2012 feature

In Honor of Dr. Clive Robbins

Coming into Being in Music:

Clive Robbins’ Work with Young Children

Nina Guerrero, M.A., MT-BC, LCAT

David Marcus, M.A., CMT, LCAT

Alan Turry, D.A., MT-BC, LCAT

Nordoff-Robbins Center for Music Therapy

Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development

New York University

New York, NY

Dr. Clive Robbins was a pioneer, a visionary, and a joyful human being. He loved making music and using music to reach individuals whom many considered unreachable. The music therapy community lost a true friend and advocate when he passed away on December, 7, 2011. Because of Clive’s extensive and excellent work with young children, AMTA’s early childhood online magazine imagine is a perfect venue for giving a tribute to him.

Clive Robbins and the Music Child

A natural place to begin exploring the work of Dr. Clive Robbins with young children is the concept of the music child – the universal human capacities for musical perception and response that are uniquely manifested in every individual, embodying his or her creative core potential for growth and development irrespective of disabilities (Nordoff & Robbins, 2007). With singular clarity of vision, Clive found ways to call forth the music child and to work at each child’s developmental threshold, cultivating the child’s motivation toward positive interaction and self-actualization. The special qualities that he brought to working with young children are best illuminated by the simple fact that he could easily and without self-consciousness access his own child-like wonder and exuberance. He conveyed unabashed joy when playfully interacting with young children. This was striking to watch because he was a tall man, yet when he worked with children he never seemed to tower over them. The age difference seemed to disappear as he gleefully engaged with them in a heartfelt manner. One never felt that Clive was calculating; he naturally responded to young children with spontaneity and humor.

Yet he very much had a therapeutic agenda, an idea of what a child’s next developmental step could be. Clive was not merely having fun, though there was joy underlying everything he did. He valued the experience of joy and felt it was a transformative one for young children. At the same time, he could perceive and intuit a child’s dormant capabilities and find ways to potentiate these capabilities. And Clive did ask children to work, to strive. They seemed to feel the depth of his joy and love for them even as he challenged them to take a step in their development. In sessions, he rarely appeared to become frustrated. When a child was resistive or hard to reach, a wry smile would appear on Clive’s face, as if to say, “I like this challenge. Now how are we going to work this out? What are we going to learn from you?  I’m ready to learn my lesson from you today.”

Sunfield and Philadelphia: Early Work

Clive Robbins began his collaboration with American pianist and composer Paul Nordoff in 1959 at Sunfield Children’s Homes in Worcestershire, England. Over the next sixteen years, these two pioneered the application of improvisational and compositional techniques in music therapy, as well as detailed analysis of therapy sessions, which allowed for innovations in research and theory. The therapeutic approach that they developed at Sunfield effectively engaged children with severe developmental delays, autism spectrum disorders (ASD), psychotic characteristics, and physical challenges. 

In the 1960s, Nordoff and Robbins became involved in a project in the Department of Child Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine through the support of two successive National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) applied research grants. Encompassing treatment, training, research, and publication components, the project was an unprecedented study of music therapy as a means of establishing communication and relationship with children with ASD and other developmental disabilities. Building upon existing assessment tools in clinical psychology, Nordoff and Robbins developed rating scales that captured the qualities of musical and personal interaction unique to creative music therapy. Many of the cases that became the basis of their teaching were conducted during the period of this grant, and were eventually published in their seminal text, Creative Music Therapy, originally published in 1977 (Nordoff & Robbins, 2007). Among them was the case of Edward, a five-year-old boy with minimal functional communication, aversion to social interaction, frequent tantrums, repetitive behaviors, and lack of daily living skills. The audio excerpts depict the therapists’ use of clinical improvisation to meet and engage Edward in the very midst of his tantrums, leading him over the course of nine sessions into “self-expressive intercommunicative singing.” As they describe, “personal and musical conditions so combined to make it possible for him to participate in sustained two-way communication. He became a successfully active partner in an interactive situation…” (p. 40).

Through empirical review of session recordings, Nordoff and Robbins closely examined the therapeutic relationship as an interpersonal field of musical communication. They observed the dynamics of intersubjectivity and attunement in interactive, improvisational music-making with clients, and their organizing potential – helping the child to self-regulate emotionally, and thereby build the capacity to think and reflect. Their findings had strong resonances with psychological research on preverbal communicative interaction between infants and their primary caregivers. What Trevarthen (1980) called the "protoconversation" of infant and caregiver is a richly musical exchange with mutually responsive shifts in rhythm, phrasing, melody, and dynamics. Aspects of attunement and the developmental processes of intersubjectivity became the focus of a vast body of research on infant communication that brought about a paradigm shift during the last decades of the 20th century: A shift to conceiving of human development as a relational process — a dynamic interpersonal world before words which forged and fostered perception, cognition, emotion, communication, and all aspects of the individual and social self. While the infancy researchers were mainly working with normally developing infants and their parents, Nordoff and Robbins utilized the therapeutic potential of music as a medium for communicative interaction with atypically developing children, often with significant impairments. In his preface to Therapy in Music for Handicapped Children (Nordoff & Robbins, 1971), composer Benjamin Britten wrote that amidst a political and social climate in which "the validity of communication in art" had been called into question, here was a musical approach "where the concentration is entirely on just this: On communication, pure and simple” (p. 9).

Bringing Music to Children with Hearing Loss
In 1975, Clive formed a new team with his wife Carol. From 1975 through 1981, with support from federal funding, the Robbinses developed a comprehensive music program for students aged 3 through 18 at the New York State School for the Deaf (NYSSD) in Rome, New York (Robbins & Robbins, 1980). Their work with children with hearing loss beautifully exemplified their conviction that musicality is a fundamental, integral capacity of human cognition and emotion, not simply of the ear. Especially for the youngest children, this work had profound significance in promoting the natural development of communication through immersion rather than didactic instruction. Clive and Carol immersed the children in a holistic context of auditory stimulation, playful vocalization, and the creative possibilities of non-verbal expression through music. Beyond the development of speech and auditory skills, they offered children with hearing loss an opportunity for mutual listening in a deeper sense, involving the integration of all of one’s senses in response to another’s presence and expression. As the children were being challenged to listen, they also were having the experience of being closely listened to – and it is on the basis of being listened to that young children develop a sense of communicative efficacy (Stern, 1990; Trevarthen, 1980). In the following two video excerpts, Clive leads a preschool group at NYSSD in singing, signing, and moving to Carol’s musical piece I Can Sing.

Watch Preschool Group at NYSSD – I Can Sing, Part I
Watch Preschool Group at NYSSD – I Can Sing, Part II

In 1989, Clive and Carol Robbins returned to the U.S. to co-found the Nordoff-Robbins Center for Music Therapy at New York University, where Clive maintained a vital presence until his death in December, 2011. Today the Center serves over 100 children and adults each year with a wide range of needs and also conducts clinical research in collaboration with educational and health-care institutions in the community. In addition, the Center offers specialized post-graduate training to music therapists, as well as practicum placements for music therapy, music education, psychology, social work, and drama therapy students.

Nicole: The First Child Served at the Nordoff-Robbins Center, NY
Four-year-old Nicole was the first child at the Center with whom Clive and Carol Robbins worked. Blind, autistic, and so small that her foot was the size of a penny when she was born in the twenty-fourth week of gestation, Nicole had not been expected to survive. Because the facilities of the Center were not yet ready, she began her sessions in the living room of Clive and Carol’s home. The sense of being at home, of coming home to music, was a pervasive theme throughout the many years of her therapy. It was as if she were engaging with family when she came to music therapy. It is interesting to note that Clive and Carol did not have a child of their own, and perhaps Nicole embodied their “music child” in more ways than one. They saw her strong potential to thrive and develop through musical interaction, as she immediately conveyed musical sensitivity, exquisite listening skills, and joy in music. Clive and Carol recognized how meaningful this could be to Nicole’s mother, who worked so hard to nurture her. When the Robbinses began working at the Center, they made sure that Nicole’s mother could view every session through a closed circuit system.

Nicole relished making music with Carol at the piano. She began to share ideas, wait and respond musically, and laugh appreciatively when Carol would play something surprising or amusing. In a sense, Carol was a maternal presence nourishing Nicole's unfolding musicality and ability to relate to others. Nicole often looked ecstatic, evidently having what Maslow (1982) would call “peak experiences” as she engaged in various music-making activities with Carol. She loved to improvise at the piano while Carol provided a grounding ostinato bass pattern. Carol's music was nurturing, her voice loving and maternal.

If Carol was a kind of musical mother, Clive was her spiritual father. He sang to her and with her, danced with her, held her, guided her, encouraged her, laughed with her. They had a special relationship that led to developmental “firsts” for Nicole. She began to use language in response to Clive's playful yet insistent singing of questions. To see Clive in action with Nicole was to see love in action. And Nicole loved him dearly. Because Clive was able to convey his complete and authentic self in his voice – laughing, singing, urging – Nicole drew close to him and they had a very intimate relationship. She loved to hold him, sit in his lap, feel his physical presence as she engaged in music. Clive was as much a part of the musical experience as Carol's music was.

One of the most touching moments in the course of therapy occurred when Clive encouraged Nicole to invite her mother into the session so that they could playfully interact with each other during the song “What's That?” (Nordoff & Robbins, 1968), which focuses on identification of body parts. After Clive had completed the song several times with Nicole, he encouraged her to sing the song to her mother. This had emotional intensity, as Nicole very rarely communicated verbally with her mother, and in fact had never before used the word “Mama.” Clive guided her to touch and identify her mother’s hair, nose, and so on; and at the end of this very close physical interaction, Nicole was able to complete the final line, “That's Mama.” Her mother was visibly moved.

Watch Nicole – That’s Mama

It is important to note that Clive was not sentimental about this tender moment, but very matter of fact. As he proceeded with the session and the course of therapy, he always worked to find the key to Nicole’s further development. He clearly loved all of the children he worked with, and utilized that love to discern the unfolding potential of each child.

Morgan: In Therapy with Alan and Clive

Clive’s work with four-year-old Morgan, with Alan Turry as primary therapist, was another case in point. According to Morgan’s mother, he had been developing normally until age 2 when he “stopped trying to communicate.” She reported that he was not a happy child, was uninterested in other people, and had trouble sleeping at night. He appeared tired when entering his first music therapy session. But a positive tone was set through improvised music that matched his assertive stride into the room, with Clive welcoming him and inviting him to play instruments, while allowing him space to explore. As a co-therapist, Clive maintained an exquisite balance between patiently, unobtrusively waiting for a child’s initiatives, and actively facilitating the child’s engagement.

Watch Morgan – Discovering Music

In this first session, as Alan played at the piano with Morgan who alternated between drum, cymbal, and xylimba, Clive was visibly enthralled. His enthusiasm for Morgan’s discoveries encouraged both Morgan and Alan to continue, to listen to each other, to find ways to meet in the music. Clive’s expression of joy was genuine – he truly took pleasure seeing how creative and active Morgan quickly became in the music room. Yet he was also assessing what Morgan could do next: Could he respond to a song with words celebrating his discovery that music could be a wonderful way to relate to others? Clive began to sing the theme that would be brought back throughout the course of therapy: “It’s Morgan’s music day. It’s Morgan’s music day! It’s music, music, music, music, music all the way.” Though simple, it captured the essence of Morgan’s attitude and celebrated the experience of shared music-making. As the sessions went on, Clive continually found new ways to engage Morgan, whether by singing, playing, or spontaneously dancing. Clive always had what seemed like an inexhaustible reservoir of energy to tap into when engaging with young children.

Watch Morgan – It’s Morgan’s Music Day

Even late in his life, when he was clearly struggling physically, Clive would occasionally come into sessions with clients. On one such occasion, Clive substituted for the co-therapist with a young child who was having difficulty relating to the primary therapist at the piano. He quietly observed the boy, sensing the possibilities for engaging him. The boy was sitting close to the wind chimes, and Clive was sitting on the other side. Slowly, Clive moved his face closer to the boy. The wind chimes were between him and the child, and Clive kept moving closer, until his nose – a nose not insignificant in size – crossed over to the other side where the boy was situated. This amused the boy to no end, and he became interested in playing the wind chimes. It was a key moment in the therapy process and Clive had initiated it in his own inimitable way.

Closure

Over the past five decades, Nordoff-Robbins music therapy has expanded into diverse settings and populations internationally, reflecting the extensive reach and enduring influence of Clive Robbins’ clinical practice, research, teaching, writings, and media presentations. In his teachings, no less than in his clinical work, Clive was a motivator, a visionary whose passion was contagious. He imparted the essence of Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy largely by enabling his audiences to share his own experiences. Using the vast archive of case material that he had recorded, he shared with students all over the world his experience of working with music, and the remarkable growth and development it facilitated. They were enthused by his enthusiasm; inspired by his inspiration; transformed by the transformations they heard occurring, one after another, in the music therapy sessions.

Just as he sparked intrinsic motivation within children to come more fully into being through creative musical exchange, Dr. Clive Robbins empowered therapists to work from their own direct experience of relationship in music with each client. As he wrote,

1. The longer music therapists work in this way and experience directly the commitment children bring to bear on discovering or extending musical interactivity – and experience the intensifying individual presence of a child in his or her musical activities – the more evident it becomes that within the music child, and self-actualizing within it, manifests the core self of the individual, the center of personhood, the being child (p.17).
   

By embracing this experience, therapists place their “creative potential, musical resources, and personal maturity” at the service of clients’ needs; allow themselves “to be led and taught” by each client; and open themselves to “a source of untold and unforeseeable inspiration for the realization of creative healing in music therapy” (Nordoff & Robbins, 2007, p. 17).

Watch Dr. Clive Robbins – Enthusiastic Teaching

References and Resources

1. •Aigen, K. (1995). The aesthetic foundation of clinical theory: A basis of Nordoff-Robbins music therapy. In Carolyn B. Kenny (Ed.), Listening, playing, creating: Essays on the power of sound (pp. 233–257). New York: State University of New York Press.
   

2. •Aigen, K. (1996). Being in music: Foundations of Nordoff-Robbins music therapy. Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Monograph Series #1. St. Louis, MO: MMB Music.
   

3. •Aigen, K. (1995). Cognitive and affective processes activated in music therapy: A model for contemporary Nordoff-Robbins practice. Music Therapy, 13(1), 13-46.
   

4. •Aigen, K. (1998). Paths of development in Nordoff-Robbins music therapy. Gilsum, NH: Barcelona.
   

5. •Forinash, M. (1992). A phenomenological perspective of the Nordoff-Robbins approach to music therapy: The lived experience of clinical improvisation. Music Therapy, 11, 120-141.
   

6. •Maslow, A. H. (1982). Toward a psychology of being (2nd ed.). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
   

7. •Nordoff, P., & Robbins, C. (2007). Creative music therapy: A guide to fostering clinical musicianship (2nd ed.). Gilsum, NH: Barcelona.
   

8. •Nordoff, P., & Robbins, C. (1998). Edward. Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, 7(1), 57-64.
   

9. •Nordoff, P., & Robbins, C. (1983). Music therapy in special education. St. Louis, MO: MMB Music.
   

10. •Nordoff, P., & Robbins, C. (1968). The second book of children’s playsongs. New York: Presser.
    

11. •Nordoff, P., & Robbins, C. (1971). Therapy in music for handicapped children. London: Gollancz.
    

12. •Robbins, C. (1993). The creative processes are universal. In M. Heal & T. Wigram (Eds.), Music therapy in health and education (pp. 7–25). London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
    

13. •Robbins, C. (1998). Introduction to the study of Edward. Nordic Journal of MusicTherapy, 7(1), 55-56.
    

14. •Robbins, C. (2005). A journey into creative music therapy. Gilsum, NH: Barcelona.
    

15. •Robbins, C. (1997). What a wonderful song her life sang: An anthology of appreciation for Carol Robbins. New York: The International Trust for Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy.
    

16. •Robbins, C., & Robbins, C. (Eds.) (1998). Healing heritage: Paul Nordoff exploring the tonal language of music. Gilsum, N.H.: Barcelona.
    

17. •Robbins, C., & Robbins, C. (1980). Music therapy for the hearing impaired and other special groups. St. Louis, MO: MMB Music.
    

18. •Robbins, C., & Robbins, C. (1991). Self-communications in creative music therapy. In K. E. Bruscia (Ed.), Case studies in music therapy (pp. 55-72). Phoenixville, PA: Barcelona.
    

19. •Robbins, C., & Forinash, M. (1991). A time paradigm: Time as a multilevel phenomenon in music therapy. Music Therapy, 10(1), 46-57.
    

20. •Stern, D. (1990). Diary of a baby: What your child sees, feels, and experiences. New York: Basic Books.
    

21. •Trevarthen, C. (1980). The foundations of intersubjectivity: Development of interpersonal and cooperative understanding in infants. In The social foundations of language and thought: Essays in honor of Jerome S. Bruner (pp. 316-341). New York: Norton.
    

About the Authors

Nina Guerrero, M.A., MT-BC, LCAT is Research Coordinator at the Nordoff-Robbins Center. She currently oversees projects investigating effects of Nordoff-Robbins music therapy on the development of communication, social interaction, and creative expression in young children with autism spectrum disorders; music perception and speech perception in children with cochlear implants; and physical, psychological, and social well-being in stroke patients. Contact: nina.guerrero@nyu.edu

David Marcus, M.A., CMT, LCAT,Coordinator of Special Projects and Publishing at the Nordoff-Robbins Center, contributed extensive co-authorship to the revised edition of Creative Music Therapy (Nordoff & Robbins, 2007). A senior clinician and supervisor at the Center, he is also co-founder and co-director of the Creative Music Therapy Studio, a private NRMT practice in Manhattan; and serves as adjunct faculty in the graduate music therapy program at NYU. Contact: david.marcus@nyu.edu

Alan Turry, D.A., MT-BC, LCAT, Managing Director at the Nordoff-Robbins Center, was the first certified instructor of Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy, and is renowned for his innovative contributions to the approach. He oversees the graduate internship program and Advanced Certification training at the Center, teaches clinical improvisation and develops course work in the NYU graduate music therapy program, and is in demand internationally as a teacher and presenter. Contact: alan.turry@nyu.edu

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imagine, is an annual online magazine sharing evidence-based information and trends related to early childhood music therapy through various media.

Each issue includes a featured multimedia article about a current topic.