Active Silences in Music Therapy Improvisations:

Abstract In this chapter I explore different aspects of silences in music therapy improvisations. I draw together literature from music therapy and free musical improvisation. I regard free musical improvisation as related to, but not the same as, music therapy improvisation. I reference the groundbreaking work of Nordoff and Robbins, who took up the developmental, relational features of musical processes within music therapy improvisations. With a focus on musical aspects of the human condition, I refer to the psychoanalytic literature, because it deals in depth and detail with what it is to be human and has incorporated a number of publications about music. I also outline my doctoral research, which investigated free musical improvisation as a form of conversation. I make a case for a form of deep listening that requires silence. I describe the various ways in which silences carry potential meaning: a moment of being together, or apart, in different ways. Silences also hold a structural function within an ongoing improvised duet, such as framing the music, slowing it down, interrupting, or ending it. In relation to the profound significance of silence, deep listening to silences is a way of attending to our whole musical-personal presence as therapists. Throughout the chapter, rather than use the terms ‘client’, ‘service user’, or ‘patient’, I refer to the person in therapy as the child/adult. In terms of psychoanalytic work, I retain the usual convention with the word ‘patient’.