Healthy Chamber Music

KEEPING THE BEAT-Healthy Aging
Through Amateur Chamber Music Playing,
by Ada P Kahn, PhD, Wordscope Associates, Inc, Evanston, Illinois 60201-4975, 1999, xix & 259 pp,
HB $27.95, ISBN 0-930121-02-3; PB $21.95, ISBN: 0- 930121-01-5, www.keepingthebeat.com

Andrew Weil, MD, Clinical Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Arizona, states that listening to and making music is the most well-researched creative arts therapy. Music can affect cardiac rate and rhythm and depth of respiration, help manage chronic pain, reduce pain of childbirth, help patients with Parkinson's disease walk better and faster, and even enhance memory in Alzheimer's patients.

Dr. Ada Kahn, a health educator and author of the award-winning STRESS A-Z-A Sourcebook for Facing Everyday Challenges (Sacramento Medicine, June 1999) and The Encyclopedia of Mental Health (Sacramento Medicine, June 1994), suggests we celebrate aging by participating in musical activities. Kahn feels chamber music is particularly suited for healthy aging.

This form of music was first mention in 1676 by Thomas Mace in Musick's Monument. Chamber music includes compositions of two or more instruments where one instrument plays each part. They may be duets, trios, quartets and larger combinations for strings (violins, violas, cellos and double basses) and wind instruments (chiefly woodwind and horns), with and without piano, for up to 10 instruments. Vocalists, madrigal singing and jazz combos are excluded. Amateur chamber music brings people together for an activity of intense involvement, satisfaction and challenge. No audience is required or desired; you are the audience.

Kahn profiles 24 men and women between the ages of 67 and 94 who share their musical and health experiences. A retired professor of social science played the piano since age four, including duets with her mother. At age 50, she learned to play a cello given to her by a friend. She began playing in a variety of duets several times a month. She feels it is common for people to learn to do new things after age 50. She recounts the psychologic benefits of reducing stress and increasing stamina, and feels that making music is a spiritual and emotionally rewarding experience.

A retired school teacher who played in the Monterey Symphony Orchestra for 15 years considers herself an amateur with a flute. At age 70 she says that "many of us older players can't play our eight bar phrases without breathing. When the pollen is too bad, we just pull out our inhalers, laugh and go on." (For more on interesting profiles and healthy aspects of chamber music please go to www.healthcarecom.net .)

The forward of Keeping the Beat is by Don Campbell, researcher, musician and author of The Mozart Effect&#reg;, who is considered the world's foremost educator on the connection between music and healing. This book, by a fellow member of the American Medical Writers Association, was a delight to read and brought back fond memories of some of my university friends who received degrees in music therapy. Ada has another winner from which our patients can benefit.

delmeyer@healthcarecom.net