In 1967, Ronald Price was a young musician beginning a promising career playing the French horn. Then the Cortland, Illinois, resident began experiencing head tremors that made it increasingly difficult for him to play. Even after a battery of tests, doctors were unable to give Price’s condition a specific diagnosis, but warned him that his symptoms might be the first signs of degenerative neuromuscular disease. They recommended to Price that he give up his demanding instrument.

While saddened by his loss, Price was not willing to abandon music entirely, and channeled his passion into teaching music to children. In the course of his teaching, Price discovered that, despite growing physical problems, he could still play the harp, an instrument he could strum with his now weak left fingers and sit down while playing, an important factor because of his increasing unsteadiness.

Then a decade after his head tremors first became apparent, something miraculous happened. “When I began to regularly set aside time to play the harp, I discovered, quite accidentally, that after twenty minutes I was OK, but after an hour I was great!” With a regimen of regular harp practice, Price along with his doctors was astounded to find his symptoms diminishing. In the years since his discovery, Price has kept up his practice, even bringing a harp along when he travels. Today, Price, a professor in the School of Music at Northern Illinois University, in DeKalb, says that if he goes more than a few days without playing the harp, his limp returns, his speech slurred, and he begins to lose control over the left side of his body.

Both puzzled and intrigued by his own experience, Price helped found Healing Harps,
A not-for-profit group that today has grown to some 100 members nation wide who share an interest in the power of the harp to heal body and soul. Members perform together and exchange their often remarkable experiences. While not all may have stories as dramatic as Price’s, many of the musicians coping with physical problems from multiple sclerosis to brain tumors believe that playing the harp has helped them feel better physically . Alice Hack, a high school math teacher in Rockford, Illinois, took up the harp after undergoing cancer surgery on her arm. Hack’s physician was astounded when he saw how much strength she had recovered. “He told me to skip physical therapy and to keep playing the harp!” she says.

A growing body of scientific research supports music’s therapeutic powers: Studies have shown that listening to music can reduce pain in children undergoing bone marrow aspiration and that members of religious communities ( who sing or chant regularly) may have a lower incidence of Alzheimer’s disease. But why might the harp in particular offer such divine power? Scientists are just beginning to explore the question, but one theory holds that the vibration of the harp may simulation the body’s immune system including the thymus gland, located behind the breast-bone , near where the harp rests.

Indeed , one of the goals of Price’s organization is to work with clinical researchers to better understand their instrument’s therapeutic potential . Price insists that his group makes no promises, beyond the well-known ability of the harp to soothe and uplift both its players and listeners. “We don’t say we‘ll heal your weak limbs,” Price says. “Our interpretation of the healing is much broader. People hurt at more than physical levels.