TeledyN

The Newton Symphony Orchestra presents a special weekend of events focused on the knowledge that music has the power to transform lives—physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  The Healing Power of Music ~ The Mind/Body/Spirit Connection is a two-day program for all ageS, music-lovers of all genres and those who seek to learn more about the many ways that music has been used for centuries and across cultures to promote healing, respite, and personal fulfillment.

But now I have an esoteric question to ask and forgive me if this is just plain naive: I know of several 'new age' composers who specifically work on various theoretical (perhaps speculative) scientific grounds to produce therapeutic changework musics (eg Jeffrey Thompson and his Schumann Resonance and brainwave entrainment compositions) but I'm drawing a blank finding composers in the acoustic instrument orchestral (or chamber) realm who are attempting to apply scientific principles in their composition.

I know in the classical and jazz realms we have a great many artists who are firmly convinced of a therapeutic value in their work. Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane to name just three, but in these musics (perhaps with the exception of Sun Ra's occult reasons) there is no peer-reviewed published theoretical foundation to their approach, theirs is entirely an empirical thing, folk art, a principle discovered or handed down, not a principle derived and deployed (I may be wrong there, feel free to correct me) and of course Brian Eno had hoped his non-repeating cycles would, as a product of creating nearly endless pieces, influence people to think about the future although I don't find anywhere any psychological foundation for his thinking. Stockhausen too had his own reasons for believing in the power of his works to change listeners, but I'm not certain his reasons had been demonstrated first elsewhere, except perhaps in meditation classes. And, as the NSO wellness event shows, a great many people are applying orchestral music, repurposing existing music of all types for all sorts of clinically very effective music therapy, but what I'm seeking here is music that was designed to be therapy, composed with peer-reviewed reason to believe the composition itself would be directly therapeutic.

Oliveros I believe did explore some sort of theoretical framework for a music-for-therapy although now I cannot find the reference. I'm not saying that any of these musics would have to actually be medicinal, I'm just curious to find examples of musics that were, with good reason, intended to be medicinal. Can anyone point me in any directions toward anything like this?