Und es geht doch um die Musik: Zur musikalischen Heilkunde im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Teil 2)

Abstract

Part two of the article continues the report on music therapy with examples from the Lunatic Asylum in Prague and the Imperial Clinical Institute for Obstetrics and Gynaecology in St Petersburg. As in the Illmenau Mental Hospital, the institutions stand for a systematic functionalising of a variety of musical activities involving different areas of hospital life.This included conscious and unconscious listening (under anaesthetic), practical musical activity or patients' attempts at composing. The examples from Prague and St Petersburg show that musical endeavours undertaken in a sanatorium or hospital have had their influence on the music aesthetics and composition of the time. This is exemplified in an analysis of Eduard Hanslick's text >Vom Musikalisch-Schönen< and Igor Stravinsky's >Histoire du soldat<. The history of music therapy is also a history of aesthetics and the composing and effect of music.