Introduction to Eckhard Weymann's Article

Abstract

Eckhard Weymann was one of my first academic teachers when I started studying music therapy in 1990. So it was many years ago that I first read his article Indications of the New. For various reasons it is useful for students reading their teacher's articles. For me, it was like walking through mountains. In the beginning they are quite distant, like a summery haze; but very soon they materialise: the art as an important and high mountain, oh, no! It is quite familiar: the writing process, studying pictures..., subjects I'm very interested in, sentences I willingly agree with, like wandering about in the hills with beautiful views, a bit irritated by small unfamiliar terms, hiding behind flowery bushes. Then an exciting yet wellknown landscape: the case and its music, I'm promenading at the border of a small river with clear water, flowing quickly through the valley. Suddenly, high rocks, hard ascent in theory, dangerous morphological term chasms. Do I have to continue or should I return? It depends on my actual constitution. I can start again and/or find my own landscape equipped with maps and descriptions. The article doesn't fix me, as well as it doesn't discourage me by describing overwhelming therapy success. It ends in "Sensitive Suspense" (Weymann, 2000). And this was one of the first and most important impressions of Eckhard Weymann as a teacher, supervisor and scientist: he is supportive and very open-minded, yet not without profile: he is a music therapist with morphological background which clearly can be seen in this article. For me he and others represented the change in German music therapy at that time: In the beginning of the nineties, the wars and battles between different schools and theoretical backgrounds ended. Music therapists began to talk, to discuss, to debate. The time of building fortresses came to an end, and for my generation of music therapists, the common position is interest, curiosity and willingness to learn from each other. This was in general our teacher's attitude, and this open-mindness also included other arts and sciences; and so in this article you can find for example, quotes and ideas from painters, philosophers, psychoanalysts etc.