We all know about music’s capacity to comfort and soothe. But how about music designed specifically to promote mental wellbeing? Here are five examples of music inspired by mindfulness.
Zen Garden | Photo: Thomas Nordwest
1.Max Richter: Sleep
Kicking off our list of music inspired by mindfulness: this eight-and-a-half hour concept album, composed by German-British musician Max Richter, was conceived as a lullaby for our frenetic world – a piece of music intended to be listened to while sleeping. Apparently Richter even consulted American neuroscientist David Eagleman during its creation to understand how the brain functions during sleep. The result is a groundbreaking musical work that pushes the boundaries between composition and everyday life. Among its most famous performances was one at the Wellcome Collection in Euston in 2015, in which audience members watched from beds instead of chairs. The performance set records for the longest broadcast and longest live broadcast of a single piece of music.
2.RIOPY: Meditation 111
As someone who experienced abuse as a child and grew up in a secular cult in France that did not allow music making, the pianist Riopy (real name Jean-Philippe Rio-Py) has been very open about his chronic depression, and the role that music played in combatting it. He wrote Meditation 111 for Mental Health Awareness Week (15-21 May) in order to soothe those suffering from anxiety, with aim of making it as simple as possible so that literally anybody could play it.
3. Pauline Oliveros: Tuning Meditation
The late American experimental composer Pauline Oliveros was a passionate advocate for ‘Deep Listening”, which she described as ‘listening in every possible way to everything possible’. And ‘Tuning Meditation’ – a communal participatory piece – is a direct consequence of that passion, taking the form of a ‘text score’ rather than a traditional musical composition, with written instructions instead of written musical notes to guide participants in creating and interacting with sounds. What emerges is something akin to a Buddhist mindfulness ritual, in which participants alternate between singing new tones and matching others’ tones.
- Watch: Interview with Roger Kennedy about psychoanalysis and music
- Read: Review of Roger Kennedy’s The Power of Music | a book exploring the links between music, emotion and psychoanalysis
4.Morton Feldman: Second String Quartet
Next in our survey of music inspired by mindfulness: the American 20th century composer Morton Feldman was notorious for writing very quiet music of extensive duration. The Second String Quartet, composed in 1983, is a prime example. Running for nearly five hours, it is characterised by its quiet intensity and gradual evolution. Staying awake for its entirety is an achievement that has eluded many of us; not for nothing have listeners been asked to bring pillows along to performances. But its sparse textures and slowly unfurling melodies do provide considerable rewards to those with long concentration spans.
5. Philip Glass: Mad Rush
Ever since his experiences with Tibetan refugees in India in the 1960s, the American minimalist composer Philip Glass has enjoyed a long love affair with Buddhism. He wrote ‘Mad Rush’ in 1979 for the first public address of the 14th Dalai Lama in North America, contrasting peaceful, meditative writing with a faster, more frantic section as a way of representing ‘the play of the wrathful and peaceful deities in Tibetan Buddhism’. As such, it musically expresses concepts of mindfulness and the interplay of different mental states in Buddhist philosophy.