Connecting to Self and Other through Electroacoustic Composition and Performance: A Case Study

Abstract

This case study explored music therapy sessions with Ben, a frail, emotionally guarded, but intellectually curious adult male in his mid-fifties, diagnosed with PTSD. Sessions concentrated on helping Ben improve expressive communication through the study, exploration, creation, and performance of avant-garde electroacoustic music. Integrative music therapy sessions took place at a psychosocial club in New York City and were aimed at helping Ben improve awareness of feeling-states and expressivity, and to begin to develop deeper relationships within his therapeutic community. A discovery-oriented approach (Mahrer, 1988) was used as the method of both data-gathering and textual analysis. The author used the data to explore his own subjective understanding of (a) Ben's verbal expressivity while surveying avant-garde electroacoustic music, (b) the nonverbal aspects of Ben's experimental timbre-centered music-making experience, (c) Ben's original electroacoustic composition via musical analysis, and (d) audience reactions to Ben's timbre-centered electroacoustic composition. These data suggest that Ben was able to express feeling-states, mostly nonverbal, and experience a positive client-therapist relationship within the therapeutic process, as well as receive support and encouragement from the therapeutic community at the psychosocial club.

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