Invited on Wednesday from Europe 1, cellist Claire Oppert came to tell how she has been using her instrument for years to relieve the pain of patients or to support people at the end of their life.

"The presence of the cello reduces pain by up to 50%, as well as anxiety," she says. 

INTERVIEW

High-level musician, Claire Oppert decided to put her art into practice outside traditional structures, to focus on people in hospital or at the end of their life.

For several years now, this cellist has been using her instrument to soothe their pain.

Invited on Wednesday from Europe 1, she recounts the birth of this activity, and took the opportunity to play the

Adagio d'Albinoni

on our antenna

.

"We have been able to prove (...) that the presence of the cello reduces pain by up to 50% and also anxiety" explains Claire Oppert, who plays Albinoni's Adagio live on # Europe1pic.twitter. com / pWT0zl3Oy0

- Europe 1 (@ Europe1) April 21, 2021

These pains, she explains, can be relieved "by music and by the presence, the relationship created between a musician and a patient".

And the cello is ideal for this, with its sound "like a human voice".

"It is an instrument which has the same frequencies as the voice, it is often noted by the patients", explains Claire Oppert. 

The "Schubert bandage"

But how did Claire Oppert come to this very particular practice?

One day, while she was in a Parisian nursing home in which she intervened regularly, she came across a patient "demented, very aggressive, who was fighting with the nurses who could not give her her bandage".

Prompted by "a sort of instinct", she then sits down next to her and begins to play the slow movement of Schubert's second trio on her.

"Her pain subsided drastically, and she gave her arm to the nurses," recalls Claire Oppert. 

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One of the nurses, she says again, then says that "we will have to come back for the 'Schubert bandage'".

And since then, this initiative has turned into a structured project, and Claire Oppert is participating in "a clinical study based on this spontaneous experience" at Sainte-Perine hospital, in Paris, "where we analyzed 112 'dressings. Schubert '". 

"The presence of the cello reduces the pain"

"We have been able to prove with precise scientific parameters, measured before, during and after each painful treatment, that the presence of the cello in the patient's bed reduces pain by up to 50% as well as anxiety", assures the guest from Europe 1. 

But Claire Oppert also supports people at the end of their life. "It happened to me to play for people at the time of the passage," she confirms. "It is often a great gift for families to know that their loved one has made this passage into music." Moreover, she adds, these people at the end of their life are sometimes not conscious, "but react in a very powerful way with their breathing when listening to the music".