V.  What value do you think Music Therapy has? What is Music Therapy? What’s its use? What it will become?

 

 P. My interest in music began at 6 years. I lived in a small town, at least ten thousand souls, Cittanova, a province of Reggio Calabria – called Little Athens because many interesting people come from here, it is said to be it’s water. It has a taste I would recognize among a thousand! … There were few study opportunities, no conservatory or music school, just a music teacher all over the town. So my mother asked him to come and give me guitar lessons at home. Then mom left, so I started studying accordion with her father … it was a huge tool compared to me small 😮.

At 14 I met Anselmo Cananzi, who is now a musician, composer and teacher of Music Pedagogy at the Messina Conservatory. He played transverse flute, he was self-taught …  I was passionate about the Rolling Stones.

He played in a complex, I was percussionist; concrete music, I played iron sheets, then … then there was this plastic tube in which together we put sand 😁.

With Alfredo De Laura, a RAI director, we made the soundtracks for promos of television broadcasts. He had come to interview all the new talents of this “southern reality”. With the band we played at the Reggio Calabria Museum, at the Sala dei Dioscuri; I read a poem, un’Ode to Neptune in ancient Greek with a background of concrete music.

I start interesting in Franco Evangelisti, to the New Consonance. I was 18, so we moved to Rome to study medicine. A mad choice! “Not this, nor that, nor this, …”, then in my family they were all doctors. I didn’t want to do it … even though with time I discovered its beauty and practical utility. He shortly left medicine to enroll in the Conservatory. In ’78, Franco Evangelisti invited me to listen to his electronic music courses.

Franco had the dream of creating a University of Music. We were different types of people, not just musicians. Architects, biologists, then me that was a medical student. There was also a philosopher! He considered musicians even less acculturated.

He has been a very important person for us, a teacher, almost a father. It was he whom suggested to study the physics of sound.

So, once arrived to the fifth year of medicine, I chose Otolaryngology Clinic Audiology, a relatively new practice. Franco had very few students, he was concerned in physiopathology!

Electronic music at that time was done with the Moog, there wasn’t neither a diploma in electronic music … it was more a certificate. Anselmo to take it went to Calculation Center of Pisa. Imagine that to do 2 minutes of music it took 2 months!😧 At that time we still used the perforated cards, we are at the dawn of electronic music. Starting from its basic parameters, for which: frequencies, time, intensity, attack, duration, intervals. That meant that finally you could think, so create, music from silence, without a predetermined instrument, as it might be the piano.

And so this. With Franco I did 2 years as auditor, where I met a lot of characters, including Stockhausen and Luciano Berio. Cage it was one of the most beautiful encounters … as it has been knowing Luigi Nono, or Donadoni. In short, I have known very important characters, including my husband Alessandro Vecchiotti.

But I was an auditor, I did nothing, I was a collaborator for the aesthetic listening of Anselmo‘s compositions. I was engaged to him up to 23 years.

I continue to be interested in music, so much that my degree thesis I did on Perceived complex sounds – tympanum, perception, from the earpiece to the cerebral cortex, and beyond. Because we listen with all our body!

 

V. How is the sound perceived, especially if complex?

 

 P. Sure! So then it would need to be torn apart. Still today we are not sure how actually the ear works. There are various theories, and it has always been my dream to understand all this, so much so that I have became a researcher. My first works, my first research, my first publications, are all about perception of complex sounds. Especially of some special sounds we had digitally processed with the Commodor 64.

 

 V. History!

 

 P. Absolutely! Really History! That was then geometric sounds. No more harmonic progression, but geometric progressions! Starting from a fundamental frequency till a roof limit we were set up. We arrived till 4000 Hz. That was what you could do with a Commodor; than, the frequency step, I do not remember what it was … minimal 5 Hz, between each other. In short, it was 1984.😏

 

 V. One year before I was born! 😄😄

 

 P. Just an year before you were born!

 

 V. So, yes yes yes….

 

 P. What do you want!? You can not tighten.

 

 V. Well, I’m concerned in human beings. I saw the change in your eyes as you talked about these people you told me, it was definitely the thing that made me more passionate 😌. I liked when you talked about your intimate things, like your thesis, your passion, these meetings, when you talked about percussions. I was struck by the fact that you remember all the names and, with some accuracy, dates.

Working with patients…

 

 P. M.

 

 V. Music Therapy today.

 

 P. Meanwhile you have to realize a thing: to be a University Researcher today means to be also a physician and ear doctor, or audiologist. It necessarily involves a split, a crazy schizophrenia! On the one hand you have all the research, on the other a welfare part. Then integrate the two things not always is romantic.

 

V. Well ;-).

 

P. You get it. You must necessarily be pragmatic, instantly. So if you need a diagnosis of deafness in a child, you can’t stop. You need to have some kind of speed. Since we can suspect it the second day of life. And that also thanks to my work.

 

V. But, such a sudden intervention on a child doesn’t excludes the possibility …

 

 P. It’s not an intervention. It’s an evaluation

 

 V. Yes, however, it follows, I imagine, an intervention, somehow invasive?

 

 P. Sometimes.

 

V. But this doesn’t preclude the child’s ability to adapt or maybe, often it happens …

 

 P. You’re opening another type of argument about what actually means deafness.

 

 V. In the sense that there are those who cannot hear and those who don’t want to hear? 😁

 

 P. There are those who become deaf, those who are born deaf, with deaf parents, but here you open a whole world!

😯

 

 V. I got it. We dedicate it to another chapter another time.

 

 P. Another time 😋.

 

 V. More generally. Music Therapy today. I ask you again: how do people live it? Do your patients trust you? Are they skeptical?

 

 P. Then I have to open two more brackets.

One is what I told you: we now have the chance to suspect a deafness on the second day of life thanks to the discoveries of a great physicist called David Kemp, K-E-M-P, that I’ve had the fortune and honor, one, to know and hear his theories, then to see the results of all his research.

You need to know that in addition to receiving sounds – this is a scoop, if you want for you, because for the jobseekers has been well known since the 1970s – the ear is able to emit sounds.
These sounds are echoes coming from the cochlea and each one of us has a certain type of emission.

 

 V. We emit frequencies?! 😮

 

 P. We emit frequencies. These frequencies are spontaneous, difficult to be detected because you have to be in an environment, let’s say.. silent. Early echoes are called Cochlea’s echoes or Kemp’s echoes. Take note that we detected them at 3 o’clock in the morning, with absolute silence and enormous machinery. Today, devices for this type of detection are more or less like an intercom.

Here, echoes can be spontaneous, which means that everyone has their own resonance frequency. I always tell that at lesson. Kemp was good at objectifying, but this thing has been known for centuries!

“For Indian musicians, for example, especially for Sitar players. You know that the Sitar is absolutely personal and comes practically … The musician who wants to play the Sitar must retreat to a cave to hear his own sound. Once listened and played, the lure builds a resonance case of the instrument exactly to amplify that specific type of sound. This for centuries! Always!”.

 

 V. What do you mean? In what sense? The Sitar is the one …

 

 P. It’s the big, big one that leans on the ground, with a long handle and you play it on the ground, arpeggiating.

 

 V. … the one with strings😊.

 

 

 P. Yes, exactly, the stringed one. And this is because music for them, Indians, especially for those who play the Sitar, is a specific passage of your soul to a collective soul. And so your feel and your frequency must be resonant with others, more amplified. So a Sitar can only be played from that ..

 

 V. That musician.

 

 P. From that specific musician and not from others. If you play it, it’s untuned. This is to say that since we emit sounds, everyone has its own sound footprint.

 

 V. I’m searching a way to bring you back to speak about deafness.

 

 P. Then, if you do not detect cochlear echoes you may suspect a deafness. That’s what I tell you.

 

 V. There are people who do not emit frequencies?😮

 

 P. There are, at least, yes, they do not emit frequencies.

 

 V. Which do not emit those specific frequencies. 😉

 

 P. So, I was telling you, from the point of view of the cochlear echoes, we have spontaneous ones, which are difficult to detect, are almost an impression, very difficult to detect.

 

 V. And do they stay the same for the rest of our lives?

 

P. It should be so 😏.

 

 V. We are not sure?

 

P. Because then this part of the research has been a bit abandoned because it really takes a lot of time and is therefore not adaptable to a standard practice of testing. While non-spontaneous cochlear echoes, those caused, to intend, are acoustic waves. You stimulate the cochlea with a particular sound that is called CLICK, that has no frequency specificity, but arange rate so small.. it is easier to listen to it than to tell you. It’s fast, ta ta ta ta ta, really fast! It stimulates the whole cochlea and this responds with an echo. At this point you know you have a working one.

 

 V. The Cochlea is the ladybug inside?

 

P. Yes, the snail.

 

 V. Does it mean that you send this impulse, that does all the turn and the unresponsive sound is expelled?

 

 P. Yes, it’s caused from the movements of the ciliary cells.

 

 V. When that does not happen it means the cochlea 😑.

 

 P. Doesn’t work. So I suspect a deafness. Then the amount of deafness you realize it through other types of examinations. But already this tells you alot, it helps you alot.

 

 V. I would continue to talk about this all night …

 

 P. You don’t care?

 

V. Absolutley! I am very fascinated, but I need to get to a point. Music Therapy?

 

 P. Well, what I’m saying is Music therapy has to be customized for each one. It can’t be the same for everyone. Everyone resonates differently and has its own musical tastes that resonate inside him and that may coincide, if you want, we can say, of social character, or statistically proving the period. But other types of music do not resonate, they do not belong to you.

 

 V. Like the comparison between Indian music and Pop music?

 

 P. At a higher level it can be a socio-cultural concept associated with ethnicity, contingency or fashion. Today it’s enough you open the internet and hear the sound of the Sitar, you can hear Beethoven, …

 

 V. Jethro Tull?

 

 P. Tiziano Ferro! You have everything in real time. Once it wasn’t like that.

 

 V. So a musical therapeutic relationship is, first and foremost, a personal relationship of trust?

 

 P. Not only. It also depends on the child’s age, the person changes their taste. Then, as you said, no? As you said at the beginning: what they want is what they need.

 

 V. I define the songs we like, and we liked, as emotional photos. I address the issue from a psychological point of view, if you want.

 

 P. M.

 

V. If one learns to objectify that emotional picture through the aid of musical theory, one can imagine objectifying, let’s say, freeing that emotional nodule that has held us. Because I think we like what we don’t completely understand, Winckelmann.

 

 P. Yes, yes, it may be. But in any case you have to ring somewhere. How come this music I’ve never heard before takes me and somehow excites me?

 

 V. Exactly! I would like to make a case study on emotions, because they need emptiness, incomprehension, for me…  

 

 P. Or it may be sudden. An emotion, I mean, to be really such, must also be unexpected.

 

 V. Yep. 🙂 Most of the time if you’re prepared for something you remain disappointed. Now I would like to ask you about the future of Music Therapy.

 

 P. So. The Future of Music Therapy. Well: to be a good music therapist it’s obvious that you have to space and you have to know many different genres of music. You know, before you mentioned Musicofilia… you saw there is a step in … but you know I had contacted him to make a conference that was supposed to be called Music and Hearing, many years ago, but, in any case, beyond that, then, Oliver Sax, I’ve wrote him also a beautiful letter.

 

 V. Where does he come from?

 

 P. M.

 

 V. America?

 

 P. Yes! He was already a big!

 

 V. Let’s get back to the future of Music therapy.

 

 P. There was a piece saying that Rap Music could be very useful for stuttering children. Because the rhythm that creates can help children who have little fluidity in articulating phrases and words.

 

 V. Like in the King’s Speech 😁. I’ve read that you are also concerned with dyslexia.

 

 P. Yes, ok, but dyslexia is another thing, is the difficulty in reading.

 

 V. Isn’t it always a matter of rhythm?

 

 P. M. Not really, because the question of rhythm, of low fluency, is due to the fact that you do not recognize what you are reading. It’s a writing code that you do not understand, that you cannot process. If you cannot distinguish a B from D, do you understand that …

 

 V. Well, in the lower case, put the bracket here or there.
I think that at everyone when small has happened at least once to get confused.

 

 

 

 

 P. Eh  😕, but many children can not visually understand the difference between a B and a D, it’s not just a phonetic thing …

 

 V. As a temporal issue, they do not distinguish the first from the after, cannot recognize …

 

P. It’s a big deal for a dyslexic if you put an entire line in front of them. So, with a ruler, slowly, they pass syllable per syllable; or hold their finger below. It does all the ride …

 

 V. We do it in a few seconds 😉

 

 P. For us it is immediate. It is difficult for them. For this reason dyslexia is all another fact.

 

 V. Use music to awaken emotional things, to restart … 

 

 P. Yes, and most of all…

 

 V. Is this Music Therapy?

 

 P. Yes, but above all, for example, I use a lot and recommend certain types of music for an audiological screening. It turns out that these children do not have cochlear echoes, there is no response. They are two days old. Maybe we can see them after a week (I must mention that for protocol), a month, … To be sure the child is hypoacusical.

 

 V. Hypo what?

 

 P. Hypoacusis is the low level of hearing. The extent of the problem puts us in a bit of a definition, you must have lived a certain amount of time. Think, the auditory path matures during the first year of life. So there are those who mature first and those mature later. You have to leave them time. If you want to be sure, you have to wait at least 6 months. If the baby is premature, those born before 9 months, even 7 months or 5, weighing 600 grams 😓, it’s really an absurd thing.

 

They survive with big problems, which can be visual and auditory. So we follow them over time. I recommend, just for the maturation of the audio channels, to use music.

 

 V. Mozart?

 

 P. Mozart! Certainly! Because it’s the one that better coordinates the levels of myelination. Myelin is …

 

 V. That moist neurons need?

 

 P. The Myelin the sheath that completely wraps the nerves and gives the ability to accelerate the perception of any sense. So, the more you are myinic, the more you are sensitive. We’re talking about sensoryism and motility.

 

 V. For this reason Mozart is myelinic 😁. Mozart, Bach,…

 

 P. The studies of Bach.

 

 V. Also his Canons?

 

 P. Also Beethoven, but mostly his Pastoral.

 

 

Another thing that helps maturity is ethnical music, african music, drums. Time, you know, drums have a very low frequency so even deaf, with deep deafness, it always remains a low-frequency auditory residue.

So a logopedia begins with a musical and acoustic training.

 

 V. It is trained…

 

 P. The child that can be hypoacusical…

 

 V. And the person can be saved at any time?

 

P. It is advisable to act when they are still small.

 

 V. But, for example, with this huge influx of immigration, nothing can be done for them?

 

 P. Sure! But it’s better when their still small.

 

 V. In the sense that later you go with the years, longer will be the psychological work, to get the effects on the physical …

 

 P. Psychological?! No! I would rather say sensorial, neurological.

 

 V. I studied philosophy, I have a bit of confusion. In the sense that if we are able to dispose of the body to perception, is it easier that you perceive it?

 

 P. Sure! Deafness is not only a genetic issue, it can also be determined by mother’s choices during pregnancy. Drugs, cigarette smoke, a disease…

 

 V. Excuse me Patrizia, to close: would you suggest everyone to deal with music and possibly even a cure …

 

 P. Absolutely! Necessarily audiologists! Audiologists and Othorins, to understand the maturation of children’s tastes.

 

 V. A pair of pregnant friends of mine asked me a playlist of classical music for their children.

 

 P. I’m doing it, it’s nearly ready.

 

 V. Where can I find it?

 

 P. Soon! I’m unfortunately busy, because there are different ways to prepare one. It’s fundamental to know which music and nursery rhymes can help the growth and maturation of our children…