Organ music and psychiatry by Kees Huges

by Kees Huges | Het ORGEL | Year 98 | (2002) | Issue 2

Kees Huges Organ music and psychiatry
Het ORGEL 98 (2002), nr. 2, 38-39 [summary]

(Kees Huges is music therapist)

Many people in Holland associate organ music with negative emotions. This makes organmusic very fit for music therapy: people react to it easily.

The first sessions of music therapy in a group are often frightening to theparticipants: they are afraid to admit that they like organ music. It can be helpful tolet the members determine with which colour they associate a specific piece of organmusic.

The most frequently chosen colours appear to be white (marriage), black (death), brown(church pews, the pub next to the church), yellow (warmth, security) and blue (heaven,liberation, ‘away from the troubles that bother me now’).

Lengthy organ music in a plenum registration is generally judged negatively. Romanticorgan music and organ music in the style of Jan Zwart and Feike Asma refer often to thedistress of a strict upbringing. Lighter baroque music in particular (trio sonatas, forexample) leads to relief: can an organ do that as well?!

Organ music can thus contribute to recovery as well as to broadening one’s musicalhorizon.