ABSTRACT
Through the words of the therapist and the music of the patient Music at the Edge allows the reader to experience a complete music therapy journey. Frances, a trained musician who was facing death from AIDS, challenged Colin Lee, the music therapist, to help him clarify his feelings about living, and dying. In doing so he helped the therapist to clarify some of his feelings about this particularly demanding form of therapeutic work and to question the framework of the therapeutic relationship in palliative care.
Music at the Edge is a complete music therapy case study. The CD of extracts from improvisations made during sessions which accompanies the text is an integral part of a unique insight into the therapeutic process when working with death and dying.
This unusual and very moving book offers anyone who is working with, or facing, illness and death an opportunity to understand how the transcendent power of music can enable expression of painful feelings more accurately than words.
