I woke up this morning with a song in my head. It was “Time is Tight” by Booker T and the MGs, a really catchy track that put me in the right frame of mind to start the day. Here in the UK, the song “Soul Limbo” by Booker T and the MGs is the soundtrack to the cricket season during the summer. I was listening to the current test match between England and New Zealand, so that’s probably why a song by Booker T and the MGs came to mind when I woke up. The song had an added meaning since everyone else in the house and I had slept in late. I was tight. But even though the morning turned out to be a blur of packing lunches, tying shoelaces, and walking dogs, I kept humming that tune. And it helped, not just in the morning, but all day.
Normally, I probably wouldn’t have thought too much about having a song stuck in my head. It happens fairly regularly after all (and it’s usually not a song I want in there). But Rosemary Golding’s book music and moral management in the 19th century English madhouse got me thinking again. Golding’s book describes the extent to which music was used in English workhouses during the 19th century.
Music as “moral therapy”
Musical and Moral Management in the Nineteenth-Century English Lunatic Insane Asylum, by Rosemary Golding
Source: Palgrave Macmillan, used with permission
The 19th century was a time of expansion when it came to asylum provision. Although today we tend to think of nursing homes in negative terms, they were often built with good intentions.
Many English asylums were also established with “moral therapyas its guiding framework (Golding uses the term “moral management”). Moral therapy was based on the belief that patients could be helped if they were treated with compassion, kindness, and dignity in a clean and comfortable environment that provided freedom of movement, opportunities for occupational and social activity, and soothing talk. In many nursing homes, social activity included both music and dance.
It is important to note that not only wealthy patients were able to participate in musical entertainment. Patients in the poorhouses, which catered to the poor, also had access to music on occasion. In fact, it was an advertisement for an organist to work in a poorhouse that prompted Golding to further investigate the use of music in asylums.
So how was music used? Although the patients often listened to music and participated in dances, they also sometimes played it themselves. Asylum bands were established and often boasted extensive repertoires. The Brookwood Asylum Band in Surrey, for example, played selections from Verdi, Strauss, Rossini and Donizetti, as well as more popular tunes. His program for the 1874-75 season included two concerts per month, together with two additional concerts in December for Christmas and New Years.
The music was meant to help patients therapeutically, socially, and even physically through dance. The patients looked forward to concerts and dances, which could be used as incentives for good behavior. The nursing home staff also looked forward to such occasions as they provided a break from what could be a monotonous and demanding routine. Finally, and crucial to moral therapy, music provided a means through which asylums could prepare patients to return to the outside world.
Music was sometimes considered a threat to health.
Although music was viewed positively in many English nursing homes, it has also been viewed as a threat to health. Like James Kennaway’s entertaining book, Bad vibes: the history of the idea of music as a cause of illness shows, music has also been seen as potentially harmful. These theories gained some authority during the Enlightenment when music, along with other stimulants such as coffee, tea, and tobacco, were thought to overexcite the nerves. Women were thought to be especially vulnerable to such effects.
Benefits worth remembering today
For me, there is something inherently pleasurable about music (well, good music, at least) that is beneficial to mental health. Part of this may be the way music can naturally make us mindful, in the way that exposure to nature can; It persuades us to live in the moment and let go of anxieties. But it can also remind us of times past and help us put things into perspective. Many asylum superintendents understood that during the 19th century. It is worth remembering today as well.
