Gary Ansdell - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Gary Ansdell
British Journal of Music Therapy, 2006
British Journal of Music Therapy, 2000
British Journal of Music Therapy, 2005
See the recent debate on 'Music Therapy & Spirituality' in the VOICES webjournal, moderated discu... more See the recent debate on 'Music Therapy & Spirituality' in the VOICES webjournal, moderated discussion on music therapy and spirituality [www.voices.no]. 'Separately from the book Love has issued a recording called Dancing Before the Ark, comprising a variety of idiomatic organ improvisations, part of the living heritage of the French tradition of liturgical organ improvisations-one of the few living traditions of classical improvisation remaining. SDC Recording (c/o Ainm Records, Dublin): SDCCD607.
International Journal of Community Music
This article describes how a group of music therapists and a music sociologist working on the AHR... more This article describes how a group of music therapists and a music sociologist working on the AHRC-funded research project Care for Music responded to the situation they found themselves during the 2020–21 COVID pandemic, both in terms of their practice and the ongoing research project they shared. In particular, the article outlines how the challenging situation has produced interesting new practical, methodological and theoretical perspectives – functioning as a helpful ‘accidental experiment’. The article presents three vignettes of music therapists coping with the initial pandemic situation and how they adapted music therapy practice, followed by preliminary reflections on emerging themes from the ‘accidental experiment’ in relation to the central concern of the AHRC Care for Music research project: the co-creation of mutual ‘scenes of care’ through music within later life and end of life settings.
Music Education Research, 2014
1. Beginners' nerves. 2. What turns you on? Working titles and research questions. 3. Plottin... more 1. Beginners' nerves. 2. What turns you on? Working titles and research questions. 3. Plotting, planning and playing safe. 4. The '3R's' of research: Reading, writing and referencing. 5. Making a proposal. 6. Designs and ethics. 7. Franz's project part I. 8. Suzie's project part I. 9. Franz's project part II. 10. Suzie's project part II. 11. Surveying the scene: Questionnaire and survey methods. 12. Finishing off. Epilogue: A community of inquiry. References. Bibliography. Index.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES Giorgos Tsiris, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in Music Therapy at Queen Margaret Uni... more AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES Giorgos Tsiris, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in Music Therapy at Queen Margaret University and Arts Lead at St Columba’s Hospice in Edinburgh, UK. Exploring the performance of spirituality in everyday music therapy contexts, his doctorate research has introduced new conceptual and methodological approaches to spirituality and its understanding in music therapy. [gtsiris@qmu.ac.uk] Prof Gary Ansdell is Professor at Grieg Academy of Music, Bergen; honorary Professor and Senior Research Fellow at Exeter University; Adjunct Professor at University of Limerick; an Associate of Nordoff Robbins, UK, where he is Convenor of the MPhil/PhD programme. Gary is author/co-author of seven books on music therapy/music and health and joint editor (with Tia DeNora) of the book series Music and Change for Ashgate Publishers. [G.Ansdell@exeter.ac.uk] Publication history: Submitted 11 Nov 2019 Accepted 14 Nov 2019 First published 24 Nov 2019
This study takes a qualitative research perspective on the question of how music therapists talk ... more This study takes a qualitative research perspective on the question of how music therapists talk about music therapy and how much a metalanguage relates to music therapy as an evolving discipline and profession. I ask whether there is a discourse of music therapy, and what the implications of this might be. Common to music centered approaches to music therapy is a problem I characterize as music therapists dilemma. This concerns having to use words and verbal logic to represent complex musical processes in music therapy (and the therapeutic processes which are seen to occur within these). I investigate how aspects of the New Musciology are discourse theory might shed light on the nature of music therapists dilemma. The data consists of an analysis of the verbal representations of one approach - Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy. Three analyses examine different occasions where Nordoff-Robbins Music therapists are required to verbalise about music therapy: (i) when making a different com...
Sociology of Health & Illness
British Journal of Music Therapy, 2008
1. Are recent developments in music therapy (such as the Community Music Therapy movement) compro... more 1. Are recent developments in music therapy (such as the Community Music Therapy movement) compromising a primary attention to people's needs? 2. Are such developments also threatening the professional survival of music therapy? 3. Is the perceived critique of the hard-won achievements of music therapy professionalisation an unfair one? 4. What is the real challenge to professional music therapy now?
Journal of British Music Therapy, 1991
This paper outlines a model for assessing adult clients in creative music therapy based on a phen... more This paper outlines a model for assessing adult clients in creative music therapy based on a phenomenological approach to organising the descriptive level.
British Journal of Music Therapy, 1998
difficulties (chapter 6). I was uncomfortable with the author's constant and unnecessary reit... more difficulties (chapter 6). I was uncomfortable with the author's constant and unnecessary reiteration that he is the founder of the approach, its methodology and the director of the training course. I feel that by doing so, the author irritates the reader and somewhat undermines his own integrity. This being said, I was fascinated to read this challenging and informative book by Paul Newham. I would highly recommend it to all music therapists and students who want to enter the mysterious world of the voice. This book certainly gives the reader every chance to have a deeper insight into this mystery.
British Journal of Music Therapy, 2000
Contrary, perhaps, to the title's implications, here is a book which will inform and inspire ... more Contrary, perhaps, to the title's implications, here is a book which will inform and inspire music therapists of all persuasions. Paths of Development is surely one of the key music therapy texts of the decade an original, perceptive and engaging contribution to the literature. For me the test of a good book is how may times I put it down to make notes, think about a point or compare it to other texts. By this test Ken Aigen's book is a good one indeed. I hope this review might convince potential readers that it has a significance and value that extends wider than simply the Nordoff-Robbins community. Paths is more than one book in many ways, a fact which could be a disadvantage in less skilled hands than Aigen's. First, the book chronicles a research project which took the form of a four-year immersion in the Nordoff-Robbins archive in New York. The honesty with which Aigen presents his 'research stance' on the material in the opening section gives the reader confidence in the trustworthiness of the interpretation and debate presented later. One could never accuse Aigen of intellectual sleight-of-hand (though his sometimes lengthy self-justifications may over-egg the pudding for some). Researching the archives led Aigen to review some of the original 'key cases' of Nordoff and Robbins' early work (some of which have been published in other more descriptive forms before), elucidating these with historical and contextual information and posing intelligent questions about this material from a contemporary perspective. Thus the second strand of the book is an ongoing historical narrative which outlines the triumphs and travails of Nordoff and Robbins' journeys around the US UK and Europe whilst developing their work in , . the 1960s. This in itself is salutary to any of us feeling hard done by in our professional lives as music therapists today. Although Nordoff and Robbins wrote up some of the same cases in their pioneering text Creative Music Therapy (1977) Aigen's approach is quite different from this. His treatment is analytic and comparative, each case study being focused by a theme such as 'Martha Can Sing a Song: Musical Skills and the Development of a Self', or 'Good-Bye Indu: The Aesthetic Form of the Music Therapy Session'. Aigen's agenda in examining the cases is partly, as he states in the Introduction, to provide 'a guide to the early work of Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins: to their motivation, their thinking, and their attempts to articulate the essence of their approach' (p. xvii). It is not, however, just the clients who are presented, but also the therapists who did this work in a particular time and in particular circumstances (both of these considerations having a bearing on the aims and style of the therapy). It is also interesting to note Aigen's comment (on p.14) that he began these studies looking for 'the story behind'the musical interaction. As his analyses progressed (and after himself training in the Nordoff-Robbins approach) he began instead to focus on the musical interactions 'being the story'. This comment is symptomatic of Aigen's attempt to primarily understand Nordoff and Robbins' work in its own terms, and the cases from their original context and rationale, rather than to impose contemporary models of practice and theory on them. For therapists not trained in the approach, Aigen hopes to show some of the depth and originality of thinking in the work (particularly that which is only implicit in the original Nordoff-Robbins texts). The way he presents his analysis as research rather than simply personal opinion lends credibility to his formulations, as they are clearly based on systematic listening, interviews and assessment of historical information. As with Nordoff and Robbins' original presentation of their work in Creative Music Therapy, you are not required to believe just the text; the clinical music is there too in order than you can judge descriptions and interpretations for yourself against the aural evidence. With Pathscome two CDs with 80 extracts linked to the case commentaries (though annoyingly the CD tracks are not marked in the text please note for the second edition!), This combination of book and music gives the reader a complex experience of the work, and I found my thoughts and hearings of material I thought I knew challenged by Aigen's commentaries and equally wanted to challenge him back in some cases. Working my way through these chapters also made me think of how incredibly lucky we are to have the original taped material so that Aigen (and others after him) can present post-hoc analysis alongside the originals. Idle speculation though this is, think how different 'Freud Studies' or 'lung Studies' would be if we had recordings of Anna O's sessions, and didn't have to rely on Freud's version of what happened! Psychoanalytic research has in large part to believe the theory rather than the evi-
British Journal of Music Therapy, 2000
British Journal of Music Therapy, 2006
British Journal of Music Therapy, 2000
British Journal of Music Therapy, 2005
See the recent debate on 'Music Therapy & Spirituality' in the VOICES webjournal, moderated discu... more See the recent debate on 'Music Therapy & Spirituality' in the VOICES webjournal, moderated discussion on music therapy and spirituality [www.voices.no]. 'Separately from the book Love has issued a recording called Dancing Before the Ark, comprising a variety of idiomatic organ improvisations, part of the living heritage of the French tradition of liturgical organ improvisations-one of the few living traditions of classical improvisation remaining. SDC Recording (c/o Ainm Records, Dublin): SDCCD607.
International Journal of Community Music
This article describes how a group of music therapists and a music sociologist working on the AHR... more This article describes how a group of music therapists and a music sociologist working on the AHRC-funded research project Care for Music responded to the situation they found themselves during the 2020–21 COVID pandemic, both in terms of their practice and the ongoing research project they shared. In particular, the article outlines how the challenging situation has produced interesting new practical, methodological and theoretical perspectives – functioning as a helpful ‘accidental experiment’. The article presents three vignettes of music therapists coping with the initial pandemic situation and how they adapted music therapy practice, followed by preliminary reflections on emerging themes from the ‘accidental experiment’ in relation to the central concern of the AHRC Care for Music research project: the co-creation of mutual ‘scenes of care’ through music within later life and end of life settings.
Music Education Research, 2014
1. Beginners' nerves. 2. What turns you on? Working titles and research questions. 3. Plottin... more 1. Beginners' nerves. 2. What turns you on? Working titles and research questions. 3. Plotting, planning and playing safe. 4. The '3R's' of research: Reading, writing and referencing. 5. Making a proposal. 6. Designs and ethics. 7. Franz's project part I. 8. Suzie's project part I. 9. Franz's project part II. 10. Suzie's project part II. 11. Surveying the scene: Questionnaire and survey methods. 12. Finishing off. Epilogue: A community of inquiry. References. Bibliography. Index.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES Giorgos Tsiris, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in Music Therapy at Queen Margaret Uni... more AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES Giorgos Tsiris, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in Music Therapy at Queen Margaret University and Arts Lead at St Columba’s Hospice in Edinburgh, UK. Exploring the performance of spirituality in everyday music therapy contexts, his doctorate research has introduced new conceptual and methodological approaches to spirituality and its understanding in music therapy. [gtsiris@qmu.ac.uk] Prof Gary Ansdell is Professor at Grieg Academy of Music, Bergen; honorary Professor and Senior Research Fellow at Exeter University; Adjunct Professor at University of Limerick; an Associate of Nordoff Robbins, UK, where he is Convenor of the MPhil/PhD programme. Gary is author/co-author of seven books on music therapy/music and health and joint editor (with Tia DeNora) of the book series Music and Change for Ashgate Publishers. [G.Ansdell@exeter.ac.uk] Publication history: Submitted 11 Nov 2019 Accepted 14 Nov 2019 First published 24 Nov 2019
This study takes a qualitative research perspective on the question of how music therapists talk ... more This study takes a qualitative research perspective on the question of how music therapists talk about music therapy and how much a metalanguage relates to music therapy as an evolving discipline and profession. I ask whether there is a discourse of music therapy, and what the implications of this might be. Common to music centered approaches to music therapy is a problem I characterize as music therapists dilemma. This concerns having to use words and verbal logic to represent complex musical processes in music therapy (and the therapeutic processes which are seen to occur within these). I investigate how aspects of the New Musciology are discourse theory might shed light on the nature of music therapists dilemma. The data consists of an analysis of the verbal representations of one approach - Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy. Three analyses examine different occasions where Nordoff-Robbins Music therapists are required to verbalise about music therapy: (i) when making a different com...
Sociology of Health & Illness
British Journal of Music Therapy, 2008
1. Are recent developments in music therapy (such as the Community Music Therapy movement) compro... more 1. Are recent developments in music therapy (such as the Community Music Therapy movement) compromising a primary attention to people's needs? 2. Are such developments also threatening the professional survival of music therapy? 3. Is the perceived critique of the hard-won achievements of music therapy professionalisation an unfair one? 4. What is the real challenge to professional music therapy now?
Journal of British Music Therapy, 1991
This paper outlines a model for assessing adult clients in creative music therapy based on a phen... more This paper outlines a model for assessing adult clients in creative music therapy based on a phenomenological approach to organising the descriptive level.
British Journal of Music Therapy, 1998
difficulties (chapter 6). I was uncomfortable with the author's constant and unnecessary reit... more difficulties (chapter 6). I was uncomfortable with the author's constant and unnecessary reiteration that he is the founder of the approach, its methodology and the director of the training course. I feel that by doing so, the author irritates the reader and somewhat undermines his own integrity. This being said, I was fascinated to read this challenging and informative book by Paul Newham. I would highly recommend it to all music therapists and students who want to enter the mysterious world of the voice. This book certainly gives the reader every chance to have a deeper insight into this mystery.
British Journal of Music Therapy, 2000
Contrary, perhaps, to the title's implications, here is a book which will inform and inspire ... more Contrary, perhaps, to the title's implications, here is a book which will inform and inspire music therapists of all persuasions. Paths of Development is surely one of the key music therapy texts of the decade an original, perceptive and engaging contribution to the literature. For me the test of a good book is how may times I put it down to make notes, think about a point or compare it to other texts. By this test Ken Aigen's book is a good one indeed. I hope this review might convince potential readers that it has a significance and value that extends wider than simply the Nordoff-Robbins community. Paths is more than one book in many ways, a fact which could be a disadvantage in less skilled hands than Aigen's. First, the book chronicles a research project which took the form of a four-year immersion in the Nordoff-Robbins archive in New York. The honesty with which Aigen presents his 'research stance' on the material in the opening section gives the reader confidence in the trustworthiness of the interpretation and debate presented later. One could never accuse Aigen of intellectual sleight-of-hand (though his sometimes lengthy self-justifications may over-egg the pudding for some). Researching the archives led Aigen to review some of the original 'key cases' of Nordoff and Robbins' early work (some of which have been published in other more descriptive forms before), elucidating these with historical and contextual information and posing intelligent questions about this material from a contemporary perspective. Thus the second strand of the book is an ongoing historical narrative which outlines the triumphs and travails of Nordoff and Robbins' journeys around the US UK and Europe whilst developing their work in , . the 1960s. This in itself is salutary to any of us feeling hard done by in our professional lives as music therapists today. Although Nordoff and Robbins wrote up some of the same cases in their pioneering text Creative Music Therapy (1977) Aigen's approach is quite different from this. His treatment is analytic and comparative, each case study being focused by a theme such as 'Martha Can Sing a Song: Musical Skills and the Development of a Self', or 'Good-Bye Indu: The Aesthetic Form of the Music Therapy Session'. Aigen's agenda in examining the cases is partly, as he states in the Introduction, to provide 'a guide to the early work of Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins: to their motivation, their thinking, and their attempts to articulate the essence of their approach' (p. xvii). It is not, however, just the clients who are presented, but also the therapists who did this work in a particular time and in particular circumstances (both of these considerations having a bearing on the aims and style of the therapy). It is also interesting to note Aigen's comment (on p.14) that he began these studies looking for 'the story behind'the musical interaction. As his analyses progressed (and after himself training in the Nordoff-Robbins approach) he began instead to focus on the musical interactions 'being the story'. This comment is symptomatic of Aigen's attempt to primarily understand Nordoff and Robbins' work in its own terms, and the cases from their original context and rationale, rather than to impose contemporary models of practice and theory on them. For therapists not trained in the approach, Aigen hopes to show some of the depth and originality of thinking in the work (particularly that which is only implicit in the original Nordoff-Robbins texts). The way he presents his analysis as research rather than simply personal opinion lends credibility to his formulations, as they are clearly based on systematic listening, interviews and assessment of historical information. As with Nordoff and Robbins' original presentation of their work in Creative Music Therapy, you are not required to believe just the text; the clinical music is there too in order than you can judge descriptions and interpretations for yourself against the aural evidence. With Pathscome two CDs with 80 extracts linked to the case commentaries (though annoyingly the CD tracks are not marked in the text please note for the second edition!), This combination of book and music gives the reader a complex experience of the work, and I found my thoughts and hearings of material I thought I knew challenged by Aigen's commentaries and equally wanted to challenge him back in some cases. Working my way through these chapters also made me think of how incredibly lucky we are to have the original taped material so that Aigen (and others after him) can present post-hoc analysis alongside the originals. Idle speculation though this is, think how different 'Freud Studies' or 'lung Studies' would be if we had recordings of Anna O's sessions, and didn't have to rely on Freud's version of what happened! Psychoanalytic research has in large part to believe the theory rather than the evi-
British Journal of Music Therapy, 2000