Healing process set to music

Composer Ian Wilson has used the time spent with stroke patients to create a new work, writes SYLVIA THOMPSON

A GROUP of patients sit listening to the Irish Chamber Orchestra in the Charlie O’Toole Day Hospital at the Adelaide, Meath and National Children’s Hospital (AMNCH) in Tallaght. As well as playing popular classical pieces, the violinists, double bass player and soprano are in “open rehear-sal” of a new work for string quartet and soprano by composer Ian Wilson.

When we visit, the musicians and singer spent about 15 minutes of their hour-long performance practising a section of the piece. The finished work will be performed to an invited audience in the hospital at the end of Wilson’s 10-week residency.

Having visual artists and writers in residence in healthcare settings has become popular in the past decade or so, but bringing a composer into a hospital is a new departure.

“I had read about how a piece of music was created about a child’s experience of migraine and performed by a chamber orchestra in the United States and, since we had already brought the Irish Chamber Orchestra into the hospital, I thought it would be interesting for a composer to create a work based on time spent in the stroke unit,” says Hilary Moss, arts officer at the hospital.

With funding from the Arts Council, Wilson has been spending one day a week in the stroke unit, interviewing patients and healthcare professionals about the experience of having and treating stroke.

“The enjoyment of music seems to be one of the last things to go when people have a stroke,” says Ian Wilson. “I’ve been allowed to accompany doctors on ward rounds and meet and talk to the patients, so I am putting music to parts of these conversations to make little songs that then morph into songs by Doris Day.

“I don’t feel I can write something abstract or avant-garde that doesn’t correspond to the patients’ lives, so that’s why I’m merging my songs into songs by Doris Day.” Song by the singer are also played in the background when patients are having physiotherapy.

The section being rehearsed when we visit is based on a conversation Wilson had with a consultant in the stroke unit. Soprano Deirdre Moynihan sings: “We were taught in medical school that you have to be emotionless, objective but the longer I go on, the more I realise that’s not what people want . . . que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be.”

Another excerpt is based on a conversation with a patient. “I was complaining of a pain in the back of my neck and my head for months and months and months. He said with that pain, I could have been taking small strokes”.

Having professional musicians perform in hospital settings has already been found to be beneficial to patients. “Bringing live musicians into the hospital gives the patients a sense of being cared for in a more holistic way. They feel valued,” says Moss. Whether the addition of a composer into the equation further enhances the patients’ experience remains open to debate.

“My hope is that the new piece of music will be an expression of an increased understanding of stroke and will help staff understand better what patients are going through,” says Moss.

The patients we spoke to – all of whom had experienced a stroke – said they really enjoyed the live music. Their feedback suggested they got more from the performance of the music than from their involvement in producing it.

“It’s brilliant listening to the music. I’ve never been to hear a classical music concert. that you have to get a stroke to hear something like this,” said one patient.

Violinist Kenneth Rice has been performing in healthcare settings for a number of years. “Every situation is completely different. Sometimes, I feel we need to communicate quite a bit with the patients. Other times, the music does the talking for us. It’s about finding the right balance between reaching out to people and playing. Ultimately, I believe the music does the work for us, and it’s our job to play as well as possible.”

Some healthcare professionals, including geriatrician, Prof Des O’Neill, believe that the process of creating work in the hospital has a value in itself. “There is a societal inarticulacy about the experience of stroke – what happens on the journey for those who have had stroke and those going along with them. This gives society an informal reflection on how we need to respond,” says Prof O’Neill.

A long time promoter of arts in the healthcare setting, Prof O’Neill believes that having musicians in hospitals is a valuable thing in itself. “Hospitals are generally aesthetically deprived places and having musicians perform brings an aesthetic charge to them. The process of creating work in hospitals can be seen as a metaphor for the creativity that patients have to bring to their lives as they deal with the changes that having a stroke brings.”

EVENTS

Members of the Irish Chamber Orchestra and soprano Deirdre Moynihan will perform Ian Wilson's musical composition in the Adelaide and Meath Hospital on Wednesday, November 24th at 11am (invitation only). A public performance will be scheduled in 2011.

Dr Frances Horgan, from the school of physiotherapy at the Royal College of Surgeons, will give a talk on Life After Stroke on Wednesday, November 24th, at 7pm in the Royal College of Surgeons, St Stephen's Green, as part of the MiniMed School Open Lecture Series. See rcsi.ie for more details.