Origins of music therapy education in the USA

Abstract

The article is devoted to the history of establishment and development of the system of music therapy specialists' professional training in the USA. In particular, its purpose was to find out the origins and analyze the peculiarities of formation of music therapists' professional training system in the USA. Achieving this goal required the application of a number of methods of historical-pedagogical research, including analysis, interpretation, and generalization of scientific literature on the problem of formation and development of music therapists' professional training system in the United States, the works of American music therapists ‒ the founders of music therapy education as well as regulatory and recommendation materials for ensuring its quality.

During the study, it was revealed that the key prerequisite for the establishment of music therapy specialists' professional training system in the USA was the active use of music for treatment and rehabilitation of hospital patients in the years after the First World War and the utilization of the accumulated experience for constructing the first courses in the universities of the USA for training of employees of medical institutions to the application of music in therapeutic work with different categories of patients. In the process of research, it was found that active further scientific and experimental research work in the field of music therapy and confirmation of its effectiveness in improving the physical and mental condition of patients with various ailments became the driving force of the professionalization of this field of activity, which was manifested primarily in the founding of a professional organization ‒ the National Association for Music Therapy ‒ and the development under its auspices of the first standardized university program for training specialists of the relevant profile. As a result of the study, the main figures in the development of the system of training music therapists in the USA were identified (M. Anderton, I. Ilsen, I. Altsсhuler, E. Gaston, W. Herbert, R. Underwood, J. Anderson, etc.) as well as their contribution to ensuring recognition music therapy as an independent scientific field, to its establishing as a profession and to its separation into a special direction of university education in the USA was determined.