Chronobiological Aspects
of Music Physiology

Biological Rhythms in Humans
and their Counterparts in Music


Prof. Dr. med.
Gunther Hildebrandt

Explanations on the following report:

In his work “Bio­logi­cal Rhythms in Hu­mans and their Coun­ter­parts in Mu­sic” Prof. Dr. med. Gunther Hildebrandt, one of the fa­thers of chro­no­medi­cine and long-stand­ing di­rec­tor of the School of Work Physi­ol­ogy and Re­ha­bili­ta­tion Re­search at Mar­burg Uni­ver­sity shows how the rhyth­mi­cal proc­esses in a healthy hu­man or­gan­ism fol­low the har­monic laws of na­ture and, in the tru­est sense of the word, turn it into a mu­sic physi­ol­ogy.

The ap­pli­ca­tion of the har­monic laws of na­ture also de­ter­mine the na­ture of Medi­cal Reso­nance Ther­apy Mu­sic^® of the clas­si­cal com­poser Peter Hübner, and here it is es­pe­cially the rhyth­mi­cal laws of har­mony which fun­da­men­tally dis­tin­guish his mu­sic from all other mu­sic and/or from their pre­sent day in­ter­pre­ta­tion.

In the books “Natural Music Creation” and “Natural Music Listening”, as well as in his study catalogue “Stud­ies in Mu­sic – Study of the In­ner Forces of Man” the tone crea­tor has de­scribed the natu­ral laws of har­mony, es­pe­cially also re­lat­ing to the field of man’s in­ner for­ma­tion.

1989 the com­poser Peter Hübner in­vited Prof. Dr. Hildebrandt to his home for an ex­change of ideas. Here, the mu­sic crea­tor and the medi­cal re­search sci­en­tist dis­cussed the con­cept of mak­ing the har­monic re­sources of mu­sic for the hu­man or­gan­ism an ob­ject of fo­cused mod­ern sci­en­tific stud­ies.

In a let­ter Prof. Dr. Hildebrandt wrote af­ter this meet­ing to the com­poser: “I am very in­ter­ested in the re­search pro­ject you in­tro­duced for the de­vel­op­ment and utili­za­tion of the mi­cro­cosm of mu­sic for health pur­poses.

As dis­cussed dur­ing our meet­ing, I would like to carry out a re­search se­ries in the con­text of this pro­ject, in which the in­flu­ence of mu­sic on the rhyth­mi­cal sys­tem of hu­mans is ex­am­ined. This is to as­cer­tain to what ex­tent un­bal­anced rhyth­mi­cal func­tions and their co-or­di­na­tion in hu­mans can be nor­mal­ized by pur­pose­fully and com­po­si­tion­ally ap­ply­ing the laws of har­mony of the mi­cro­cosm of mu­sic.

Where­by the musi­co­logi­cal part of this re­search se­ries would be ar­ranged by you, I, to­gether with my col­league Dr. med. R. Moog, would for­mu­late the medi­cal side of the re­search and moni­tor its exe­cu­tion.

Please find en­closed the medi­cal re­search re­port for ini­tial basis stud­ies on the sub­ject of sleep dis­or­ders, a prob­lem which af­fects many Ger­mans, but es­pe­cially those who have to do shift work”.
The thor­ough re­search of these har­monic con­nec­tions is a wide field, and will proba­bly take up sev­eral more years.

Prof. Dr. Hildebrandt’s sci­en­tific work in hand, is sup­por­tive of the un­der­stand­ing of the con­cept of Medi­cal Reso­nance Ther­apy Mu­sic^®, as it dem­on­strates the or­der of the natu­ral rhyth­mic sys­tem in hu­mans as be­ing har­monic in the sense of the mi­cro­cosm of mu­sic.

At the com­poser’s re­quest, this fun­da­men­tal work of Prof. Dr. Hildebrandt on “Bio­logi­cal Rhythms in Hu­mans and their Coun­ter­parts in Mu­sic”, with the avail­able ex­panded new pub­li­ca­tion, should once again be made ac­ces­si­ble to a wider, more tech­ni­cally quali­fied pub­lic.