Music for Life: where other therapies cannot reach

Last year I witnessed the miracle of music. Eight extremely old people, all of them suffering from dementia,  sat in a circle, each with a percussion instrument in their lap. Among them were sprinkled three classical musicians - a violist, a cellist and an oboeist - who, improvising a hypnotic set of rhythmic tunes, attempted to coax the rest of the circle out of their hermetic worlds.

A drum, for example, sat inert in the lap of an old man who no longer speaks. Slowly the beckoning rhythm, and a look of eager authority on the face of the viola player kneeling before him, prised him out of the wilderness. From somewhere inside his brain, a message was conveyed down an arm and into a weak wrist which started to tap stick against drum.

While he lived his life in silence, a woman in the group made more than enough noise for two, most of it bright-eyed attention-seeking nonsense. Another was initially moody and querulous and asking for her long dead husband. The hour-long session activated some and pacified others. Each tapped or pinged or boinged the sort of instrument which , once upon a time before the war, these now prodigiously old people would have once been introduced to music-making as gap-toothed scamps with grazed knees. Now that reasoned speech has all but gone, this was their last means of communication.

The philosophy of Music For Life is simple: that music can help to find the person behind the dementia. Its practitioners are not, it needs stressing, music therapists. Using their deep knowledge of chord structure, the trio’s task is musically to invent a way past the barrier that dementia – deprivation of the mind – erects. It doesn’t claim to be a miracle cure. But even if only for the duration of the hour, the goal is to bring them back from private silence into a kind of community. Within its own parameters, I can attest that Music For Life works wonders.

Any number of musicians are signed up to work for the charity. They have everything from a tuba player to a harpist on their books. The musicians leading the trio with this particular group for a series of eight weekly sessions was the violist David Hirschman. His regular gig is with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. “You have to leave behind a lot of the preconceptions you have about playing classical music,” he says. “We’re not just playing music at people. We’re trying to engage people in the process of making music at some level, whatever shape or form that can take. We try to be not too prescriptive in terms of obliging people to do a certain thing in order to qualify for taking part. From that participation, whether it’s just sitting and listening or being very active, we hope that they are going to get some benefit from the music we have made together.”

What gradually emerges in the course of the hour is a genuine musical collaboration. It is deeply moving to watch the shy ones opening up and the less shy ones calming down. For all the rewards brought to people living with dementia, Music for Life has ploughed a lonely furrow as a small organisation with modest reach. Last year the running of it was taken on by Wigmore Hall. There are 700,000 people with dementia in the UK. The idea is that, with the clout of a world-renowned concert venue to disseminate its values and practice, rather more people will reap the benefits.

“It’s now widely accepted that music can help people with dementia,” explains John Gilhooly, the director of Wigmore Hall. “We wanted to make an impact beyond our walls and felt that the prestige of an international concert hall would bring a lot of attention that Music For Life might not otherwise get.” So far 50 musicians have undertaken the training, and some are now training others. But of course it all costs money.

For anyone wishing to support the venture, there is a fundraising recital on Saturday 3 July in aid of Music for Life in North London. The performer is the pianist Reiko Fujisawa, who happens to be Hirschman’s wife. The programme includes Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and Albeniz. The venue is St Michael’s Church, Highgate.

For those interested in finding out more,Kate Newell, Wigmore Hall's project manager for Music for Life, will be giving a talk entitled "Sound Mind: Does Music Make You Better?" at Cheltenham Festivals on Sunday 4 July

• Book online for Reiko Fujisawa's Music for Life recital
• Book online for 'Sound Mind: Does Music Make You Better?' at Cheltenham Festivals
• Music for Life on the Wigmore Hall website
• Reiko Fujisawa's website