Discovering the Healing Powers of Music
Courtesy of the Watford Observer
26/10/04
WITHIN composer Peter Shearer's music, like the works of many musicians, there is a distinct agenda. But rather than aiming to create a particular mood, or project a political stance, his music has an intrinsic, even physiological effect.
According to the former university lecturer, who sells his improvised healing CDs in hospitals, hospices and nursing homes in the Watford area, his music aims to create "a harmony" within the hearts and minds of people; a harmony that, he says, has been replaced with discord in many cases.
This approach to the human body as a kind of musical instrument is based on the idea -that we all have the capacity to create, and that this creative aspect of ourselves, which incorporates our "intuitive, imaginative, and non-sequential thoughts", would be more predominant if we were in touch with the "right" side of the brain.
Describing this effect, he said:"An awful lot of people, whether they are in hospital or not, feel a sense of discord within themselves that they can't place.
"This is a disease inside them and the reason that hospitals use my music is because it facilitates what they are doing in terms of communicative therapies.
"It gives the patients a sense of ease or harmony rather than discord and opens them up to other methods of healing."
Based in Hemel Hempstead, where he has his studio, Mr Shearer writes his compositions and organises his busy schedule of therapy visits to a range of hospitals and day centres, including Watford General and Mount Vernon hospitals.
One of the main outlets for his music is the Lynda Jackson Macmillan Centre at Mount Vernon Hospital.
Used alongside other forms of treatment in the cancer support and information hub, Mr Shearer believes his music is being utilised to its full advantage as a form of complementary therapy, or "complementary complementary therapy".
He said: "When it's used alongside other therapies such as reflexology and in group relaxation sessions, the music can really facilitate inner calm."
Head of the Lynda Jackson Macmillan Centre, Rosemary Lucie, described the appeal of Mr Shearer's music.
She said: "We are always open to new ideas as to how we can help cancer patients and ease the symptoms of the illness.
"The thing about Peter's music in particular is that it is very relaxing, and as many of the people who come in to see us are either undergoing chemotherapy or are about to undergo it. It fits in with our ethos."
But, keen to point out that his music is also very effective when used on its own, Mr Shearer said he has many examples of people who have had a personal connection with it.
He said: "There was an instance of a 25-year-old man who had died from leukaemia and my CD was played at his funeral.
"I found out later that he'd been given a copy at the hospital and in the last few weeks of his life, when he was very close to the end, he listened to one of my CDs, called Peace, constantly."
The first of Mr Shearer's compositions, and the reason he "started all of this in the first place", Peace is still his best selling work to date.
Working as a lecturer in the incongruous world of business studies when he wrote it four years ago, Mr Shearer was composing in his spare time.
He said: "I'd gone through a difficult time in my life and come through it and being a Christian was very much a part of it.
"I think the resolution I felt when improvising at that time really came through to create something special.
"I just thought other people might like to listen to this, so I put it on the web at £9.99, and I sold about 50 fairly quickly."
But after getting tired of cutting and pasting copies of the cover that he had designed himself, Mr Shearer decided to hire a company to do the printing for him.
He said: "I thought, l am fed up with my life, I can do something better than this, and it all
went from there really."
He said: "I started receiving positive responses from all sorts of people, people who had undergone really difficult times, both personally and politically."
One such woman was Chinese national, Luna. Recounting the effect his music had on her, Mr Shearer said: "She said she could feel the peace.
"Having come from an environment where people don't talk about feelings and they just put on a face, it was like she'd been given a release. "
And in the words of Luna: "Music that is not simply enjoyment from my brain, but from my heart is the, profoundest type of healing there is."
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