Therapeutic Music

People are now playing therapeutic music for patients in hospitals, hospices and other clinical settings to improve their healing. Music seems to be therapeutic to the human mind. Music can also provoke memories. It can trigger things in our minds that we all have experienced as humans. Music's power extends to the point where we don't even have to hear a song, we just have to think of it. When this happens, memories of a particular event or time in our lives that possess or resemble some type of association can come flooding back (Science of People; Danielle M. Baker). Through these scientific discoveries, we see yet another aspect of the power of music in the human mind. This power can be seen in the composition Forever Music by Mark Hayes and Susan Boersma. Historically and scientifically, it is evident that music has a power that is both unique and universal. The language of Forever Music is written for the intended purpose of global unification through the power of music. The idea of producing a common ground amongst all people who can hear. The message; music represents life, peace, time, love, and the happy assembly of all people in the world regardless of ones individual background. Each lyrical element in this piece is intended to allow all people of every culture to share a song. A song that carries meaning applicable to everyone who can hear. Mark and Susan seem to have envisioned, as demonstrated by the text's language and rhetoric, a peaceful and unified world that has the deepest appreciation for life and music. The audience for this text is timeless. â€Å"†¦ where present, past, and future meet upon a narrow bridge of time.† This work is written for all people of all ages. It is designed to inform the world that each individual life is a song meant to be sung. The study of this piece, Forever Music, can be broken down into many different segments. We will take time to dissect each phrase in the song with the hope of being able to fully understand the depths of its symbolism and how what it communicates relates to people of every age and from every culture around the world. We will contextualize the songs language though it's lyrics, and we will also try to gain a better musical understanding for the way that this piece was composed. We can just as easily dissect the musical element of Forever Music as the lyrical element. These two categories, individually, are imbedded with such meaning, emotion, and symbolism. These are things that we get to discover! There are many years of professional experience between this works creators, and because of this, their experiences enhance their ability, and this songs ability, to reach a timeless audience from every culture.