5.1. Creating a new GIM Program
Method, participants, and progression
The investigation was conducted between November 2009 and August 2010 as a collaborative re-
search project, implying an ongoing process of planning, selection, evaluation, testing, and reflection
(Stige 2005:410). Primary GIM trainer Ellen Thomasen (ET) and musicologist Erik Christensen (EC)
selected and evaluated the music. Music therapist Helle Mumm (HM) participated in GIM test ses-
sions, and professor Lars Ole Bonde (LOB) contributed ongoing advice and feedback. The project
progressed in four steps; encouragement and agreement, test of a pilot program, music selection,
and test of the final program.
Encouragement and agreement
Listening to the GIM program Atonement by the British GIM therapist Martin Lawes provided an im-
portant incentive for the project. Lawes had presented his program at two GIM conferences (Lawes
2006, 2009), and he kindly placed the music selection at the project group’s disposal. In his descrip-
tion, Lawes indicates that Atonement is an advanced working program for participants open to chal-
lenging music. The program includes 20th Century music by Tormis, Birtwistle, Seldin, Henze and
Gorecki. In particular, one piece differs from the traditional GIM music selections, the British compos-
er Harrison Birtwistle’s 18-minute-long, extremely energetic ”Panic” (1995) for alto saxophone, jazz
drummer, wind, brass and percussion.
Listening to this music selection encouraged EC and ET to initiate the project. Some weeks
later, ET guided EC and HM in GIM-sessions based on Atonement. The outcome of the sessions
confirmed the relevance of including unconventional music in a GIM program for experienced par-
ticipants.^3 Another test session, in which EC traveled to Kenneth Bruscia’s program Faith, guided by
ET, provided further encouragement. This program encompasses 20th Century music by Pärt, Ives,
Alwyn and Messiaen, and a symphony movement by Saint-Saëns (Bruscia & Grocke 2002:570).
In January 2010, EC and ET listened to selected music pieces in order to assess their applica-
bility for GIM. ET agreed that one piece might serve as the core piece of a GIM program. This was
the 10-minute-long ”Garden of Love’s Sleep”, the sixth movement of Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla
Symphony (1948), This movement is characterized by a repeated melody in strings unfolding ex-
tremely slowly, accompanied by counterpoints of flute and clarinet, gentle metal percussion and live-
ly birdsongs in the piano.
Testing a pilot program
After listening to a variety of new music, EC assembled a pilot program, consisting of;
- Arvo Pärt: Da Pacem Domine (2004) for choir 5’30
- Olivier Messiaen: The Ascension (1933) for orchestra, second movement 6’10
- Sofia Gubaidulina: Seven Words on the Cross (1982)
for cello, Russian accordeon and strings, third movement 4’00 - Bela Bartok: Elegy from Concerto for Orchestra (1943) 7’45
- Olivier Messiaen: Garden of Love’s Sleep (1948) 10’30
Criteria for selecting these pieces were musical space and polyphony, richness of sound, perfor-
mance quality, religious features and existential issues of death and resurrection.
ET familiarized herself with the music of the pilot program. Subsequently, in order to assess its po-
tential qualities for GIM, she traveled to the program in a GIM-session guided by LOB in April 2010.
3 HM has described her experience of the Atonement session in an interview by EC 16 July, 2010 (Unpublished manus-
cript in Danish).