Creative Music Therapy:
A Guide to Fostering Clinical Musicianship
Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins
ISBN 978-1-891278-13-6 $130

A long-awaited, contemporary revision and expansion of the classic 1977 text by Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins that laid the foundations for the widening development of their pioneering improvisational practice of music therapy.

It is a large format book of nineteen chapters and over 500 pages—yet it is a book to be listened to as much as read. The core of the book’s content is to be gained through the ear. The original edition—the first music therapy text to make audio recordings of therapy sessions publicly available—contained one hour of recordings. The revised edition includes almost five hours of clinical work on four CDs. The 160 annotated excerpts taken from courses of improvisational music therapy with twenty-four variously disabled children present a kaleidoscopic range of creative musical-clinical phenomena.

The book is fundamentally practical in its orientation and focuses on the application of clinical musicianship throughout. The recordings communicate a music-centered approach and exemplify creative dynamics and dimensions in piano and vocal technique. Musical proficiencies are identified. The implementation and effects of a wide variety of musical resources and styles are explored. The authors present their work in five sections:

  • Part 1: The philosophy of their approach centering around the concept of the Music Child
  • Part 2: Comprehensive case studies tracing the developmental processes of five children demonstrating very different conditions, needs, and responses. The evolution of improvisational technique is described in detail in each case.
  • Part 3: Illustrations, descriptions, and discussions of clinical and musical technique broadly and in detail. Chapters in this section are entitled:
    o Practical Matters: Requirements and Procedures
    o Teamwork in Clinical Practice
    o Nunnu: Meeting a Child's Crying or Outburst
    o Stimulating Free Singing—Nonverbal or Verbal
    o Songs and Singing
    o Leading into Instrumental Activity
    o Working with the Child’s Way of Beating—Leading into the Basic Beat
    o Expressive Musical Mobility: The Tempo-Dynamics Schema
    o Rhythm: Forms and Levels of Experience, Perception—The Fulfillments of Developing Rhythmic Skills.
  • Part 4: Three scales of evaluation and assessment augment the understanding of processes in music therapy in the areas of the development of Relationship, Musical Communicativeness, and Musicing itself. The scales offer a taxonomy of interactive musical involvement.
  • Part 5: Improvisation exercises, techniques, and idiomatic styles and resources

The revision was made by Clive Robbins in collaboration with colleagues in the Nordoff-Robbins Centers in New York, London, and Australia. 2007 (ISBN 978-1-891278-13-6), 516 pages plus 4 CDs, $130.
Home Next Title Previous Title   Go To Cart