ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the development of music therapy in Britain, from the 1890s to the 1990s. It shows that the influences which have facilitated this development - the scientific, medical and physiological and the aesthetic, philosophical and psychological - and at how these have come together at the end of the twentieth century in the modern profession of music therapy. The late nineteenth century in Britain was a period of rapid scientific development, particularly in medicine. Alongside advances in medical techniques, there was also a growing awareness of the need to treat the social and psychological aspects of illness. The gramophone and live music provided a therapeutic form of entertainment, and music was used as part of a specific medical treatment. These could be described as the 'recreational model' and the 'medical model'. By 1976 there were two professional training courses in music therapy, one at the Guildhall and the other run by Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins.
