Memories from The International Congress of Music Therapy 1974

Claus Bang

I was the only participating delegate (since Prof. Gunnar Heerup, chairman of the Danish Society for Music Therapy, who was also invited, send an excuse) from the Nordic countries, and I was listening and observing too, because the day before our departure to Paris, the Aalborg Main Newspaper quoted me from my presentation in Aalborg Conference Hall. The headlines were: MAKE AALBORG UNIVERSITY CENTER A NORDIC MUSIC THERAPY CENTER and the article described my representation and the themes I would speak about at the congress in Paris 2 days later!

I was aware of the fact that most part of the central-European view on music therapy would focus on receptive music therapy, the effect of which might be difficult to predict. In Denmark we mainly focused on active music therapy, and that was my intention to illustrate and to document in my presentations by that time on basis of 13 years employment and experience as a music therapist and audio speech therapist at the Aalborg School for Deaf, Hearing Impaired and Deaf-Blind Children and Adolescents.

It was therefore exciting and challenging to meet other delegates from Argentina, Brazil, Belgium, Great Britain, France, Holland, Italy, Israel, Yugoslavia, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Hungary, West-Germany, Austria and Egypt, in total 80 delegates. Besides that the congress was daily visited by approx. 300 participants of different nationalities.

On October 31st the congress opened with an international delegate-meeting, where we discussed the neccesarily of an international committee and its organisation. These discussions were continued after the end of the congress on November 3rd, and it was extremely difficult for the delegations from 18 countries to reach a firm formulation.

The official opening of the congress took place on November 1st at 9.00 am under great attention from the press, radio and TV. Considering the very inopportune post-strike it was some kind of a miracle, that this huge arrangement could be established at all!

On this first day of the congress I should defend the Danish and at the same time the Nordic colours. In my presentation in the morning I reported on the development of music therapy in our country for the past 15 years, the background for the foundation of Danish Society for Music Therapy and about the Nordic Cooperation, which was established in 1968 by the founding of Nordic Society for Pedagogical Music Therapy. In my capacity of head of music therapy training at the newly established years-course "Music as an Aid in Treatment and Education of Handicapped" at the Aalborg School under the auspices of the Royal Danish College of Educational Studies, I accounted for the pre-planning and the arrangement of this years-course in music therapy.

Before noon the same day I had the honour to represent Denmark in a round table discussion with the theme: The Organisation of Music Therapy, national, regional, institutional etc. I still remember my problems at the beginning of the round table having to communicate and discuss in a mixed tongue of English and French with Juliette Alvin, Edith Lecourt and the moderator M.A. Guilhot. But we all had a common language: Music!

In the afternoon Juliette Alvin, British Society for Music Therapy, started the row of approximately one hundred presentations. After her, the honourable personality in music therapy, I was given 40 minutes to present my research-project: "Physiological Sound Functions among Deaf and Normally Hearing Children exploring the Use of Sonor Tone Bars in Sound-Analysis and Musical Voice Treatment and - Speech Therapy" (pdf). I presented the music therapy programme at the Aalborg School, State Special Centre for Deaf, Hearing Impaired and Deaf-Blind Children and Adolescents, illustrated by TV films of music therapy with hearing impaired, deaf-blind, dysphasic, motorically disabled and multi-handicapped children.

Though I had been given the greatest amount of time for my presentation, this contribution of mine was highly concentrated, and my wife, who joined me in our first visit to Paris, and myself had most certainly plentiful to do handling transparencies, dias, tape-recorder etc., while I had sweat on my brow. The reason was, that the French TV-technicians that very day, a quite special holiday, which I remember as being the "Day of the Saints", had turned very late out of their feathers!

However we managed all together 3 minutes before deadline, and all 12 TV monitors in the huge auditorium showed my message brought from Denmark. Everything went just perfect and was very well received. The audio-visual contributions gathered as a whole the many nationalities and tongues in an optimum way at this congress, which was a manifestation of the fact, that music is the only language on our planet, which is understood by every human being.

We were assembled in beautiful Paris, the fashion center of the world. But, ladies and gentlemen, our théme was not just a fashion, a la mode. Music Therapy had come to stay and the problems concerning education and research was on their way to be realized and to be solved through a close cooperation between everyone in the team, involved in the treatment, the education and the rehabilitation of those fellow citizens, whom we are trusted, a collaboration between institutions and centres, and here and now starting in Paris a teamwork across every border in our world - a World of Music.

The International Congres of Music Therapy in Paris 1974 gave me confidence and trust for my plans 3 years later in 1977 to initiate and finally along with other members of the Planning Group in 1982 to establish a Diploma Study in Music Therapy at Aalborg University Centre, which is nowadays well known all over the world.

Welcome in Denmark - Bienvenue aux Danemark.

Denmark in October 2008

Claus Bang, Director of Music Therapy, Founder - chairman - project leader, The Music Therapy Association "A World of Sound and Music" - "Un Monde de Sons et de Musique".

Angela Fenwick: Memories of the Paris Congress and other Congresses

I know that there was fierce debate as to whether the Paris Congress was actually the first World Congress, as Darko Breitenfeld had already had a gathering of international music therapists in Zagreb. But others argued that this was only 'international', not World'! Maybe Paris has eventually won the day!

I also remember that Jacques Jost had just given a paper at the Congress saying that music therapy only involved music that sounded pleasant, i.e. he was talking about "receptive music therapy." I had missed part of his paper and also my French was not good enough to understand everything he was saying. I then gave a paper about music therapy in England, which was based on improvisation! The sounds made in my taped examples were certainly not all concordant!

There was also a lot of discussion—which still rumbles on—about whether one had to be a trained psychotherapist before becoming a music therapist. People like Harm Willms were adamant that one could not, but there were many in the educational field, like Johanna von Schulz, who was doing very good work in Berlin with under-privileged children, but she was not a qualified psychotherapist, so she was not "admitted" to the German music therapy fold. There was also a strong Anthroposophist music therapy movement. I think that this discussion still rages, namely as to whether arts therapists are actually arts psychotherapists. I personally think that this negates the power of the art form used and often adopt psychological theories such as Solution Focussed Therapy or Personality Construct Theory, in my work. I am certainly a music therapist, not a music psychotherapist.

I remember a lot about the Jugoslavia Conferences with Darko Breitenfeld and his 'group of reformed alcoholics' who sang songs confirming their abstention from alcohol, also Prof. Yamamatsu from Japan, who was working with autistic children and using a trampoline with improvised music to accompany their bouncings. (This led to me being invited later to lecture in Japan—a wonderful experience).

Of course Juliette Alvin came to the Berlin Conference as well, also such people as Alfred Schmolz, who was a pioneer in Austria at the time of Prof. Andreas Rett—of Rett Syndrome fame. Also there was Claus Bang from Denmark, who was working with deaf children (or he may have been a little later). He has just completed his memoir. At the time, I remember noting that Claus concentrated on speech improvement through the use of tone bars, rather than the emotional state of the children he was working with.

There was also a German Conference about that time in which a Chinese music therapist was using music in acupuncture needles... I wonder how that work developed. Johannes Kneutgen was working in Cologne with electrodes attached to fishes, trying to measure the effect varying types of music had on the fishes. He said that he would not become a music therapist until he knew how to measure the effect of music on people, which was why he was working with the fishes. We said that we felt we could not wait for his results, but would continue to learn from experience with actual people!

It was a time to try to define "what is music therapy" — but then, maybe we are still doing that?! Especially in the ever-growing field of arts therapies/community arts in health field, which is a very strong movement in the UK. Money comes from our Arts Council to support Musicians working with special needs people, but does not apply to music therapists! So what are the borders between community music and music therapy? They really do over-lap, but I believe that there is a definite boundary between the two.

Elizabieta Galinska interviewed by Krzysztof Stachyra

Krzysztof Stachyra: What was your first association with the 1st World Music Therapy Congress in Paris, 1974?

Elżbieta Galińska: I was then a 24/25-year-old woman, who as a person working in the main center of psychiatric education in Poland (The Psychiatry and Neurology Institute, Warsaw, prof. S. Leder), had already been teaching music therapy since 1972.

I think that it was not only the Congress, but also Paris, that attracted the numerous Polish delegaties wanting to present their reports, published in 1978 in Textes du Congrés Mondial de Musicotherapie Paris 1974, Hachette. The papers dealt with the organization of music therapy in Poland (T. Natanson), the usage of music therapy in gynecology and obstetrics (H. Jaklewicz, M. Bogdanowicz, E. Dąbrowska), in the treatment of neurosis (E. Galińska), in psycho-motoric re-adaptation of students with physical dysfunction by means of dancing (A. Drozdowska, M. Wolczyńska), case study of a disabled person not fully adapted (D. Borzych, E. Szpotowicz, M. Tyszkiewicz, J. de Walden), and psycho-physiologic researches (A. and A. Metera).

K. S.: What aspect of that time remained the most vivid in your memory?

E. G.: After 34 years, what comes to my mind when thinking about the Congress are: a figure of Juliette Alvin - a very thin, agile elderly lady; an organ concert of M. Estellet Brun, a composer improvising for the sake of therapy; a gallery of Art and Music in the famous Salpetriere Hospital in Paris, where many canvases inspired by Chopin’s music were shown; a breath-taking orchestra of children in, so called, iron lungs, from which only a head, holding an instrument together with a music stand in its mouth, was standing out; an audio-visual presentation by R. Benezon, who was pouring the hands of an autistic child, thus stimulating him. Meanwhile, he was making electronic sounds imitating snore-like noises of a child, in order to make contact with it (the iso principal). Similar sounds of deaf children were presented in music therapy by Claus Bang.

I remember the protest of the members of the Congress against the film presented by UNESCO, which showed children wearing masks of different monsters, making strange, horrifying sounds. For me, as for a clinical doctor, the film was very interesting in the diagnostic and therapeutic aspect (expression of emotions). It seems to me that the same film was shown in 1989-1991, during the European program of UNESCO Arts in Hospital. Among the Polish members, the one who I remember the best is A. Drozdowska, who activated the audience by making them clap to the rhythm of music. I also remember the Music Therapy Studio of Association Francaise de Musicotherapie, which I visited together with Jacque Jost. It was a small room with black walls, in the middle of which stood an enormous armchair for relaxation with a screen hanging in front of it showing nature films, for example, beautiful flowers and landscapes. From both sides of the armchair lied pillows for members of the therapeutic group.

K. S.:K.S.: What kinds of feelings did this Congress evoke in you?

E. G.: The general impression which comes to my mind when I search the Congress papers is that the field of music therapy in 1974 was already quite well-developed in terms of clinical and research methods of psycho-physiology (however, there had not been enough psychological research done yet). Reading my paper, I am surprised by the fact that already in 1974 I described my method of musical portrait (diagnosis and regulation of the “I” structure, see Ch. Maranto (1993), and the techniques of guided imagery, among which, there was an imagery technique Imaging of the Person stimulated by music, that I am researching at the moment.

K. S.:K.S.: Were the differences between people from Western and Eastern countries in terms of perceiving music therapy visible at that time?

E. G.: There were no differences in terms of a human concept and the treatment of a human, but there were differences concerning the material aspect, for example, the case of equipment in music therapy studios, access to the literature, presentations of clinical methods and world research papers. Those differences are still present, even now.

K. S.:K.S.: Did this Congress have any influence on your interest in music therapy or your future career in this field?

E. G.: Thanks to this Congress, I started my cooperation with A. Schmölz form Vienna, with whom I did some workshops at Christoph Schwabe’s in Lipsk. Darko Breitenfeld from Yugoslavia contacted me and asked for the history of the illnesses of Polish living composers. Unfortunately, the idea was impossible to be executed. The closest contact was made with Paris, with Edith Lecourt, the president of the 1974 Congress, who described my presentation of Music Portrait in her book (1988). Together with Ann Sloboda from London, Edith Lecourt visited Poland during the International Music Therapy Conference in 1994 which I organized in the Palace of Radziejowice (near Warsaw), which resulted in me being invited to the European Music Therapy Committee (president Tony Wigram). Thanks to this cooperation, until this day, I get La Revue de Musicotherapie (in which I published articles about cognitive music therapy (1988) and Music Portrait (1998) which I also presented during two-day seminar in Centre Médical de L’Université de Rene Déscartes, in Paris).

Serafina Poch Blasco interviewed by Barbara Wheeler

Barbara Wheeler: What was your view of the Congres International de Musicotherapie in Paris in 1974?

Serafina Poch Blasco: The "I World Congress" was very important and the work done by Edith and colleagues were great. To me was extremely important because gave me the opportunity to meet again some important professionals such as Juliet Alvin, my friend, and Dr. Breitenfeld also. And I could establish contact, especially with Edith Lecourt, Rolando Benenzon, and Alfred Schmölz. It was also important in order to make contact with people in the same profession, with specialists.

The organization was very good and the distribution of the interventions, very scientific. Unfortunately USA representatives were not there, but they sent a sheet of information about the NAMT.

I was attending this Congress representing the "Dirección General de Sanidad"(Health General Director) from the Ministerio de la Gobernación (Ministry of Interior) of Spain and as initiator of the "Spanish Association of Music Therapy" with a group of four persons. But at that time still our Association was not approved officially. One of my interventions was to read the Bylaws of that Association and the answer to the questions made by the organizers of the Congress.

B. W.: What papers did you present?

S. P. B.: The Congress asked each country representative to answer one question: "Indications of the Music Therapy." They published our answers. And I had an intervention: "Applications of the Music Therapy in Autism and Psychoses." (see also Abstracts of Poch Blasco's presentations)