Neurobiological Aspects of Music Therapy

Abstract

Notes From an Old Town in a Small Country…

Sitting in the Café Schwarzenberg, which is located at the Ringstrasse, from where one can view the rear side of the famous concert hall “Musikverein” as well as the Asian-appearing, minaret-like turrets of the Karlskirche, a black-suited waiter wearing a bow tie is serving a “kleiner Brauner” (an espresso with milk) together with a glass of water on a silver tray, while a “Fiaker” (horse and carriage) is slowly passing by. A hundred years ago, Freud, Schnitzler, Klimt, or Schönberg might have used the same phrases to describe the typical ambience of a Viennese coffee house visit—of course, they may have used words more eloquently than I have. And, of course, since 1913, times have changed in Vienna. Today, the scene described above is “updated” by an electric city bus that stops at the crossroads and the sound of smartphone ringtones from the next table and a “McCafé” vis-à-vis that attracts more tourists than the old “Kaffeehaus.”

The year 1913 was a special year in many aspects. It was to be a turning point in politics, in medicine, in music, in arts…. It was the year before the outbreak of World War I (WWI), later labeled “the great seminal catastrophe of this century.”¹ This war was to dramatically change the ways of fighting a war. Because of technological developments and the use of weapons of mass destruction for the first time in human history, more than 9 million combatants were killed. The catalyst of WWI was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo in 1914. The world would not look the same after this year, and many roads—not all—lead to Vienna.

The “fin de siècle,” between 1890 and 1914, was characterized by social turmoil amid the rise and fall of a new era, and both diffused …