Music Therapy in Eighteenth-Century Spain: Perspectives and Critiques

Abstract

From the perspective of the history of ideas, the first three decades of the eighteenth century in Spain marked the transition from traditional practices to the development of new perspectives and interpretative models. In the field of the theory of music, this period was noteworthy because of the proliferation of composers and theorists, particularly music treatise writers and physicians, who believed that music played a key therapeutic role in sickness and health, in accordance with ideas that linked the practice of music to aesthetic and technical theory. Studies on music, which until then had been theoretically associated with physics and mathematics, and, on a practical level, to religious worship, the upper classes or the expression of popular sentiments, began to focus on the pleasure and enjoyment music delivers. Moreover, issues discussed within the theory of music gradually shifted from a focus on the physical and mathematical sciences towards the liberal arts.