As one of my friends said, “Cantique de Jean Racine” by Faure is one of the most gorgeous choral songs ever written.” Listen to it, enjoy and start your working week in a fine mood. Music is your best therapy, especially now, the time of financial and emotional stress.

Music has been used for many years to help people to deal with their emotions, to make them feel happy, to think, to be inspired and motivated.

Do you know that in the Ottoman Empire mental illnesses were treated with music? In the 17th century, the scholar Robert Burton wrote in “The Anatomy of Melancholy” that music and dance were critical in treating mental illness, especially melancholia. He also noted an excellent power of music to expel many other diseases, and called it “a sovereign remedy against despair and melancholy.”

Therapists around the world use music, as physical, mental, emotional, aesthetic, and spiritual remedy to help their patients not only to improve and maintain their health, but to treat a variety of medical problems, such as stress, psychiatric disorders, developmental disabilities, addiction, communication disorders, and aging. Music can also help you to improve your learning process, to motivate a healthy lifestyle and other health-related activities.

Source: The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton, subsection 3, on and after line 3480, “Music a Remedy”; www.youtube.com

Text by Svetlana Konnikova. Copyright 2009.