Product Code Database
Clive Robbins, (23 July 1927 in Handsworth, West Midlands – 7 December 2011 in New York) was a British Music therapy, Special Needs educator, Anthroposophy and co-founder of Nordoff-Robbins music therapy.
While in the RAF at 18, Clive was injured by a bullet that nearly killed him, leaving his left hand and arm partially paralysed and dashing his hopes of becoming a pianist. Instead, he attempted photography and painting but found no vocation until becoming a teacher in 1954 at Sunfield Children's Home, a Rudolf Steiner 'curative educational community' for mentally disabled children in the Clent Grove, Stourbridge. He described it as "the first profoundly fulfilling experience of my life". He and his wife Mildred lived with their two children, Tobias and Jennifer, on the grounds of the school in a small trailer.
Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins were both involved in the thinking and practice of Anthroposophy previous to their meeting. "Our studies of anthroposophy had independently instilled in each of us an attitude of reverence for the destiny of humanity as a whole and the meaningfulness of each human existence" Robbins later wrote, going on to describe the individual music therapy work that they soon began together at Sunfield as "creative empiricism" (Robbins, 2005, p. 10). Practicing "Gentle Empiricism "—The Research Heritage Nordoff Robbins by GARY ANSDELL & MERCEDES PAVLICEVIC
The time Paul Nordoff spent at Sunfield in 1959-60 working with Clive Robbins was life-changing. The two men formed a close relationship and carried out experimental musical work with many of the most disabled and unreachable children who bore tragic lives of distress and self-injury. With the help of carefully chosen harmonies, appealing melodies and rhythms, the children were drawn into musical participation developing increased social and self-awareness, discipline and concentration. Placed in front of a snare drum and cymbal, they revealed their sensitivities and their expressive, receptive and relational abilities in their musical responses. It was a profound discovery of how music could be used for human benefit and Paul and Clive documented their observations and techniques in painstaking detail, making and transcribing recordings of their sessions.Profile 33: Clive Robbins. In: John Mahoney (Ed.): The Lives of Music Therapists: Profiles in Creativity - Volume 2, Dallas: Barcelona Publishers 2017.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Paul and Clive toured the world demonstrating their work, with groups of followers starting to work wherever they went. After Paul Nordoff's died in 1977, Robbins continued his music therapy work, teaching and lecturing well into his 80s.
In 1975, Clive returned to the US where he married his second wife Carol Matteson, also a music therapist. Together they worked at the New York State School for the Deaf in Rome, NY (1975–81), at Southern Methodist University, Dallas (1981–82), continuing courses and lectures and maintaining ties in Europe with annual teaching engagements. From 1982 until 1989 they lived in Australia where they established a Music Therapy Centre at Warrah, an anthroposophical disability service centre and biodynamic farm, and a Nordoff-Robbins Association in Australia. In 1989 a dream was fulfilled with the establishment of the Nordoff-Robbins Center for Music Therapy at New York University, of which Clive and Carol became Co-Directors. The new Centre served as a music therapy clinic and training venue for music therapists in the Nordoff-Robbins approach. Here Clive stayed active until his death, becoming Founding Director in 1998.
Clive saw the establishment in 1996 of the International Trust for Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy which came into being to preserve the name and reputation of Nordoff Robbins and to hold the worldwide intellectual property assets arising from the work of Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins. He held honorary doctorates from Combs College of Music, Philadelphia, the University of Witten-Herdecke, Germany, and the State University of New York. In memoriam: Clive Robbins 1927-2011 Nordoff-Robbins UK retrieved 2014.10.08
|
|
