The Healing Energies of Music

The Healing

Energies

of Music

The Healing

Energies

of Music

Hal A. Lingerman

A publication supported by

THE KERN FOUNDATION

Learn more about Hal A. Lingerman and his work at www.questbooks.net

Copyright © 1983, 1995 by Hal A. Lingerman

First Quest Edition 1983

Second Quest Edition 1995

Quest Books

Theosophical Publishing House

PO Box 270

Wheaton, IL 60187-0270

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lingerman, Hal A.

The healing energies of music/Hal A. Lingerman.

p.    cm.

A Quest book.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-8356-0722-3

1. Music therapy. I. Title

ISBN for electronic edition, e-pub format: 978-0-8356-2139-7

9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  *  98  99

Contents

Preface to the Revised Edition

Introduction

  1  Music and You–A Closer Relationship

  2  Music for Better Health and Well-Being

  3  Finding Your Music

  4  Music for Daily Life

  5  Music for Home and Family

  6  The Music of Nature

  7  Angelic Music

  8  Music and Global Spirituality

  9  Gallery of Great Composers: Composer Keynotes

 10  The Deeper Mysteries of Music

 11  Music for the Future

 12  Women Composers

Appendixes

Appendix to the Text

Music Lists

Composers’ Birthdates

Bibliography

Preface to the Revised Edition

Music opens us to the rapture of being alive; music suggests the Mystery that moves through all things.

I deeply value the transforming power of beautiful music! Although I am not a trained musician, I am a longtime lover of music who is deeply indebted to music for the many ways it has always enriched my life. For me music is far more than entertainment; it is a vital food, filled with energies and beauty that nourish me daily. I believe that great music, carefully selected and experienced, can be a unique agent for healing, for partnering joy and sorrow, for empowerment, attunement, and inspiration, and for expanding one’s spiritual consciousness.

Professionally, I am a college teacher, counselor, and nonsectarian minister. In each of these areas, music helps and inspires me in ways that are both obvious and subtle. Whatever I have felt and learned about music through the years, I have enjoyed sharing with others. The results have been gratifying and mysterious. I have observed music improve people’s physical health, emotional stability, mental focus, and spiritual sensitivity. In my own life, I have felt repeatedly how beautiful music contributes toward refocusing me and integrating parts of my personality, offering harmony and peace to my psyche and empowerment and gladness to my soul.

In this book I would like to share with you some of the impressions and discoveries that have come to me from experiencing beautiful and uplifting music. My approach is synthesis: Many pieces of music cut across different fields of study, such as politics, history and biography, psychology, philosophy, science, medicine, religion, metaphysics, and esoteric studies. I have been led by my own love of music to follow an intuitive and mystical path of investigation. During my years in teaching and the ministry, I have moved through various orthodox, metaphysical, and esoteric groups, finding truth in all places and in all religions and philosophies of the world. I believe strongly in the teaching of multiple lifetimes and in the progressive consciousness of all lives, in the existence of beings in nature who work through the inner dimensions of life, in the great reality of angels and higher powers in God that inspire us. I acknowledge gratefully the abiding love of the Divine Presence as the inspiration for humanity. Also, I acknowledge God’s helpers, both visible and invisible, with whom we are linked in the great ladder of light (mentioned in the Old Testament story of Jacob’s Ladder), as we serve the cause of the highest that we know.

Years of seeking spiritually, behind the literal or merely academic view of things, have only confirmed my conviction that truth is far deeper and more subtle than any one literal approach or interpretation. We are reminded, By their fruits ye shall know them. One’s life is always larger than one’s belief systems; whatever path we follow, our lives will require increasing refinement–of mind, emotions, and body. Disharmony or imbalance on any level of consciousness produces fear and stress within the total temperament, and if these concerns are not dealt with, they can eventually lead to frustration, disease, and even illness.

We live today in a critical and demanding time that is uncertain and full of sudden changes. In many places, we can observe a decline in excellence and a decreasing sensitivity to others’ needs. In many areas of life, high quality and a sense of purpose seem to be lacking. However, at the same time, many persons are also feeling a new hunger for a life that is less self-seeking, less exploitive, more respectful, and more spiritually meaningful. Internal and external growing pains in humankind are demanding serious questioning of ideas that for many years have been accepted or taken on faith. Old systems and assumptions are breaking apart. Old solutions are no longer helpful. New energies and new seeds of possibility are now leading individuals to share in a new spirit of cooperation. Such persons are contributing their creative energies to helping our planet function more healthily as part of God’s universe. People are now developing deeper intuition and insight that will lead us eventually into future times of increased well-being, caring, and loving good will.

Some persons among us today hold to pessimistic and fatalistic views of humankind’s future. I prefer to see our times as a dynamic opportunity for individual and planetary transformation. Now is the time to dig in, get involved, and work for a cause greater than one’s own pleasure or self-interest. Enough individuals, working together in networks of light and prayer-filled activity, can make a huge difference. They can help to create a brighter future in all places. Every life of service and every act of genuine good will can help to bring about a new cleansing and healing.

I believe music can be one such catalyst for good. Music, as the empowering sound of divinity, is an extremely important carrier of the Creator’s holy Presence. When sound is used wisely and effectively, it can attune people to higher sources of love, union, and power, thus strengthening their character and increasing their receptivity and attunement.

I wrote The Healing Energies of Music in 1980-81. Since its publication in 1983, the book has gone through five printings and has been translated into German, Swedish, and Portuguese. During the past eleven years, I have been privileged to receive letters from around the world, written by readers who have shared with me in many ways their love of beautiful music. I deeply appreciate these enthusiastic responses. This new and updated book offers music lovers everywhere many more selections and possibilities.

In 1980 the compact disk was little more than a rumor. Now, with the amazing turnaround in technology and the music industry, the LP, although still loved and collected by many, has largely become a dinosaur. Cassette sales are also dwindling, and the compact disk reigns supreme. During the past ten years, many beautiful recordings have appeared on compact disk. Many obsolete 78 and LP records and out-of-print cassette recordings have been remastered and rereleased on compact disk. These restored recordings are almost like new, with distortions, pops, clicks, and hisses largely removed, and sound quality is improving continuously.

However, at the same time that so many old friends and new recordings are rapidly appearing, music lovers are facing new challenges:

1.  How do we find out about the new recordings that are becoming available so rapidly?

2.  How can we sample and listen to these new recordings in order to choose the ones that we want to buy and add to our listening library?

3.  How can we access the new recordings we want to buy?

4.  How can we locate and buy new recordings before they go out of print? (The average life span of a new CD is often one to two years, sometimes shorter, and sometimes only one to two thousand CDs are made at a single pressing.)

These challenges point to why so few persons are even aware of the music that is currently available. In what follows, I will suggest several strategies for discovering, sampling, and locating beautiful music. It is my hope as well that this book itself will be a resource for dealing with these problems.

It is clear that music offers tremendous opportunities for enjoyment, healing, inspiration, and transformation. From my classes and workshops, however, I find that many listeners are just beginning to make contact with the music that can touch their deepest feelings and open their hearts and souls. Surveys indicate that in the midst of a supposedly booming CD industry, only five to seven percent of the population is buying the kind of immortal music that for more than five hundred years has stirred people’s consciousness, inspired them, and helped heal their psyches.

During the years since I wrote The Healing Energies of Music, I have continued to seek out the compositions and recordings which have proved to be enjoyable, inspiring, therapeutically uplifting, and spiritually dynamic. Some of what I have discovered suggests new and promising possibilities. For instance, a new World Music is evolving rapidly today, which like other aspects of the growing multimedia culture, expresses an expanding synthesis of styles, forms, ideas, feelings, timbres, and harmonies. In these days of accelerated change and rapid transformation, powerful music from all nations and cultures is now offering us all its unique healing power: a more global music is emerging.

As a practical resource, this new edition includes a thorough listing of many new recordings (CD and cassette), including conductor, orchestra (or group), artists, and the label and distributor. I have also provided as many addresses as possible for ordering the recordings I mention and list. I have tried to provide some description of the listed recordings, without telling the reader-listener how or what to hear. When many recordings of the same musical work exist, it is difficult to know which interpretation to choose. My suggestions for particular interpretations are the results of personal taste and more than twenty years of careful research. Compare different recordings of the same musical work to find the energies, shadings, and interpretations that benefit you the most.

The Schwann Opus Catalogue, available almost anywhere, is also a valuable resource for finding the composer, label, order number, and distributor for a musical selection you are seeking, such as a piece of music heard on the radio that you would like to purchase. Refer also to the Music Masters Catalogue, c/o Musical Heritage, 1710 Highway 35, Ocean, NJ 07712 (908-531-3375). For New Age musical recordings, please refer to White Swan Music, Inc., 1705 Fourteenth Street, Box 143, Boulder, CO 80302. For special imported classical recordings, I have found the following sources most helpful:

1.  Records International, P.O. Box 1140, Goleta, CA 93116-1140 (1-805-687-0327).

2.  Allegro Imports, 12630 NE Marx Street, Portland, OR 97230-1059 (1-800-288-2007).

3.  Qualiton Imports, 24-02 Fortieth Avenue, Long Island City, NY 11101 (1-718-937-8515).

I have also listed additional sources that can help you to keep updated and informed about existing and new recordings. As a reliable music store, I recommend Tower Records, which has proven to be helpful and cooperative whenever I have needed to find a recording. I suggest that you talk to record store employees about the music you want to hear, get on mailing lists from various record companies, who will usually send you free announcements of new recordings, and keep a listening journal of pieces of music that uplift and feed you.

I have also included in this new book a chapter on women composers and their music. Amazingly, when I originally wrote The Healing Energies of Music, many fewer recordings by women composers/artists existed. Now, happily, more and more women’s music is appearing. Even more hopeful, as I write today, is the number of recordings appearing in which men and women are collaborating and performing music together–as friends and companions who mutually love to make music.

I look forward to hearing from you and learning from you about the beautiful music that you love and cherish in your daily life. I hope this book will help to lead you into many new experiences in your lifelong enjoyment of beautiful music.

I wish to thank the many friends who have helped me and inspired me to write this new edition: in particular, my mother (an organist and teacher) and my father (accountant, college teacher, attorney, spiritual seeker, animal lover, and entrepreneur), who often encouraged my love of music, Ruth Stockton and Gwen Hulbert for their valuable editorial suggestions, Paul M. and Paul G. Traudl, Marge and Elden, Stan, Tom, Elsie, Lynn, Dr. Dika Newlin, Jerrie, Ken, Trudy, Helen, Walter, Lucy, Joy, Clare, Robert and Jeri Hannah, Tony Α., Kent, Joe, Norman, Dr. David Amos, and Dr. Benjamin Kimpel. I’m especially grateful to Rosemary, my patient, wonderful wife, whose kindness and loving friendship enrich my life each day, and also to Aria, my creative and magical daughter, whose love and joy always bring me new gifts and surprises. I deeply thank the Reverend Flower A. Newhouse, spiritual teacher and Christian mystic, founder of Questhaven Retreat in Escondido, California, whose sensitivity to music and nature has provided me with many valuable insights, some of which appear in this book. Thanks also to Dr. John Diamond, whose book Your Body Doesn’t Lie has confirmed through kinesiology so many of my own findings. I also wish to thank Dr. Karl Haas, who has inspired me greatly with his illuminating radio series on music of the great composers, Adventures in Good Music. I also am deeply grateful to the many composers, conductors, and performing artists, past and present, whose sensitivity and talents have enhanced my life and the lives of millions of listeners throughout the Earth. I also want to acknowledge the encouragement and expertise of Dr. Helen Bonny, one of the pioneers in the field of musical therapy and her work in integrating psychology, music, and spirituality.

The powers that can be communicated to earth by means of music are as yet scarcely suspected by the average individual.

But the time is fast approaching when man will select his music with the same intelligent care and knowledge he now uses to select his food. When that time comes, music will become a principal source of healing for many individual and social ills, and human evolution will be tremendously accelerated.

ESOTERIC MUSIC, CORINNE HELINE

That music always round me,

Unceasing, unbeginning–

yet long untaught I did not hear;

But now the chorus I hear

and am elated;…

I hear not the volumes of sound

merely–I am

moved by the exquisite meanings,

I listen to the different voices

winding in and out,

…now I think I begin to know them.

LEAVES OF GRASS, WALT WHITMAN

Introduction

Just as much information is given by a great symphony as is imparted by a remarkable book. It is just as important that a person become evolved and enlightened in music as it is that someone become improved by thought.

FLOWER A. NEWHOUSE

Music is the universal language.

RICHARD WAGNER

Sound, color, and number influence every area of life. How we respond to these great universal forces will condition a large part of our health and happiness. It is, therefore, essential to learn how to use sound, color, and number more wisely, so that their energies can flow into us and our environment, filling our life with joy, vitality, and clarity.

We live in music. The universe is a tonal harmony composed of many moving sounds–many lives interacting and vibrating together as they resonate in music coming through the silence of the Infinite. Each individual human life either contributes to this creative harmony or produces discord. We make either music or noise.

Music is the positive pole of sound; its rhythms and life-enhancing melodies echo the eternal harmonies sounding through the heavens. In this way music is a mirror of holy resonance; it opens transparencies in us, enlarging our horizons and helping us to feel what is beautiful and inspiring. Great music nourishes us. It is always strengthening, because it attunes us to powerful waves of life energy and to the unfathomable Source of all good.

Noise is the opposite of music. It is sound gone crazy, for its insanity is really its disconnectedness–its failure to find any unity or harmony with the universe in which it is moving. Great music resolves chaos dynamically, bringing peace, beauty, synthesis, and transformation; noise emphasizes separation, ugliness, and distortion.

Stories come down to us about how sensitive and skilled the ancients were in using music as a healing art. For them music was not just a form of entertainment; it was also a source of health, containing chords of rhythm and melody that would harmonize and rebalance the human organism, draining away its impurities. From Manly Hall, a prolific writer on esoteric traditions, we learn that in ancient Greece an angry man charged an enemy, sword drawn, ready to kill. Suddenly a wise Pythagorean, sensing the situation, struck one chord on his lyre. Instantly, all anger and hatred were drawn out of the would-be attacker, and he became gentle as a lamb.

Pythagoras of Samos, a very wise teacher of ancient Greece, knew how to work with sound. In his mystery schools in Delphi and Crotona, he taught his students how certain musical chords and melodies could produce responses within the human organism. He demonstrated that the right sequence of sounds, played musically on an instrument, can change behavior patterns and accelerate the healing process.

In the Old Testament we also read about the power and therapeutic value of beautiful music. Saul, an ancient king, was troubled by an evil spirit. He was advised as follows:

…seek out a man, who is a wise player on a harp: and it shall come to pass…that he shall play with his hand and thou shalt be well.

1 SAM. 16:16

Saul sent for David, whom he found favorable in his sight, and when David played his lyre for the king, these were the results:

David took a harp, and played with his hand: and Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.

1 SAM. 16:23

From these examples and others, it is clear that the ancients sensed the power and value of beautiful music and knew how to use it to promote harmony and well-being in their lives. They knew in their consciousness the difference between uplifting and degrading music. Likewise, today we can rediscover the therapeutic and spiritual potencies of healing music.

In my work I have been able to observe many situations in which music has been a powerful factor for change and improvement, both for individuals and for groups. Certain pieces of music, played with appropriate timing and good taste, have helped to alter behavior and awareness. Musical selections have helped to calm the heartbeat and nervous system, have promoted greater relaxation, have deepened constructive attitudes and brought a willingness to listen and to be receptive to new directions. I have also observed how specific musical selections can contribute to changing the mood of an environment or a relationship. I remember, for example, several patients in nursing homes who sat inert and unresponsive in their seats until a certain piece of music was played to them. Then, suddenly, they began to move, clapping their hands, smiling, humming, singing, talking with each other, and keeping time with their feet. When a certain woman, who was almost catatonic, heard the waltzes of Chopin, she suddenly began singing and yelling happily. A single piece of music, carefully played, can transform the entire atmosphere and conduct in a place. Dr. John Diamond, a well-known medical doctor and researcher into the powerful factor of music in our lives, demonstrated this fact in his book Your Body Doesn’t Lie:

One factory in particular, a manufacturing and repair plant for sophisticated electronic equipment, where concentration and clearheadedness are essential, was playing a great deal of rock on its continual music broadcast system. It was recommended that this be eliminated. The management changed to different music and found to their delight an immediate increase in productivity and an equally pleasing decrease in errors, even though the employees were quite vocal about their dissatisfaction at having had their favorite music removed.

These experiences and others like them offer immense value for our lives. They speak to our times of increasing stress and challenge and point the way to a rediscovery of the healing energies of great music. They tell how we can use music to increase harmony and clarity in our working environment, our homes, and our relationships. Music, wisely chosen, can refresh us in our leisure hours, at our jobs, or wherever we may be. I use the word healing to suggest whatever contributes to the increasing balance and integration of all the ingredients of the personality. Music, properly used, can help to bring clearing and purification to the body, emotions, and thinking patterns. Music can also open listeners to deeper dimensions of soul and of spiritual strength within and around them.

I believe that great music is always inspired. In its own way it is immortal; its unique essence overrides personal tastes and preferences, so that it pours through listeners like a life fluid, gaining access and opening doors where all else has failed. Often great music influences persons therapeutically, despite previous conditioning, opinions, or experiences. Finally, music that is truly immortal is greater than its particular style or the historical period in which it was composed, and it transmits an abiding essence which speaks to every generation.

I remember playing certain musical selections for a friend in New Jersey several years ago. When he heard this music for the first, and even the tenth time, he ridiculed it. He said he found it weird, far out, and too different. Subliminally, however, he must have found it intriguing, as it triggered strong emotional responses in him. He soon returned and asked for more of that strange stuff. I obliged. Gradually, he became fascinated by the sounds of the symphony orchestra, with so many melodies interweaving. He was captivated by the colors and sonorities of different instruments blending together. He responded particularly to the strings and powerful Crescendos of the brass and timpani. I noticed that he was concentrating and really giving himself to the music for the first time. Whereas previously he had paced up and down in the room, talking nervously, he now chose to sit down. His breathing changed, and he became more introspective–even meditative.

By the end of that year he had bought more than two hundred new recordings, most of them containing that weird stuff. Later, he wrote to me, telling me how some pieces of music had inspired him to write a book of poetry. He mentioned to me how different he felt: …more connected and centered–more interested in things. I noticed how he had become more purposeful in his job, and how much more carefully he chose his working environment. The nourishing power of the music he found overrode all previous experiences and tastes. It awakened a deeper layer in him and affected his responses to daily ups and downs. It increased attunement to his own life path. Today great music still nourishes him.

Our life’s highest purpose is to live completely in conscious union with God. The more we cultivate great music in our lives, the greater will be our attunement to unlimited sources of the Creator’s power and direction. Such music will strengthen us to define and accomplish our earthly goals.

Develop a deeper friendship with great music and you will see many areas of your life begin to open. Beautiful music can:

Increase physical vitality, relieve fatigue and inertia.

Pierce through moods, calm anxiety and tensions, uplift feelings.

Focus thinking, clarify goals, release courage and follow-through.

Deepen relationships, enrich friendships.

Stimulate creativity and sensitivity.

Strengthen character and constructive behavior.

Expand consciousness of God and horizons of spiritual attunement.

We were all created equal, but we are born into each lifetime with different temperaments, personalities, and inclinations, which we learn to harmonize. Choosing our path with discernment and sharing with each other, we move toward fuller expression of the Divine Presence. Often, we may feel the light at the center of us and beyond us, which fills our blind spots and clarifies our motivations. Particular pieces of great music, pouring their healing energies through us, help to emphasize the light of Divinity; they remind us to focus on the best in ourselves, which is of God, while we attend to those distorted areas that need correction.

Seek out music that increases your well-being and transforms ugliness and chaos. Such music can lead you into activities and horizons of consciousness that are as beautiful as your greatest dreams and life goals.

CHAPTER 1

Music and You–A Closer Relationship

Each time we listen to beautiful music, we select an impression to weave into the harmony of our unfoldment.

FLOWER A. NEWHOUSE

It seems to me that, above all, music must stir the heart.

C. P. E. BACH

How deeply do you feel music? How much of yourself do you give? The more you can give of yourself to the music you are experiencing, the more vibrations of power will sound through you. If you come to great music with an open heart, a willing mind, and a relaxed body, it will enter you and renew you. Great music brings healing streams and electrical chargings, but these cannot enter and revitalize you as deeply if you are distracted, tense and resistant, critical, impatient, ungrateful, or poorly prepared.

If our attunement is faulty and we are scattered, we sometimes miss the finest things in life. A poet has written, The Angels come to visit us, and we know them only after they are gone. If you take time to prepare yourself beforehand for your music, it will play through you, not just around you. You will receive the full power and beauty of great music by learning better how to relax and link with the melodies you are hearing.

Take a comfortable position, either sitting in your favorite chair or lying on the floor. If you are outside, lie down on the grass or relax against a favorite tree. Use these ten keys for a more meaningful musical experience.

BEFORE BEGINNING THE MUSIC

 1.   Come to quiet for a minute. Speak to your body; tell any tense areas to relax. Speak to your feelings; tell them to be calm. Speak to your mind; let go of racing thoughts. Realize the Divine Presence in whom you are listening. You might want to use an affirmation or verse to center yourself, such as Be still and know that I am God. Keep this exercise short, simple, and enjoyable.

 2.   Be grateful for