As an experimental-composer primarily working with participatory performance and social engagement, I find myself regularly exploring novel perspectives from which to ground my practice. Subsequently, it was not long before I stumbled into music therapy scholarship. Here, I found a field of study that I consider to be even more pluralistic than my conception of music itself; writing that rekindled my dwindling faith in the potential for the arts to act as a vehicle for meaningful positive change. As such, my doctoral study has partly become an investigation into the lack of contemporary composers paying attention to this body of research—an exploration into why even “socially engaged” composers are reluctant to situate their practices alongside the social, psychological, or physiological domains that become implicated in music therapy literature.¹ However, there is also a complementary angle to my research, one that aims to introduce the aesthetics of experimental-music to music therapists, for a variety of reasons. Currently, I believe that the most pressing of these justifications relates to contemporary issues surrounding race and representation.

Although I am still overwhelmed by the internal and external heterogeneity illustrated by the writing on each of the models and approaches detailed in music therapy literature, this diversity comes with some caveats that will be of no surprise to current practitioners in the UK. For example, a search through the biographies of the sixty-nine contributors named in the previous three editions of the British Journal of Music Therapy, revealed sixty-four of them to be Caucasian (and an additional four simply had no further online presence). As such, although perhaps imprecise in of itself, this short survey further illustrates the inferences I had already received during conversations with practising music therapists in the UK: that a great white elephant is sitting stubbornly under a perpetually-proliferating avalanche of theoretical diversity. ² Clearly, valuable efforts are already underway to address these imbalances and I don’t intend to undermine their significance.³ However, this commentary will endeavour to approach the situation from a relatively novel vantage point—that of radical musicological perspectives and avant garde postconceptual music-making. Specifically, these contemporary theorisations of musical analysis and musical composition will here be instrumentalised in the exploration of two questions addressing the future of music. The first of these revolves around concerns surrounding how to deal with existing musics in music therapy, while the second takes steps towards imagining the forms therapeutic music may take in the future.

To consider my first question, it is clear that recognising the limitations of historical music therapy practices, and criticising the monopoly held on them by discourses and materials lifted from the Western Classical tradition, is an important step that is always worth retracing. ⁴ Therefore, this commentary will reinscribe these efforts below. Yet, a critique of historical practice (or historical works) often counterintuitively leaves behind a vacuum that is most often filled by simply reinstating the old relics to their favourable positions, with little consideration for the cost of this return, even if these relics are reinstated with a measure more self-awareness than before. In instances such as these, Mozart’s Requiem still occupies the same position, even if our relationship with the piece has changed—a nuance which can’t help but preach only to the already converted, and subsequently does little to shape external perceptions of professional practice. Luckily, there are other paths that can be taken concurrently, and these all move ambitiously towards preempting the forms that music may one day take in therapy.

The first alternative is to replace materials from the Western canon with existing materials from other traditions, and it is clear that a significant number of researchers are working towards this end.⁵ However, this article will deal with the more ephemeral question of what music in therapy may become, and it will take as its starting point the dematerialisation of the art object—a process which occurred primarily during the evolution of conceptual art in the 1960s (Lippard, 2001).⁶

Although the conceptual phenomenon of dematerialisation first entered contemporary art discourses over half a century ago, this allows us to understand the impact it has had on modern art practices across the globe, and to compare its effect with that of the aesthetics of post-war conceptualism’s musical counterparts. For example, whereas there may today be concert halls in most of the world’s major cities, I would argue that these institutions preserve canonic works in a manner alien to that illustrated by galleries of contemporary or modern art. And, even discounting the contemporaneity of a gallery’s works, these sites are more frequently filled with wider varieties of artists and practices, despite the fact that both of these musical and artistic institutions have been metaphorically built upon the foundations of an ineradicable, Western Classical hegemony. Perhaps for this reason, over the past decade antecedents from conceptual art have been instrumental in belatedly provoking calls for an expanded conception of music,⁷ and there is cause for hope that decentering sound in musical works may similarly invite a more diverse membership into the participation, and criticism, of the future of contemporary music.

Over the remainder of this commentary, I will first present a criticism of historical music practices and an introduction to the recent, rigorous decentering of sound in musical analysis, before presenting two post-sonic compositions taken from the field of experimental-music and exploring their relevance to music therapy specifically.

Although far from utopian, experimental composition has found a home simultaneously outside and inside the boundaries of the Western Classical tradition. A critique of the cultural imperialism too-often inferred by Western art-music afforded the emergence of a tradition which has attracted composers who often remain disenfranchised with the neoclassical avant-garde (such as this British-Asian author).⁸ As such, while it is beyond the scope of this text to detail a comprehensive history of experimental composition,⁹ it is worth mapping out a condensed timeline which illustrates various stages of experimental-music’s relationship with the Classical canon and its discourses.

An appropriate starting point is a text that has already proved influential to the theorisations of a number of music therapy approaches—Christopher Small’s Musicking, which predominantly consists of the description of a typical symphonic performance (Small, 1998).¹⁰ Through uncovering the implications of the behaviours performed by all the stakeholders in these events (from musicians, to audience members, box-office staff, and beyond), Small reveals notions of transcendental harmony, genius composers, and many of the other foundational associations attached to the Classical tradition to be illusionary constructions built upon, and reinforced by, the rituals of concert music etiquette and its historical reception. Small’s unmasking of a symphonic performance provides an early iteration of an emerging new musicology that repeatedly distanced itself from conventional readings of the Classical canon. However, in an increasingly-radical manner over the three decades since Small’s ideas were first published, and with repeated references back to the dematerialisation of the art object, recent philosophies and analyses of music have distanced themselves not only from the authority of the Classical tradition, but from the authority of sound itself. The most provocative example of these recent re-readings of music is arguably G. Douglas Barrett’s After Sound: Toward a Critical Music (2016).¹¹

Barrett (2016), an interdisciplinary artist and theorist, goes beyond Small’s unmasking of concert music’s mystification strategies, and argues that the Classical tradition spanning from Beethoven to Brahms¹² represents an interruption (rather than the pinnacle) of music’s historical trajectory. Barrett begins by vigorously undermining the disproportionate emphasis placed on sonic materials (harmony, pitch, rhythm, tempo, etc.), in the theorisations and reception of Romantic-era music, arguing that the influence of these lingering assumptions has burdened us with a critical armoury that is ill-equipped to deal with a plethora of musical meanings and materials that are not sonic. Importantly, Barrett notes that this critical armoury is still utilised ubiquitously in all manners of musical analysis today. Consequently, Barrett offers an alternative critical approach to music that drastically relegates the importance placed on sounding properties in order to uncover the limitations of a Romantic methodology and the repercussions of its continued use. Barrett labels his contemporary framework as a critical approach to music “after sound.” The rest of the publication continues to explore the political ramifications of various performances through musical analyses which pointedly pay almost no attention to sonic materials. Importantly, these post-sonic analyses also extend an invitation to compositional practices that similarly pay a dramatically-reduced attention to sound.

While Barrett’s arguments are perhaps necessarily exaggerated, they argue for a renegotiation with the stubborn remnants of the Romantic era of the Classical tradition, and in doing so they also illustrate solutions to much of the academic uneasiness that has often problematised both Classical and neoclassical music. Specifically, within the context of decolonisation, although Barrett doesn’t deal explicitly with these concerns, his text implies that it is not enough for music practitioners in the West to simply approach, recognise, assimilate, and promote many more musics. Instead, music itself must be decentered, and our critical and analytical vocabularies require a similar neutralisation in order to evade an imperialism perpetuated through the conversations we have about music, not just through the music we choose to talk about. It is for this reason that substituting one music for another in the interests of decolonisation is most productive when these substitutions are enacted alongside a change of the vocabulary we use to discuss music, and a revised conception of the nature of music itself. And at this point, parallels with the dematerialisation of the art object become all the more convincing.

As noted in the introduction to this commentary, a critique such as that presented by Barrett leaves a vacuum, or more appropriately—a silence. Therefore, in order to fill this empty space, the following section presents two descriptions of post-sonic composition, in order to give form to this philosophical aesthetic. These descriptions¹³ provide exemplary accounts of a decentered music practice, and they are followed by an examination of the potential affordances of a post-sonic music to contemporary music therapy.

The sentiments behind these conclusions are far from revolutionary, even if their particularities may be.¹⁶ To point to only a handful of examples: feminist and culture-centered perspectives on music therapy have been well-received in spite of their relative novelty; the holistic and reflexive nature of Community Music Therapy is wholly complementary to an expanded reading of music;¹⁷ Erinn Epp (2007) has provided a particularly persuasive argument for the wariness with which romantic tropes must be handled in music therapy; and, Colin Lee (2016) summarises the dangers of a stagnating music therapy and practitioners who “use music yet seem unaware of its complexities” (p. 518). Lee continues, “Music therapy has developed its language from the foundations of popular tonal music. It is now crucial that the profession looks to broadening its horizons. Music therapy needs to be contemporary, both clinically and musically” (p. 528).

For clarity, a decentering of sound in music therapy practice need not result in an environment where the Classical tradition and the musical materials it gave birth to are considered of no value. However, I am certainly advocating a position from which the relevance and limitations of these historical materials are regularly articulated, and additionally, that alternative, novel conceptions of music are explored. For, while it is clear that much work is being done to reconsider the future of existing music(s) in therapy, it appears as though much more could be done to explore music(s) of the future in therapy. And, in a similar vein, while a great deal of attention is currently being paid to an expansion of client diversity in music therapy, I believe much more could be done with respect to practitioner diversity in music therapy, and decentering music may be especially valuable in addressing this latter concern.

To conclude, it is worth highlighting the nature of the presentations offered at the biennial BAMT conference in 2018, which was curated around the themes of “Music, Diversity, and Wholeness.” Despite the encouragement proffered by the theme towards discussions of race and professional diversity, the 372-page book of abstracts only once begins to broach the boundaries of a discussion surrounding the identities of music therapists in this manner.¹⁸ Whereas, numerous papers appear to implicate discussions of diversity in practice, diversity in theory, or diversity with regards to the recipients of music therapy.¹⁹ In this respect, Lo Ming Cheng’s advocacy for ”the need to denaturalize and problematize the ‘non-ethnic’ (and ‘asexual’ for that matter) images of professions” is arguably more pertinent than ever (2002, p. 107). And I believe these endeavours require a consideration not only of our relationship to existing and historical music or the frameworks we employ to arrest and evaluate it, but also an ambitious exploration of what music may become in music therapy. To this end, radical musicological perspectives, and decentered compositional aesthetics pursuing a music “after sound” offer two illustrations of a necessary desire to remain proactive and progressive musically and creatively, as well as critically, in contemporary music therapy.

Aaron Moorehouse is a PhD composer studying at Bath Spa University’s Open Scores Lab—a research group exploring novel approaches to scoring and new modes of music-making. His thesis investigates how music therapy frameworks may be used to draw attention to the psychosocial impacts of non-therapeutic music practices—subsequently illustrating that these impacts are present in any musical act, and encouraging composers to develop a vocabulary with which to address the psychosocial implications of their creative practices. Similarly, his own creative practice problematises the methods by which academic institutions draw distinctions between ethical and unethical creative practices (as well as the situations in which such distinctions are deemed necessary), and he often deliberately provokes hesitancy in order to uncover where these boundaries lie. Aaron’s work repeatedly manipulates and subverts various framing devices, and also makes frequent use of a multitude of other postmodern and postconceptual techniques—including fictocriticism and dematerialisation.

Claire Bishop questions the purpose of this rejection, especially when participatory works are explicitly conceived in order to benefit the lives of various individuals and groups (Bishop, 2004, 2012).