Read on to discover how music can unlock cherished memories in dementia patients...
The power of music to move us is still largely unexplained...
Despite living in Vienna, a city teeming with orchestras and composers, Sigmund Freud was intensely irritated by music. ‘Some rational or perhaps analytic turn of mind in me rebels against being moved by a thing without knowing why I am thus affected,’ he wrote. In other words, he resented music because he couldn’t explain in analytical terms its effects on us – as he could explain (or thought he could) our sexual urges or dreams.
More than a century later, we still don’t understand how certain combinations of soundwaves trigger feelings of melancholy, exhilaration, wistfulness, love or a thousand other emotions too tangled to put into words. But what fascinates me even more is the remarkable effect of music on people with dementia.
In dementia patients, music is the last thing to go...
We can’t completely explain it – this way that music unlocks, albeit temporarily, brains that in other respects have become permanently unhinged from rational thought, or indeed from their own sense of self. All we can say is that music is often ‘the last thing to go’, perhaps because our musical instincts are more deeply embedded in our brains (and in our 300,000-year development as a species) than, say, verbal language or conscious reasoning.
But just because we can’t explain it doesn’t mean that we can’t use the phenomenon to light up the lives of dementia sufferers (over a million in the UK now). Some of the most moving musical experiences of my life have been when I have witnessed such work at first-hand. And I know I’m not the only one who feels this. Over the decades I have talked to many performers involved with wonderful charities such as Lost Chord and Live Music Now that take music into care homes, hospitals and hospices. All regard this work not as a chore to fill their diaries between ‘proper’ concerts, but as the most life-affirming music-making they do.
Using old songs to revive memories
In his brilliant book Musicophilia, the great British neurologist Oliver Sacks chronicled many ways in which music can be used as a stimulus for brains that have otherwise shut down. One of the most potent is using old songs to revive submerged memories and a sense of ‘self’ in dementia sufferers. The problem for musicians is knowing which songs have that magic effect – and remembering that most old people in care homes today were young in the rock’n’roll era, not the Second World War.
What’s even better, perhaps, is when it’s possible to get dementia sufferers actively involved in music-making. Fifteen years ago, Wigmore Hall – renowned primarily for presenting world-class musicians in a hushed, reverential atmosphere – developed a very different aspect to its work. It took over responsibility for the Music for Life scheme, providing activities for dementia sufferers and their carers by running a Singing with Friends choir.
I first encountered this group at a fundraising concert in Buckingham Palace, where it performed a Mozart anthem and an English madrigal with heartrending tenderness. The sense of shared joy between audience and performers, patients and carers, the well and unwell, was unique in my experience. Talking to participants’ family members afterwards, I heard the same testimony over and over again: ‘For an hour, at least, I got my real husband (or mother or father) back.’
Music can make dementia less bleak...
The case of Teddy Mac is a celebrated instance of what a therapeutic experience music can be. The former Butlins redcoat and club singer was hit by Alzheimer’s in his seventies, losing his memory and becoming aggressive towards friends and family. They noticed, however, that singing his old repertoire had a remarkably therapeutic effect. So they encouraged him to sing more and more. His videos went viral and at 80 he released a single on Decca, then two albums, raising more than £150,000 for the Alzheimer’s Society.
As a young journalist on The Times, I watched aghast as my mentor, the great columnist Bernard Levin, gradually lost his memory and his magisterial command of words. Later, I saw my mother’s personality change beyond recognition as she too succumbed to Alzheimer’s. More and more of us will find ourselves responsible for dementia sufferers – and perhaps, one day, be sufferers ourselves. Music can’t permanently reverse mental decline, but it can make that frightening journey less bleak. I hope there’s a local choir for me to join when the time comes.
