Concerts on Prescription, from Montreal to Clermont

A prescription usually means a medication or a round of physical therapy. This season in Clermont-Ferrand, in central France, some doctors can write something else on it: a concert. Clermont-Ferrand University Hospital and the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes National Orchestra are launching a "music prescription." According to its organizers, it's the first program of its kind in France. Elsewhere in the world, though, the idea already exists. And researchers are starting to measure what a concert in the hall offers that a recording doesn't.

Two Seats, Nineteen Concerts

Throughout the 2026–2027 season, partner doctors at the hospital can give their patients a cultural prescription. Each one is good for two seats: one for the patient and one for a companion of their choice. In all, 230 seats are set aside across 19 concerts. The program is backed by the regional bank Crédit Mutuel Massif Central and is aimed first at people living with chronic illnesses, such as cancer or endometriosis.

The orchestra already knows the hospital well. Every year, its musicians perform at the hospital's three campuses, and the next concert there is scheduled for December 10, 2026, at Estaing Hospital. With the music prescription, it's the patient who goes to the concert: they leave the hospital and take a seat in the hall, among the audience. Each participant will receive a short questionnaire, and a summary report will be compiled at the end of the season.

Montreal Led the Way

The model comes from Quebec. In late October 2025, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and the physicians' association Médecins francophones du Canada launched "La musique sur ordonnance", or Music on Prescription. Association members who practice in Montreal each receive two official prescriptions. The patient calls the orchestra, gets two free tickets, and picks the concert. To qualify, patients must be adults, understand French or English, and be able to get around on their own. The association then analyzes the data collected to measure the program's effect on participants' health and quality of life.

In the UK, Orchestras Have Long Played a Role in Care

The Montreal partners point to their own model: social prescribing in the UK. There, the National Health Service (NHS) lets health professionals refer patients to local community activities, and music is one of them. British orchestras have been involved for years.

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic has run a Music and Health program with NHS partners since 2008. According to a University of Liverpool report, it reached about 18,000 patients and participants over fifteen years. The program includes music sessions on hospital wards, as well as supported concert outings and open rehearsals at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall. In London, since 2022, musicians from the City of London Sinfonia have performed at a health center in the borough of Southwark as part of the area's social prescribing program.

France already had related programs, though without prescriptions. In Toulouse, the Résonance(s) program invites psychiatric patients to attend rehearsals of the Orchestre national du Capitole. In early 2026, it expanded to other orchestras in Paris, Rouen, and Limoges.

What Music Actually Does

The Clermont-Ferrand team presents music as a complement to supportive care, not as a treatment. Research backs that up, with a few caveats. The benchmark review is a 2021 Cochrane review covering 81 clinical trials and 5,576 people with cancer. The strongest finding concerns anxiety, with a moderate to large effect. The effect on pain is moderate, and the effect on fatigue is smaller. For other outcomes, the authors say more rigorous studies are still needed.

Those trials looked at music therapy and listening to recorded music, not concerts. I've already written here about a study on how nature sounds lower blood pressure. That leads to another question: does being in the hall change anything?

The Hall or the Screen?

Two research teams tackled this question in 2026, in the journal Scientific Reports. In Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, Erasmus University, the Erasmus MC medical center, and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra brought 130 healthy volunteers to De Doelen, the city's main concert hall. Participants were randomly assigned to two groups. One heard the concert in the hall, while the other watched the same concert livestreamed on a big screen. The in-person audience rated the music higher, said they felt more moved, and reported more positive emotions. Their heart rate was also higher. Other heart measurements, however, showed no clear difference.

A team from the universities of Bristol and Bath ran a similar study with 296 audience members, one jazz concert, and one classical concert. Once again, being in the hall improved the experience on every measure. Audience members' heart rates were also more in sync with one another. Here's a detail sound people will appreciate: in the hall, where you sat made no difference to the experience. In front of the screen, however, the camera angle mattered.

These studies weren't done with patients, and they don't prove that a concert heals. What they do show is that listening together, in the same room as the musicians, isn't the same as hearing music through a screen. That's exactly what the Clermont-Ferrand prescription sets out to offer. This month, the first patients can attend a concert of music by Henry Purcell and Benjamin Britten, conducted by Enrico Onofri on November 20 at the Opéra-Théâtre de Clermont-Ferrand.

What about you? If your doctor prescribed a concert, would you go hear it in the hall, or would you rather put on headphones at home?