (theme with variations). While some think of Mozart's music as "too good to be true", I used to think of his music as "too nice to be mine", as I have already shared with you. I have felt this to be a limitation in my relationship to music, and as an adult I have tried to develop my relationship to Mozart. I bought his piano-sonatas and made an effort to play them in a variety of ways. What actually helped me the most was Glenn Gould's 1965/1970-recording of this very A major sonata. I am among those who enjoy Gould's humming, but my point here is his extremely slow - some would say eccentric - interpretation of the Andante Grazioso. With a clipped and detached articulation there is a continuous threat to the phrase structure in this performance. I feel that the music may collapse at any point. It is not just another piece of sweet music any more, it is something I would like to rescue. Similarly Nordoff gives me a new possibility for discovery by using the first variation of the theme as an example of the "urgency" created by unprepared nonchordal tones (HH, pp. 117-118). I have not heard this. I may have been listening to this piece of music with too modern or romantic ears. Nordoff's comment helped me to explore the tonal subtleties that in fact are present in this variation. I would have liked to hear his performance of this though, because I still struggle with it.

This Mozart-example is one in a series in Healing Heritage where Nordoff uses works from the history of Western classical music to illuminate possibilities in music; the possibilities in following rules, the possibilities in breaching them, and the possibilities in making new rules. Nordoff invites us to rediscover things we take for granted, such as the triad. He focuses on composers who in some way challenged tradition, for instance Debussy. "........., because he was primarily the one who freed chords from the relationships of the traditional harmony of the past." (HH, p. 68). Later in the text he states: "It's from this kind of freedom that a real music therapy - a clinical improvisational therapy - could come into being. Because if this hadn't taken place, we just wouldn't be here today. This has paved the way musically for all the things we now do, for our deliberate conscious use of each harmonic element, each musical component. We owe Debussy a tremendous amount, as therapists, just for this very reason." (HH., p 78).

Nordoff gives several examples of composers who were able to rediscover and use musical elements creatively that may have been taken for granted. His love for these composers, and his ability to let them feed his own creativity, makes a strong impression on me. So this is also a text about social (re)construction of music, and about music therapy's relationship to history and culture. I would like to dwell with the courage to create - if I may borrow Rollo May's words - involved when someone challenges tradition. When reading Healing Heritage I was reminded of Nordoff and Robbins' own courage as explorers. As pioneers of music therapy they were challenging traditions of music and of therapy, and not without resistance. It has been suggested that Nordoff and Robbins did not create or construct - but that they discovered - Creative Music Therapy. I have objections to this line of thinking; their personalities and cultural background had a shaping influence on the approach. But let us follow the discover-metaphor for a while, since I think it may illuminate how brave explorers Nordoff and Robbins were. Actually Clive Robbins uses the allegory of discovery himself when he describes the early years of his collaboration with Nordoff, and he says that they - unlike Columbus - knew when they had "discovered America" (Robbins & Stige, 1998). I will try to illustrate my point about courage by using the allegory of discovering America.

In prehistoric times America was probably discovered on more than one occasion; in historic times it has been discovered at least twice, by Leiv Eiriksson and by Christopher Columbus. I will use Eiriksson as an example - not just because I am a Norwegian - but because his story sheds light on the element of courage usually involved in discoveries. Leiv Eiriksson was son of Eirik the Red - Norwegian emigrant and the first Norse to settle on Greenland - and historians today generally agree that Leiv discovered North America around 1000 AD ⁴. He found a coast he thought was exceptionally mild and friendly and he called it Vinland, a name that may be connected to several meanings; meadow, wine, beauty. Like Columbus 500 years later he did not exactly know the location of the place he discovered⁵, but my point here is the courage that must have been involved for someone living in the old Norse culture when he decides to sail westwards from Greenland. The picture these people had of the world was that it was flat, and that it was encircled by Útgard (The World Outside), which was inhabited by giants and trolls. In other words; Eiriksson was risking his life, he was possibly heading for Útgard. Instead he found a land of beauty.

Nordoff and Robbins probably did not have an image of sailing toward Útgard, but the courage needed in their pioneer work must have been considerable. This we can see in their own rich descriptions of their early work, for instance in Therapy in Music for the Handicapped Child (1971/1992). They had to fight for their right to listen to the music and their clients with open ears and minds. They were fighting against limitations suggested by traditional anthroposophical thought and therapy, and by what were the prevailing approaches to music therapy at that time. More than once they were told that they were not doing the right things in the right ways. The heritage after Nordoff and Robbins is a heritage of courage. As with Eiriksson and Columbus, their achievements will always be honored, sometimes also criticized, but at least never forgotten.

Let us follow the allegory one more step though; to read transcriptions of Eiriksson and Columbus' descriptions of America certainly would have enormous historical interest, but it would not be a very good guide for visitors of America today. It is not 500 years since Paul Nordoff held his lectures, and in many ways I feel I can recommend him as a guide to clinical music. Time moves fast at times though, and some of his ideas about music are not contemporary or very relevant for music therapists in the 21st century. I therefore would say; listen to his courage more than to the details of his words. If we choose to let ourselves be inspired by his enthusiasm, knowledge, and love for music, we should make our own explorations, supported by contemporary music and contemporary ideas in musicology. To honor this man is not to copy him, rather to do our own creative explorations.

Towards a Groovology of Music Therapy

There is a responsibility resting on the shoulders of the readers of Healing Heritage, a responsibility to use Nordoff's words as an inspiration and not as a limitation. One of the possible limitations could be his (lack of) conception of popular music, which I think is connected to his conception of culture, see later. I have the impression that among some Nordoff-Robbins therapists it is still considered "new" - or maybe even unwelcome - to use rock, pop, and jazz in clinical improvisations. If my impression is correct, this is a clinical limitation for Nordoff-Robbins therapists, and it is about time we start reflecting upon the possibility of developing a "groovology" of music therapy ⁶.

Healing Heritage shows us which music inspired Nordoff and his work; the European classical tradition from Bach, Mozart and Beethoven to Debussy, Ravel and Falla. Of course there were also other influences; for instance Gershwin and the less famous Spanish composer Nin-Culmell. His interest for and knowledge about several ethnic idioms also inspired him to use elements of these in his improvisations. This is quite an impressive palette. Most music therapists are more restricted in their musical skills and knowledge. Still, contemporary music therapists might want to add other names and idioms to their list of influences. Contemporary jazz, rock and pop music might need to be included, or 20th century composers as Cage, Boulez and Reich. Since few of us are able to cover it all, this will mean that we will have to leave some of Nordoff's influences behind.

Maybe we should try to include a lot of influences, and Nordoff will certainly be one of those for many of us, but the heritage needs to be digested, which means rejection and development in some kind of balance. I am not saying that it is in itself a limitation that Nordoff's musical examples are taken from the tradition of classical tonal music. This is his music, and we are reminded of the value of using our own music as a point of departure. I do not mean to imply that we should never copy him. Around 1960 Bob Dylan sounded like a Woody Guthrie jukebox; later he went beyond this and developed a quite personal style. It is not a bad thing to copy another musician. This is very often how we learn. What I am saying is that there must be a life after the copying, and that human life is about interacting with a culture, and that popular music is an essential element in most contemporary cultures. Clients come to music therapy with popular music in their minds and bodies. To neglect this is at least not client-centered therapy. We need to go beyond explorations of the tonal language of music, we need to explore grooves, which are so significant in popular music. If one does not recognize the embodied feelings in grooves one misses much of what goes on in this music, and easily ends up speaking about popular music with disrespect; there is no tonal development, there are just a few simple chords repeated over and over, etc.

In Healing Heritage Nordoff does not speak like this, but we get a clear image of what he considers important in music; melody and harmony, tonality and tonal developments. For some clients I think the tones are not so important, they are maybe just an excuse for making a good groove; one of the "how-aspects" of musical performances ⁷. We all know this; when we listen to performances of blues songs the chords are usually the same, but there may be oceans of differences between performances. The difference is in the phrasing, in the grain of the voice, in the way the notes are bent, and in how the musicians are playing with the beat and thus creating grooves. During the last decades there has been a growing interest within ethnomusicology and "New musicology" concerning the how-aspects of musical performance⁸. Performance is then used in a broad meaning; including (clinical) improvisations and other everyday-use of music. This interest is of great theoretical importance; it concerns how we speak about music, how we conceptualize the non-verbal.

In two thought-provoking essays Charles Keil (1994a, b) challenges some traditional concepts on musical meaning by focussing upon motion and feeling instead of Leonard Meyer's (1956) classical terms emotion and meaning. Keil's main idea is that rock and other popular music forms signify in different ways than classical music. While construction of complex melodic and harmonic syntax (the development of motifs in a sonata etc.), as well as norm-deviation and tendency-inhibition (such as a disappointing cadence), is essential in our experience of classical music, we find little of this is rock, pop, and jazz. These "what-elements" are simply not very developed in these genres (with the possible exception of advanced harmony in some sub-genres of jazz). As already stated, this of course has led some to suggest that rock, pop, and jazz is of less value than classical music: "it's all trite melodies and the same three chords over and over again".

Keil (ibid.) draws our attention to some very important "how-we-play-what-we-play" aspects that I find relevant for our understanding of musical improvisations in therapy. His focus is on the ongoing musical process, engendered feeling, more than on the object or the structures built through this process. When we listen to rock - and some music therapy improvisations - it is not the intervals, scales and chords that usually interest us. More often it is the grain of the voice and the "participatory discrepancies"; the "out-of time-and-out-of-tune" aspects; bending the notes and playing with the pitch, stretching the beat by playing "on top" or "lay back", etc. This music is not about development of motifs; and thus not about variability in melody and harmony, it's about "getting into the groove", which basically is a social and situated thing (Stige, 2000).

Sensitivity for grooves does not mean insensitivity for melodies and harmonies, but it may help us to understand the wisdom in Woodie Guthrie's "if you're using more than two chords, you're showing off." Sometimes the tones are just excuses in our search for grooves. Similarly; when we sing, sometimes the words are just excuses. They make our singing possible. However we may need good excuses at times. Some words may be alienating for us to sing, and some chords may be so boring that we are unable to find a groove. Of course sometimes when you listen to a singer-song-writer you feel that the song is just an excuse for delivering poetry, and sometimes when we play our focus is more on the tonal subtleties than on the groove. We therefore need to develop sensitivity for diverse interactions of the what- and the how-elements of music.

Cultural engagement

In several places Paul Nordoff comments upon the cultural development of his students. He shows engagement for their "... cultural growth, which you know I view as so important for you all, because you will never have more to give a child than you have within yourself" (HH, p. 203). Earlier in the book he states: "... ... I am thinking about how absolutely necessary it is for you all to become musically cultured people" (HH, p. 88).

I could not agree more, but I have problems with how Nordoff continues this statement: "Although it's interesting, naturally, to see what is happening today - to be contemporary, so to speak - and listen occasionally to concrete music, electronic music, synthesized music, atonal music, and all the rest, it's much more important for us as therapists really to get in our grasp the essentials of the greatness of the music of the past. Because these were the people - the Bach, the Mozart, the Beethoven, and so on - these were the people who worked with all the things we need: with tremendous sensitivity to intervals; with an absolutely instinctive feeling for the directions of tone; who made the most beautiful creative leaps out of those tonal directions. These were the people who sensed the way chord progressions could be most expressive - most naturally, musically expressive" (HH, p. 88).

Implicit in these statements is a taken-for-granted conception of classical music as the great and cultured music. While Nordoff here speaks like a music child of his time, today we should be concerned because of the ethnocentrism and essentialism involved (Stige, 1998b). This last comment of mine asks for a short exploration of Nordoff's concept of culture, as it is conveyed in Healing Heritage. I will start with a brief outline of typical uses of the word 'culture', since there is a profusion of connotations to the term both in scholarly texts and in everyday language: Broadly speaking there are two main streams of use in modern societies. The "value-oriented" use to denote what is considered first-rate in arts, manners and scholarly pursuits, and the more descriptive use to denote a way of life built up by a group of humans over time. Both streams have a history of 'instrumental' use, as part of a project of differentiation and construction of hierarchies within and between societies. Expressions like "a man of culture" have been used to denote a man of the upper social classes, to be distinguished from 'the people' not only because of his money but also because of his cultivation. Hierarchies have also been developed concerning "ways of life". The word 'culture' - and its close relative 'civilization' - has been used as a tool to distinguish between higher (read Occidental) and lower (read Oriental, African, etc.) forms (Stige, 2001/in press).

None of these projects of differentiation are characteristic - I would say - for music therapy. On the contrary, the value in Paul Nordoff's work, and that of other pioneers of music therapy, may also be seen in the perspective of bringing music to people that traditionally have been culturally excluded (Stige, 1995). The problems I see with Nordoff's concept of culture are therefor present in his words much more than in his practice. We need to reflect upon these problems though, in order not to be limited by his words, because in them we find residues of discourses of differentiation and segregation. Nordoff gives no definition of culture in Healing Heritage, but certain assumptions seem to be implicit in his use of the term. One assumption is that classical western music is more cultivated and of greater value than say popular music. When Nordoff encourages the students to cultivate themselves, it is the classical canon of western music that is in focus, not the cultural background of the clients. This is problematic indeed, since clients come to therapy with musical knowledge, limitations, and expectations colored by their own cultural background, which is not necessarily the western classical canon. We have already dealt with this issue, and I will now focus upon two other issues related to the concept of culture; Nordoff's concept of archetype and his notion of culture as a discrete entity.

Nordoff's notion of archetypes in music is rather vague. It is a first form or model, it is "deep memory" and "racial inheritance", it is based and it is not based upon Jung's conception (HH, p. 134). The first example he gives is Children's Tune as an archetype, and this example I find problematic for several reasons. One such reason is that the Children's Tune is not found all over the world, although this is at least hinted at in Healing Heritage. Nordoff's students are from several countries; and he asks: "I don't know if you play "Ring Around the Rosie" in England - do you? - as we do in America?" (HH, p. 135) and he gets assent form the students. He sings the game, and asks "Do you have such a game as that in Denmark and Norway"? (ibid.). Again he gets assent from the students. If I did a similar thing in my classes I would of course get assent from my Norwegian students, but not with some of my students from Eastern Europe. As Bjørkvold (1989/1992) and other researchers have found, the Children's tune is not universal, it is not found all over the world, it is for instance not a part of Russian culture. Nordoff's point is that this tune is not culture, it is an archetype. If this is so, the notion of archetype is very different from that developed by Jung, who thought of archetypes as basic and more abstract structures in the psyche, not concrete cultural expressions such as a specific melody.

What is typical in the west is not bound to be universal, and we may ask why Nordoff felt he needed a notion of archetypes. One answer may be that he thought of culture as a discrete entity and limiting factor in therapy. He thought it important to reach "beyond race and culture for the universal" and comments: "Now I have met one or two music therapists who have strongly the idea that children should only be given the folk music - or music similar to the folk music - of the country in which they were born ...<...>... I think this is so terribly narrow, that you give a child born in Russia only Russian folk music - or that kind of music - as therapy" (HH, p. 136).

It is not difficult to subscribe to the suggestion that it could be limiting to use only Russian music with a Russian child. More than once I have worked with clients who can relate to almost any music except Norwegian folk music. Nordoff's argument is based on some premises I do not share though. I do not think culture follows race or national borders or that it is a discrete entity. Culture develops as ways of life, and is thus in constant change and exchange, it is interactive and historical. I am also concerned about the assumption that the solution to the problem of (cultural) limitation is to reach for the universal. Nordoff's ideas of the universal in music remain rather hazy to me, and not without a touch of ethnocentrism. We must be fair, and remember that he was a child of his time, but we also need to reflect upon the ethnocentric aspects in his thinking. They are also present in his strong interest for music from other cultures. In Exploration Eighteen - when demonstrating a Middle Eastern scale - Nordoff expresses: "And we all agreed that the scale expressed the heat, the dryness, the poverty, the loneliness, the suffering - it comes out of the folk soul of the people" (HH, p. 197). Heat, dryness, poverty, loneliness, and suffering - compared to what, as defined by whom? This statement is nothing less than Orientalism, which to me is hard to defend - not only because of the western Orientalizing of the Oriental - but also because of the essentialism involved (Said, 1978/1995).

How to relate to these and other problems in the text is then a question of how to define Healing Heritage. As suggested earlier in this essay, I consider this book to be a very important historical document but not an up-to-date guide to contemporary practice. Nordoff was an explorer, one of the bravest we ever had in music therapy, and should be honored as such. Without his pioneering clinical musicianship where would music therapy be today? Nobody knows. What we do know is that Columbus' discovery of America was much more important than Eiriksson's. Columbus was the last to discover America, and with lasting consequences. Only a few generations of Norsemen lived in Vinland, before they died or left. After Columbus, America changed completely. Not so much because of his personality and capacity, but because of the people supporting, surrounding and following him; the historical circumstances. After Nordoff, music therapy changed⁹. In evaluating the factors leading to the lasting success and development of the Nordoff-Robbins approach I think it is impossible to overestimate the importance of Clive Robbins' contribution. I am thinking of his warm and sensitive clinical presence in the pioneering years, I am thinking of his strong engagement throughout the 1980ies and 90ies, and - not least - I am thinking of his living openness for new ideas and perspectives on the work. This is a core of the heritage of courage, a continuous challenge for contemporary music therapists.

Openness is a key, a condition and prerequisite for development, and therefore I find a beautiful symbolism in the fact that the last exploration of Healing Heritage ends with a "wild" suggestion from Clive Robbins. Nordoff has been exploring the harmonies of Romantic Music and Robbins asks if they can sing Goodbye - a "classic" Nordoff-Robbins song - to that harmonic style. "Not very well" answers Nordoff (HH, p. 206), and then he gives it a try.

Coda

Everybody thought it impossible to jump after Wirkola. But somebody had to do it. A lot of times it was just embarrassing to watch, other times it was not so bad. Not until the late 80ies, when Jan Boklöv - a crazy Swede, so the Norwegians said - started to jump in a way nobody had heard of. For generations the Norwegians had cultivated the art of ski jumping. It is not at all only about lengths. It is about style, form, and aesthetics. The referees do not only measure lengths; they give marks for the aesthetic quality of the jump, from 0 to 20 points. Wirkola, with his perfect parallel skis and his body and arms in ideal control would typically get 19, 19.5, or even 20 points out of a possible 20 points. Boklöv did not even try to keep his skis in parallel position! Instead he made a V. The Norwegians were furious and shocked. Compared to the wonderful archetypal form of perfect parallel skis, what is the V-style with the skis pointing wildly in two arbitrary directions? The referees did not like it either. They would give Boklöv marks like 14 or 15, due to his unaesthetic style. What does a Swede know about ski jumping anyway?

He knew how to jump, 5 or 10 meters longer than all the others, due to the increased lift created by the V-style. Today no one jumps like Wirkola and everybody like Boklöv. And no referee would give you a 14 anymore, just because of your V. But the Norwegians still speak of Wirkola. We still remember him, and in different areas of life we still meet people who make the expression "to jump after Wirkola" come to use.

Notes

1) Some of the paragraphs in this essay are based on a book review of Healing Heritage, published in December 1999 in Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, 8(2), pp. 214-217. And abbreviated version of the essay - called Heritage of Courage - is also published in Mucicing, 2001 (The Newsletter of the International Association of Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapists).

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2) The "Edward-series" started in June 1998, Vol. 7(1), with a reprint of the original case study of "Edward", as it was published in 1977 in Nordoff & Robbins' Creative Music Therapy. The case was supplemented by a new introduction written by Clive Robbins (1998), and in the following issues articles and comments on this classical case study were published by (in chronological order) Randi Rolvsjord (1998), Kenneth Aigen (1999), Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen (1999), Jacqueline Robarts (1999), Lutz Neugebauer (1999), Michele Forinash (2000), and Gary Ansdell (2000).

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3) For sake of brevity I will refer to HH and a page when I refer to Nordoff's statements in Healing Heritage.

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4) There are some discrepancies in the old Sagas concerning just how this happened. According to Eirik the Red's Saga Leiv sailed off course on a return voyage from Norway, missed Greenland, and found new land. Most historians today find The Saga of the Greenlanders more reliable, and it suggests that he set his course westward from his parental home at Brattahlid (Steep Hill) in South-Greenland in order to find the land a seaman off course had seen - but not visited - a few years earlier.

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5) The old Norsemen knew of three continents - Asia, Africa, and Europe - and tried to integrate the discovery of Vinland in their existing geographical knowledge. Thus, in Norse maps from the 13th century Vinland could be depicted as a Northwestern corner of Africa (Hastrup, 1999, p. 11).

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6) Popular music in clinical improvisation is of course no new thing in music therapy. In the Nordic countries for instance it has been pioneered practically by Kimmo Lehtonen and theoretically by Even Ruud since the late 70ies and early 80ies.

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7) I am well aware of the fact that Nordoff in other contexts have discussed the importance of the basic beat, but that is different from focusing upon groove as a "how"-aspect of musical performance.

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8) For a good overview of some of the literature, see Ansdell (1997).

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9) As always when working with allegories there is a danger of creating non-intended associations and images. The discoveries of America were connected to imperialism and violence of different degrees, which is - of course - not included in my suggestion that Nordoff changed music therapy.

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