Sharon Davis-Troth, Ph.D.

"By sound the letter is formed, by letters the syllable, by syllables the word, by words the daily life.  Hence this human world is dependent on sound."¹

Sound and music have been instruments of healing since the beginning of time.  Music and the process of healing have co-existed since ancient civilization.  Even in mythic lore, music has affected emotions and matter.  Apollo, from Greek and Roman mythology, was the patron god of musicians and poets who had healing powers, and was said to have made harmonious sounds in the heavens through his rhythmic movements.  His servant Orpheus would apply remedies to body and soul through poetry, music and medicine, and brought back to life his beloved Eurydice with song.  His son, Asclepius, is invoked, even today through ritual for healing of body, mind, and emotions.

Three major roles that music played in early civilizations were-music as the key to knowledge of universal law; as a means for worshipping and interacting with the Divine; and as a healing tool in everyday life.²  Music has been considered the core of secret forces or spirits to be evoked by song in order to bestow power on man, which assists in healing and helps him rediscover the deeper self.  Most likely, man will never know when or how the first musical sound was made, but every culture has developed some form of musical tradition, and many cultures have their own legends about the origins of music.

The origin of what would be known as music is said to have come before the first agricultural villages and perhaps before the first civilization.  Music had power to influence the mind.  The earliest physical evidence of musical activity was the clay ocarina with five holes, in 1000 BC.  The oldest healing music manuscript is now only a fragment, the First Pythian Ode of Pindar, dating from 474 BC.  This ancient Greek document was written in the Dorian style, which the Greeks thought to be therapeutic since it civilized and cultivated courage.  Pindar's odes were sung with the accompaniment of flute and lyre and "sought to inculcate healthy happiness as a national asset" for Greek communities and their people.³  The ancient Spartans had a ceremony of playing flute music to remove the spirit of anger from men retuning from war.  It is written that Plutarch, on the authority of Aristotle, had flute music playing to relieve the pain of Etrusian slaves who were being flogged.  Homer used music to ease negative emotions such as anger fear, worry and stress, and used music as a vehicle to raise the moods of soul and body.  Historical writings also show that Plutarch taught, "All though the history of music in ancient Egypt, modulated sound itself was an Arcanum."  The name for sound was herv (lit. voice) and the word had an esoteric impact in cults.⁴

The Greek scientist, philosopher and mathematician, Pythagoras (6th century BC), helped alleviate the worries on the minds of his disciples each day by playing music which would calm their mind and produce restful and deep sleep with prophetic dreams.  In the morning, he would remove residual sleepiness by playing stimulating music and melodies.  He discovered the relationship between tone and the ratio of the strings.  There was also a strong emphasis on numbers and how they linked with music.  Pythagoras taught that movement, rhythm and vibration of every atom, as well as the celestial bodies produce a specific sound.  Even today, sound and numbers are intricately linked through Greek history, the Qabalah, and other mystical studies.  "Sound is simply heard number; number is latent sound."⁵ Pythagoras, after twenty-one years of study with several mystical orders, learned the secret information surrounding numbers and music.  History considers Pythagoras to be the inventor of Western mathematics, science, and music theory.  Pythagoras spent much of his time looking for the Divine order in numbers.  Barbara Crowe, in Music and Soul-Making, reports that Pythagoras saw the manifestation of earthly order in the movement of heavenly bodies and in the laws of music, as well as in the physical and mental realms of humans.  Pythagoras calculated ratios of musical intervals and began a system of musical scales based on mathematics and the mystical number system he had learned.  Pythagoras believed the study of music and how our world works were the same.  The basic origin of knowledge was the study of music.⁶

Music played an important role in rituals and festivals.  The feasts were considered to be helpful in preventing negative emotional states and to rid people of fears.  These early Greeks believed that by keeping the people's emotions healthy, physical health would follow.
    
Kirtan is an ancient participatory music activity that brings a person to stillness without mental effort.  Considered one of the oldest sacred music traditions of the world, kirtan is a "call-and-response chanting" from India.  The music of kirtan is the vehicle, but the driving force is the vibration of the tones that open the heart and activate the inner spirit.
    
In ancient China, the emperor called on his musicians and astrologers, both participants of the Imperial Bureau of Weights and Measures, and had them determine the exact length of the Imperial Pipes to make certain that the music played during his reign would be in harmony with the heavenly bodies.  This would establish peace throughout the empire.  By the third century, BC, a system of connecting sounds to the order of the universe had been actualized.  To this Chinese culture the concepts of music were based on a belief in the power of music to sustain universal harmony (or destroy it if used improperly).  It was an extension of the belief of the magic power of sounds.  As a manifestation of the soul, a single sound "had the power to influence other souls for good or ill."⁷
    
According to the ancient Hebrews, all prophets foretold the future through chants.  It is recorded that Moses' sister, Miriam, had great visionary powers brought to her through chanting.  The Talmud refers to a song which when sung is reported to protect the people from epidemics.⁸
    
Islamic history reports that Ibn Zaila (d 1048) believed sound brings an influence in the soul in two separate ways: one because of its musical structure (aesthetic beauty), and the other because of its likeness to the soul (spiritual meaning).  In the ancient kingdoms of Assyria, Babylonia, and Sumeria, the priests who calculated the astrological measurements of heavenly bodies, oversaw ceremonies and cured the sick, were also the musicians.⁹
    
Other cultures of the past have recognized the value of music for healing and transcending.  The Druids, for instance, had a practice called "perpetual choirs."  They would continually feed harmony into their realm for maintaining the natural order of life, just as the Tibetans did in the past and still do today.  When a person would go to see a Zulu medicine man, rather than ask the person when their symptoms first occurred, he would instead ask them when they had stopped singing.  All cultural lives of the Australian aboriginal people were organized around songs and the ebb and flow of the natural landscape.  Songs would form wave patterns corresponding to the sounds of a particular natural setting-"the shape of the land and the shape of the song" were entrained harmoniously.¹⁰
    
In early cultures worldwide, musicians, shamans, priests, prophets, and philosophers all held the concept in common that music exemplifies the microcosm of the, "order of the universe, and follows cosmological laws and that through the practice of music one could understand these laws as well as the intelligence behind them."11  Based on these laws and their inherent intelligence, rhythm of music reflected the movement of all the universes-galaxies, stars and planets, sun, moon, seasons, days and nights, seas and oceans with their tidal rhythms, birth, death, and even human cells.  Music was considered the stimulus that could bring harmony to the mind and body of man, to the community of man, and even the heavenly bodies.  These ideas made up the basis of the practice of music as a healing technique.  In his book, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, La Govinda states:

Among the worlds' cosmologies the universe began with a sound.  The secret of this hidden power of sound or vibration, which forms the key to the riddle of creation and of life, had been well understood by the seers of olden times.  The Rishis who inhabited the slopes of the Himalayas, the Magi of Iran, the adepts Mesopotamia, and the mystics of Greece."¹²

    
The people of India believed the whole universe "hangs on sound," and all human activity is dependent on this truth.  In the temples of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, the priests chanted incantations while giving medicine to the sick.  Among the early Ojibwa tribes of North America, the jissakid practitioners (medicine men) would sit beside the ill or injured and sing songs with accompaniment of rattles.  The American Indians of the plains and northwest, while experiencing their rite of passage, would fast and meditate four days and nights in hope of receiving an animal spirit who would bestow to them a song of protection from harm throughout life.¹³  There is a story about a girl on the Aleutian Islands who raised a man from the dead by singing.¹⁴
    
There are many references in the Old and New Testament of healers who used music and soothing balms for healing.  The ancient Hebrews and early Christians believed that singing of psalms would have healing power.  David comforted King Saul with his lyre.  Whenever, "the evil spirit" came upon Saul, David "took the lyre and played it with his hand, and Saul would be relieved and feel better, and the evil spirit would depart from him."¹⁵  Another story is found in Joshua, Chapter 6.  Joshua is instructed by the Lord to bring down the walls of Jericho by having his people march around the city while seven priests blow trumpets.  This process is continued for six days.  On the seventh day, Joshua instructs his people and priests to go around the city seven times.  On the seventh time around when the priests blew the trumpets, Joshua ordered the people to, "Shout! For the Lord has given you the city."  At this point, the walls of the city "fell down flat," and the people were able to take over Jericho.¹⁶
   
The connection between music and religious worship is still an integral part of the religious practices today.  Hymns are sung, Catholic churches have full musical masses, Muslims are called to prayer through chant, and the cantor is an integral part of the Jewish Sabbath service.
     
Many cultures believe that music and the Divine are so strongly connected that it is sound which is the source of creation itself.  Barbara Crowe cites from J. E. Berendt in Nada Brahma: The World is Sound, "From the standpoint of physics, there are billions of different possible vibrations.  But the cosmos - the universe - chooses from these billions of possibilities with overwhelming preference, for those few thousand vibrations that make harmonic sense . . ." [In reality, there are an innumerable amount of possibilities.]  Ms. Crowe then states that different cultures believe this is not coincidence but a Divine Intelligence of some sort that sang the world into existence.  The Hindu culture, the Aborigines, and even the early Christians believed that it was sound that brought the universe into existence.¹⁷   The Gospel of John, Chapter 1, verse 1 reads, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."¹⁸  A word is a sound that has a specific vibration and frequency just as music does, so the world, according to the Bible, began with a sound.
    
During the 1730's, Carlo Broschi, known as Farinelli (the most famous singer of his century, 1705-1782), was summoned by Queen Isabella to help King Philip V of Spain overcome severe depression.  Farinelli is said to have sung one of his most captivating songs and Philip experienced not only instant remission of his depression but his chronic pain also disappeared.¹⁹
    
In 1787, a German musician and physicist, Ernst Chladni published, Discovery of the Theory of Pitch, one of the first commentaries about the science of sound.  In this piece and other written works, he laid the foundation for the branch of knowledge that was coined "acoustics."  Chladni is most often referred to as the "father of acoustics."  He also invented the euphonium, a musical instrument made of glass rods of different pitches.  Chladni was the first known individual to begin the process of what today is called Cymatics (to be addressed later in this paper) by demonstrating that sound and vibration move matter.  Chladni placed sand on a metal plate, and using a violin bow perpendicular to the plate to make sounds, showed that the sand shifted and vibrated from an amorphous pile to very intricate designs.  Today, variations of his early technique are used in the design and construction of acoustic instruments like violins, guitars, and violas.²⁰

Continue to Part 4

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1  Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnakra (translated by Dr. R. K. Shringy), (Delhi: Motilal Barnarsidass, 12.2, 1978)

2  Barbara Crowe, Music and Soul-Making, (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2004) 3-4.

 

3   Meinecke, Music and Medicine in Classical Antiguity, 72.

 

4   Ibid., 55

 

5   E. Rothstein, Emblems of Mind, (New York; Avon Books, 1995) 23.

 

6   Crowe, Music and Soul-Making, 3-4.

 

7  Lawrence Pickin, Music for Eastern Asia. The Oxford History of Music, Vol. 1, ed. by Egon Wellesz,

(London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 87.

 

8    Alfred Sendry, Music in the Social and Religious Life of Antiquity,

(Cranbury, NJ: Fairlight Dickenson University Press, 1974) 247.

9    Ibid., 236.

10  An Interview with Ani Williams by Diane M. Cooper. 2002. Music as a Mirror of Creation.
 http://www.aniwilliams.com/music_mirror.htm.

11  Henry George Farmer, "Music of Islam,"  The Oxford History of Music, ed. by Egon Wellesz,

(London: Oxford University Press, 1957), 440.

12  La Govinda, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, (New York: Weiser Books, 1967) 26-27.

13  Ibid., 8.

14  Alfred Sendry, Music in the Social and Religious Life of Antiquity, 249.

15  The Holy Bible, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1989), Samuel 16:17-23,  248.

16  Ibid., Joshua 6:1-20, 188.

17  Barbara Crowe, Music and Soul-making, 6.

18  The Holy Bible, John 1:1, 86.

19  Sony Pictures, Farinelli (Carlo Broschi) 1705-1782), 1986. 1-2.

20  Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Ernst Chladni,

Retrieved June 10, 2006 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Chladni.