Tracing the Origins of Music Medicine

Humans have been using sound for therapeutic purposes for centuries, since long before the arrival of modern medicine. Let’s trace the origins of music therapy to learn more about where the practice came from—and where it may be heading next.

Music for mental distress, morbid inclinations, and tarantula bites?

In Aristotle’s famed texts, instruments like the flute were said to “arouse strong emotions and purify the soul” and ancient Greek physicians likely used them to improve digestion, sleep, and mental health. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the Greek God Apollo oversaw the realms of music and medicine, prompting disciples to sing to him in exchange for protection from disease. 

According to the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA), the first official reference to music therapy as it’s practiced clinically today (defined as the “clinical & evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish individualized goals”) appeared in 1789, in a text detailing how music was used to treat mental distress during medieval times.

Back then, some physicians believed that music could stimulate the senses in such a way that cleansed the body of “demonic powers.” Others would play music to patients as they slept in the hopes that its vibration would force morbid inclinations out of the subconscious. When inflicted with “tarantism,” a form of hysteria that was thought to be caused by a tarantula bite, people would dance to upbeat folk music for hours or even days, until the poison was “expelled” from their bodies.

Over time, different cultures around the world developed their own unique approaches to music and dance. The Indian classical ragas (melodies), for example, are thought to influence physical and mental health by engaging with the body’s chakras. Each melody is meant to be enjoyed during a particular time of day, to match the mood and energy of the hour. 

In the U.S., the concept of “musical organ-tropism,” which claims that certain sounds can heal afflictions of the cardiovascular, respiratory, and neuroendocrine systems, had spread to a small number of hospitals by the 1900s, which hired musicians to play for their patients.

But music therapy really found its footing across the country following World War II, when clinics were overwhelmed by the thousands of wounded discharged soldiers returning home. They started using music as a low-cost tool to help veterans regain mobility (by playing instruments), flex their memory (by listening to familiar songs), and relate to one another. 

As music therapist Triona M McCaffrey, PhD writes in a 2015 paper in the Music and Medicine journal, “Music may have opened a door to novel ways of restoring harmony to a society that had been traumatized by the destruction of war.”

Music therapy gains legitimacy

Not everyone was on board with the idea that music could be therapeutic during post-war times. Researcher Jane Edwards, PhD makes an interesting guess as to why in her 2008 paper, The Use of Music in Healthcare Contexts. Edwards notes that around this time, music was seen as a poor man’s hobby in crowded urban areas like London, where street musicians played on every corner. “Music everywhere for everyone was not a shared utopian vision,” she writes, and many physicians needed to see more scientific proof before they could believe that sound actually held medical value.

Ira Altshuler was one of the first psychiatrists to attempt to add such legitimacy to the field. He empirically studied music therapy by observing patients at Eloise Hospital in Michigan, where he eventually invented the Iso Principle of matching music to a patient’s current state before gradually guiding them into a desired state by adjusting the tune’s rhythm, dynamics, melody, and tempo.

Altshuler’s student, Esther Goetz Gilliland, was one of the first people to graduate with a college degree in music therapy in 1945. She went on to become the president of the National Association for Music Therapy; a group dedicated to designing a standardized curriculum for aspiring therapists. 

The association was instrumental (no pun intended) in integrating music therapy into the medical field at the time. “Psychiatrists must learn more about the healing power of music and musicians must learn more about psychiatry before much can be accomplished to bridge the gap,” Goetz Gilliland once said.

Today, roughly 9,000 people hold a Music Therapist, Board Certified (MT-BC) credential; a symbol of board certification. The field of music therapy is growing, but it’s not moving fast enough to meet the needs of an increasingly loud world. Noise pollution is a major concern, and more people than ever are suffering from conditions like loneliness, chronic stress, and anxiety—all of which can be assuaged using strategic sound exposure.

This is the impetus of Spiritune, which delivers therapeutic sound directly to smartphones across the world. Our app leverages music therapy and neuroscience to create tracks that can be self-administered at home, without the oversight of a therapist. These tracks take the foundational Iso Principle mentioned earlier and pair it with modern technology to allow anyone to access music medicine whenever they might need it—whether they’re studying for a big test or unwinding after a stressful day. 

Future predictions

Back in 1891, The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular published an article guessing that  hospitals would one day have “electric call-boxes provided with a special signal for summonsing the medical musician.”

Nearly 150 years later, that prediction is just starting to come true. Concetta Tomaino, DA, the Executive Director of The Institute for Music & Neurologic Function and the Music Therapy Advisor at Spiritune, predicts that doctors will soon be able to “prescribe” music therapy sessions or apps like Spiritune to their patients as alternative health treatments and have them covered by insurance. “That’s where the trend is right now: To find these ‘over-the-counter’ tools that people can use right away,” she says. 

At the same time, more research is emerging to support the therapeutic benefits of sound. In the last 20 years, the number of studies published on music therapy annually has shot up by over 400%, and there are currently 1,256 registered clinical trials being conducted on it around the world. Music is being studied and deployed in many medicinal contexts—to help ease the symptoms of dementia and Alzheimer's disease, depression, and even pregnancy and delivery.

Where the music medicine field will head next is anyone’s guess, but Jamie Pabst, Spiritune’s Founder & CEO, predicts that “we’re not far from a future where music is prescribed as readily as any other form of therapy, transforming lives on a large scale. Until music medicine is considered a frontline modality for mental health alongside traditional mainstream modalities like psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy, our work will not be done. This shift is crucial in addressing the global mental health crisis.”