Practicing "Gentle Empiricism" -- The Nordoff Robbins Research Heritage

Contemporary pressures on music therapists to provide evidence for the efficacy of music therapy increase the risk of producing research that negates the phenomenon at the very heart of music therapy work. This paper challenges what typically counts as evidence by exploring a distinctive alternative empirical research tradition. The “qualitative science” of Goethe (1749–1832) and Steiner's (1861–1925) Anthroposophical tradition provided Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins with a distinct qualitative stance for developing their clinical practice and the theory and research that have emerged from this practice. In this article, four projects illustrate the practitioner-researcher stance of “gentle empiricism,” which retains a firm root in the fundamental phenomenon of people-in-music , alongside the pragmatics of putting “music's help” in action with different clients and in varying situations. As a research principle Nordoff and Robbins' distinctive qualitative tradition presents a strong rebuttal to contemporary simplification and politicization of what counts as evidence of music therapy's value, and the corresponding confusion of replacing the phenomenon with abstractions (be these in words or numbers).