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| Date noted | Date published | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 28/8/08 | 2008 | titbits from the last few months |
| 6/5/08 | 2008 | Recent highlights from the hundreds of new items added since Feb |
| 21/2/08 | February '06 | Recently available video lecture: 'Music and the Mind' |
| 8/2/08 | February '08 | Music, brains and wellbeing |
| 4/12/07 | November '07 | Every Primary School to Become a Singing School |
| 18/10/07 | July '07 | Singing map of Victoria |
| 18/10/07 | January '06 | 'National Singing Ambassador' appointed in Britain |
| 18/9/07 | July '07 | Why Music Education? 2007 |
| 18/9/07 | 2006 | Making every child's music matter; Music Manifesto Report no. 2 - A consultation for action |
| 7/8/07 | April '06 | The Creativity and Aging Study |
| 7/8/07 | March '07 | Report of the Review of Arts and Health Working Group |
Alice Wignall of the Guardian has written a piece about music-making's contribution to physical health, drawing strongly on the work of the Sidney de Haan Research Centre for Arts and Health
Starting in early May and running through to early July, Nature, 'the international weekly journal of science', has published nine essays (from authors including Cook, Huron, McDermott, Patel, Sloboda and Trainor) on Science and Music.
The excellent articles published in the February issue of Music Forum (mentioned below) by Davidson and Harvey are now available online.
After we finally located our most favourite researcher, Betty Bailey, she has kindly sent us hard copies of her eight papers, which, in our opinion, form one of the best bodies of work exploring the benefits of participatory singing. If you have a good reson for examining the full texts of her papers, get in touch with us.
And finally, we've linked Lucy O'Grady's interview in Voices with Jon Hawkes on the role of performance in music-making.
Since 21/2, we've added 174 new entries to our bibliography, 40 of which are 2008 publications. Highlights include:
The release of the Dana Foundation's new research, Learning Arts and the Brain
A NY Times article about community singing in the USA
Schon and others on 'Songs as an aid for language acquisition'
A bunch of new fat handbooks from Oxford University Press: Medical Ethnomusicology, Music and Emotion, Music Psychology Music and Consciousness and Companion to the Affectice Sciences. Only the first of these has been formally announced by OUP, but authors are already announcing their chapters online.
And, as a reminder that there's nothing new under the sun, 'Abiding memories: the community singing movement and English social life in the 1920s'
Just last month, ucsd.tv loaded this excellent talk by Aniruddh Patel from the Neurosciences Institute on to YouTube.
Two excellent pieces in this issue:
Jane W. Davidson writes on 'singing for self-healing, health and wellbeing'; she provides a comprehensive summary and analysis of the research supporting the function of group singing as an essential aspect the human experience: 'studies provide evidence of the physiological, cognitive, and emotional benefits of group singing for an improved quality of life'.
Alan R. Harvey writes on 'music and human evolution' from the perspective of a neuroscientist actively engaged in music since childhood. His coverage of the brain research is fabulous, but even more useful is his outline of the interpretations of music's essential functions that can be drawn from this research. His final, and most exciting, is of music's capacity to keep us sane.
Sadly there's no electronic source for these articles, but you could hassle your local library to subscribe, or even buy you own copy.
On the 21st November, the British government launched a national campaign to 'make our primary schools come alive with the sound of music, involving a £332 million investment in choirs, orchestras, new instruments, performance and free music lessons'.
The Press Notice describes the many programs (amongst them Sing Up), and outlines the basis on which it was decided to take this path. There's some useful material here to use in support of similar campaigns elsewhere.
John Wiseman, head of the McCaughey Centre, delivered this address at the July '07 Expanding Cultures: Arts and Local Governement Conference. The pdf version of the PowerPoint support to this presentation displays, for the first time, the results of State-wide research into the level of active arts participation amongst Victorians. This includes a map of Victoria indicating the 'proportion of (the) adult population who have participated in singing in the last month' according to local government area.
Howard Goodall was appointed National Singing Ambassador by the then Secretary of State for Education, Alan Johnson, in January 2007. Funding was earmarked (£10m for the first year, with the possibility of a further 3 years subject to the British Government's comprehensive spending review) to run a national programme to make every primary school a singing school. In June '07 Hansard records a question concerning how the funds have been applied. The answer claimed that 'plans are being made to allocate the funding to major national initiatives to achieve the widest possible impact. This will include the production of a major song resource to be made available to every school and every child and the training of vocal leaders for schools'.
A summary of research-supported reasons why music in schools is essential. From the staff of MENC (The National Association for Music Education)
The Music Manifesto is a campaign for improving music education. Established by the UK Government in 2004, it aims over five years to provide greater opportunities for children and young people to develop their personal and creative potential through music.
From the Executive Summary:
Music has the power to transform lives. As this report makes clear, everyone involved in music education passionately believes in the benefits of music and music making, yet hundreds of thousands of children and young people are missing out.
Our aim is to give every child the chance to make music and enjoy the immense benefits it brings. As we have discovered through putting this report together, brilliant work is being done to do precisely that, but it is being hamstrung by a lack of coordination and focus, particularly at a local level.
The central recommendation of this report is that everyone involved in music education should work together to provide the framework and focus needed to deliver a universal music education offer to all children, from early years onwards, where they can take an active part in high-quality music making.
Final report (April 2006) of a study begun in 2001 that included a seniors chorale in Washington DC as one of three subjects. The study continues. Principal Investigator: Gene Cohen
The following is taken from the summary of the choral stream in the linked report above.
The Levine School of Music in Washington, D.C. formed a Senior Singers Chorale in 2001 as part of the wider study examining how cultural programs under professional direction could affect the health of people 55 and older.
Findings from the choral stream:
Conclusions From Results:
What is remarkable in this study is that after just a year into the study the cultural groups, in contrast to the control groups, were showing areas of actual stabilization and improvement apart from decline-despite an average age which is greater than life expectancy. This pattern then continued throughout year two of the study. These results point to powerful positive intervention effects of these community-based art programs run by professional artists. They point to true health promotion and disease prevention effects. In that they also show stabilization and actual increase in community-based activities in general among those in the cultural programs, they reveal a positive impact on maintaining independence and on reducing dependency. This latter point demonstrates that these community-based cultural programs for older adults appear to be reducing risk factors that drive the need for long-term care.
Released in March 2007, this report sets out the findings and recommendations of the Review of Arts and Health Working Group, which was set up by Harry Cayton, the National Director for Patient and the Public, to support him in advising the Department of Health on its role in relation to arts and health.
Its key findings are:
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