The 19th Swissmedmusica symposium showed that there is still some catching up to do in the world of music when it comes to prevention.
On 11 November 2023, the Salle Grenette in Fribourg became the meeting place for all Swiss people interested in music and health. Experts from music academies, associations, physiotherapists, teachers and researchers gathered to discuss the topic. They presented a differentiated picture of how physical and mental health issues are dealt with in the Swiss music scene. One of the key questions was how individual music-making can be improved without losing motivation. Recent research results currently paint a rather worrying picture. Elena Alessandri, Head of the Competence Centre for Music Performance Research at the Lucerne School of Music (HSLU-M), for example, presented recent studies that indicate that music students have to contend with above-average physical and psychological deficits right from the start of their studies compared to the population as a whole.
Carine Tripet-Lièvre, Head of the General Pedagogy programme at the Haute école de musique Genève – Neuchâtel, and Andreas Cincera reported from university practice, who works at the Scuola Universitaria di Musica della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano (SUM) and at the Bern University of Applied Sciences (BFH/HKB), as well as Oliver Margulies, research assistant in the field of music physiology, preventive and musician’s medicine in the Department of Music at the ZHdK. If one had to draw a common conclusion from their presentations, it would probably be this: There is still a lot to be done in terms of holistic music education that does not extinguish the inner fire of the students. Cincera illustrated the task with a virtual thick book that would list the countless research projects on the topic that have not yet been tackled.
The keynote speakers were child and adolescent psychiatrist Anke Grell and German musicologist Antonia Pfeiffer. The former presented child and adolescent brain development and its connection to self-efficacy skills and deficits. Antonia Pfeiffer was connected via video and Zoom due to illness. She explained variations of tapping techniques that can be used to counteract performance anxiety, for example. The techniques are familiar from kinesiology. Pfeiffer presented further developments by the German physician Michael Bohne.
Music health day for all
With the Music Health Day, Swissmedmusica offers a networking event that covers all aspects of prevention, education and musician’s medicine and provides a practice-orientated information platform for interested parties of all kinds. The campaign also includes a list of health services offered by members of the association on the Swissmedmusica.ch website (under “Offers”). Members also benefit from a comprehensive newsletter with information on events, current news from the field of musician’s medicine, literature and media references and other interesting content. Membership is open to anyone who sees conscious health work as an opportunity to improve their own music-making and general quality of life.
The next Music Health Day will take place in autumn 2024 in Lucerne’s Neubad. In close cooperation with the HSLU-M team, it will once again provide an overview of contemporary methods and techniques of prevention and healthy, inspired music-making.