The Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal Volume 4, Issue 1 Copyright 2008 To Dance Beneath the Diamond Sky with One Hand… Edited by Alex Lubet, University of Minnesota Minneapolis & Na’ama Sheffi Sapir Academic College Ashkelon, Israel Editor’s Note We are pleased to include in this issue the first half of a forum on music guest edited by Alex Lubet and Na’ama Sheffi. The second half of the forum will appear in the next issue of RDS, volume 4, issue 2. Thank you Alex and Na’ama for an excellent and comprehensive forum! Table of Contents Introduction: Music Beyond Norms To Dance Beneath the Diamond Sky with One Hand… Alex Lubet Beyond the Canon Sounds of Progress in the Academy: An Emerging Creative Partnership Peggy Duesenberry & Raymond MacDonald Book Review: Sounding Off: Theorizing Disability in Music Edited by Joseph Straus & Neil Lerne Reviewed by Kevin Schwandt Cultural Perspectives (and Beyond) The Gift Henry Kingsbury Robert Ashley and the Tourettic Voice Gavin Steingo Music Review: Nutters with Attitude Reviewed by Elizabeth Walker Book Review: The Truth of Music: Empire, Law & Secrecy by Henry Kingsbury Reviewed by Sarah Schmalenberger Beyond Therapy The Implementation of Batia Strauss's Method of Active Listening to Music with Didactic and Therapeutic Aims during Music Classes in Polish Public Schools Renata Gozdecka Life and Livelihood: Musicians Coping with Breast Cancer Sarah Schmalenberger To Dance Beneath the Diamond Sky with One Hand: Writings in Disability and Music Alex Lubet, Ph.D. Associate Editor, RDS University of Minnesota Welcome. It’s a tremendous privilege to once again edit an RDS special forum. For our collections on disability and music, I’m proud to be teamed with guest editor Dr. Na’ama Sheffi, Director of the School of Communication, Sapir Academic College, Ashkelon, Israel. Contributors hail from Poland, Scotland, England, Canada, and throughout the US, from Maine to Hawai’i. As a bonus, our forum includes not only articles but also reviews of recordings and books on music. RDS can justly claim to have originated disability studies in music in print in its 2004 premier issue and to have included music articles and reviews frequently hence. Much additional activity has ensued since that beginning, including articles, numerous conference papers at the Society for Disability Studies and elsewhere, a listserv (DISMUS-L@GC.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU), the formation of an interest group within the Society for Music Theory (http://web.gc.cuny.edu/disabilityinmusic/index.html), and an edited volume (Straus and Lerner’s Sounding Off: Theorizing Disability in Music, reviewed here). Surely there is more to come. Stay tuned. Even in this very young subfield of the still young field of Disability Studies, research directions are clearly emerging. Much work uses traditional music disciplines such as music theory and musicology as its point of departure. Even the most (literally) conservative institutions of classical music training, conservatories, are finding time and space to educate students with all manner of disabilities. Peggy Duesenberry and Raymond MacDonald report from Glasgow, Scotland on one particularly exciting program as well as its “cousins” around the UK. Their essay is followed by Kevin Schwandt’s review of the aforementioned Straus and Lerner collection, whose point of departure is the traditional musical academic disciplines. Ethnomusicology and its parent discipline anthropology are natural if underutilized bases for disability perspectives in music. They are represented here in articles by Henry Kingsbury and Gavin Steingo. Kingsbury, long known as a pivotally important ethnographer of Western classical music (a repertoire largely immune from such scrutiny, in favor of interrogations of more “exotic” musics) focuses here on the contributions of renowned amputee pianist Paul Wittgenstein. Steingo brings an insider’s knowledge to his analysis of American avant-garde composer Robert Ashley’s “Tourettic” Automatic Writing. They are joined by University of Leeds (England) ethnomusicologist Lizzie Walker’s review of the CD Nutters with Attitude and Sarah Schmalenberger’s review of Kingsbury’s book, The Truth of Music: Empire, Law & Secrecy. The longstanding (and often justified) schism between Disability Studies (DS) and the clinical praxes is addressed and perhaps even partly “healed” in essays by Renata Gozdecka and Sarah Schmalenberger. Polish music educator Gozdecka bridges what has heretofore seemed an untraversable chasm between music therapy and DS. She describes the incorporation of music therapy techniques with the theories of Israeli pedagogue Batia Strauss as implemented in the Polish public schools. Interesting and important lessons are offered for inclusive education through the application of music therapy methods to all students (often, though not always in Poland, in inclusive classroom settings). The idea that music therapy can benefit everyone and not only a “special” few more than illustrates the efficacy of Universal Instructional Design principles. It also challenges the notion of the “disabled other.” Musicologist and French horn performer Sarah Schmalenberger crosses more than one culture in her essay. A breast cancer survivor who writes from the perspective of performing arts medicine, she critiques that field for having largely failed to attend to the professional needs of those like her whose injuries, unlike those that primarily preoccupy those physician-specialists, are not a consequence of their employment as cultural workers. Exceptionally “medical” for an article in a DS journal, its important presence here stems not only from its abundance of practical information, but also its subjectivity, its recognition and description of breast cancer at every stage of illness and remission, including post-therapeutic trauma, as an impairment and disability overwhelmingly impacting women. Scholars working in fields beyond music, especially literature, have long dominated academic popular music studies. This has resulted, predictably, in an emphasis, arguably an overemphasis, on lyrics. The essays by Isaac Stein and Ray Pence transcend that limitation, extending their concerns considerably beyond verbal text. In the next issue, psychologist Isaac Stein offers an extraordinary appreciation of the life and career of his fellow Canadian Neil Young. It is an in-depth examination of what is widely though mostly superficially known; that Young is a person with disabilities, the father of two sons with disabilities, and a passionate and dedicated disability activist. Stein’s analysis is movingly interwoven into his own disability history in which Young emerges not as a rock and roll supercrip but as heroically honest and persistent in his dedication to a cause that is literally a family affair. Ray Pence of the American Studies program at the University of Kansas brings his interdisciplinary training to a long overdue consideration of the career of soul legend Curtis Mayfield, who late in life became a quadriplegic/diabetic/amputee, while continuing to pursue his creative work as composer and vocalist. Comprehensive, painstaking, and insightful, of particular interest is Pence’s scrutiny of the American media’s portrayal of Mayfield after the work-related accident that caused his major mobility impairments. The music of the disability rights movement and of disability culture must be regarded as a unique case. While stylistically grounded in popular idioms, it primarily serves a small and dedicated community rather than a mass populace. RDS’s own Steve Brown, a “movement” man who is both an historian and a participant in history provides a guided tour of his picks of the best songs and artists of the disability rights struggle. We close with essays that speak to one of the outstanding potentials of Disability Studies in music. Because music is understood within many cultural systems to be a manifestation of “talent” – extraordinary ability – its juxtaposition with disability – understood as talent’s opposite –offers an exceptional window on social praxis. Disability Studies, stationed at a particularly busy intersection of the body and culture, offers – and delivers – exceptional opportunities for interdisciplinarity. This has been particularly true of DS in music, the latter a field whose frequent hostility to participation by people with disabilities, particularly in Western music education (Duesenberry, MacDonald, and their likeminded British colleagues notwithstanding), has left little in the way of forthrightly musical sources for research, and has mandated that its scholars look beyond traditional music writings and methodologies. University of North Carolina art historian Ann Millett’s study of the musically influenced work of deaf visual artist Joseph Grigely (he does not exclusively identify with Deaf Culture) is an example of the new subfield of DS in music drawing its materials and ways of knowing from all intellectual corners. We close with my brief appreciation of nonagenarian guitarist Les Paul, whose diminished instrumental technique, a function of both impairment and age (perhaps a distinction but surely not a dichotomy) has left his ability to put on a good show undiluted, as he replaces the dazzle of fast fingers with the marvels of a century of wisdom and laughter. By maturing (and impairing) from primarily a player to substantially a storyteller, Les Paul’s performance makes him and the audience that embraces him role models. I close this introduction with a note about our forum’s title. Doubtless, many readers will recognize it as a line from Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” turned poetic “amputee” with the elimination of a few words. Some, however, may not be aware that the inspiration for this classic song was Dylan sideman guitarist Bruce Langhorne, himself an amputee, with three partial fingers on his right (picking) hand. Langhorne’s legacy in Dylan’s song (and on many classic Dylan cuts) is but a fraction of the evidence offered throughout this forum of what may be its most important theme; that a richly participatory life in music is everyone’s right and entirely feasible with the equipment – and spirit – we have today. Stay tuned. Alex Lubet St. Paul, Minnesota September 6, 2007 Beyond the Canon Sounds of Progress in the Academy: An Emerging Creative Partnership Peggy Duesenberry & Raymond MacDonald Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama: Department of Psychology Glasgow Caledonian University Abstract: This paper provides a project overview of an emerging partnership between Scotland’s national conservatoire, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) and Sounds of Progress (SoP), a music training and theatre production company specializing in working with people with disabilities. The paper seeks to introduce this partnership and its institutional context, to relate current work to previous research on other SoP projects, and to give an overview of some issues arising from the workshops, including professional training, new artistic possibilities, and integration with non-disabled musicians. Key Words: music and disability, Sounds of Progress, Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) ** Authors’ note – This paper was made possible through the assistance of RSAMD Access Coordinator Katja Riek, and we also are grateful for help with this research from SoP staff and participants, especially those interviewed. Special thanks to Fran Morton and Joe Harrap, for assistance with videos. Scotland’s national conservatoire, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD), has begun to open its doors and, tentatively, its curriculum, to disabled performers. In a recent development, RSAMD has begun to work with Sounds of Progress, a music training and theatre production company that specializes in working with individuals with a variety of impairments, including people with learning difficulties and/or physical disabilities. The first joint project, known as “Spotlight,” is a series of musical training workshops in which disabled and non-disabled musicians work together. The National Context for Inclusion of Disabled Students As recently reviewed by Barnes, universities in the United Kingdom did not become accessible for people with disabilities to any significant extent until the 1990s (Barnes, 2007); likewise, the conservatoire sector has not been at the forefront of movements to promote active participation by performers with disabilities. In 1999, the UK Quality Assurance Agency published a Code of Practice for Students with Disabilities that identified the need for an “element of proactive change within institutions” and required higher education institutions to enable “disabled students’ participation in all aspects of the academic and social life of the institution” (QAA, 1999). Although this led to an increased awareness of the need to provide a level playing field for students with disabilities, many higher education providers perceived conflicts between wider inclusion and the pursuit of excellence. The QAA Code of Practice encouraged the now widely-used system of Learning Agreements, in which a disabled student declares his/her disability, is assessed by occupational health practitioners, and an appropriate support system put in place by the institution. The Learning Agreements system is similar to the individual negotiations in Canadian universities, described by Jung (2003), with the important difference that UK Learning Agreements usually involve a welfare officer in arranging adjustments with individual instructors and examiners, and ensuring they are carried out. The Learning Agreements approach is also enforced by regulations concerning “reasonable adjustments” in the UK’s Disability Discrimination Act 1994 (DDA). The DDA has been criticized by disability theorists as ineffective or, more strongly, a charter allowing the non-disabled to excuse their oppressive practices (Barnes, 2000; Corker, 2000). This criticism relates closely to Jung’s view that accessibility based on individual negotiation serves to maintain the interests of the non-disabled educational establishment. In December 2006, a new Disability Equality Duty came into force in the UK, which requires public bodies to “act proactively on disability equality issues across the board, rather than on an individual basis” (Disability Rights Commission, 2006, p.4). The Disability Rights Commission has described this as a “quantum leap in legislation with an emphasis away from minimum compliance towards building a positive culture change.” Changes to physical plant, admissions procedures, and IT systems form a necessary part of the move to promote equality for disabled people, and to lessen the onus on individual disabled students for seeing that their needs are met. They further raise the threshold at which students need to make the decision to disclose a disability. Promoting equality, as distinct from preventing discrimination, moves UK public institutions towards an engagement with the social model of disability. These differences in the legal requirements relating to higher education may be related to the Linton/Hanks categories of social practices regarding disabled people. The reasonable adjustment or Learning Agreements model fits with the “Limited Participation” category, in which “disabled people’s roles and status are largely derived from their ability to be productive in terms of the standards set by the dominant majority” (Linton, 1998) and, in the case of students, they can participate and gain degrees as long as they can “keep up.” The Learning Agreements system for reasonable adjustments allows UK students with disabilities a better chance of “keeping up” within the established curriculum. The Disability Equality Duty seems more closely aligned with Linton’s “Participation and Accommodation” category, in which “procedures and standards are adapted to include everyone” (p. 54). The Institutional Context “It’s easier to move a graveyard than to change a school of music.”1 The present legal climate regarding disability requires the conservatoire sector to ask what it should be doing to educate disabled performers. With the exception of students with dyslexia, who form the largest population of students with disabilities in this sector, any answers other than “nothing” or “we’ll accept a few SuperCrips”2 represent a radical change for conservatoires. Educating disabled musicians involves changes to existing teaching practices, a potential impact on the curriculum, and legal obligations regarding discrimination and equality. These are questions affecting all educational institutions, and relate to creating an environment in which people with disabilities can “keep up.” For a national conservatoire, the Disability Equality Duty also requires consideration of the representation of disabled people in the arts, and who should be doing that representation. Included here is the question of what conservatoires should do to support and educate disabled performers not attempting to work in the mainstream, but preferring to operate within the Disability Arts movement. This includes issues of programming Disability Arts events for the public, and making sure all students are, at a minimum, aware of the sector. The Spotlight Project highlighted here represents an additional arena, that of specialized training for disabled musicians wanting to become active performers whether or not they wish to identify with the Disability Arts movement. The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama’s (RSAMD) response to the Disability Equality Day so far has taken several forms, including inclusion of wider access in the remit of the YouthWorks Department, the appointment of an Access Coordinator and formation of a Reachability Committee to oversee institutional responsibilities for equality in terms of race, gender and disability, staff development sessions to build increased awareness of the reasonable-adjustments approach to the existing curriculum, vast improvements to the physical plant to enable access, and occasional performances and workshops by disabled performers. RSAMD’s YouthWorks Drama has an actor with a visible disability on the staff, and the School of Drama is preparing for the matriculation of its first acting student to use a wheelchair. The significance of this “first” is hard to overstate: In 2003, the Arts Council of England reported that, in the 1980s, an Equity survey found that no disabled actor had ever been able to access professional training in the UK, though there were some disabled actors who had trained professionally prior to becoming disabled (Sutherland, 2003). There is little evidence that professional theatre training prospects for people with disabilities have improved much since then. The Sounds of Progress (SoP) Spotlight workshops form part of this multi-faceted approach to the Disability Equality Duty. The workshops are especially significant in that they represent a rare integration of a group of disabled musicians who are unlikely to “keep up” with existing degree programs, with non-disabled student musicians as part of their Bachelor of Music (BMus) curriculum. Sounds of Progress The musical activities discussed here are focused on the work of Sounds of Progress (SoP), an integrated music production company based in Glasgow that works predominately with individuals who have disabilities. SoP provides opportunities for people to explore their creativity through music. The company’s ongoing work includes delivering music workshops and recording and performance projects (MacDonald, Miell, & Hargreaves, 2002). The company encourages musicians to develop their skills to the highest standard and has an explicit educational objective in terms of developing the musical skills and awareness of all individuals who participate in SoP activities. The company focuses on enhancing a wide range of musical skills, but developments in rhythmic ability on percussion instruments, singing skills, and compositional and improvisational skills are some of the educational objectives employed. The company aims: 1. To provide access to creative music activities and professional training. 2. To facilitate integration between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged individuals. 3. To challenge existing perceptions of disabilities. 4. To create employment opportunities. SoP coordinates and delivers a range of musical activities including music education programs, performance and recording-based activities and music therapy interventions. As described by SoP’s music development officer Sally Clay: “We’ve got three main divisions within the organization ?We’ve got the workshop program which starts with people with little or no musical experience?and then we’ve got a kind of middle thing which is where this workshop is, which is Spotlight project and associated things like that which is basically for musicians that have…developed a skill [already]…And then after the Spotlight we’ve got the bands, which are…more professional level.” SoP Gamelan Workshops SoP has run Javanese gamelan workshops in which individuals with no previous experience of music making are given the opportunity to explore their creativity through music. A series of empirical psychological studies focused upon the SoP approach to delivering gamelan workshops in the 1990s (MacDonald, Davies, & O’Donnell 1999; MacDonald, Miell, & Hargreaves, 2002). In gamelan music there is no conductor. Instead, all communications are accomplished musically by one drummer leading the other musicians (Lindsay, 1989; Kartomi, 2001). Effort is therefore required by everyone to follow the variations in tempo that occur and emphasis is thus placed on group based communication. Another important feature of the use of gamelan with people with disabilities in mind is accessibility. Complicated digital dexterity is not required to commence playing many of the instruments in the gamelan ensemble. Given these particular characteristics, the gamelan caters to all levels of ability and is therefore an ideal ensemble to use for therapeutic applications of music. The gamelan workshops that were studied lasted approximately 90 minutes and began with rhythm exercises. The purpose of these warm-up sessions was relaxation and to help set up cohesive group dynamics, which are essential to the success of a workshop. The rest of the time was usually given over to playing the gamelan. Various methods were employed by the workshop leader to communicate musical ideas to the participants. Initially participants were asked to repeat a rhythmic pattern being played on one of the sarons (a small metallophone type instrument). More complex patterns were played as the workshop progressed and there was opportunity for improvisation within the context of any piece of music. The improvisatory element was not strictly within the gamelan tradition and participants were free to express themselves as they wished, but in reality the improvised music stayed close to the rhythmic and melodic elements that were being played in other sections of the workshop. The participants also had the opportunity to select a particular instrument of the gamelan. The emphasis was on group involvement and rhythmic awareness through musical participation, while at the same time attempting to cater for the individual needs of participants. A key question for the next phase of the research emerged: What are the psychological mechanisms that underpin these developments? The relationship between the social and cognitive variables under study led to the development of a research project that focused on joint attention processes (O’Donnell, MacDonald and Davies, 1999). Joint Attention Joint attention is defined as a shared focus of attention on the same object by two individuals and is similar to the concept of “shared social reality” (Rogoff, 1990). Both involve the need for a shared focus of activity or definition of the task and an agreed goal to work towards; these are negotiated between partners or group members. As a theoretical construct, joint attention has been well explored in language development work (Hughes, 1998; Morales, Mundy, & Rojas, 1998; Sigman, 1998). For example, the children of mothers who spend a longer time in linguistically active joint attention are observed to have larger vocabularies and more developed syntactic structures (Tomasello, 1992, 1995; Tomasello & Todd, 1983). In a development of the MacDonald, Davies, and O'Donnell (1999) studies reported above, a further study examined the interactions between individuals attending the music workshops to explore the possible relevance of joint attention processes in this setting. Independent raters watched short clips of participants in the experimental group and the control group communicating with another individual during the assessment sessions, which took place before and after each workshop. They rated each participant on a number of aspects of communication, measuring the amount of joint attention present. The participants in the experimental group showed significant improvements over the course of the ten-week workshop period in joint attention in comparison to the control group (O’Donnell, MacDonald & Davies, 1999). This study provides evidence that the developments in communication skills that were observed as a result of participation in the music workshops can in fact, be linked to developments in “joint attention.” Evidence suggests that joint attention is disrupted in children with atypical development (Harris, Kasari & Sigman, 1996; McCathren, Yoder & Warren, 1995). For example, children with Down syndrome find situations of joint attention particularly difficult (Kasari, Freeman, Mundy & Sigman, 1995; Roth & Leslie, 1998). Given our evidence that participation in music workshops may be effective in developing joint attention skills, we suggest that working closely and coordinating with others on music activities, particularly playing the gamelan, leads to these developments. For example, gamelan involves a combination of listening to instructions, paying attention to others’ performance, and appropriately executing one’s own part in synchrony with others. It involves executing a planned sequence of actions in the context of a joint attention task (as indeed do many types of musical activity). This research has gone some way towards mapping the effects of participation in musical activities on various specific musical, social and communication skills and uncovering a mechanism which might underlie these effects (Miell, MacDonald, & Hargreaves, 2005). This approach operates at a micro level, attempting to establish causal relationships between music interventions and certain specific musical and psychological variables, and we suggest that there will be important interactions between developments in these individual abilities and wider notions of personal and musical identity. Our research showed gains in key musical and psychological variables such as self-confidence and communication skills, and participation in music activities might also be expected to produce developments in more general beliefs, behaviors and feelings about the self and about musical abilities; that is, about the participants’ personal and musical identities. Experimental and observational research on the impact of participation in musical activities does not shed light upon these more general beliefs and identities of the people who participate in music activities, and so further research was required. Further Research In order to access individuals' own views of their identities we carried out a qualitative study using in-depth interviews with a small sample of participants who have been involved with SoP between 1990 and 2000. Adopting this type of research method is appropriate since it is a useful way to access individuals' own personal accounts, from their own unique “insider” perspective (MacDonald, Murray, & Levenson, 1999). The complex and sometimes contradictory nature of identities can be explored in detail through these extended accounts, and valuable information can be gained in the analysis of both the content of what is said, and the ways in which topics are talked about. The method is also compatible with the wider aims of SoP itself, which seeks to give a voice to all the individuals who work with the company, enabling them to take artistic control and help determine the way the company develops. Such an approach is perhaps most graphically demonstrated in one of their shows, Irreparable Dolphins, which focused on life histories and personal stories of individuals with disabilities. These narratives formed the basis for a musical production that highlighted some of the realities of living with disabilities for members of the company. Each member of the cast was interviewed and the transcripts from these interviews formed the basis of personal stories that were performed by each individual on stage. These qualitative interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed in accordance with criteria outlined by Denzin and Lincoln (1998). According to the social model of disability, the degree to which any impairment impinges on everyday life depends more on the physical context and the views and reactions of others with whom the person is interacting than on the nature of the impairment itself. Each of the individuals interviewed here was aware of the impact of other people’s expectations and prior assumptions about them, feeling that they were being judged on the basis of their appearance or assumed (lack of) competence rather than on their actual abilities. The participants all reported that working with SoP seemed to change other people’s expectations of their capability. A very important aspect of SoP is the professionalism of the performances and the work needed to achieve this. The participants felt that the work they did with SoP was “a complete professional job” and that this became widely known, so that their audience came to expect a “full professional sound.” In some ways, it was this professionalism that warranted the identities of both musician and person with a disability. The social constructionist view of identity as plural is one that in recent years has been drawn upon by disability researchers who argue that “disabled” is not the only identity open to individuals with a disability, as is often assumed. Other identities such as “professional” and “musician” are also made available and are publicly recognized through participation in these activities (Morris, 1993; Swain, et al., 1993). Linked in many ways to the issue of professionalism was a theme of gaining empowerment and a sense of personal responsibility from performing with SoP. For the people interviewed, taking responsibility for the work involved in doing “a professional job” was an important factor in feeling able to take on the identity of “musician,” or to broaden their access to different aspects of that identity. The results from the first studies reported here highlighted the impact that music interventions can have on discrete personal and social factors. The preliminary analysis of the interview material suggests that involvement in musical activities also has more general effects on the way in which people think about themselves and their position within society. These two developments are related in that music can be thought of as not only facilitating specific changes in musical and psychological factors, but also as contributing to the identity projects in which the individuals are engaged. Whilst we have been focusing our debate upon the activities of one particular music company (SoP), this has been presented as an example of how any musical participation, suitably structured, can be an excellent vehicle for leading to musical and personal gains for participants. We do not believe these effects will only be found with participants in SoP activities, but rather suggest that when music is employed for therapeutic/educational objectives in a structured and goal-directed way by individuals with musical expertise and training, then outcomes of the type reported here can be expected. The Spotlight Workshops Overview Spotlight is a three-phase program, run by Sounds of Progress, and spread over three years to provide long-term music training for disabled musicians with the ultimate goal of creating a “new professional-standard fully inclusive band or contemporary orchestra.” At the same time, Sounds of Progress hopes to “create a model that demonstrates good working practice in music inclusion”3 and to give conservatoire students some training in artistic inclusion. SoP’s artistic director Gordon Dougall hopes that, by working with Bachelors of Music (BMus) students in the Spotlight Project, SoP will develop a bigger pool of professionals who could be trusted to work appropriately with -- and without patronising -- SoP participants. Phase One of the Spotlight Project concentrated on individual skill development and ensemble work. Phase Two is in conjunction with RSAMD, and focuses on creation of new pieces of music during weekly workshop sessions led by SoP’s artistic director Gordon Dougall and music development officer Sally Clay. The instrumentation includes winds (flute, oboe, saxophone), percussion (drum kit, bin whackers, tuned bells), pianos and bass-line instruments (cello, guitar), and sessions are held weekly. Phase Three, which is planned for winter 2007/08, will focus on public performances. An important part of the Spotlight ethos is to construct an inclusive musical environment that is creative and not patronizing. By using a combination of aural tuition and improvisation, the focus is on inner hearing and creativity, and there is no need to read music. In addition, like most students in higher music education in the West, the RSAMD BMus students involved have little prior experience in improvisation, so they are being challenged musically as are the Spotlight participants. The Phase Two workshops held at RSAMD are structured in three parts: warm-up, directed rehearsal, and a more relaxed improvisation session. As the group assembles, they do warm-up rhythm exercises followed by a circle game involving naming each other and swapping places. Rhythm exercises have been used previously by Sounds of Progress, at the start of gamelan workshops for people with learning disabilities; these had the similar purpose of setting up group dynamics and fostering joint attention ( MacDonald, Davies, and O'Donnell, J. 1999). The circle game serves to center everyone, ground the group in the Spotlight ethos, and provide the routine that is good for all participants and essential for members with autism. As described by SoP’s music development officer Sally Clay: “We have this name game and the function of that is, obviously, there’s a lot of people in the group who’ve got autism, learning disabilities and things where their concentration won’t be necessarily on a level, won’t have been utilised in the same way, and they need to have these kind of exercises, like the name game, to keep their concentration going.” One of the BMus students had a slightly different understanding of the circle activity: ET: “It’s really great and I guess that’s really important for, like, for example people who are blind because if they didn’t have a game where you say everyone’s name, they wouldn’t necessarily know who’s there that day?It’s good for everybody, not just – but it’s kind of developing awareness of who’s there.” Next is the main work of the day, a directed rehearsal using a combination of aural tuition and improvisation. SoP leaders take small groups and demonstrate melodies and riffs, making sure participants learn them. They will direct repetitions until satisfied. Meanwhile, other subgroups are working on their parts: ET: “We were just trying to learn one of the riffs…we were just kind of making like a bass team, kind of trying to remember it. I think I’d got the tune by then so I was just repeating it and he got it too, eventually, on the guitar.” Then leaders take turns starting off the whole ensemble, or sometimes conducting. According Sally Clay, “At the moment we’re using rhythm to try and develop lots of different skills. And I think rhythm is a fundamental aspect of music.” Some of the rhythms participants are asked to learn are complex, and this is part of a deliberate strategy to stretch Spotlight participants, including those with learning difficulties. One BMus student described how she had underestimated a percussionist with Down syndrome when SoP’s artistic director was able to teach her a highly complex rhythmic pattern: “I spent ages trying to teach her something and then I thought she just wasn’t very able in some way, and then at the end of the group Gordon came to teach her and she learned it quite quickly.” The final part of the workshop has been described by one participant as “our mad time.” Much less directed by the Sounds of Progress leaders than earlier, this is a time for improvisation without a performance goal in mind. Participants can experiment, communicate, and be more relaxed or excited as they wish. Sometimes musical ideas are generated that can be used in subsequent directed work. It is a time when concentration levels do not need to be as high, but study of videoed workshop sessions indicates that participants are fully engaged with the musical group during this part of the workshop. Acoustic Instrumentation The Spotlight Project uses acoustic instruments, with no computer-assisted or electronic devices. This is in contrast to several music-training organizations for people with disabilities that have made innovative use of technology to enable wider access to music making. Roger Knox has outlined ten oft-used defeatist reasons for not using technology, all of which serve to disable musicians with impairments (Knox, 2001). But SoP has a different agenda in emphasizing acoustic instruments for this particular project: SC: “I suspect that developing people’s skills acoustically will mean their fine motor skills are developed, they are learning a craft which they can take [home] with them. They’re not dependent on the technology to use, to play their instruments?And also it means that it might be easier in performance situations …to get logistically into the venue and get the gear out. Maybe it’s because the environment, it’s a classical environment in a sense and given a bit more of a continual line.” The Spotlight project rationale for emphasizing acoustic instruments includes positive choices that help enable the Spotlight participants to gain access to public performance opportunities. This choice reflects both the particular impairments and abilities of the participants, and the particular institutional environment involved. Ultimately, the technological differences between Spotlight in the conservatoire and the adapted music movement are insignificant when compared with their similar aims of enabling people with disabilities to participate actively in music-making. The Conservatoire Space and Sounds of Progress Spotlight’s first phase was held in a very large, long room in another venue. The move into RSAMD premises for Phase Two has had a number of benefits: SC: “Due to us moving to the RSAMD, there’s a lot more positive climate, if that’s possible?For example, the space that we’ve got in that room is ideal for us to have. For us to interact on a more intimate level, it’s more of an intimate space than the one we had before?It’s a really good size. It’s good for me as a blind [person], sort of when I’m leading…it means it’s a bit safer…I can interact with people more easily than if I’m running about in this massive room. Acoustically it’s much better. The fact it’s got two pianos in it really makes a difference.” Location within the Academy building also creates opportunities for informal and serendipitous interactions with the large community of musicians in the building. The place of an integrated performance ensemble within the curriculum of a conservatoire BMus degree program deserves notice. The initial plan for the RSAMD’s involvement in Spotlight was to involve composition students and students in the RSAMD’s BA (Scottish Music) program. Organizational difficulties meant that this did not occur. Instead, Spotlight was offered as a placement to students in Community Music modules.4. This may be regarded as a stepping-stone to the goal of including an integrated performance ensemble in undergraduate performance modules. Integrated performing projects at UK higher education institutions have been described as are extra-curricular (e.g., Hellier-Tinoco, 2005), or as part of a more liberal-arts approach (Kuppers, 2000), but having an integrated and inclusive ensemble enter the degree curriculum for a BMus would be significant. Current websites of UK conservatoires show Disability Equality Statements5 and describe arrangements for Learning Agreements but do not highlight any integrated courses or ensembles at undergraduate level. For younger musicians, the Royal College of Music’s Junior Department has a three-year pilot program to enable visually impaired musicians to reach the level required for entry to mainstream music degrees.6 The Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) for Music and Inclusivity, involving six institutions in northeast England, plus the Open University, defines inclusivity as involving “students of diverse backgrounds,” a much wider range of musical genres than Western art music, and offers “opportunities for creative and enabling work (with, for example, children with special needs, and the elderly and mentally infirm)” including vibro-acoustic sound therapy.7 These aspects of inclusivity highlight agendas of class, race, and music therapy; they are quite different than the Spotlight goal of long-term training for musicians with disabilities. RSAMD’s new partnership with Sounds of Progress therefore complements other UK programs to widen access to higher education in music. Spotlight in the Context of Disability Arts Disability Arts has been defined as “art made by disabled people, which may or may not reflect the experience of disability.” In an essay to celebrate Disability Arts during the European Year of Disabled People, Allan Sutherland places this movement in contrast to both music therapy and integrated arts, and discusses the ways in which the Disability Arts movement has helped people with disabilities wanting careers in the arts, has produced work drawing on the experience of disability, and addresses a disabled audience (Sutherland, 2003). The Spotlight workshops fit this definition in some respects, but in having the additional role of providing artistic inclusion skills to RSAMD BMus students regardless of their disability status, it also functions as an integrated arts project. As SoP music development officer Sally Clay put it: “As far as I’m concerned it’s music. I’m not saying that everyone’s equal because they’re not. Everyone’s got different abilities. There’s people that have no physical, no apparent disability and they can’t play a note. As far as I’m concerned, you’re making music and the more that you can do it, the better.” Sally Clay has been involved in Disability Arts productions, currently including Blind Girl and the Crips, which she describes as “a deliberate ironic statement on life and a range of issues…disability, gender, sexuality.” She regards Disability Arts as a political platform and feels that the work of the Spotlight Project is of a different order: providing training to people with disabilities who otherwise would have no access to music education, and training professional musicians to work in further similar projects. The Spotlight workshops also may be compared to the Swedish theatre group Olla, described by Jens Ineland as having a dual role involving a government social services organisation and achieving critical distinction as a performing arts organization. Olla receives funding, and operates within, a social services context in Sweden but its work has both artistic and therapeutic aims: Olla seeks to make theatrical performances (notably an acclaimed production of Carmen) and to provide therapeutic activities for adults with disabilities. Ineland examines the institutional frameworks that create the dual role of artistic leader and care giver of Olla’s organizers. He reports that, like Sounds of Progress projects, Olla’s production of Carmen “represented an emancipatory practice in the way that its members received attention and appreciation for their performance as actors with disabilities and not as disabled actors” (Ineland, 2005). The aim of the Sounds of Progress Spotlight workshops is to produce musicians with a high level of performance skill, but there is also a recognized therapeutic value for all participants, both disabled and non-disabled, including increased confidence and social skills in an integrated musical environment. Sounds of Progress’s focus on musical genres, such as improvisation and gamelan, that do not require either a conductor or musical literacy, provides an important site for development of a socially responsible music education environment. The partnership with RSAMD means that this approach, which unfortunately may be described as unusual (cf. Lubet, 2004), can reach undergraduates aspiring to professional careers, provide better facilities for musicians with disabilities, and demonstrate a good model for inclusive working practices in musical performance. Peggy Duesenberry, Ph.D., is a fiddler and ethnomusicologist with a special interest in Scottish music. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for research for her Ph.D. thesis “Fiddle Tunes on Air:  A Study of Gatekeeping and Traditional Music at the BBC in Scotland, 1923 – 1957” (University of California Berkeley, 2000). More recently, her own experience of disability has led to an interest in disability studies. She is currently Lecturer in Research, Scottish Music, at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, Scotland where she supervises research students with topics in ethnomusicology and practice-based research. Contact Info: RSAMD, 100 Renfrew Street, Glasgow G2 3DB, Scotland. Email: p.duesenberry@rsamd.ac.uk http://www.rsamd.ac.uk/research/Peggy.htm Raymond MacDonald, Ph.D., is Professor of Music Psychology at Glasgow Caledonian University. His Ph.D., from The University is Glasgow, investigated the educational and therapeutic effects of music workshops for individuals with disabilities. He is currently editor of the Journal Psychology of Music and an associate editor of The International Journal of Music Education and The Jazz Research Journal. He has published over 70 research papers and presented over 100 conference presentations. He is co-editor of two books, Musical Identities and Musical Communication, both published by Oxford University Press. He has also been Artistic Director for Sounds of Progress. He currently supervises 10 Ph.D. students investigating such topics as music therapy, music education, and musical identities, and he is the head of the Glasgow Caledonian Music Research Group. As a saxophonist and composer he performs internationally and has recorded many CDs. Contact Info: Department of Psychology, Glasgow Caledonian University, Cowcaddens Road, Glasgow G4 0BA, Scotland. Tel.: +44 (0) 141 331 3971. Email: Raymond.MacDonald@gcal.ac.uk http://www.gcal.ac.uk/sls/Psychology/staff/macdonald/index.html References [0] Barnes, C. (2000). A working social model? Disability, work and disability politics in the 21st century. Critical Social Policy, 20(4), 441-457. Barnes, C. (2007). Disability, higher education and the inclusive society. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 28(1), 135-145. Corker, M. (2000). The UK Disability Discrimination Act - disabling language, justifying inequitable social participation. In L. P. Francis & A. Silvers (Eds.), Americans with disabilities: Exploring implications of the law for individuals and institutions (pp. 357-370). NY: Routledge. Disability Rights Commission (2006). Further and higher education institutions and the Disability Equality Duty: Guidance for Principals, Vice-Chancellors, governing boards, and senior managers working in further and higher education institutions in England, Scotland and Wales. http://www.drc.org.uk/pdf/Further_and_higher_education_institutions_and_the_DED_guidance2006.pdf Fulton, C. J. (2004). Miami soundscapes: An adapted educational model for the study of ‘home'. Paper presented at the British Forum for Ethnomusicology Annual conference, University of Aberdeen. Girolametto, L., Verbey, M., & Tannock, R. (1994). Improving joint engagement in parent child interaction: An intervention study. Journal of Early Intervention, 18, 155-167. Harris, S., Kasari, C., & Sigman, M. D. (1996). Joint attention and language gains in children with Down syndrome. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 100, 608-619. Hellier-Tinoco, R. (2005). Becoming-in-the-world-with-others: Inter-Act Theatre Workshop. Research in Drama Education, 10(2), 159-173. Ineland, J. (2005). Logics and discourses in disability arts in Sweden: a neo-institutional perspective. Disability and Society, 20(7), 749-762. Jung, K. E. (2003). Chronic illness and academic accommodation: Meeting disabled students' "unique needs" and preserving the institutional order of the university. Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, 30(1), 91-112. Kartomi, M., & Mendonca, M. (2001). Gamelan. In S. Sadie (Ed.), The new Grove dictionary of music and musicians (pp. 497-507). London: MacMillan. Kasari, C., Freeman, S., Mundy, P., & Sigman, M. D. (1995). Attention regulation by children with Down syndrome: Coordinated joint attention and social referencing looks. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 100, 128-136. Knox, R. (2004). Adapted music as community music. International Journal of Community Music, 1(1). http://www.intljcm.com/articles/knox.html Kuppers, P. (2000). Accessible education: Aesthetics, bodies and disability. Research in Dance Education, 1(2), 119-131. Lindsay, J. (1989). Javanese gamelan: Traditional orchestra of Indonesia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Linton, S. (1998). Claiming disability: Knowledge and identity. New York: New York University Press. Lubet, A. (2004). Tunes of impairment: An ethnomusicology of disability. The Review of Disability Studies, 1(1), 133-156. MacDonald, R. A. R., Davies, J. B., & O'Donnell, P. J. (1999). Structured music workshops for individuals with learning difficulty: An empirical investigation. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 12(3), 225-241. MacDonald, R. A. R., & Miell, D. (2000). Creativity and music education: The impact of social variables. International Journal of Music Education, 36, 58-68. MacDonald, R. A. R., & Miell, D. (2004). Musical collaboration. In K Littleton & D. Miell (Eds.), Learning to collaborate, collaborating to learn understanding and promoting educationally productive collaborative work (pp. 133-146), New York: Nova Science. MacDonald, R. A. R., Miell, D., & Hargreaves, D. J. (Eds.). (2002). Musical identities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. MacDonald, R. A. R., Miell, D., & Morgan, L. (2000). Social processes and creative collaboration in children. European Journal of the Psychology of Education, 15(4), 405-416. MacDonald, R. A. R., Miell, D., & Wilson, G. B. (2005). Talking about music: a vehicle for identity development. In D. Miell, R. A. R. MacDonald, D. J. Hargreaves (Eds.), Musical communication (pp. 321-338). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Miell, D., & MacDonald, R. A. R. (2000). Children’s creative collaborations: The importance of friendship when working together on a musical composition. Social Development, 9(3), 348-369. Miell, D., MacDonald, R. A. R., & Hargreaves, D. J. (Eds.). (2005). Musical communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Morales, M., Mundy, P., & Rojas, J. (1998). Following the direction of gaze and language development in 6-month-olds. Infant Behavior and Development, 21, 373-377. O’Donnell, P. J., MacDonald, R. A. R., & Davies J. B. (1999). Video analysis of the effects of structured music workshops for individuals with learning difficulties. In D. Erdonmez & R. R. Pratt (Eds.), Music therapy & music medicine: Expanding horizons (pp. 219-228). Saint Louis: MMB Music. Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (1999). Code of Practice for the assurance of academic quality and standards in higher education: Section 3: Students with disabilities. The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. http://www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/codeOfPractice/section3/default.asp Roth, D., & Leslie, A. M. (1998). Solving belief problems: Toward a task analysis. Cognition, 66, 1-31. Sanger, A., & Kippen, J. (1987). Applied ethnomusicology: The use of the Balinese Gamelan in recreational and educational music therapy. British Journal of Music Education, 4(1), 5-16. Sigman, M. (1998). Change and continuity in the development of children with autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 39, 817-827. Sounds of Progress (n.d.) http://www.sop.org.uk/ Sutherland, A. (2003). Celebrating disability arts. London: Arts Council England. Tomasello, M. (1992). The social bases of language acquisition. Social Development, 1, 67-87. Tomasello, M. (1995). Joint attention as social cognition. In C. Moore, P. J. Dunham, et al. (Eds.), Joint attention: Its origins and role in development (pp. 103-130). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Vancouver Adapted Music Society. (n.d) http://www.disabilityfoundation.org/vams/about.htm Book Review Title: Sounding Off: Theorizing Disability in Music Editors: Neil Lerner and Joseph N. Straus. Foreword by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson. Publisher: Routledge, 2006 Paper, ISBN: 0-415-97907-2, 312 pages. Reviewer: Kevin Schwandt, School of Music, University of Minnesota Over the past several decades, music scholars have increasingly sought to examine the myriad ways music interacts with, reflects, and constructs various aspects of identity and difference. Musical academia tends to lag a bit behind other fields in the application of critical and cultural theories and such approaches continue to encounter significant disciplinary resistance from some quarters. Yet when musicologists, ethnomusicologists, and music theorists seriously engage these issues, the results can have profound implications both for the study of music and for the uses of music by scholars from other fields. Neil Lerner and Joseph N. Straus’s edited collection of essays Sounding Off: Theorizing Disability in Music makes just such contributions. One of the most significant impediments to interdisciplinary musical studies has been the assumption that discussing music requires a prohibitively technical language. Several of the collection’s essays—particularly in the third part, “Composing Disability Musically”—do, in fact, seem to assume a certain level of proficiency in the parlance of music theory, but throughout the collection, those authors who engage in close musical analysis take pains to explain the broader implications of both the theoretical concepts they utilize and the specific observations their theoretical lenses enable. Therefore, while music non-specialists may, in isolated passages, find themselves puzzling over certain terminology, these moments of discipline-specific jargon should not prove a significant hindrance. Rather, as all good cultural studies should strive to do, the authors provide gateways through which scholars from a wide range of fields can access the cultural products under scrutiny. Some of the collection’s authors avoid technical analysis of specific works and, instead, engage broader issues of musical performance and reception. Laurie Stras’s, “The Organ of the Soul: Voice, Damage, and Affect,” is particularly exemplary of this approach. Her examination of how the valuing of certain vocal sounds under the standard rubric of classical training construes voices which deviate from the norm as “impaired,” reveals the complexity of audiences’ relationships with particular kinds of vocal production, while suggesting useful frameworks for understanding such subjective responses. Dave Headlam’s, “Learning to Hear Autistically,” presents equally engaging prospects for the productive reconfiguration of the reception of cultural products when we are brave enough not to construe physical or psychological difference as pathology or deviance. Through a remarkably diverse set of applications of Disability Studies, Sounding Off consistently challenges some of the most basic assumptions of musical rhetoric and structure in order to reveal the latent ableism underpinning them, as well as to suggest the enormous value of critically engaging their cultural implications. How does the standard Western musical valuing of teleological structures—perhaps most aptly condensed in that basic building block of musical education, the “harmonic progression”—relate to discourses of “curing” and traditional conceptions of life narratives? How does the systematization of composition, performance and reception limit or hinder the potential for differently-bodied musical engagement? Most importantly, how can Disability Studies contribute to the dismantling of ableism in music, and how can music contribute to the dismantling of ableism in culture more broadly? Sounding Off is an important step in these processes and, as more interdisciplinary studies of disability and music emerge, it should serve as a useful reference in the development of theoretical vocabularies. Cultural Perspectives (And Beyond) The Gift Henry Kingsbury Kennebunk, Maine Abstract: This paper, invoking Mauss, will describe a series of musical gifts given to and by Paul Wittgenstein (1887-1961), celebrated one-armed pianist. In 1915, after losing an arm in the war, Wittgenstein was given a remarkable gift: His teacher, the blind organist and composer Josef Labor (1842-1924), presented Wittgenstein with three newly-composed works for a one-armed pianist. Wittgenstein promptly reciprocated Labor’s gift by performing these works near Prague. Far more significantly: Wittgenstein’s response to Labor’s gift was not limited to playing these works. A gift “receives its meaning… from the response it triggers” (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 5), and Wittgenstein answered Labor’s gift by devoting the rest of his life to being a one-armed concert artist. Wittgenstein’s long career can be seen as reciprocation for Labor’s original gift. But Wittgenstein has given us a gift, as well. Wittgenstein was “intrigued with how genius would handle this unusual problem” (Flindell, 1971 p. 114), and between 1923 and 1950, he commissioned works from numerous composers (R. Strauss, Britten, Prokofieff, others), the most important of which was by Ravel. Ravel’s concerto not only demands breath-taking virtuosity from the soloist (most of the Wittgenstein repertoire does this), but also involved structural complexities not found in the standard repertoire (Kingsbury pp. 56-59). However: Ravel rather intensely disliked Wittgenstein’s manner of playing, and in 1936 Ravel assigned his concerto to a two-handed pianist. Nowadays, the “Wittgenstein repertoire” is mainstream repertoire. This repertoire is Wittgenstein’s answer to Labor’s original gift, but it is also Wittgenstein’s gift to us all. Key Words: Paul Wittgenstein, Maurice Ravel, one-handed pianists I will speak to you about the hau... The hau is not the wind that blows, not at all. Let us suppose that you possess a certain article (taonga) and that you give me this article. You give it me without setting a price on it. We strike no bargain about it. Now, I give this article to a third person, who, after a certain lapse of time, decides to give me something as payment in return (utu). He makes a present to me of something (taonga). Now, this taonga that he gives me is the spirit (hau) of the taonga that I received from you and that I had given to him. The taonga that I received for these taonga (that I received from you) must be returned to you” (Mauss, 1990, p. 11). In this essay I will recount a few events from the music history of 20th century Europe. In this incident, a horrific bodily impairment (dismemberment – loss of the right arm) was transformed from a disability into a cultural gift. Sometime in the fall of 1915, Leopoldine Wittgenstein, a 65 year old widow in Vienna, welcomed her son home from the war. His Holiness, Pope Benedict XV, had arranged for an exchange of war prisoners, and one of these newly-released prisoners was her 28 year old son Paul. Now, release from prisoner-of-war status can only be “good news” for the individuals involved, and such it certainly must have been for Paul Wittgenstein.1 On the other hand, the circumstances of his capture by the Russian army relate to a rather calamitous fact: Paul Wittgenstein had not been captured on the battlefield, but in a Polish hospital, where his right arm had just been amputated. Frau Wittgenstein’s boy was returning to his hometown not just as a released POW, but as a war casualty. Notwithstanding the horrific carnage that was about to envelop Europe over the next three (let alone, the next thirty) years; this homecoming-of-the-maimed can only have been a traumatic event. Paul's father Karl had been a highly successful industrialist, and the Wittgensteins were a wealthy family. As a small child, Paul had played piano duets with his mother, a highly accomplished pianist who became his first music teacher. Later, Paul went on to study music theory with a respected Viennese organist-pianist-composer by the name of Josef Labor, and piano with the nonpareil piano teacher, Theodore Leschetitzky (now famous for having been the teacher of such giants as Ignaz Paderewski and Artur Schnabel). Young Paul had also played piano duets with Richard Strauss, for this great composer was a frequent visitor in the Wittgenstein home, as were Clara Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Gustave Mahler, Edward Hanslick, and other illustrious figures of the Vienna music scene. At the age of twenty-six – that is, just a few months before he packed off to war – Paul Wittgenstein had played a debut concert in Vienna, performing a concerto by the Irish composer John Field, and another by his teacher, Josef Labor. His debut had been sufficiently successful as to portend a career as a concert artist. The war – the amputation of his right arm – would put an end to all that. Perhaps, but perhaps not, for Paul Wittgenstein was about to be given an extraordinary gift. As soon as the young soldier-pianist returned home, 2 his former teacher started composing a series of full-scale compositions for a one-armed pianist. Josef Labor composed a sonata for piano and violin, a piano quartet (i.e., for piano, violin, viola, and cello), as well as an orchestral concert-piece, all for a one-armed pianist (Flindell, 1971, p. 126f). The impact of Labor’s remarkable gift was felt immediately. As Wittgenstein would say, many years later, “I immediately determined upon the plan of training myself to become a one-armed [left hand] pianist, or at least to attempt it.”3 Josef Labor was at that time in his mid-seventies; for almost all of those years, he had been blind. Well may one conjecture as to the thoughts that an aging blind musician might have entertained on the subject of the calamity that had just befallen his prize pupil. In any event, by the early months of 1917, with the war still raging, Paul Wittgenstein had already performed several Labor works in recitals in two small cities in Bohemia (Teplice, 12/19/16; Kladno, 1/9/17) and, apparently, elsewhere.4 Wittgenstein’s wartime one-armed recitals were not unprecedented. In May of 1915, while the newly-amputated Paul Wittgenstein was still being held in a Siberian war-prison, there had been in Berlin a lecture recital by a celebrated one-armed piano virtuoso from Budapest – a Hungarian nobleman named Geza Zichy. The audience for Zichy’s 1915 lecture-recital was made up entirely of war casualties, and Zichy’s lecture was an inspirational “pep talk” addressed to the wounded soldiers. I do not know whether or not the Wittgenstein household in Vienna, or perhaps Josef Labor, knew about Zichy’s performance before these German war veterans in Berlin, although such seems entirely plausible. It is all but certain that the Wittgenstein household would have known of Zichy’s career, and that, upon learning of Paul’s war injury, the significance of Zichy’s career would have taken on great importance.5 Count Geza Zichy (1849-1924 – one year older than Frau Wittgenstein) had lost his right arm at age 14 in a hunting accident. He took up serious piano study only after his amputation, apparently as part of a rather grimly-gritty determined youthful resolve to completely overcome his adversities. He eventually became the protégé of Franz Liszt, and concertized widely throughout Europe for many years. For more than forty years (1875-1918), Zichy was director of the national conservatory in Budapest, and during that period he also composed and produced five full-length operas. From 1891 to 1894, he held an authoritative administrative position at the Royal Hungarian Opera and, although this was a fairly brief period, it was significant for having precipitated the resignation of Gustav Mahler, who was then music director of the Royal Hungarian Opera -- as well as a personal friend of the Wittgenstein family. In a word, Zichy was a “bigshot.” His concertizing had drawn raves from another friend of the Wittgenstein family, Edward Hanslick, probably the most influential critic in Europe. Hanslick had once written – “The most astounding thing we have heard in the way of piano playing in recent times has been accomplished by a one-armed man – Count Geza Zichy…his lightning-like jumps, skips, and glides and his polyphonic legato playing were so extraordinary that his listeners could scarcely believe their ears and eyes” (quoted in Edel, 1994, p. 27). This Hanslick review (very much truncated here!) had come in response to an 1882 Zichy recital in Vienna. In 1882, Frau Wittgenstein would have been 32 years of age, and already minding four children. She was hobnobbing with Hanslick and others of the Viennese musical elite, and it is inconceivable that she would not have known about a musical celebrity such as Zichy. It seems unthinkable that later, when her own son became an amputee himself, she and her friends around her would not be thinking of the career of Geza Zichy as a model.6 Special mention must be made of the fact that Josef Labor’s musical gift to the young amputee included a Konzertstücke, a concert-piece, for piano solo with full symphony orchestra. This was not a little sonatina for piano solo, not something that Paul Wittgenstein would play at home by himself, or in front of the family. Josef Labor’s gift was an unmistakable career-challenge. And while it is possible that Paul Wittgenstein would have required no urging to continue with his piano playing, it is also possible that he would have chosen another direction for his life. Consider, for example, this observation by the cellist Pablo Casals, who suffered a near-catastrophe while mountain climbing on his first concert tour of the US, in 1901: “Suddenly one of my companions shouted, ‘Watch out, Pablo!’ I looked up and saw a boulder hurtling down the mountainside directly toward me. I jerked my head aside and was lucky not to be killed. As it was, the boulder hit and smashed my left hand – my fingering hand. My friends were aghast. But when I looked at my mangled bloody fingers, I had a strangely different reaction. My first thought was, ‘Thank God, I’ll never have to play the cello again’” (Casals, 1970 p. 105) I have no way of knowing what if any thought Paul Wittgenstein may have given to his imperiled career as a piano virtuoso on the day his arm was shattered by Russian bullets, or on the day when the surgeons removed it altogether. I have no way of knowing whether Wittgenstein might have had thoughts similar to those of Casals, fourteen years earlier. In light of what Casals said, however, it should be clear that such thoughts were not impossible, but/and that Labor’s gift of full-length compositions would have cast any such thoughts in a most unacceptable light. Such can be the power of the giving of gifts. And there remains the truly extraordinary historical fact that barely a year after returning from the war, Paul Wittgenstein did indeed perform in public, as soloist with symphony orchestra, on December 19, 1916, and again with a chamber-music ensemble on January 9, 1917 -- playing with the only hand he still had. However, Wittgenstein was not yet finished with his reciprocation of Josef Labor’s gift. In response to Labor’s gift, Wittgenstein would not limit himself to the playing of just those pieces. Wittgenstein’s response would be an entire career as a one-armed pianist. In 1918, however, even after having performed Labor’s gift compositions, the career prospects for a one-armed pianist were either slim or none. There were some pleasant musical miniatures by Camille St. Saëns, Max Reger, and a few others, but neither the quantity nor the quality of the one-hand repertoire was such as to indicate a concert career. Wittgenstein set about to remedy that fact in two ways. One thing that Wittgenstein did was to make his own transcriptions, re-arranging standard works into solo pieces for a one-armed pianist. With these as a basis, he generated a career as a one-armed concert pianist. As such, Wittgenstein performed in the “normal” concert venues of Europe. Although he certainly was a sensation, he equally certainly was NOT a freak-show. The following eyewitness/earwitness testimony is typical: “I was about 12 years old when I heard Paul Wittgenstein play for the first time. I was sitting with my father in our subscription seats in the rear of the Wiener Musicverein Saal. After the concert, my father asked me if I had noticed anything unusual about the pianist. I had not. He told me then that the pianist had only played with his left hand. I could not believe it” (quoted in Flindell, 1971, p. 113). The other career-building tactic that Wittgenstein used was to draw on his own considerable financial wealth and to commission the composition of large-scale works from leading composers of the era. Wittgenstein’s many commissions must also be understood as responses to the original Labor gift of 1915. Herein lies the significance of Pierre Bourdieu’s observation that appears at the head of this chapter, “The gift receives its meaning from the response it triggers.” Herein also, it seems to me, is a response to the observation of Theodore Edel, who in his discussion of Geza Zichy remarks that “it seems rather strange that Zichy did not use his wealth to enrich his repertoire with commissions from great colleagues, as Paul Wittgenstein would later do” (Edel, 1994, p. 29). As Marcel Mauss observed in The Gift (2000), the obligation to reciprocate for the receipt of a gift is an extremely powerful cultural force. The cultural difference between Zichy and Wittgenstein may well be understood in terms of the fact that Wittgenstein’s disability was, but Zichy’s was not, the focus of the presentation of an important gift. Some of Wittgenstein’s composers – Hans Gál, Eric Korngold, Franz Schmidt, Serge Bortkiewicz, and Alexander Tansman – are largely forgotten, and unknown to today’s audiences. Others – Benjamin Britten, Richard Strauss, Sergei Prokofieff, Paul Hindemith, and Maurice Ravel – are canonized composers with an enduring reputation. Of these, Ravel is unquestionably the most important to the present discussion, because his “Wittgenstein Concerto” has itself become a standard repertoire item of the concert-world. Ravel’s Concerto pour la main gauche is regularly performed and recorded by “normal” two-handed piano virtuosi (such as Casadesus, De Larrocha, Entrement, Katchen, and Zimmerman), as it is generally considered to be one of Ravel’s greatest and most unusual works.7 On the other hand, the list of composers who wrote works for Wittgenstein is noteworthy also for several names that are absent. It is no accident, for example, that Wittgenstein did not commission one-handed repertoires from Arnold Schoenberg, or Igor Stravinsky, or Bela Bartok. Wittgenstein’s musical tastes were decidedly romanticist, and the intensely dissonant styles of these arch-modernist composers were alien to Wittgenstein. It is significant that, although he did commission works from Hindemith and Prokofieff (both of whom were fairly modernistic), in each both case, he rejected these works and they were never played. Wittgenstein’s musical preferences are indicated in this entry for Serge Bortkiewicz in The New Grove – “Bortkiewicz’s piano style is rather typical of the Post-Romantic Russian tradition: based on Liszt and Chopin, nurtured by Tchaikowsky and Russian folklore, virtually unaffected by 20th century trends in Europe. His workmanship is meticulous, his imagination colorful and sensitive, his piano writing idiomatic…” (Schwartz, 1994). Unfortunately, the phrase, “virtually unaffected by 20th century trends,” carries with it the invidious implication that composers such as Bortkiewicz failed to partake of the major cultural events of their own times, essentially because they continued, in the twentieth century to adhere to a romanticist musical idiom. Thus Schoenberg, who lived from 1874 to 1951, is considered a genuine “twentieth century composer” because his harmonic style was invented in the twentieth century, while the younger Bortkiewicz (1877-1952) is likely to be thought of as a musical anachronism, as one whose musical creativity was not in keeping with the spirit of the times. This sort of historiological ideology tends to diminish the historical significance of Wittgenstein’s career, since he eschewed, by and large, the more striking stylistic innovations of composers such as Schoenberg, Bartok, Stravinsky, Berg and Webern. If, in the context of academic music history, Wittgenstein’s career is not treated as a “freak-show,” it is, nevertheless, treated as a musicological sidebar, as something standing to one side of the mainstream of music historical evolution. It occurs to me that this is misleading for two reasons. First, it implicitly treats “music” as an absolute, autonomous, and self-directed domain having its own history, a history that in the twentieth century was fixated on the evolution of harmonic styles in an increasingly dissonant fashion. Second, it elides the very important element of cultural disruption that was, in point of historical fact, caused by the events of Paul Wittgenstein’s career. It is not only axiomatic, but also paradigmatic, that musicologists think of an event such as the tumultuous premier of Le Sacre de Printemps as defining moments of twentieth century music history. Such jarring works as Le Sacre, or Bartok’s Allegro Barbaro, or Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, are typically characterized as era-defining works, largely in connection with the spirit of cultural disruption – epater le bourgeois – that they created. Alongside such a standard, the career of Paul Wittgenstein is likely to be thought of merely as a curiosity, a personality-story with only a minimum of “musical” significance, and this, because Wittgenstein’s musical taste was “conservative,” and not in keeping with the harmonically “progressive” developments of “the twentieth century.” In spite, or perhaps, rather, in light of this, it is important to state directly that Wittgenstein’s career created its own cultural upheaval, identifiable on at least two counts. First, the concert-going public was amazed. Second, the experts didn’t know what to make of it. But, hello: Confused amazement might well be taken as the characteristic trait of the cultural response to Le Sacre and Pierrot. As for the audience’s amazement, I will be brief, and confine myself to the general observation that Wittgenstein’s concerts were universally accepted as “serious” music, and consistently left listeners with the impression that they were listening to a two-handed pianist. The above-quoted remark of the twelve-year-old piano student who didn’t even notice Wittgenstein’s disability is, I think, ample testimony, even if it came from a young girl. A young girl is only a young girl, but twelve-year-old girls can be extremely curious and observant, and a twelve-year-old piano student who is in a Vienna concert-hall is not a babe in arms. This, however, only leads to my second point, for if that young girl didn’t know what to make of things, she was not alone. Consider, for example, this commentary from the music pages of The New York Herald Tribune: “Doubtless the greatest tribute that one could pay to Paul Wittgenstein, the famous one-armed pianist, is a simple statement of the fact that after the first few moments of wondering how in the devil he accomplishes it, one almost forgets that one was listening to a player whose right sleeve hung empty at his side. One found oneself engrossed by the sensitiveness of the artist’s phrasing, the extent to which his incredible technique was subordinated to the delivery of musical thought” ( quoted in Flindell, 1971, p. 117). There are, today, numerous recordings of Wittgenstein’s performances, and there should be little question but that this reviewer’s incredulity about “how in the devil he accomplishes it” is misplaced: Wittgenstein’s pianistic technique was markedly limited. The period between the two world wars was an era when pianistic giants walked the earth; our Herald Tribune reviewer would most assuredly have been familiar with the piano playing of Moritz Rosenthal, Serge Rachmaninoff, Josef Lhevinne, and Joseph Hoffman, each or any of whom could have tied at least one hand behind his back and still played circles around Paul Wittgenstein. And I didn’t yet mention Leopold Godowski, the super-virtuoso sometimes called “the apostle of the left hand,” in connection with his many transcriptions and compositions for the left hand alone. 8 Far, far more significant in this commentary is the reviewer’s reference to “a player whose right sleeve hung empty at his side.” Surely, the reviewer’s familiarity with the likes of Rachmaninoff and Lhevinne had not prepared his critical sensibilities for this! In fact, the above Herald Tribune quotation comes from a review of a Wittgenstein performance of the Ravel concerto, and it should be said directly that Ravel’s concerto, rather like some of the major works of the dissonant modernists (Le Sacre, or Pierrot Lunaire), created a furor-sensation that included its own quotient of confusion and misunderstanding. For example, it is a point of considerable mystique that the Ravel concerto creates the illusion that the pianist is playing with two hands. As has already been mentioned, the illusion of twohandedness was a characteristic of Wittgenstein’s performances generally, but the impact of Ravel’s concerto was to introduce this issue anew, as though the salient accomplishment of Ravel’s concerto was the illusion of two-handedness. As though arguing in favor of this canard, none other than Alfred Cortot, who was perhaps the most celebrated French pianist of that epoch, re-wrote the entire solo part for two hands! Hastily should it be said that as soon as he learned about it, Ravel expressly forbade its performance, but Cortot’s venture bears witness to the mystique of the Ravel concerto, in which a one-armed pianist does what another pianist would do with two. 9 There was one particularly important contemporary observer who noted the shortcomings of Wittgenstein’s piano playing, Ravel himself. After being disappointed by Wittgenstein’s rendition of his concerto, Ravel went to considerable lengths to dissociate himself from Wittgenstein, and eventually appointed a different two-handed pianist 10 as the preferred exponent of the piece. The Ravel-Wittgenstein quarrel provides the juicy gossip that musicologists love to whisper: Wittgenstein: I am an old hand as a pianist, and what you wrote does not sound right. Ravel: I am an old hand at orchestration, and it does sound right (quoted in Long, 1971, p. 59). Although, as I have indicated, Wittgenstein’s pianistic technique was not so advanced as that of some others, it is apparent that Ravel’s primary misgivings were oriented more toward his style, and particularly toward his penchant for making alterations in the composer’s text. A major point of conflict between Ravel and Wittgenstein was on the matter of whether or not the performer must always adhere precisely to the dictates of the score, or whether the performer has the authority to make ad libitum changes: Wittgenstein: Performers must not be slaves! Ravel: Performers are slaves (ibid). Ravel’s insistence that “performers are slaves” means that as far as Ravel was concerned, the performer is obliged to strictly (slavishly) obey the written indications of the score, and is forbidden the license to improvise or make modifications, emendations, and elaborations. The urgency of this issue, the reason this engendered conflict with Wittgenstein, is that in the era of pianistic romanticism, many performers took it to be their prerogative to make modifications in their work. Why would this have been such a sticking point for Ravel? Why couldn’t Ravel simply let Wittgenstein “do his own thing?” The most obvious answers relate to the fact that literalistic interpretations of musical scores was very much in ascendancy at the time, and also that Ravel’s compositional style was characterized by extremely detailed refinement of particulars (Stravinsky famously characterized Ravel as a “Swiss Watchmaker”). There is, however, an intriguing paradox here. Maurice Ravel had received a commission from Paul Wittgenstein, a romanticist virtuoso struggling to transcend the limitations of his disability (and not to be a “slave” to circumstances). Ravel was meticulously anti-romanticist and decreed that the soloist must indeed be a “slave.” Nevertheless, Ravel composed a work that, more than any other establishes the soloist (slave?) as the triumphant conqueror of the musical event. From the viewpoint of a music analyst, the most salient trait of the Ravel Concerto for Left Hand pertains not the one-hand/two-hands illusion; it is the formal structure of the work. Alone in the European art music repertoire, the Ravel Concerto for Left Hand is characterized by a solo part that, by the end of the work, has unquestionably become dominant over the orchestra (which in this case happens to be a very large orchestra). This formal-structural characteristic makes Ravel’s concerto unique within music history. To be sure, the illusion of a two-handed pianist is an important factor within this organizational pattern, but it is important to realize that, in comparison, no concerto for a two-handed pianist features an orchestra part that is structurally subordinated to the soloist, as is the case with the Ravel Concerto for Left Hand. This calls for at least a bit of analytical elaboration. The Ravel concerto is in one movement comprised of three sections; the first and third of these are slow-moving and in triple meter, the second is a rapid, tarantella-like passage in duple meter. By no stretch of the analytical imagination can this rapid middle section be understood as a “development section,” and the one movement of this piece cannot be understood as being “in sonata form.” On the other hand, the first and last sections do indeed relate to each other rather in the fashion of the “exposition” and “recapitulation” of a genuine sonata-form movement (thus: the final section includes re-statements of all the tunes that had been heard in the opening section, and the re-statements of these various tunes show different key-relationships than had been heard earlier). The closing section of the Ravel concerto, however, contrasts stunningly with a typical concerto recapitulation: In Ravel’s concerto, the soloist alone plays the lion’s share of the “recapitulation,” while the players in the orchestra sit by quietly. It is not the entire ensemble, but the soloist who single-handedly (!) moves the piece toward its conclusion. The orchestra returns only very briefly at the very end. One will find nothing comparable in the concerti of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, etc. No, the hallmark of concerto organization has always been that of symmetry, or equipoise, between the opposed forces of the soloist and the orchestra. Only in Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand is this principle of sociomusical equipoise superseded by a stunning outburst from the soloist, which unquestionably dominates the orchestra yet without subjugating it. It is hardly a coincidence that the only concerto in which this is so should be one that was composed specifically for a one-armed war casualty. And Ravel’s writing for the one-armed soloist is, without question, nothing short of astonishing. But Ravel has done something that is quite different from writing a part that will generate the illusion of a two-handed pianist! In the score, Ravel has rather whimsically written the word “cadenza,” over the extraordinary piano solo that re-states the main themes in the concluding section. This passage, however, is no ordinary cadenza. For one thing, the word, “cadenza” entails the notion of “cadence,” and there is no semblance of a cadence here. If this is a “cadenza” at all, it is one in which the soloist emerges to shove everyone else, large ensemble and conventional soloists alike, out of the way for one of the most outlandish displays in music history.11 In this, Ravel’s one-handed cadenza is not unlike the cadenza in the first movement of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #5, the work that inspired the above-quoted remark from the musicologist Susan McClary (1987). In her discussion of the 5th Brandenburg, McClary argued that that cadenza introduced a sociological – indeed, a political – perspective, which McClary characterized as the “revenge of the continuo player.”12 I find McClary’s observations on the 5th Brandenburg to be entirely plausible, and yet this Bach cadenza is significantly less revolutionary than that of Ravel in the Concerto for Left Hand. The “outlandish” cadenza in the 5th Brandenburg comes not at the end of the piece but at the end of the first movement, and is followed by two very substantial movements in which are restored any uncertainties regarding the appropriate solo-ensemble balance. The cadenza in Ravel’s Concerto for Left Hand, however, comes at the end of the work.13 In 1915, Josef Labor had given a musical gift that was dedicated to the proposition that a one-armed war casualty should be able to play the piano. In 1930, Ravel composed a concerto in which a one-armed war casualty could play a piano solo that surpassed anything previously written for two handed pianists. Then, in 1936, Ravel presented that same concerto to a two-handed pianist, in order that two-handed pianists might be able to do what the one-armed soloist had done. Is this the apotheosis of reciprocity? Perhaps not, although it does strike me as a remarkable chain of cultural events. We have all been magnified by this exchange of gifts. ? ? These works comprised Josef Labor’s musical gift to Paul Wittgenstein, 1915: 1) Concert-piece in the form of Variations 2) Piano quartet in c minor 3) Violin & piano Sonata in E Major A list of Wittgenstein’s many counter-gifts: Works for one-armed pianist Commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein 1923 – Franz Schmidt, Concertant Variations (composed: performed in 1925) 1923 – Eric Wolfgang Korngold, Concerto in C# (composed: performed in 1924) 1924 – Paul Hindemith, Concerto (composed) 1924 – Eric Wolfgang Korngold, Piano Quintet (published) 1924 – Richard Strauss, Parergon (composed: performed 1926) * 1926 – Franz Schmidt, Piano Quintet (composed: performed 1929) 1926 – Richard Strauss, Panathenaenzug (composed: performed 1928) * 1927 – Rudolf Braun, Concerto (performed) 1928 – Hans Gal, Piano Quartet (performed) 1929 – Eduard Schütt, Paraphrase for Piano and Orchestra (performed) 1929 – Sergei Bortkiewicz, Concerto (performed) 1930 – Maurice Ravel, Concerto (composed: performed 1931) 1930 – Eric Wolfgang Korngold, 4tet-suite (published) 1931 – Sergei Prokofieff, Concerto (composed: performed 1956) 1932 – Josef Labor, Divertimento in c (performed) 1932 – Franz Schmidt, Piano Quintetin B-Flat (composed) 1933 – Ernest Walker, Variations for Piano Left Hand and Chamber Ensemble, (composed) 1934 – Franz Schmidt, E-flat Concerto composed (performed 1935) 1935 – Ernest Walker, Prelude (composed: performed 1950) 1936 – Josef Labor, Concert Piece in f (performed) 1936 – Walter Bricht, Faust Fantasy (composed) 1937 – Walter Bricht, Lied ohne Worte, Albumblatt, Perpetuum mobile (composed) 1937 – Walter Bricht, Die Fledermaus fantasy (composed) 1938 – Franz Schmidt, Pno 5tet in A (composed) 1938 – Franz Schmidt, Toccata in d (composed) 1940 – Benjamin Britten, Diversions (composed: performed 1942) 1943 – Alexandre Tansman, concert piece (composed) 1950 – Franz Schmidt, Variations on a theme by Labor (5tet with piano) (performed) * -The two works composed by Richard Strauss are frequently said to have been commissioned, but Mathias von Orelli points out that “needless to say, Strauss was doing his friend a favor with this composition [the Parergon], and received no payment;” presumably, this is also the case with Strauss’ Panathenaenzug. Such may also be the case with some of the other works in this list. Additional research is called for. This list is compiled from Flindell, 1971. Also listed, but with no date: Bortkiewicz, Concert-Fantasy, Piano & Orchestra Braun, Perpetuum Mobile; Serenade Gál, Piano Quintet Godowski, Gypsy Baron Paraphrase Labor, Concert-piece in b Labor, Piano Quintet in e Labor, Piano Quintet in D Henry Kingsbury, pianist-ethnomusicologist, was born in 1943. He was educated at Oberlin College, the Peabody Conservatory, University of Michigan, and Indiana University. He has held music-academic positions at Oberlin, Elizabeth City State College, Clemson, Tufts, and Brown Universities, and UMass/Boston. His academic career was cut short after a 1991 mishap with brain surgery left him with a welter of physical and neurological disabilities. He says that the most tumultuous event of his life was his ten-year lawsuit vs. Brown University under the Americans with Disabilities Act. He is the author of two books: Music, Talent, and Performance (Temple University Press, 1988), and The Truth of Music, 2005, Full Court Press). The latter book deals with his ADA litigation, and is the source of his essay, "The Gift." References Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Casals, P. (1971). Joys and sorrows; reflections, by Pablo Casals as told to Albert E. Khan. New York: Simon and Schuster. Edel, T. (1994). Piano music for one hand. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Flindell, E. F. (1971). Paul Wittgenstein (1887-1961): Patron and pianist. Music Review, 32, 107-127. Kingsbury, H. (1998) Music, talent, and performance: A conservatory cultural system. Philadelphia: Temple University Press Long, M. (1971). Music in British libraries: A directory of resources compiled by Maureen W. Long. London: Library Association. Mauss, M. (1990/2000). The gift: The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies (W. D. Halls., Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton. McClary, S. (1987). On the blasphemy of talking politics during Bach year. In R. Leppert & S. McClary (Eds.), Music and society: The politics of composition, performance, and reception (p.26). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weissman, J. S. (1994). Zichy, Count Geza. In New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 20, 677. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Robert Ashley and the Tourettic Voice Gavin Steingo University of Pennsylvania Abstract: This article explores notions of subjectivity and voice in American composer Robert Ashley’s composition, “Automatic Writing.” Ashley links his own (alleged) experience of Tourette Syndrome with his compositional process. The “Tourettic voice” that emerges in Ashley’s music challenges normative conceptions of unified subjectivity and the ontology of presence. Key Words: Tourette Syndrome, Robert Ashley, music and disability The relationship between Tourette Syndrome (TS) and musical activity has intrigued both scholars and artists for decades. From Oliver Sacks’ (1987; see also Sacks, 1992) essay on the drummer “Witty Ticcy Ray,” and the Tourettic boy pianist in the film The Tic Code (Draper & Winick, 1999), to Nirvana’s song “Tourette’s” (Cobain, 1993), responses to music and TS have been extremely varied and provocative. In this brief essay I examine one musical engagement with TS: American composer Robert Ashley’s piece “Automatic Writing” (1996). Lasting exactly 46 minutes, “Automatic Writing” is a work for two voices (Robert Ashley and Mimi Johnson), electronics and Polymoog1 (both performed by Ashley). The piece was produced, recorded, and edited at several locations (Oakland, Paris, and New York City); it is very sparse, and (at least in my hearing) hauntingly beautiful. Before analyzing “Automatic Music” I would like to present some of the guiding thoughts and inspirations for this article. As a musician and Touretter, I have long meditated upon the dialectical relationship between my musical activity and my tics. In my own experience, playing guitar has helped me to “forget” the insistent and intrusive gestures of my Tourettic Doppelgänger. On the other hand, seemingly ex nihilo and unexpected impulses seem to have given my playing a particular creative flair. The last point brings me to a more theoretical point, namely an analysis of what I call the “Tourettic voice.”2 In neurological and popular discourses on TS, “involuntary” tics are described as being the “work” of something other than the ticquer. A Touretter is usually described as someone who struggles against his/her tics but simply cannot stop him/herself from ticcing. That is to say, a Touretter tics against his or her own will; a Touretter tics in spite of his/herself. However, the tics of a Touretter are the movements of the Touretter, of course. Tics are unwanted movements or vocal utterances, gestures that fracture the sense of a self-sufficient and self-defining individual. Involuntary cursing is itself a curse – yet it is a curse that is embodied within the individual, embodied at the margins of that individual, and embodied as a disturbance to subjective unity. The Tourettic voice calls into question the subject’s relationship with itself, the “presence” of the speaking subject, and by extension calls into doubt the very basis of Western metaphysics.3 Ultimately, the Tourettic voice intrudes into the space of normative subjectivity, and causes us to re-configure the “healthy” voice in relationship to the marginal (that is, the Tourettic voice). Ashley’s work is important because, instead of repressing his Tourettic voice, and instead of hearing his Tourettic voice from the position of his “healthy” voice, he affirms his own disjuncture and thereby acknowledges the irreducible fissure that characterizes all subjectivity. Instead of hearing and interpreting his Tourettic voice from without, Ashley performs his Tourettic voice as his (own) voice. No longer the symptom of a syndrome that intrudes rudely, Ashley is his Tourettic voice. Let us now turn to an analysis of “Automatic Writing.” In the liner notes of the CD (penned almost two decades after “Automatic Writing” was recorded), Ashley writes that “Automatic Writing was composed in the recorded form over a period of five years, during which time I was fascinated with ‘involuntary speech.’” He continues to say that he was convinced that he has a mild form of TS, and he therefore wondered, “Because the syndrome has to do with sound-making and because the manifestation of the syndrome seemed so much like a primitive form of composing…whether the syndrome was connected in some way to my obvious tendencies as a composer.” Ashley’s conceptualization of TS is overtly social, even political. He takes TS to mean any thought, utterance, or speech-act that is not easily interned by the conscious subject. In his liner notes he mentions that Morton Feldman (a contemporary of Ashley’s and a fellow American avant-gardist with whom he is often associated) wanted to lock up any composer who “went around with a tune in his head.” After saying that Feldman was only being metaphorical (and that Feldman did not actually want to lock anyone up), Ashley states rather emphatically, and somewhat ironically: “This speech was illegal.” Such speech is illegal because it is unruly. It is unruly because it is uncontrolled and trivial; it lacks intentional design and is not the result of self-expressivity. From there, Ashley cites two other avant-garde composers who seem to have described the kind of involuntary Tourettic speech that he is interested in: John Cage, who referred to a friend who hummed unconsciously, and Pierre Boulez, who apparently hated whistlers. (Ashley takes this to mean that Boulez hated people who “whistle while they work.”) In contrast to Ashley, Feldman and Boulez condemn any person who produces sound that is not the conscious result of “their own” concentrating and concentrated autonomous self. “Automatic Writing” is an attempt to produce and capture a truly involuntary speech. Reacting against statements made by composers such as Feldman and Boulez, Ashley valorizes the involuntary spontaneity of that speech which is unprepared and without obvious source. Discussing his early experiments with producing involuntary speech (intentionally producing involuntary speech is, of course, itself a paradox), Ashley says that his few moments of “loss of control” were triumphs. He triumphed because he desubjectified himself. So, does Ashley have TS? I am not convinced that he does in the technical medical sense. What is interesting about “Automatic Writing,” however, is that Ashley has appropriated TS as both a compositional strategy and a kind of political praxis. We should not forget, moreover, that historically all definitions of TS have been made in the context of social conventions. Even a cursory look at Howard Kushner’s (1999) recent history of TS makes this much clear. I am not denying that there is a neurobiological basis for TS. However, as many neurologists, historians, and psychologists have pointed out, TS must always be understood as both neurological and cultural. Ashley’s “use” of TS is a kind of cultural work that questions the biopolitics of movement and speech: Why are Tourettic gestures (such as cursing) often cultural taboos? Within the brain and mind, what mechanism causes “involuntary” movements and utterances that are resolutely anti-social? Does the policing of bodily movement and vocal utterance in some way cause or agitate the Tourettic voice? In trying -- although he cannot be trying -- to speak automatically, Ashley embodies an involuntary voice that is truly his own. Ashley’s hyper-subjective involuntary speech-acts are captured beautifully in “Automatic Writing.” In my own view, “Automatic Writing” brings to light the fragile boundaries separating presence and absence, self and other, normality and illness. Ashley’s is a “disabled-Tourettic” voice that causes us to re-consider the categories of mental health and creative production; in the end, we don’t know where his voice comes from. Gavin Steingo has published articles in Popular Music and Society, African Identities, and Black Music Research Journal (forthcoming). In addition to his scholarly pursuits, Gavin is a guitarist and composer. He is currently a Ph.D. student in Anthropology of Music at the University of Pennsylvania. References Brown, K. E., & Kushner, H. I. (2001). Eruptive voices: Coprolalia, malediction, and the poetics of cursing. New Literary History, 32, 537-562. Kushner, H. I. (1999). A cursing brain? The history of Tourette Syndrome. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Miller, J. (2001). The voice in Tourette Syndrome. New Literary History, 32, 519-536. Sacks, O. (1987). Witty Ticcy Ray. In The man who mistook his wife for a hat and other clinical tales (pp. 92-101). New York: Harper & Row. Sacks, O. (1992). Tourette’s and creativity. British Medical Journal, 305, 1515-1516. Schleifer, R. (2001). The poetics of Tourette Syndrome: Language, neurobiology, and poetry. New Literary History, 32, 563-584. Filmography Draper, P. (Producer), & Winick, G. (Director). (1999). The tic code [Motion picture]. United States: Universal Studios. Discography Ashley, R. (1996). Automatic writing [Ashley, R. and Johnson, M.]. On Automatic writing [CD]. New York: Lovely Music. Cobain, K. (1993). Tourette’s [Nirvana]. On In Utero [CD]. Geffen Records. Music Review Title: Nutters with Attitude Artist: Various, for Mad Pride Produced: 2001 Cost: £4.50 UK & EU (incl. Postage)/£5 international plus 30% for airmail http://www.activedistribution.org/index.php or ACTIVE DISTRIBUTION, BM ACTIVE, LONDON, WC1N 3XX, UK Reviewer: Lizzie Walker, postgraduate student, Centre for Disability Studies, Leeds University The compilation Nutters with Attitude was a charity CD for Mad Pride, “A pressure group committed to improving the civil liberties and social standing of psychiatric patients” (liner notes). While embracing Swain and French’s “affirmative model”, Mad Pride remains contentious, recently criticised for “Misplaced Pride” (Allen, 2006). The unifying theme of the CD is one of challenging conventional boundaries, both social and musical: “Contrasting styles and genres will clash and blend, on stage and from the audience, to cut through the alienated cultural constraints imposed by ‘sanity’” (Mad Pride, 2002). While a variety of musical genres including punk, country and folk, are present here, the ethos of punk (demonstrated by the challenging of convention; creative expression driven by the marginalised; the immediacy of the delivery and the music stripped down to bare elements) pervades most tracks and the artwork. Countering the assertion that disability culture can only be produced by disabled people, an inclusive approach has been taken here: “Though not all of these musicians are mad, most of them are. In any case ... they are all people who [sic] we respect.” (liner notes). The CD was aimed at a wide audience, but found more success with users/survivors of psychiatric services. It would also be accessible to other disabled thinkers and subversives. The professional quality makes it an exciting and thought-provoking CD for a modest price. Several themes emerge from the lyrics, including a focus on relationships. Mark Perry’s Alternative T.V. performs “Communication Failure” but he also joins The Long Decline, here with “Beat it Boys (You’re Really Jerks),” a song juxtaposing the complexity of socialising with the accessibility of masturbation. The Arlenes mix love and psychiatry in “Dr Love.” The Fish Brothers’ “I Wonder (What You Look Like With No Clothes On),” while musically conventional, is lyrically a pertinent love song for the cultural “other”: “Well you’ve seen me down the pub when I am plastered, And you can smell that I’m not often in the bath. And you’ve seen it when they’ve called me a fat bastard. And if you saw me nude would you just laugh?” The “oppositional habitus” (Crossley, 1999) of service users appears in the adversarial stance of several tracks. The CD starts with the Skinny Millionaires’ “Jack Shit,” an impassioned rejection of medical epistemology’s ‘professional decider/knowers’, “cos you don’t know - Jack Shit.” The Ceramic Hobs’ “Make Mine a Large One,” later a Mad Pride video, “accused local Freemasons … of murdering a young boy in a real case where a decapitated torso was found in a bin” (Sienko, 2004). (A man labelled with schizophrenia was convicted of this crime – an easy target for a quick conviction?) The counter-cultural approach embodies madness as cultural “other,” taking on “stranger” identity. Alienation can be viewed in several tracks, including the wistful tones of Eddie Murray’s “I Wish I Was Back Home in Derry.” The Astronauts describe an altered state in “Robot Ways,” and explore suicide as a transformative process. Gertrude’s “Getting and Spending” encapsulates consumerism, echoing Bauman’s view of outsiders as “flawed consumers.” The CD provides for a kind of snapshot of our culture. Mad culture suffers from a lack of continuity, as the tragic loss of Pete Shaughnessy, Mad Pride co-founder, demonstrated; people get involved, work too hard and get ill or die. Due to this, our cultural artifacts are rare and especially precious. References Allen, C. (2006). Misplaced pride. The Guardian, 09/27/2006. Retrieved May 26, 2007, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1881476,00.html Bauman, Z. (1998). Work, consumerism and the new poor. Buckingham: Open University Press. Crossley, N. (1999). Fish, field, habitus and madness: the first wave mental health users movement in Great Britain. British Journal of Sociology, 50(1), 647–670. Dellar, R., Lesley, E., Watson, B., & Curtis, T. (2000). Mad Pride: A celebration of mad culture. London: Spare Change Books. Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. New York: Doubleday. Mad Pride. (2002, November). MAD PRIDE AT THE BULL AND GATE: DOWN WITH THE MENTAL HEALTH BILL! Retrieved May 26, 2007 from, www.zyra.org.uk/madprid1.htm Sienko, C. (2004). Ceramic hobs: President Massey is home safe and well [electronic version]. Blastitude #17, November 2004. Swain, J., & French, S. (2000). Towards an affirmative model of disability. Disability and Society, 15(7), 569–582. Book Review Title: The Truth of Music: Empire, Law, and Secrecy Author: Henry Kingsbury Publisher: Full Court Press, 2005 Paper, ISBN: 0-9769269-0-3, 135 pages Cost: $14.45USD Reviewer: Sarah Schmalenberger This short monograph may not be suitable reading material for those who envision Academe as a utopian “community of scholars.” Then again, perhaps it is precisely what they should read. Henry Kingsbury has written a scathing critique of the scholarship and pedagogy of current ethnomusicology, based on his agonizing struggles with an ill-fated faculty appointment at a prestigious university. His account of the events leading to the demise of his career at this institution, as narrated through the Prelude and first two chapters of the book and then interspersed throughout the third and fourth chapters, indicts many individuals for their unscrupulous behavior. Separating these chapters at midpoint is an intriguing Interlude about “musical gift-giving” that seems at first wholly at odds with the surrounding material. Much of what Kingsbury describes reads like a nightmare of everything that could possibly go wrong in an academic career. This is the kind of stuff that keeps junior faculty and graduate students awake at night with worry that something they said or did will become misconstrued and haunt them at their tenure hearing or dissertation defense. That this book not only describes at length the manifestation of these fears but also identifies multiple perpetrators in two federal lawsuits against a university’s music department makes the scenario all the more terrifying to those most vulnerable to the pitfalls of institutional life. Beyond the simple question of whether Kingsbury is justified or wholly accurate in his account of what happened to him, he has nevertheless articulated the issues of trust and integrity as crucial to the well-being of any academic community. In his case, he despairs that a self-appointed cohort of scholars (and their administrative “enablers”) are so entrenched in the business of marketing “world music” studies as a commercial enterprise that they conspire to suppress voices of dissent (like his) that question the ethics of their agendas. Insisting that his only crime was that of muckraking within the protocols of scholarly discourse that he believed (erroneously) all academics embrace, Kingsbury ultimately arrives at the bitter revelation of “the truth,” the pain of which echoes the strains of Heine’s poem of betrayal, Ich grolle nicht, that Schumann immortalized in music. This book could be easily dismissed as nothing more than a personal vendetta, were it not for the Interlude section subtitled, “The Gift (pp. 44-59),” wherein Kingsbury shifts his attention to the social context of repertoire composed for disabled musicians. Specifically, he expounds upon the different career trajectories of two one-handed pianists based on the anthropological analysis of Marcel Mauss in The Gift (1954 first English version). The disability itself, Kingsbury argues, is not the sole determining factor of the musician’s career, but rather the construction of personal and community responses to physical disability. He illustrates his point by comparing Geza Zichy and Paul Wittgenstein, both one-handed pianists. (A different version of “The Gift” appears in this RDS forum.) Whereas Zichy took it upon himself to learn the piano after his amputation, Paul Wittgenstein was an established concert pianist who lost his arm in the First World War. His former teacher Josef Labor was compelled to write several compositions for Wittgenstein, as a gift that would encourage and nurture him back to musical health. In accepting Labor’s gift, Wittgenstein was challenged to think beyond the confines of his disability, to envision himself as the “whole” musician he once had been. What ensued were multiple resonances of the gift, as Wittgenstein continued Labor’s initiative to construct a diverse repertoire of works for one-handed pianists. His disability was in effect transformed into opportunity for renewal and change. The gift’s implicit obligation to reciprocate was the catalyst. Kingsbury, in describing the career of Wittgenstein after his amputation, notes marked discrepancies in audience reception of his concertizing. Many spoke of their amazement at his ability to play with one hand, but far fewer commented on his musical artistry or the compositional integrity of the repertoire he performed. Thus, despite Wittgenstein’s intent to present himself as a musician above all else, his critics remained rooted in their fascination with the novelty of seeing a one-handed pianist perform. It would seem to many that Wittgenstein failed to achieve success when Ravel, who had written the now famous Concerto for Left Hand for Wittgenstein, later re-wrote it for a “normal” two-handed pianist. Kingsbury disagrees with this popular notion on several levels. His most convincing argument to the contrary is his interpretation of the work’s formal trajectory of musical ideas, wherein the soloist ultimately dominates the orchestra completely by the end of the piece. Far from submitting to the conventions of symmetrical balance and concerto formal structures that characteristically privilege the orchestral majority over the solo minority, Ravel’s concerto thwarts several expectations of musical expression through normative gestures, toward a new rhetoric that valorizes the singular voice. As such, Kingsbury reads either version of the concerto as Wittgenstein’s triumph of resolve, first by being encouraged personally to persevere but also in presenting the musical community with a work that would challenge listeners and composers alike to think beyond the constructs of conventional musical rhetoric. That Kingsbury positions his contextualization of one-handed piano repertoire in the middle of a book that seems otherwise obsessed with describing a litany of grievances against others suggests that The Truth of Music is much more than a public purging of his outrage. More Wittgenstein than Zichy, Kingsbury seems on a quest to transcend the bounds of his identity beyond what was circumscribed for him by his once-esteemed peers. At the same time, it would appear that Kingsbury perceives Academe as a disabling force. It has clearly been so for him, but he is also deeply concerned for the unsuspecting students who would put their trust in a system corrupt with the “obscure machinations in the ‘world-beat’ music industry” (back cover) that has amassed considerable power to determine the fate of performing and scholarly careers. However awkward its presentation may seem for its angry tone, The Truth of Music can be read as Kingsbury’s gift to what he perceives as a disabled body that needs to be challenged toward a renaissance of intellectual and professional health. He seems to offer up his pariah status toward illustrating the extent to which a small minority of powerfully-connected scholars have constructed façade of hegemony in order to protect their own interests (commercial and otherwise). In refusing to engage with dissent in productive ways, this community of peers to which he once aspired to belong has, from his perspective, amputated itself. And yet, the possibility of Kingsbury ever being re-joined to this body seems doubtful, given the numerous bridges burned in his unsuccessful attempts to defend himself. He may not desire a reconnection, anyway. To be sure, though, he has been left to his own devices of developing his scholarly voice outside of community, and it is too soon to predict whether this or any future work will be reviewed on its own merits or through the filter of his reception as an outcast. Beyond Theory The Implementation of Batia Strauss's Method of Active Listening to Music with Didactic and Therapeutic Aims during Music Classes in Polish Public Schools Renata Gozdecka, Ph.D. Maria Sk?odowska-Curie University in Lublin The Faculty of Art, Institute of Music, Poland Abstract: The article chronicles the implementation of Active Listening to Music, a pedagogical method developed by Batia Strauss that has become extremely popular in Poland in recent years. Strauss, working at Levinsky College for Teachers in Tel Aviv and managing the Branch of Music Teaching at the Jerusalem Music Academy, led workshops for a wide circle of participants worldwide. This article includes aims and forms of music therapy as used in Polish schools, a description of the method of Batia Strauss, particularly its therapeutic features, and means of implementation of elements of Strauss’s method through a variety of music therapy techniques as adapted in Poland. Key Words: Active Listening, music therapy, Batia Strauss Introduction Music therapy is nowadays a dynamically developing field. In Poland it developed most rapidly in the 1970s, and since that time the number of its practitioners and advocates has been growing continually. As a form of psychotherapeutic treatment, music therapy evokes interest in a wide range of therapists. Based mostly on medicine, psychiatry, and psychology, it concentrates its healing and therapeutic activity mainly within the frames of these disciplines. Music, however, is not only a medium used in therapy – it is an essential element of the life of the contemporary human, regardless of health or impairment status (Szulc, 2005, p. 15). Teaching may become an important area for music therapy as the school environment provides many possibilities for therapeutic activity. Current research by psychologists and pedagogues in Polish schools shows that the number of students with various impairments and health conditions is on the increase. The new educational reform introduced in Poland in 1999 divided learning into a new set of stages: I – integrated education, 7-9 years of age; II – block education, 10-12 years of age; III – grammar school, 13-15 years of age; IV – over-grammar education, 16-18 years of age. Grammar school has proven to be the most difficult stage for teachers. Many pupils in this age group often show anxiety, find it difficult to control their behavior, and act out numerous nervous reactions. It would be extremely useful to introduce music therapy classes into such situations, both during music classes and in after-class activities organized at school. Music used with children and young people with this aim can become an important component of the educational process. Used by a therapist or a teacher, music facilitates communication, intensifies learning and helps students concentrate, both intellectually and emotionally. It also improves a variety of conditions that hinder learning, releases emotional tension, stimulates focus and memory and reduces aggression. Most teachers show interest in the way music influences such problems. Once they have an awareness of the benefits, they can include music therapy in their yearly cycle of teaching music in public schools. Aims and Forms of Music Education in Polish schools Numerous pedagogical theories stress the importance of art in shaping the personalities of young people, and how it enriches them intellectually and emotionally. Aesthetic upbringing – an essential element of education - has as its aim to arouse sensitivity to its beauty, to evoke interests, and to shape a conviction that art makes an indispensable contribution to our lives. This kind of thinking is a foundation of music education in Poland, which is based on the accomplishments of Polish pedagogy and psychology from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries as well as upon many European and American theories. Public music education developed in Poland most rapidly in the twenty-year period between the wars and in the 70s and 80s. The Polish idea of music education was brought into being by many academic centers. It is based on theoretical foundations (the theory of aesthetic upbringing, psychology, ethnomusicology, aesthetics, and other branches of the humanities), Polish traditions of teaching methods and music syllabus and on the achievements of pedagogues from other countries, especially the systems of E. Jacques-Dalcroze, C. Orff, Z. Kodaly and J. Mursell (Lipska & Przychodzi?ska, 1999, p. 5). The aims of the Polish concept of music education are versatile. They concern the development of basic musical abilities, shaping musical sensitivity and acquiring musical knowledge, all necessary to participate in musical culture. The contents of music education are equally versatile. The term “contents” refers both to the repertoire used for singing, playing and listening and the activities taught, such as singing, playing instruments, expression through movement, creating music, and listening to music. In Polish schools music classes are planned according to the principle of the integration of the aforementioned activities, which gives teachers the possibility to lead varied and interesting classes (Przychodzi?ska, 1989). The first important area of teaching is elementary music which is simple in structure and fulfils a didactic function. The term “elementary music” covers uncomplicated musical material, that is, simple melodies with clear rhythm, allowing the principle of repetition, similarity and contrast, with simple formal structure, such as two- or three-part forms, rondos, rounds, and variations. Experiences with elementary music prepare pupils for music with more difficult structures and pieces which are much more musically sophisticated. Elementary music, apart from its teaching function, plays expressive and aesthetic roles, manifested through what pupils experience in direct contact with pieces which evoke joy and entice the inclination to further musical study. Elementary music is an ideal material for active musical practice in accordance with the principles of Batia Strauss's method. Taking into account the cultural and artistic values of our native folklore, the Polish concept of music education includes Polish folk music and ethnic music of other countries in its teaching program. This kind of music can be taught to pupils in the form of songs from different regions as well as instrumental pieces intended for both playing and listening. In all music syllabuses intended for Polish public schools, artistic music occupies a special position. The term “artistic music” refers to the body of works created in past epochs of Western culture which reflects one of the great cultural heritages of humankind. This emphasis, while not unmindful of other repertoires, befits the culture of a Central European nation such as Poland. And thus the syllabus includes the examples of early music from the Middle Ages through Baroque, Classical and Romantic – the periods whose pieces comprise the main, standard repertoire of concert halls – to the Western art music of the 20th century. Artistic, folk, and contemporary music presented to pupils in the form of directed listening to chosen compositions, is for the majority their first contact with this kind of work. It creates an opportunity for students to become seriously interested in music in the future. Making music accessible to pupils within the framework of a subject taught in school has many advantages. Most important are: regular contact with music, careful and accurate choice of material taught and attractive approaches to learning music. All of these characterize the method of active listening propagated by the Israeli pedagogue Batia Strauss. Apart from its didactic values, Strauss’s method can be successfully used a form of therapy through music. Music Therapy in Public Schools The music education syllabus defined by the Polish Ministry of Education does not clearly specify any recommendations as to how to teach particular music therapy classes. The reasons for introducing music therapy to schools are mainly to influence the effectiveness of the intellectual work by pupils by toning down their nervous states, releasing tension through different relaxation activities and stimulating concentration and memory. Projects focused on such activities can be introduced briefly within classes and they can be incorporated into the principal topic of the lesson. In the school environment there are children with different levels and degrees of emotional, behavioral, and adjustment difficulty. These derive from a variety of factors, including the attitudes of parents and teachers and stressful situations at school. To ensure a stress-free educational environment, the teacher should first of all secure an atmosphere conducive to peaceful learning. Music can be an important element in helping to reduce tension. Modern teaching should incorporate different forms of therapy through art, including music, in order to shape in pupils the positive sides of their personality. In Poland, many student's books as well as methodological guides for music teachers include many forms of therapy through music. These are often components of practical activities that can be used during music classes (Wi?ckowska, & R?kas, 2001). They include, for example, different kinds of improvisation and musical dialogues between pupils which expose their emotional states, as well as different miming activities around given subjects. Practising music on the basis of simple forms such as AB, ABA, rondo, or round using percussion instruments can also prove an interesting form of relaxation during class, especially when led in an unrestricted way. The implementation of such methods is obvious in the work with children with disabilities who are taught in Polish public schools either within mainstreamed classes, or in special education settings for children with paralysis, autism, or ADHD taught in so called “therapeutic” classes. Regardless of the type of school, the Strauss method of active listening can be successfully as a form of therapeutic activity. Characteristic Features of Strauss's Method of Active Listening to Music Batia Strauss is a figure to whom music pedagogy owes a great deal. Her contribution to its development, both in Europe and around the world, is invaluable. After graduating from the Music Department in Israel and Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris in the 1960s, she began teaching in Levinsky College for Teachers in Tel Aviv where she worked till the end of her life. Beginning in 1979, she directed the Music Education Department at Jerusalem Rubin Music Academy, and for 20 years she taught workshops to a wide group of participants from all over the world. Polish teachers had a chance to get acquainted with her method in the 90s when Strauss visited Gda?sk where she taught the students of the Department of Music Education and Rhythmic (1993), and Warsaw where she participated in Carl Orff's Seminary at the Music Academy (1996) (Tarczy?ski, 2000). Strauss’s method is based on the assumption that listening to music shouldn't be passive. Getting acquainted with music should be based on the teacher's using different media such as movement, dance, gesture, singing, percussion, or instruments made by children, as well as other available objects used for generating sound; so called unconventional elements, such as plastic bags, mugs, keys or sticks. When one gives listeners/pupils a possibility to play with music, it becomes appreciated, understood and willingly listened to, be it artistic, folk, or popular music. Teaching how to listen is one of the more difficult forms of music education. It demands from pupils both sensitivity of perception and the ability to focus attention. For those pupils who are truly interested, music can be a source of interesting and deep aesthetic experiences. In this situation the teacher is obliged to guide the students’ capacity for understanding and perceiving music. This can be accomplished through setting particular music tasks for young listeners, motivating them towards a positive attitude, and inspiring their own musical experiences. Listening to chosen repertoire can be done in various ways. The teacher can use analytical listening which singles out particular sound layers of the piece, such elements as voices, instruments, units, the style of the period, the style of the composer, the form of the piece and its interpretation. The teacher can also present examples with reference to semantics and comparatively, within the context of the entire music curriculum. Finally, the teacher can use a third way of presenting music which incorporates various tasks which activate the process of listening. Listening to music at school often poses teachers many problems, such as pupils' difficulty in concentration and in perceiving the multiple sound layers of pieces consciously, or in having to deal with non-musical duties while presenting the pieces, especially when the chosen examples differ radically from pupils' musical interests (as it is commonly known in Poland and elsewhere that art music is not the main interest of young listeners). Using appropriate methods can result in progress. One approach is to diversify the process of listening by using different methods, which will make it both more interesting and more thoroughly understood. Strauss’s is undoubtedly such a method. Active listening includes several stages. The first is the presentation of a chosen musical example followed by a conversation about the character of the music, the sound and other elements that can be recognized by the listeners adequately at their level. At this stage the teacher can create a story appropriate to the music in the lesson, which can then be presented through movement in the form of gestures or dance. This kind of exercise develops imagination and stimulates activity in the group. The next stage is the introduction of percussion instruments or other sound making objects to the listening process (depending on the teacher's choice and upon the character of the piece) in order to create an orchestra with a conductor. The role of the conductor could be initially played by the teacher. However, later on, it should be given to one of the pupils. At that stage pupils have a chance to become the co-performers of the piece as their music becomes an accompaniment for the work played in the background. The accompaniment can be led freely or it can be restrained in the area of melody, rhythm, tone (using different groups of instruments at a given moment), or form (the same accompaniment for the repeated parts of the piece, which helps students to recognize the form of the composition). Another stage of active musical participation can be playing percussion instruments while looking at the score prepared for the piece used in the lesson (Gozdecka, 2004, p. 285). The score can be prepared conventionally as the notation of the parts of particular instruments accompanying the listening, or it can be a graphic score made for the needs of children in the form of illustrations or different graphic signs, such as lines, points and drawings. The method beautifully suits the Polish model of teaching music. It includes all forms of musical activity: listening, playing instruments, creativity, improvisation, singing, and movement. Strauss's method is extremely well-liked by Polish music teachers for its didactic value. Didactic and Therapeutic Values of B. Strauss' Method of Active Listening to Music Strauss's method has many virtues, both didactic and therapeutic. The most important of these is the potential for adapting a variety of works, regardless of the period they come from or features they possess. Teachers who want their classes to be therapeutically effective should not only know the repertoire, they should also exhibit empathy and have the attributes of a good, sensitive pedagogue who reacts to the needs of pupils. Pieces intended for music therapy classes can be classified according to mood. The teacher could choose compositions which are cheerful, sad, nostalgic, mournful, dramatic, pompous, or joyful and dynamic. Composers such as J.S. Bach, Chopin and Gershwin come immediately to mind; however, the choice should be guided by the type of class and the needs of the pupils. Another value worth stressing is the possibility to teach rhythm and movement to children in the form of musical games or music listening through movement (for example, a separate choreographic preparation for each part in the form of clapping, slapping the thighs, snapping the fingers or walking in a circle, bearing in mind that when a part is repeated we should use the same patterns, as it allows children to recognize the form of the piece clearly). Experiencing music through movement can have a positive influence on the child's personality and physical condition, as well as enhancing concentration and group responsibility. What is most important is for children to listen to music and become fond of it. Through that they can subconsciously acquire the knowledge of instruments and musical elements, such as rhythm, dynamics, form or tonality. There are also many possibilities of implementing B. Strauss' method in combination with drawing or painting. Such activities performed under the influence of listening are an interesting form of musical interpretation; they exhibit emotion, invite artistic expression and allow students to visualize pieces in the form of “picture scores.” During such activities the teacher displays a set of graphic signs suitable to the form of the piece on the board and points to particular signs assigned to specific percussion instruments while playing the composition. Music therapy in combination with plastic arts is particularly useful for children who haven't developed the ability to verbalize their experiences (?ychowska, 1999, p. 66). Singing, although not always properly appreciated for its healing properties, is an excellent method of music therapy, especially when done in a group. Pupils singing in a choir or in a group in class experience different feelings such as the sense of togetherness, responsibility and satisfaction, as well as discharging emotional tension, another positive effect of singing. The music and lyrics become integrated during choral singing, while pupils follow the conductor's directions and feel the need to achieve a common goal. Aware of these values, Strauss included singing in her method. She suggested that singing could be used while listening. Singing can be also successfully used in music therapy with autistic and stammering children who, thanks to this method, can establish a better contact with their environment. There are many more advantages to Strauss’s method. It enables pupils to perform prepared pieces in public, which encourages and motivates them to further activity. Furthermore, it allows pupils to identify with the artist performing the piece and to play different roles, such as that of performer or conductor. Strauss's method is enthusiastically received by children regardless of their age. Music teachers who raise their qualifications in the Strauss method at workshops or during post-graduate studies also discover exciting new possibilities for music teaching. When Strauss presented in Poland, she included only a few pieces as examples intended for active listening. Among them were Baroque, Classical, Romantic and 20th century art music pieces as well as folk compositions from different countries. The growing interest in the implementation of her method proves that teachers find it inspiring to look for their own ideas and to adapt her method in an individual way. Children with whom the method was used exhibit many positive features, such as consistency and persistence. They listen to music for longer periods of time and more attentively; they are more disciplined and accurate. Strauss also showed that thanks to music we can have fun and be happy, which in our times is much desired. Renata Gozdecka, Ph.D., is an academic teacher in The Faculty of Art, Institute of Music at the Maria Sk?odowska-Curie University in Lublin, Poland, and Director of Postgraduate Studies in the Institute of Music, co-funded by the European Union Structural Funds. Her academic interests concentrate on issues in music education in the Polish schools. She can be contacted at: Wydzia? Artystyczny UMCS, Al. Kra?nicka 2a, 20-718 Lublin, Poland or through e-mail at: regoz@poczta.onet.pl References Gozdecka, R. (2004). Method of active listening to music with the implementation of percussive instruments. Music Education at School, 5, 285-308. Lipska, E., & Przychodzi?ska, M. (1999). Roads to music. Warsaw: WSiP, p. 5. Przychodzi?ska, M. (1989). Music education. ideas, contents, and the directions of development. Warsaw: WsiP. Szulc, W. (2005). Music therapy as a subject for research and education. Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS, p.15. Tarczy?ski, J. (2000). Active listening to music according to Batia Strauss. Music Education at School, 2-3, 90-100. Wi?ckowska, D., & R?kas, A. (2001). The world of music. A guide for teachers. Warsaw: WSiP. ?ychowska, T. (1999). Therapeutic and educational values of music. Music Education at School, 2, 58-68. Life and Livelihood: Musicians Coping with Breast Cancer Sarah Schmalenberger University of St. Thomas St. Paul, MN Abstract: Cancer survivorship -- an emerging research field, may be particularly helpful in understanding the physical effects of breast cancer and treatment on musicians. The National Cancer Institute reports that breast cancer survivors comprise the largest cohort of documented cancer survivors in the United States overall, representing 40% of female survivors. Nevertheless, the problems routinely encountered by breast cancer patients following treatment – such as lymph edema, post-surgical neuropathy, shoulder morbidity, post-radiation contracture, chronic fatigue, immune deficiency, and chronic pain – have not been extensively studied. Problems routinely encountered by breast cancer patients – such as lymph edema, post-surgical neuropathy, shoulder morbidity, post-radiation contracture, chronic fatigue, immune deficiency, and chronic pain – may be especially burdensome to musicians. Musicians depend upon their torsos and arms in their professional work, precisely the areas most affected by surgical procedures and adjuvant therapies. From holding an instrument to using lungs and arms to produce sound, a woman’s torso is the core of her livelihood. Performing arts medicine, a discipline derived from sports and occupational medicine, could easily support studies in rehabilitative health for breast cancer patients. As yet, however, no one has studied the problem of musician’s injuries from a non-occupational catalyst. Research into the long-term medical and occupational impact of breast cancer is needed so that best practices – both in treatment and rehabilitation – can be identified and developed, to bring about best outcomes for all patients, including, specifically, women musicians. The Life and Livelihood Study, commencing in September 2007, seeks to understand issues faced by women musicians with breast cancer, and clarify how the care of such women can be improved. This qualitative study will develop a profile of the impact of breast cancer and medical treatment for breast cancer on women musicians, toward facilitating a broader understanding of breast cancer survivorship issues in general. This essay describes the research problem of musicians' survivorship after breast cancer, and argues for further examination of the impact of breast cancer not only on musicians, but also on those in other fields where physical fitness, strength, and stamina are vital to occupational and general well-being. Key Words: musicians with breast cancer, Life and Livelihood Study, performing arts medicine Embodied States: Making Music and Battling Breast Cancer Survivorship – a new area of cancer research – may have profound implications for musicians who have had breast cancer. From local papers (Cummins, 2007) to the New York Times (Berger, 2007), stories about long-term medical problems of cancer patients describe physical challenges that would jeopardize a career in the performing arts. That people are overcoming a life-threatening illness successfully enough to consider their quality of life afterward is cause for celebration in the ongoing battle against this disease. Nevertheless, the growing realization that cancer survivorship can be fraught with severe and often permanent disabling conditions is cause for exploring the sources of patients’ complaints, especially in terms of how these affect their livelihoods. Beyond survival, the quality of life after breast cancer is becoming a primary concern among women who lead active lives. Their concerns relate less to cancer itself than its effects long afterward, issues which are more germane to impairment and disability studies. Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed type of cancer in women. According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), 178,480 cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to occur among U. S. women in 2007 and 40,460 women will die from breast cancer this year (U.S. National Institutes of Health, 2006). Nevertheless, prognosis for survival from the disease has increased dramatically in the past ten years. Data from the NCI indicates there are over 10,000,000 cancer survivors in the United States, and that the largest single group of survivors is comprised of women who have had breast cancer, representing 23% of all survivors and 40% of female survivors (U. S. National Institutes of Health, 2005). In addition to the existential crisis precipitated by a cancer diagnosis, the intensity of breast cancer treatment poses a myriad of risks for suffering to patients weak and strong, young and old. Problems routinely encountered by breast cancer patients include lymph edema, post-surgical neuropathy, shoulder morbidity, post-radiation contracture, chronic fatigue, immune deficiency, and chronic pain. These may be especially burdensome to musicians because of the physical demands of the music professions. For women who are performing artists, the physical discomfort routinely experienced at some point during breast cancer treatment can impede their ability to function at least temporarily. This is no small consequence if this occurs at a critical time in their performance schedule. Long-term effects, which can disable them permanently as musicians, are concerns that are just beginning to emerge in cancer research on survivorship. Musicians are athletes in that they must maintain high levels of stamina, efficiency, and proficiency. The fitness of their upper bodies is crucial to sustaining their livelihoods. However they construct their careers (whether exclusively as performers or also as teachers or managing a music business), musicians engage in a variety of activities that require advanced levels of physical and mental balance. Recovering that balance, and returning to the studio, stage, or even the classroom after battling breast cancer can be extremely challenging. Playing any musical instrument involves an upper body sufficiently sophisticated in tone and strength to execute precise, complex motions. Here are just a few examples. String players use their left arm and hand to hold their instrument while pressing firmly against a fingerboard a set of strings stretched taut across the instrument in order to find pitches. Holding a bow in their right hand, they move the bow across several planes of motion in order to execute complex sound-producing effects through musical passages at precise speeds and volumes. Percussionists employ a system of preparation and follow-through not unlike that of professional golfers, and in the act of striking a myriad of playing surfaces they must protect themselves from the rebound shock of hitting those surfaces. Vocalists, woodwind and brass players rely upon the ability to take in a full breath, but that is only an initial step to producing sound. From a full expanse of their lungs, they must pressurize the air in the diaphragm and chest muscles, then balance perfectly the correct air pressure and speed needed to propel the air through a set of resistant “sound makers” such as vocal cords, compressed lips, or wooden reeds. All aspects of sound production thus work together like a mobile, each component moving in response to the motion of another. Imagine, then, how surgery and other procedures common for treating breast cancer could affect just one of these movements, or how even a slight disruption would affect one’s core sequence of sound production. Post-surgical pain seems the most obvious disruption in this sequence, but numbness incurred from certain chemotherapy drugs, as well as cognitive or neuropathic dysfunction from chemotherapy and radiation can also impair or alter significantly a musician’s ability to perform. Compounding this is the tendency among performing artists to adopt a rugged determinism to go “on with the show” in confronting obstacles (both physical and mental). “Suffering for your art” can become a severe liability under these conditions. Addressing the Needs of Musicians Impaired or Disabled from Breast Cancer Treatment Accommodating and preventing disability after cancer is emerging as a field of medical practice in selected regions of the country. Nancy Hutchison, MD, is acutely aware of how this new practice affects musicians. A physiatrist specializing in cancer rehabilitation and lymph edema at the Sister Kenny Institute in Minneapolis, she is part of a collaborative team of specialists who provide an impressive menu of rehabilitation and quality of life services for cancer patients. Hutchison is quick to acknowledge the visionary leadership of Jennine Speier, MD, whose establishment of a Performing Artists Clinic has enabled countless musicians to improve their medical and occupational well-being after illness and injury. In the seven years since Sister Kenny first began to integrate its inter-disciplinary health care options across multiple institutions (Sister Kenny, Virginia Piper Cancer Institute, and Abbott-Northwest Hospital), Hutchison has seen an increasing visibility of chronic medical issues of survivors increase along with the growing number of survivors. Her evaluation of musicians who are treated for cancer acknowledges their high risk for disability: “These people [musicians and athletes] are very kinesthetic and finely tuned. They feel small changes in muscle balance, symmetry, strength and restrictions that can totally throw off performing. Most artists and athletes have trained so long that they have a way of doing things that they have internalized. When something changes such as with breast cancer treatment, it can be very difficult to adjust without specific Physical Therapy by a team of therapists who understand the treatments for breast cancer, the radiation and muscle reconstructions” (N. Hutchinson, personal communication, May 2007). Hutchison and her colleagues have designed intake interviews to screen carefully those cancer patients with physically demanding jobs, underlying musculoskeletal conditions, or jobs that require a high degree of muscle control in the arms and/or chest (such as musicians, dancers, yoga instructors, and athletes). This method of screening does not constitute the norm, however, as few hospitals or even cancer clinics offer programs that track patients from diagnosis through aftercare according to their occupational needs. Of the breast cancer patients that Hutchison has treated, their most common musculoskeletal complaints all have potentially disabling consequences for musicians. These include shoulder pain and restricted motion, chest wall/rib cage pain and restricted motion, a feeling of trunk asymmetry, arm weakness on the affected side, bound down scars pulling on underlying tissues, and swelling of the chest wall and arm. As yet, no one has documented these symptoms toward defining a specific population of survivors such as musicians. It would seem, furthermore, that the social construction of disability and impairment issues as they derive from cancer treatment protocols has not yet been explored. Scientific research on the number of women musicians diagnosed with breast cancer and the medical and occupational well being of musicians after breast cancer is essentially nonexistent. A review of the literature in the fields of performing arts medicine, breast cancer research, complementary and alternative medicine, and women’s health did not identify any published studies about the effects of breast cancer on women musicians. However, anecdotal evidence from women musicians suggests that breast cancer and its treatment often have profound effects on their well-being. Only recently has a qualitative study been published in book form to address the well-being of cancer survivors in general (i.e., Magee & Scalzo, 2007).1 Just as there are many different treatment protocols now used for patients with breast cancer (depending upon tumor stage at the time of diagnosis, co-morbid conditions, patient preferences, and other factors), there are also potentially many different courses of rehabilitation from breast cancer treatments (e.g., Fialko-Moser, Crevenna, Korman, & Quittan, 2003; Kiel & Kopp, 1999). For example, exercise has been cited as crucial to recovery from breast cancer, and potentially to reduce the risk of recurrence (McNeely, Campbell, Rowe, Klassen, Mackey, & Courneya, 2006; Kaelin, Coltrera, Gardiner, & Prouty, 2006). Musician survivors of breast cancer comprise a particularly valuable cohort of survivors to study, in that their occupational needs could help physicians understand how the disease and its treatment can affect the quality of vocational well being on several levels. The model of integrated care at Sister Kenney suggests that inquiry into identifying the needs of specific populations of survivors would, firstly, advance clinical knowledge in treatment protocols across the nation. Research into the long-term medical and occupational impact of breast cancer is needed so that best practices – both in treatment and rehabilitation – can be identified and developed, to bring about best outcomes for all patients, including, specifically, women musicians. Without a description and understanding of the experiences of female musicians with breast cancer, physicians and medical researchers currently have a limited basis for developing diagnostic tools and appropriate therapies for the occupational rehabilitation of such patients (see Brodsky & Hui, 2004; Cassileth & Deng, 2004; Chua, 2004). Secondly, advancement in clinical knowledge of rehabilitative and preventive practices would broaden the discourse on cancer survivorship from its focus on pathology toward theorizing about the social constructions of disability and impairment around cancer. The cohort of women musicians impacted by breast cancer is potentially large, given the confluence of the above statistics for the disease and the number of women who are active musicians. “Musicians and Singers” as defined by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), are people who “play one or more musical instruments or entertain by singing songs in recital, in accompaniment, or as a member of an orchestra, band, or other musical group.” For the latest month for which statistics are available (May 2006), BLS had data on 46,600 musicians (U. S. Department of Labor, 2007). The actual number is doubtless much higher, as BLS data is incomplete for not including part time and intermittent workers, which would include those who identify their primary occupation as music teachers. Assuming that 30% to 50% of musicians are women, the BLS data suggest that there are at least 14,000 to 23,000 women musicians in the country.2 It is also important to note that women musicians are even more populous among the ranks of “uncounted” rosters of freelance performers who combine ad hoc concert engagements; not only those who teach music in public schools or college, but also those performing in regional orchestras and choral ensembles that do not document personnel in BLS, or those who draw a considerable income from studio instruction and performance venues. Serious illness and physical disability are most certainly the bane of a musician’s career. In addition to the financial risk of taking extended time off for a medical condition (such as breast cancer, but also other illnesses), musicians must also consider the amount of time spent away from their instrument as a liability. The phrase “use it or lose it” has a very real application for the target muscle groups that musicians rely on to form an embouchure for a wind or brass instrument, pluck a harp string (callouses on the fingertips of harpists, for example, will begin to soften after only two days of non-use), or to press on a fingerboard. Returning to active performance after an extended hiatus can be disastrous without a plan for gradually re-conditioning the body to its prior level of performance status. Personal and Professional Concerns of Musicians After Breast Cancer This dual burden of a musician’s financial and emotional needs is understood by Julie Liebelt, a Physical Therapist and Certified Hand Therapist who treats injured musicians at Sister Kenny’s Performing Arts Clinic. In the eighteen years that she has helped musicians recover from problems ranging from overuse to injuries incurred from accidents and surgery, Liebelt observes that: “Musicians, especially freelance musicians, often are torn between the need to earn a living and taking care of their bodies. If word gets out that a musician is having problems, they may be passed over for jobs. Freelance musicians also often do not have adequate health insurance, resulting in putting up with pain for longer than they should which may complicate the issue” (J. Liebelt, personal communication, May 2007). The problem is compounded by an overriding need to continue performing despite knowledge that doing so could be counterproductive: “Musicians are some of the lucky people that do for a living something they have a passion for, that fills an emotional need. Not being able to play is very difficult, with some musicians not even able to listen to music if they cannot play. So they often will continue to play to meet that emotional need, ignoring the pain. It is often difficult to get musicians to slow down enough to allow their bodies to heal” (J. Liebelt, personal communication, May 2007). Echoing Hutchison’s observations, Liebelt reports that musicians she has treated who are breast cancer survivors have complained of decreased shoulder motion from surgery, loss of dexterity from lymph edema, and neuropathic pain and/or weakness due to either radiation damage or nerve compression from compensatory patterns. This is not to suggest that all musicians with breast cancer are pre-destined for injury, or that they are reckless with their bodies. On the contrary, most musicians are likely some of the best candidates for surviving the rigors of cancer treatment. Research may reveal creative artists as uniquely resourceful in apply their vocational skills of disciplined diligence and motivation toward a successful navigation through obstacles that may confront them during cancer treatment. To be sure, women musicians are highly motivated to succeed in their careers. This can become a liability, however, if they are not thoroughly apprised of their rehabilitation issues in the context of recovering from breast cancer. “Give us six months and we’ll give you back your life,” the surgeon said to me days before my first surgery to remove a tumor in my left breast. I am one of the fortunate survivors in the 98% category, meaning that I have that much of a chance of becoming a little old lady someday. As thankful as I am to belong to this group of survivors, I nevertheless struggled with postoperative pain, exhaustion, and weight loss during treatment. I suspect that my determination to keep teaching and concertizing despite it all was not uncommon among young female professionals who are active performers and teachers. This kind of attitudinal conditioning served me well in my fight against cancer. Afterward, however, my “type A personality” nearly ended my career as a hornist. I recall the diligence with which I sought ways to maintain my stamina during my treatments so that I might continue working. With the help of acupuncture that both restored my appetite and boosted my energy, and by keeping my teaching spaces sanitized, I taught all my spring term courses during chemo and radiation. I decided to follow through with my scheduled faculty recital, although I had to change it from a solo horn event to a program of chamber works with horn so that I could conserve energy. When my treatments ended with a final surgery (to remove my estrogen-producing ovaries), I believed that my troubles were over. They were, in terms of the cancer. I assumed there would be some lingering tiredness and pain from all that I had endured; so it was of minimal concern to me that I felt a little “off” physically when I returned to performing with a chamber orchestra in the summer. So focused was I on getting through my schedule of surgeries and chemo and radiation, that I never considered the cumulative effects of repeated traumas to my body, specifically my torso, and how this would affect my breathing as a hornist. Gradually, over three years, the cumulative effects of certain cancer treatments weakened me to the point where I could barely lift my instrument, despite my disciplined regimen to get back into shape. Musicians, like all athletes, develop various sets of adaptive skills for responding to the flexible, daily changes to their lips, breath, range of motion; and several of my colleagues shared additional “tricks of the trade” for my recovery. Try as I might, none of these techniques seemed to restore me to my previous levels of endurance and strength. By the next summer season with the chamber orchestra, I was struggling to get a full breath, and I felt winded. At one point during a concert after playing what should have been a relatively easy solo passage, I nearly passed out right on stage. The director of the breast program at the cancer clinic where I had been treated suspected that I had developed a form of pleurisy from the radiation. A lung capacity test indicated otherwise – on a bad day of breathing, I still could inhale and exhale “off the charts” by normal standards. A breast MRI finally revealed the problem: post-irradiation contracture that had not shown symptoms until well after treatment officially ended. This condition had damaged the nerves around the lumpectomy incision, and it caused a pulling of internal tissue around the excised tumor area. It turns out that I had a particularly exuberant reaction to radiation therapy, one that is rarely documented but was nevertheless frighteningly disabling to my work as a musician. Three years after being cured of breast cancer, I was unable to pull in a good, full breath to play my horn. Moreover, the chronic pain radiating throughout my left side from my damaged nerve condition worsened when I played my instrument. I had more than sufficient skills in mental focus to block this pain during rehearsals and performances; the pain returned with a vengeance once the show was over. In an effort to find relief from what felt like an ever-tightening band around my chest, I spent six months receiving deep myofascial tissue release treatments that were excruciatingly painful. These did at least enable me to pull in a good breath, but the pain throughout my side was crippling. Unconsciously, I had developed a bizarre set of compensatory motions in order to move my body around the pain when I played the horn. I created within my body a cyclic pattern of compensatory musculoskeletal dysfunction that ultimately exacerbated the pain in my side.3 I began to dread playing the horn, but not playing caused deep grief. During my three-year journey of intensifying symptoms, two other members in the chamber orchestra were experiencing their own symptoms from their breast cancers. One colleague, a string player, had received a chemotherapy drug that rendered her fingertips numb, and I watched her struggle with technical passages that she could not possibly master with unresponsive fingers. She also suffered from a suppressed mental acuity (“chemo head”) and could not concentrate effectively during an entire rehearsal period. The other musician, a vocalist, had painful fingertips from her chemotherapy that prevented her from working on her solo performance repertoire through practice sessions at the piano (and, she was unable to play the piano in studio lessons with her many vocal students). More important, her single mastectomy left her feeling extremely unbalanced and constricted throughout her torso area when she most needed to build breath support for her operatic singing. Disability and Community Among Musicians After Breast Cancer What all three of us lacked in our strategies to overcome breast cancer were long-term plans for addressing issues specific to musicians’ physical restoration. I had few resources to consult when it came to figuring out how to resume being an active musician. Through online networking, I located other women musicians who were similarly struggling after they finished treatment for breast cancer. They too, seemed to fit the profile of what Hutchison and Liebelt describe as “powering through” pain and other physical limitations as part of an unspoken musicians’ code of honor. But where I had hoped to facilitate among colleagues a common cause toward forging change, I found instead an ingrained sense of isolation and self-reliance. Many women whom I contacted expressed initial relief at discovering another musician survivor with issues, only to become reticent at the prospect of disclosing their problems to a medical professional. To their detriment, musicians often feel compelled to live up to an internalized ethos of resilience that rewards those who will perform/produce at any cost. This kind of conditioning is only partially to blame. Hutchison laments, “I do not think the health care system in general understands the unique musculoskeletal, breathing and stress issues of performing artists” (J. Hutchison, personal communication, May 2007). Nevertheless, the programs that she has created with her colleagues prove that both the medical and musical communities can change. Perseverance yields rewards, and in the case of injured musicians, the yield depends upon their willingness to disclose their conditions without fear of retribution, financial or otherwise. Only recently did I find my way to a solution for my own rehabilitation, beginning with a doctor who supplied me with an experimental topical cream that deadens neuropathic pain. This proved the key component to stopping the cycle of tensing up my entire left side in order to manage the pain when I play my horn. The pain gel was so completely effective that I was able to enter physical therapy specifically designed for musicians at the Sister Kenny Institute. My journey back will be a long one, however, as certain muscles have atrophied and others have become linked to inefficient movement sequences. It has been humbling for me to pass up jobs for the sake of recovery, and I was fearful of admitting to my colleagues (and most of all, my students) that I came to work every day in pain. So far, no one has rejected me or questioned my expertise. A few people have ventured to contact me with messages of “me too,” and I am both heartened and saddened. Disclosure was at one point also a major obstacle in launching studies into a once little-known phenomenon of “overuse syndrome” that ultimately formed the core of Performing Arts Medicine. Brave musicians and their doctors, drawing upon research from sports injuries, created a new field of research and a thriving new medical arts discipline. Now, this specialized field of inquiry has produced impressive research on the prevention and treatment of over-used movement (such as the repeated small finger movements of pianists, string and woodwind players), occupational injuries from incorrect posture and lifting, performance anxiety, and TMJ syndrome (temporormandibular joint dislocation that can occur from playing certain wind instruments). The current paucity of studies on the effects of breast cancer treatments seems to shadow the once-nascent status of a currently booming field of research and treatment in musicians’ occupational impairments and disabilities. Performing Arts Medicine and Breast Cancer Survivorship Performing Arts Medicine could easily support studies in rehabilitative health for breast cancer patients, as it is already providing rehabilitative services at institutions like Sister Kenny. The closest study in print and available to laypersons on how musicians sustain occupational injuries is Playing (Less) Hurt by Minnesota Orchestra cellist Janet Horvath (2006). Horvath spent years soliciting the assistance of medical researchers and injured musicians, all of them struggling with the problem of why the majority of string players experience unrelenting and constant pain in their hands, arms, and backs while they played. “Suffering for your art” is, Horvath argues persuasively, a serious and major health issue in professional orchestras worldwide. A second edition of Playing (Less) Hurt provides newer research on overuse syndrome as it affects woodwind players, and there are helpful chapters on specific preventive and healing techniques designed for these common problems. In addition to Horvath’s book, other resources such as the non-profit Safety and Health in Arts Production and Entertainment (SHAPE) organization, the quarterly journal Medical Problems of Performing Artists published by the Performing Arts Medicine Association (PAMA), and medical facilities such as Sister Kenny and the Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York which are specific to performing arts confirm the significance of medical problems of musicians (See also Bishop, 1991; Cassileth & Deng, 2004; Jabusch & Altenmuller, 2006; Sataloff, Brandfonbrener, & Lederman, 1990; Weiss, n.d.). The latest issue of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) contains an impressive annotated bibliography of performing arts health (Cockey, & Kalmanson, 2007), and websites abound with resources on various occupational maladies (e.g. Musicians and Injuries, n.d.). Among all these resources, it is Horvath’s collaborative methodology that suggests an optimum model for inquiry into the more specific problem of what women musicians face when they are diagnosed with breast cancer. Women musicians resourceful enough to seek the advice of practitioners in performing arts will be sorely disappointed, however. As yet, no one has studied the problem of musician’s injuries from a non-occupational catalyst such as cancer. Rehabilitation from breast cancer treatment is a topic that has received little scientific study, and certainly not from the perspective of female musicians who have experienced difficulties. For example, a comparative study of questionnaires given to female breast cancer patients about their overall quality of life after treatment appeared in print only two years ago (Wilson, Hutson, & VanStry, 2005). This study did not provide a comprehensive profile of the patients’ quality of life, and in fact aimed only to document the extent that respondents believed their treatment had been effective. From this study, however, came a notable incidental discovery that women who continued to suffer from lymph edema rated a lower level of overall well being. Emerging research on symptoms related to breast cancer treatment, such as shoulder morbidity, confirm the existence of problems and also suggest rehabilitation protocols (Ghazinouri, Levy, Ben-Porat, & Stubblefield, 2005; Sprod, Drum, Bentz, & Schneider, 2005). A recent newsletter issue of the International Musician, the largest organization of professional musicians, contains a brief essay that begins with the acknowledgement that “the idea that a musician needs the same physical care as a professional athlete has been slow to take hold” (Steel, 2007). The essay concludes that, although some orchestras and big-budget entertainment companies are beginning to incorporate health care coverage for fitness training, preventive and alternative medicine, and wellness programs, medical researchers and musical organizations alike need much more commitment to these initiatives. Even so, there is no mention of rehabilitation from non-occupational catalysts such as cancer. Conclusions Women musicians, rugged survivors already from working in the cutthroat business of the music industry, are unlikely to succumb to their infirmities from breast cancer. In fact, the anecdotal evidence of women musician survivors of the disease suggests that they have been extraordinarily creative in their persistence to heal. Within traditional western medicine are some promising studies on upper body rehabilitation and lymph edema that, when combined with a focused inquiry on performing arts, could produce significant results. A recent study (Sprod, Drum, Bent, & Schneider, 2005) on the benefit of women who utilize walking sticks in restoring range of motion in their shoulders suggests a connection to prevention of pain or restricted motion from lymph edema. In addition, there are documented benefits of Traditional Chinese Medicine that can provide relief from side effects commonly experienced from chemotherapy, radiation, and post-operative pain. Anecdotally, some women have reported positive results from a variety of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) such as Rolf, Qigong, and Homeopathy. It remains the burden of the researchers to define the population of women musicians who have had breast cancer. Toward this end, a qualitative research project, The Life and Livelihood Study, is underway (Sept. 2007) to query the experiences of women musicians in the United States who have been treated for breast cancer within the past five years (see Author’s Note). This will be the first investigation to describe the experiences of a specific population of survivors, and it is expected to generate hypotheses for additional inquiries. Consider the scenario of a wounded athlete who requires extensive rehabilitation, and we might draw some comparisons to what women musicians could one day experience in the event that they are “disabled” from their experience with breast cancer. A quarterback falls to the ground after a play, wincing in pain from torn muscles and ligaments incurred from being tackled. The player is carried off the field, and he will immediately begin the long process of recovery with the help of a team of injury specialists. Sports commentators broadcasting the action worry aloud that the team’s star quarterback may not be able to continue playing the rest of his season. When the quarterback returns to active play, and if he is conscientious enough to recognize who helped him do this, he will hold a press conference or an interview where he divulges how his treatment was a success in getting him back to the game he so loves. A professional sports athlete requires—and has access to—an entire system of physical and mental health services designed to regain his/her place on the playing field.4 So too, a professional music athlete requires a similar system of services when they sustain injuries. Why then, would a woman who has been deeply scarred and torn, not from a tackle but from at least one incision in her chest (probably more, plus her underarm from a lymph-node biopsy), expect to continue playing her season of concerts unscathed? Furthermore, where is her team of specialists to nurture her back to shape, train her for re-entry onto the playing field of musical performance she so loves? Sports, of course, is a huge industry, lucrative enough to provide its sponsored teams an entourage of supportive medical and legal resources. Sporting events certainly are a critical component of public culture, more so than the performing arts. Or are they? Music surrounds us in our daily lives, and people consume it on many levels whether or not they are conscious of that consumption. Music, like sports, is a form of entertainment, but there are no impassioned broadcasters narrating about the various injuries sustained by members of the “team” who are performing the crowd’s favorite Pearl Jam tune or the audience’s favorite symphonic repertoire. Injuries are a predictable component of a professional athlete’s career for which they are at least mentally prepared, insomuch as they enter into their chosen sport knowing full well their chances of getting injured in a game. Musicians, however, do not go into their business expecting that they will have a career expectancy of a football player. Nor do women musicians expect that a diagnosis of breast cancer could bring them to the brink of ending their career. All they want, initially, is to get rid of the cancer, and fortunately this is happening more often than not. Next, however, comes the quality of life afterward, and this can be a lonely road of guessing, worrying, and trying fruitlessly to find out what’s wrong. A new area of rehabilitative medicine for women could and should be more visible on the horizon of performing arts medicine, ready to assist these “musical athletes” back to the playing field of the concert stage. Author’s Note This essay derives from a series of narratives co-written by the author as well as Charles Gessert, MD, MPH, Senior Researcher, St. Mary’s Duluth Clinic (SMDC Health System), and Amy Kamenick, University of St. Thomas Corporate Foundation Grants Office, toward proposals to fund The Life and Livelihood Study, which is a qualitative research study to look at the medical and occupational well-being of musicians after breast cancer. The investigative team for this research includes the author as Principal Investigator, Gessert, Jean Giebenhain, PhD (University of St. Thomas), Lisa Starr MSN (SMDC Health System). The investigators anticipate that the findings from this study will provide physicians, medical researchers, and musicians with new insights into the effects of breast cancer and breast cancer treatment on the medical and occupational well being of musicians. The investigators expect that the findings will also be instructive to researchers and clinicians in the fields of occupational medicine, wellness studies, complementary and alternative medicine, and overall cancer care. Sarah Schmalenberger teaches music history and horn at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN. She earned her Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Minnesota. Her research on black women in the concert tradition includes extensive study of the Washington Conservatory of Music, an excerpt of which appears in a chapter in the anthology Black Women in Music: More Than the Blues (University of Illinois Press). Her article on an opera manuscript she discovered by Shirley Graham Du Bois appears in Black Music Research Journal, and she is contributing to a forthcoming anthology on Blackness in Opera with a chapter discussing the Jacobean court spectacle from 1604, "Masque of Blacknesse." She is initiating new research into the field of cancer survivorship with a qualitative study on the occupational and medical well-being of musicians after breast cancer. In addition, she maintains an active freelance schedule as a performer on both the modern and Baroque horns. References Berger, L. (2007, May 22). Cancer care seeks to take patients beyond survival. New York Times. Bishop, D. (1991). The musician as athlete: Alternative approaches to healthy performance. Calgary, Alberta, Canada: Kava. Brodsky, M., & Hui, K.-K. (2004, December). An innovative patient-centered approach to common playing-related pain conditions in musicians. Medical Problems of Performing Artists, 19(4), 170-173. Cassileth, B. R., & Deng, G. (2004). Complementary and alternative therapies for cancer. The Oncologist, 9, 80-89. Chua, J. (2004, March/April). Panorama. Predicting the aftershocks: Quality of life study looks at physical and mental health after breast cancer treatment. MAMM, 6(4), 15. Cockey, L., Kalmanson, K. (2007). Annotated bibliography on musician wellness. American Music Teacher, 56(6), 28-41. Cummins, H. J. (2007, April 10). For many, work really is a pain. Star Tribune (Minneapolis), p. D1. Fialka-Moser, V., Crevenna, R., Korpan, M., & Quittan, M. (2003). Cancer rehabilitation: Particularly with aspects on physical impairments. Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine, 35(4), 153-162. Ghazinouri, R., Levy, C., Ben-Porat, L., & Stubblefield, M. (2005). Shoulder impairments in patients with breast cancer: A retrospective review. Rehabilitation Oncology, 23(2), 5-8. Horvath, J. (2006). Playing (less) hurt: An injury prevention guide for musicians (Rev. ed.). Missoula, MT: Randale Sechrest Medical Multimedia Group. Jabusch, H.-C., & Altenmuller, E. (2006). Focal dystonia in musicians: From phenomenology to therapy. Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 2(3), 207-220. Kaelin, C. M., Coltrera, F., Gardiner, J., & Prouty, J. (2006, July 4). The breast cancer survivor’s fitness plan (Harvard Medical School Guides), McGraw Hill. Kiel, K., & Knopp, P. (1999). Rehabilitation of breast cancer. Cancer Treatment & Research, 100, 107-133. Magee, S., & Scalzo, K. (2007). Picking up the pieces: Moving forward after surviving cancer. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: Raincoast. McNeely, M., Campbell, K .L., Rowe, B. H., Klassen, T. P., Mackey, J. R., & Courneya, K. S. (2006, July 4). Effects of exercise on breast cancer patients and survivors: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 175. Musicians and Injuries (n.d.). The Music Industry, part of 2007 WebRing, Inc. Retrieved August 10, 2007, from http://eeshop.unl.edu/music.html. Sataloff, R. T., Brandfonbrener, A. G. & Lederman, R. J. (Eds.). (1990). Textbook of performing arts medicine. New York: Raven Press. Sprod, L. K., Drum, S. N., Bentz, A. T., & Schneider, C. (2005). The effects of walking poles on shoulder function in breast cancer survivors. Integrative Cancer Therapies, 4(4), 287-293. Steele, C. P. (2007). A sporting chance: An athletic trainer saves a violinist’s career. International Musician, 105(2), 13. U. S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, (2007). Occupational employment and wages, May 2006. Retrieved August 8, 2007, from http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes272042.htm U. S. National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, Cancer Survivor Research, (2005 data submission). Estimated U.S. cancer prevalence. Retrieved August 8, 2007, from http://dccps.nci.nih.gov/ocs/prevalence/prevalence.html U. S. National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER), (2006 data submission). Cancer of the breast. Retrieved August 10, 2007, from http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/breast.html Weiss, S. L. (n.d.). The anatomy book for musicians. Glenview, Illinois: Muscle Dynamics. Wilson, R. W., Hutson, L. M., & VanStry, D. (2005). Comparison of 2 quality-of-life questionnaires in women treated for breast cancer: The RAND 36-item health survey and the functional living index-cancer. Physical Therapy, 85(9), 851-853. RDS Information Information for Advertisers The Review of Disability Studies, published by the Center on Disability Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, invites advertisements from (a) publishers of books, films, videos, and music, (b) employers with position announcements, and (c) producers and distributors of products and services. For questions or to advertise with RDS, please email rdsj@hawaii.edu or call 808-956-5688. Why Advertise With RDS? The Review of Disability Studies is the ideal vehicle for reaching an international audience in the field of disability studies. We have and are pursuing affiliations with other major organizations in the field. Subscribers are academics, advocates, and libraries. 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Amount enclosed by check or purchase order $____________ (Please make payable to RCUH 2144) Credit Card #________________________________Exp Date___________ VO#_____ Please select if you would like an alternative format to the print version: __Braille __Large Print __Audio Cassette Email form and payment information to velina@hawaii.edu or mail to: The Review of Disability Studies Center on Disability Studies 1776 University Avenue, UA 4-6, Honolulu HI, 96822 For questions please email rdsj@hawaii.edu or phone 808-956-5688. Endnotes 1 Although I first heard this aphorism, as quoted, in a conference paper (Fulton 2004), a version of it is widely attributed to Woodrow Wilson and the principle has been applied to medical and business schools as well as liberal arts curricula. 2 See Lubet, A. (2004) for a discussion of the term “SuperCrips” and of leading Western art musicians with disabilities. 3 Spotlight Phase Two information sheet. Sounds of Progress have received funding for the Spotlight Project from Lloyd TSB and Glasgow City Council. 4 RSAMD students have had the option of courses described in the syllabus as designed “to enable young musicians to apply their musical skills, knowledge and experience to stimulate cultural growth and expression within a wide range of community groups…[and] pursue career options in performance outreach, music in special education, music therapy and youth and community work.” 5 Disability Equality Statements, describing institutional arrangements for promoting and monitoring equality of opportunity, are required by UK public institutions as part of the Disability Equality Duty in the 2006 Disability Discrimination Act. 6 See http://www.musiciansinfocus.org/programs_rcm.htm 7 See http://www.cetl4musicne.ac.uk/ Endnotes 1 Paul Wittgenstein (1887-1961) was the older brother of the celebrated philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). 2 Or, perhaps, sooner: Pretty certainly, Josef Labor would have known about the amputation almost as soon as it happened, and it seems fairly likely that he would have begun composing while Paul Wittgenstein was still being held in prison. 3 Flindell, 1971, p. 112. 4 Flindell 1971, p. 126. Flindell’s article does not state that these Labor compositions of 1915 were his own gifts to Paul Wittgenstein. As far as I know, it is not impossible that Josef Labor composed these works in response to a commission from, say, Leopoldine Wittgenstein, although to me this seems somewhat less likely. To me, at least, there seems only a trivial distinction to be made between a series of gift-exchanges that began within the pianist’s family and a series that began with his teacher. Here’s a research project for an enterprising Austrian sociomusicologist! 5 Information on Zichy’s Berlin lecture-recital in 1915 can be found in Edel, 1994, p. 26 6 Biographical information on Geza Zichy relies on Edel, 1994, and Weissman, 1980 7 I have included a listing of the Wittgenstein repertoire on pp. 30-31. 8 As Theodore Edel notes, the phenomenon of normal, two-handed pianists who made a specialty of performing with the left hand alone goes back to the early 19th century (Edel, 1994). 9 Two parenthetical points should be added: (1) although the solo part of Ravel’s concerto is indeed difficult, it is certainly not unplayable; (2) moreover, it can confidently be said that re-arranging the solo part for a two-handed performer would not reduce the difficulties. 10 Jacques Février, 1900-1979. 11 McClary, 1987, p. 26. 12 Ibid. 13 In Ravel’s other piano concerto (two-handed, in G Major), Ravel equally whimsically writes the word “cadenza” over a passage that is obviously not a cadenza at all, but is the soloist’s re-statement of the “second theme” in the recapitulation of a rather strict sonata-form movement. Endnotes 1 A Polymoog is an early analogue synthesizer. 2 The following theorization has been greatly enriched by a series of articles in New Literary History, appearing under the title “Vocalization, Voice, and Intent.” See Brown & Kushner (2001), Miller (2001), and Schleifer (2001). 3 In referring to the history of Western metaphysics in these terms I am drawing on the work of Jacques Derrida. Endnotes 1 At this essay’s printing this book was unavailable for review. 2 30% derives from a ratio/count of personnel in the top ten orchestras in the U. S.; 50% derives from a speculative representation of an equal division of the sexes in any general group. 3 Liebelt describes this as a common scenario: “Musicians often compound their injury from trauma, surgery or radiation, by trying to return to playing before physically ready. If there is any weakness or decreased flexibility as a result of the injury, musicians often will compensate by changing their posture or hand position to be able to play, which can cause new problems or exacerbate existing problems” (J. Liebelt, personal communication, May 2007). 4 Although the issues faced by female athletes should not be minimized, their profession has traditionally included a retinue of sports medicine specialists with access that artists can not even imagine. The sports industry has been regulated to provide trainers and physical therapists as part of the support services to athletes from high school through pro-sports teams. With the exception of the internationally prominent and incorporated ensemble companies of dance/ballet, orchestras, opera performers, as well as mega-pop stars, the majority of professional performing ensembles have no such partnership with occupational medicine practitioners. Although more of these performing groups now offer health care benefits, when most musicians go on tour it is rare that the management provides more beyond the services of a general MD to accompany them. Thanks to advocates like Horvath and institutions like Sister Kenny, the Minnesota Orchestra and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra have lobbied successfully for coverage in preventive and rehabilitative care. Moreover, these ensembles have physical therapists with them on tour. --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ Page 1 of 64