Music - Corpus

Encounters with Musical Centenarians

10 June 2025 2 Comments

William Green

Nearly everyone wants to know the ‘secret’ to longevity. Several years ago, on his 107th birthday, Jack Coe (at that time the oldest man in New Zealand) declared that the secret was ‘popcorn and beer’. Hastings centenarian Vi Cassin, born in 1924, gave her answer as ‘onions and beer’. I would like to meet her, not only to find out whether she consumes these two items separately or together, but also because she is a pianist. As a pianist myself, I regularly work with retirement village choirs and have become increasingly intrigued by centenarian musicians. Is part of the ‘secret’ to longevity contained in their musicianship?

Studies have shown that music stimulates parts of the brain responsible for memory, attention and problem-solving skills. I’ve certainly noticed that many musical centenarians I’ve met continue to be proficient in using Google, email and YouTube. Another important factor also seems to be that being musically active contributes to a sense of purpose, accomplishment and community belonging. [Read more…] about Encounters with Musical Centenarians

Poetry, music, and an ethics of care

25 May 2020 5 Comments

Sophia Wilson

In February 2020, as a Covid-19 outbreak had led to lockdown in Wuhan and was sparking alarm around the globe, a small audience gathered in a Dunedin Methodist church for an evening of conversation between Behrouz Boochani and Professor Alison Phipps. Behrouz Boochani is a Kurdish refugee, journalist and film maker who recently achieved both fame and literary acclaim from within the walls of Manus Island Detention Centre for his novel No Friend but the Mountains. Professor Alison Phipps is the UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts at the University of Glasgow. She was in Dunedin as the 2019 De Carle Distinguished lecturer at the University of Otago. Present also were Neil Vallely (Centre for Global Migrations, University of Otago), Ali Mostolizadeh, (Translator and PhD candidate in Sociology and Legal Studies, University of Waterloo) and respected Dunedin poets Emma Neale and Rhian Gallagher.

It’s not often a discussion about human rights abuses and serious political regression ends with a celebration of poetry and music, but given the guests, this was a natural outcome.

The evening’s conversation embraced issues of race, colonialism and the purpose of language. Medicine, in particular psychiatry, wove its way through the narrative, not as an altruistic, heroic vehicle for healing, but as a spectre of oppression and control.

Dog walks allowed

6 April 2020 2 Comments

Barbara Brookes

There seem to be more dogs getting walked these days – or are we just doing it all at the same time? Dog walking, I would argue, is important for both physical and mental health. We have been committed dog walkers from graduate school days when we dog-sat a Newfoundland and a Labrador. Our first dog, Taffy, a Welsh terrier, was a present to my Dad on his seventieth birthday in the hope that he would take more walks to help his heart condition. When my Dad’s heart gave out two years later, we took over the naughty and ill-trained dog from my unable-to-cope mother. Taffy returned to my mother five years later – a bit calmer – when we went overseas on study leave. When we came back, we saw how that naughty dog had enhanced my mother’s life. Those walks around her neighbourhood kept her fit and brought her new friends. At home he was great company. There was no way Taffy was coming back to us.

Our next dog was acquired when our young sons convinced a babysitter that a trip to the SPCA pound would be a good diversion. Heart-rending tales of the cutest dog in the world came home and soon Scruffles was saved from death row. The boys’ enthusiasm for walks diminished quite quickly but I found those walks gave me essential thinking time. When it rained, I donned my father’s rain pants and my father-in-law’s LL Bean Jacket, wrapping myself in my forebears as I braved inclement weather. Problems that seemed insoluble, writing tasks that were blocked, difficult interpersonal relations – all became easier when pondered in the fresh air. After fourteen years Scruff passed on and we acquired our first puppy, Scout. Nearly six, he remains full of beans and addicted to chasing a ball. I have regular dog-walk dates.

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Isolated tracks

30 March 2020 2 Comments

Chris Nichol

Songs have a remarkable capacity to speak into a range of specific contexts. In doing so, their meaning can be completely transfigured. Sometimes it’s a conscious re-application, someone uplifting the music or melody and applying it to a different purpose. Take the melody of the British National Anthem, for example. Originally it was probably a sixteenth century plainsong or chant. Later, Purcell and Handel borrowed the tune and Purcell used it in association with the words “God save the King”. We know the words and music were sung together at the Drury Lane Theatre in 1745 as a patriotic response to the Scottish Jacobite victory over George II’s soldiers at the Battle of Prestopans. On that occasion it included this verse:

May the sedition hush, and like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush, God save the King!”

Strangely, it seems the Jacobites themselves used the tune as a drinking song at the same time. Beethoven also wrote piano variations on the tune in 1804, possibly free of political sentiment. Even today the melody provides the tune to other nations’ patriotic songs including the United States’ “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”.

Sometimes this transfiguration of melody or lyric can happen simply by accident or historical happenstance. In the days before Covid-19 took over our lives, when Corona meant a cold beer with a slice of lemon tucked in the top, we went to see Kate Tempest at the Festival of the Arts. To be honest, we knew practically nothing about her. She was billed as a spoken word and hip hop artist, a rapper, a poet, novelist and playwright. But that gave so much to go on we had no idea what to expect. It turned out her show was a dynamic and relentless waterfall of words that nailed a world of contemporary angst while still offering a glimpse of a positive future.

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Medical musicians: the New Zealand Doctors’ Orchestra

17 June 2019 1 Comment

Tim Wilkinson

The New Zealand Doctors’ Orchestra is playing at the Dunedin Town Hall on Sunday 23 June at 2pm, with all proceeds from ticket sales going to the Otago Community Hospice. Medical musician and NZDO co-founder, Tim Wilkinson, talks about how the orchestra came to be:

The New Zealand Doctors’ Orchestra is one of several orchestras around the world made up of medical musicians. There is an Australian Doctors’ Orchestra, a European Doctors’ Orchestra and a World Doctors’ Orchestra. There are also many local medical orchestras, for example in Christchurch, Auckland and Melbourne. The New Zealand Doctors’ Orchestra (NZDO) gave its first concert in 2012. Since then, the NZDO has given annual concerts in various parts of New Zealand.

The orchestra was founded by myself, my wife Lynette Murdoch (a GP and teacher for Otago University), and our son Tom, a medical registrar. I play double bass, Lynette plays violin and Tom plays trumpet. We decided to form a national doctors’ orchestra for several reasons. There are many doctors who are very able and/or keen musicians, yet sometimes the pressures of work mean their musical talents are not realised. The NZDO provides Kiwi medical musicians an opportunity to play in a high quality national orchestra, encourages collegiality and enhances work-life balance.

Life with polio

17 September 2018 3 Comments

Sue Wootton

Lorraine Inwood is 88 years old. She lives in Mosgiel, near Dunedin in New Zealand’s South Island. Sixty years ago, when she was pregnant with her fourth child, her eldest son became ill with a tummy upset. He vomited several times but soon recovered. Then Lorraine went down with the same bug. She quickly became so weak and feverish that she was unable to get out of bed.

The family doctor diagnosed pneumonia. He made at least three home visits, finally telling her, “You’re convalescing now. You should be up and about.”

There was no way that Lorraine could follow his advice. She had a vicious headache and awful back pain. Every time she tried to stand she vomited again. She could feel herself becoming progressively weaker. No matter how much she willed herself to stand up straight, her body refused to obey and she remained bent double, saggy as a sack. A specialist was consulted. He recognised the signs and symptoms immediately: Lorraine had polio. She was one of 1,485 New Zealanders who contracted the disease during the 1955-56 epidemic.

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