- shares essential features of classical music;
multiple layers
predictable structure with appropriate variability
dynamic change
ambiguity and suggestibility
access to the composer’s creative imagination
Finally, Bonny has emphasized that the performance quality is important for inclusion in a GIM program.
Preliminary conclusion
This project in collaborative research has confirmed that it is possible to design a clinically functional
GIM program on the basis of 20th and 21st Century art music. The criteria for inclusion of music in the
program Present Moments coincide to a large extent with the criteria for GIM programs based on
classical music, as originally proposed by Helen Bonny.
It might be an obvious conclusion that the characteristics underscored by Bonny are universal
and indispensable criteria for inclusion of music in a GIM program. However, the design of one new
GIM program does not provide sufficient basis for drawing a definitive conclusion. Further research,
including a comparative study of new GIM programs, will be needed to elucidate this question.
Inclusion or exclusion in a GIM program depends on an assessment of the music’s therapeu-
tic potential. This assessment does not equate an evaluation of the music’s aesthetic quality. In the
preliminary music selection, EC excluded hundreds of musical works that offered intense aesthetic
experience. Many of these works were excluded, because the music “insisted too much on itself.”
5.4. GIM experience and music phenomenology. Possible relationships.
Similarities between the client’s experience of music in a GIM session and the experience of music in
phenomenology suggest perspectives for future investigations. Three themes appear to be relevant; the
bodily experience of music, the listening attitude, and the multidimensionality of the musical experience.
Body listening
In a GIM session, listening is a bodily experience. In phenomenology, Thomas Clifton ascribes musical
meaning to primordial bodily knowledge (1983:45-46, 70). Don Ihde states that ”to listen is to be dramat-
ically engaged in a body listening that ’participates’ in the movement of the music” (1976:155-156). Mer-
leau-Ponty emphasizes that bodily experience constitutes the basis for phenomenological investigation.^12
Mutual possession
In the GIM experience, the traveler may adopt changing attitudes towards the music. He or she may
observe the music, or be the object of the music’s impact, or feel being one with the music. Clifton
describes the latter kind of experience as mutual possession: ”I possess the music, and it possesses
me” (Clifton 1976:76). Don Ihde describes the double nature of music listening; at the same time,
music seems to penetrate the listener’s body and surround it (Ihde 1976:76-78). Merleau-Ponty re-
ports that music appears to unfold in a particular kind of space (2002:257-258). Clifton describes that
he, as listener, inhabits the spaces formed by music (1983:138).
Multivariable experience
Music employed in GIM is polyphonic. The multiple relationships within the polyphonic musical struc-
ture constitute a basis for the vivid emergence of imagery and narrative in GIM sessions (Bonde
1997c, 2004b; Aksnes & Ruud 2006, 2008). As suggested by the experimental listening of Bartok’s
An Evening in the Village,^13 experimental phenomenological listening can contribute to uncovering
the internal musical relationships that are important in music selected for GIM.
12 Cf. chapter 2.
13 Chapter 2, pp. 50-52, and appendix 2.02, p. 172.