Music, whether performed or heard, has been seen as therapeutic in the history of many cultures. How have its therapeutic properties been conceptualized and explained? Which cultures have used music therapy? What were their aims and techniques, and how much continuity is there between ancient, medieval and modern practice? These are the questions addressed by the essays in this volume. They focus on the place of music therapy in European intellectual, medical and musical traditions, from their classical roots to the development of the music therapy profession since the Second World War. Chapters covering the Judaic, Islamic, Indian and South-East Asian traditions add global, comparative perspectives. Music as Medicine is the first book to establish the whole shape of the history of music therapy in a systematic and scholarly way. It addresses the problem of defining what music therapy has meant in different cultures and periods, and sets the agenda for future research in the subject. It will appeal to a diverse readership of historians, musicologists, anthropologists, and practitioners.

Contents: Introduction, Peregrine Horden; Musical solutions: past and present in Music therapy, Peregrine Horden; Part I: Ancient Literate Traditions: Commentary on part I with a note on China, Peregrine Horden; Music therapy in antiquity, Martin West; Jewish and Muslim traditions of music therapy, Amnon Shiloah; Music therapy: some possibilities in the Indian tradition J.B. Katz; Part II: Medieval Europe: Commentary on part II, with a note on the early Middle Ages, Peregrine Horden; Music and medicine in the thirteenth century, Christopher Page; Music therapy in the later Middle Ages: the case of Hugo van der Goes, Peter Murray Jones; Part III: Renaissance and Early Modern Europe: Commentary on part III, with a note on Paracelsus, Peregrine Horden; Marsilio Ficino, the second Orpheus, Angela Voss; Music, melancholy and medical spirits in early modern thought, Penelope Gouk; Curing man and the Cosmos: the power of music in French Renaissance poetry, Noel Heather; Musical treatments for lovesickness: the early modern heritage, Linda Phyllis Austern; Part IV: Tarantism: Commentary on part IV, with a note on the origins of Tarantism, Peregrine Horden; Ritualized illness and music therapy: views of Tarantism in the kingdom of Naples, David Gentilcore; Medical theories of Tarantism in eighteenth-century Spain, Pilar León Sanz; Tarantism in contemporary Italy: the Tarantula's dance reviewed and revived, Karen Lÿdtke; Part V: Modern currents: Commentary on part V, with notes on nineteenth-century America and on mesmerism and theosophy, Peregrine Horden; Music as cause and cure of illness in nineteenth-century Europe, Cheryce Kramer; Shamanism, music and the soul train, Keith Howard; The music therapy profession in modern Britain, Helen M. Tyler; Index.