This book can be opened with

Note on our eBooks and Audiobooks: you can read our eBooks (ePUB or PDF) and listen to audiobooks on the free Emerald Books app on iOS, Android, and desktop. Or read and listen on Emerald's online reader (ePUB eBooks and audiobooks only). To purchase a digital book you will need to create an account if you don’t already have one. After purchasing you will receive instructions on how to get started.
Music is an art form but also a social activity. It is a part of every human society, contributing to community, culture, and a sense of group identity. It is also fundamental to individual identity and personal well-being. In Music, Eugene Beresin traces the possible applications of musical expression for human health and happiness.
At the heart of Music are powerful examples from the lives of real individuals, families, and populations. These stories cover a myriad of ages, instruments, situations, and purposes, to convey the universal power of music to help us all get more out of life.
Offering practical ideas for integrating musical practice into a wide range of settings from the medical to the personal, Beresin provides a compelling evocation of the healing power of music. It is a must-read for practitioners, teachers, counsellors, and lovers of the art form.
Chapter 1. Why Music? The Universality of Music
Music and the arts reach around all corners of the world and into all corners of our life and Dr. Eugene Beresin details many aspects of their purpose and importance in his book Arts For Health: Music. I think this is important information to share and it reinforces what all of us musicians and artists already know…that the arts (regardless of their type), when done with the right intention, are healing arts.
Music is certainly a pleasurable and universal part of the human experience, but is it really possible that harms could be assuaged through harmonies, symptoms soothed by symphonies, remedies found in rhythm? As an expert Harvard physician, healer, and musician, Dr. Gene Beresin makes a forceful and persuasive case that the answer is a resounding, “yes” - scientifically elucidating and affirming music’s psycho-biological therapeutic effects and uncovering its power to heal. Informative, instructive, inspirational, students, clinicians, patients, and family members, will find solace and joy here.
If you are in the group of people that think music is ancillary to your life - or extracurricular or non-essential - but have been waiting for someone to prove you wrong, look no further! Dr. Eugene Beresin has comprehensively, and in simple language, dispelled any hypothesis of the kind in his book, Arts For Health: Music. From heartfelt personal testimonies to factual medical data, this book beautifully explains the effect music universally has on humanity and why it’s important for individual well-being. It is a must have for all music teachers, students and professionals, as it gives language to what we innately already know.
Music has a visceral, transcendent power that cuts across language, culture and age, and it can help us connect to each other, as well as to our innermost selves. In Arts For Health: Music, Gene Beresin has created a fantastic reminder of and argument for music’s power to lead us to healthier, more connected, and more fulfilling lives.
Eugene Beresin is Executive Director of The Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds at The Massachusetts General Hospital, a Full Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, U.S.A, and Senior Educator in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at The Massachusetts General Hospital.