Opportunities instead of deficits

The hall at Bern University of the Arts on Papiermühlestrasse seems to be bursting at the seams. The topic is moving in many ways: making music in old age can be an opportunity for people to fill their twilight years (or even their late afternoons) with emotions and good experiences. However, for those who have made music all their lives and earned a living from it, it can also mean a painful process of letting go and winding down. The annual symposium of the Swiss Society for Music Medicine, which focuses on these aspects of the sonorous art, can report record attendance.

The Trio Poetico, three woodwind players who used to sit in the spotlight of the Tonhalle Orchestra, among others, set a confident sign in this respect right at the beginning, continuing to develop artistically at an excellent level after their retirement and discovering new repertoire, such as the fascinating music of the Brazilian "Messiaen" Heitor Villa-Lobos.

In their presentations, medical expert Maria Schuppert from the Center for Musicians' Health at the Detmold University of Music and Zurich neuropsychologist Lutz Jäncke confirmed that a lot has changed with regard to music-making in old age. Until not so long ago, the human ability to acquire new skills was underestimated until old age. However, not least the work of Jäncke and his colleagues on brain plasticity shows that even with white hair and average health, far more resources can be called up than was believed not so long ago. Even high-class expressive possibilities do not have to be sacrificed if one does not pay homage to an ideal of youthfulness, but rather understands the characteristics of one's own age as original peculiarities.

Of course, the senses deteriorate with age, the hearing, the eyes; the voice also changes. The male voice, for example, becomes higher, but loses volume due to physiological degradation processes, as Eberhard Seifert, Head of Phoniatrics at the University ENT Clinic of the Inselspital in Bern, points out. And while it used to be unthinkable to take part in an ensemble with a hearing aid, modern technology has made so much progress that it is still possible to sing in a choir or play in an orchestra even with the corresponding impairments, as master hearing acoustician Michael Stückelberger explains.

The increased confidence is also being felt by music schools, which are able to adapt to more and more music students in the third stage of life. In a workshop, musician and journalist Corinne Holtz, who also heads the CAS "Musical Learning in Old Age" at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB) and the Institute of Ageing at the Bern University of Applied Sciences, reports on a research project entitled "Mach dich schlau - Lern- und Lehrstrategien im Instrumentalunterricht 50plus". And choirmaster Karl Scheuber, who is getting on in years himself, will show how age-appropriate singing exercises and clever repertoire management can contribute to quality of life even in old age.

As Hans Hermann Wickel from the Department of Social Services at Münster University of Applied Sciences points out, there is now even a dedicated specialist field on the subject, music geragogy. Its aim is to optimize music offerings for the very elderly, people who may suffer from multi-morbidity or dementia, and to explore the possibilities in palliative care.

Conversations at the symposium's concluding aperitif showed that, in addition to experts, interested outsiders who were looking for opportunities for musical activity at an advanced stage of life also attended the event - an indication that a special contact point could meet a need.