Understanding the wellbeing of professional musicians through the lens of Positive Psychology

Abstract

Recognizing the need to include musicians in mainstream wellbeing profiling and to move beyond a focus on debilitating factors of the music profession, this study aimed to understand how professional musicians experience wellbeing in the light of Positive Psychology. Guided by the PERMA model, the goal was to track enhancers and challenges for wellbeing in relation to the model's five components: positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment. Participants included six professional musicians from six activities: solo, orchestral, choral, chamber, conducting and composing. Two interviews were conducted with each participant, separated by two weeks of diary record-keeping. Results point to high wellbeing. A clear sense of self appears as an overarching sustainer of wellbeing and the transition to professional life as the most challenging time regarding musicians' flourishing. Positive emotions emerged as highly related to musical moments, while varying repertoire and experiencing different ensembles appeared as central sources of engagement. Meaning emerged as linked to the shared nature of music-making, and a sense of accomplishment was built on internal goals and oneness in performance with others. The key processes for positive functioning appeared to involve responses to, and regulation by, relationships. Implications are discussed in relation to the role of holistic training in educational settings.The meaning of a good life has long shaped philosophical debate and is becoming a fundamental topic in psychological research. However, the mainstream approach has tended to focus on alleviating symptoms of ill-health and coping with problems. Recent studies have helped to redefine how being well means more than just the absence of disorder (Seligman, 2008). At the

Knit One, Play One: Comparing the Effects of Amateur Knitting and Amateur Music Participation on Happiness and Wellbeing

“…Finally, pride in accomplishment is an extremely strong narrative in both groups. The fit with PERMA supports earlier findings with professionals (Ascenso et al 2017) and amateurs (Lamont 2012) in music, and PERMA could provide a useful means for analysing future findings in the domain of crafts. Seligman's (2018) proposal that PERMA could help guide people towards more rewarding activities had been applied in music education by Lee et al (2017), who used the model to pinpoint areas needing improvement.…”

“…Hallam and Creech concluded that active musicmaking provided more opportunities for multiple routes to wellbeing, a finding echoed by Lamont et al (2018) with a choir for older people and by Perkins and Williamon (2014) with older instrumental learners. Music-making has been linked to Seligman's PERMA model by several researchers (Ascenso et al 2017;Croom 2015;Lamont et al 2018;Lee et al 2017), and the evidence that all five components can be involved may explain the evidence for music's potential greater impact.…”

Learning to facilitate arts-in-health programmes: A case study of musicians facilitating creative interventions for mothers with symptoms of postnatal depression

“…Kreutz, Ginsborg, & Williamon, 2008) and professional musicians (e.g. Ackermann, Driscoll, & Kenny, 2012) can experience high levels of ill-health or psychological distress, projects such as this may prove a useful means of reconnecting musicians with the meaning of their musical activities (see also Ascenso, 2016;Ascenso, Williamon, & Perkins, 2017). …”

Singing in later life: The anatomy of a community choir

“…The first hedonic state refers to positive emotions, and four eudaimonic states are also included: a sense of engagement or absorption with the activity itself (sometimes termed flow); social relationships; a search for meaning or connections beyond the individual, achieved through spirituality, or religion; and accomplishment, referring to the sense of achievement gained by completing a task. This PERMA framework (illustrated in Figure 1) explains how long-term wellbeing is achieved through repeated experience of various positive emotions, and has been successfully used qualitatively to explore student performers' musical memories (Lamont, 2012) and professional musicians' experiences of wellbeing (Ascenso, Williamon & Perkins, 2016). There are no quantitatively validated measures of this framework as yet and our aim in this study is to explore qualitative experiences and meanings of music-making.…”