Music, Emotions, and Well-Being: Historical and Scientific Perspectives. (360G-Wellcome-101901_B_13_Z)

Music is commonly treated as an emotional stimulant that can calm, console or energise. That music can and frequently does contribute to an individual's sense of well-being is commonly accepted. This relationship between music, the emotions and well-being has been studied from two different perspectives. Firstly, it has been the subject of historical investigations problematising what emotions are and exploring historically variant practices of using music as an emotional tool. Secondly, psycho logists and, increasingly, neurologists have produced exciting results by measuring music's effects on the emotions in physiological terms; these appear, however, to be universal and thus a-historical. We aim to bring these two seemingly incompatible views of music's emotional effects together to search for research strategies that can incorporate ideas of cultural conditioning into scientific research methods. As such, the symposium addresses both the role and potential of music in well-being, but it also raises the bar for medical humanities by investigating how its research areas can impact on research questions and strategies beyond the humanities. Delegates will present their views from the fields of neurology, psychology, music therapy, history and musicology. The symposium will be based on pre-circulated papers to allow maximum discussion time.