The ap­pli­ca­tion of Medi­cal Reso­nance Ther­apy Mu­sic^® pro­duced simi­lar re­sults to those fa­mil­iar to us from the kan­ga­roo method. Breath­ing be­came calmer and more regu­lar, and res­pi­ra­tory pauses less fre­quent. Rest­less pre­ma­ture ba­bies re­acted im­me­di­ately and fell asleep more quickly; the wak­ing pe­ri­ods were shorter. Par­ticu­larly af­ter stress situa­tions (in­jec­tions, in­tu­ba­tion, etc.) the chil­dren calmed down more quickly when un­der the in­flu­ence of the mu­sic than they would oth­er­wise have done. Our stud­ies are not yet com­plete. Com­puter-as­sisted eval­ua­tions of our moni­tor­ing pa­rame­ters in the rou­tine op­era­tion of the in­ten­sive care ward are still un­der­way. Par­al­lel to this, we are also car­ry­ing out poly­som­no­graphic tests in or­der to ob­tain an ob­jec­tive as­sess­ment of the ef­fects of mu­sic ther­apy, which have so far been sub­jec­tive.

Simi­larly posi­tive, par­ticu­larly calm­ing ef­fects were ob­served in chil­dren suf­fer­ing from heart dis­or­ders, in cases of neurove­ga­ta­tive dis­or­ders (par­ticu­larly in sym­pa­thi­cotonic cases), in motor-hy­per­ac­tive chil­dren, and par­ticu­larly in chil­dren who were hard to dis­ci­pline, and those whose be­hav­ior and de­vel­op­ment was dis­turbed.

La­dies and gen­tle­men, the stud­ies and ob­ser­va­tions pre­sented, vari­ously sug­gest that the ef­fects of Medi­cal Reso­nance Ther­apy Mu­sic^® do occur ob­jec­tively – for they occur in­de­pend­ent of whether the lis­ten­ers find the Medi­cal Reso­nance Ther­apy Mu­sic^® pleas­ant, whether they are in­dif­fer­ent to it, or whether, in terms of taste, they are not really keen on it at all. And any­way, chil­dren are in­cor­rupti­ble.

The fun­da­men­tal sig­nifi­cance of the natu­ral or­der for ones health can be summed up in the fol­low­ing ex­ample: If you deny a per­son food, this soon gives rise to many symp­toms: his cir­cu­la­tion will weaken, his sleep will be dis­turbed, he will be sus­cep­ti­ble to gid­di­ness, etc. All of these symp­toms can be healed by one sim­ple course of ther­apy: by pro­vid­ing suf­fi­cient food. Just as much as it re­quires food, our or­gan­ism needs natu­ral or­der, and it there­fore pos­sesses highly com­plex sys­tems, in or­der to be able to re­store natu­ral or­der as soon as pos­si­ble fol­low­ing any dis­rup­tion.

In the opin­ion of an­cient doc­tors, our or­gan­ism re­acts to mu­sic like a reso­nance or sound­ing body and, by means of the cor­rectly struc­tured mu­sic, its proc­esses can be brought back into their natu­ral or­der – that is to say, har­mo­nized. When the natu­ral or­der of the or­gan­ism is dis­turbed, this is com­pa­ra­ble to the de­nial of food. The dis­rup­tion of the or­der will soon give rise to a mul­ti­tude of dif­fer­ent symp­toms of ill­ness. If one suc­ceeds in strength­en­ing the natu­ral or­der again, this alone will ban­ish the di­verse symp­toms of ill­ness which the dis­or­der had brought about.

Just like mod­ern phy­si­cians, an­cient schol­ars pointed out the great im­por­tance of natu­ral or­der for a life in good health and pro­moted the ap­pli­ca­tion of har­moni­cally struc­tured mu­sic as a kind of es­sen­tial sup­ply of natu­ral or­der and har­mony for the peo­ple. Via the ear, mu­sic has di­rect ac­cess to the brain, and if one looks at the re­sults of stud­ies car­ried out with Medi­cal Reso­nance Ther­apy Mu­sic^®, it cer­tainly looks as if vi­tal func­tions which have been drawn into chaos can be brought back into or­der with the help of har­moni­cal mu­sic. This could ex­plain the di­ver­sity of the ef­fects of Medi­cal Reso­nance Ther­apy Mu­sic^®.

In his book ‘The Back of the Mir­ror. An At­tempt at a Natu­ral His­tory of Hu­man Cog­ni­tion’ the Nobel prize-win­ner, Konrad Lorenz, sens­ing in­creas­ing hu­man ag­gres­sion, wrote thus: ‘The pro­gres­sive de­cline of our cul­ture is so ob­vi­ously of a patho­logi­cal na­ture, so ob­vi­ously pos­sesses the fea­tures of a sick­ness of the hu­man mind, that there is a cate­gori­cal ne­ces­sity for a medi­cal sci­ence as­pect in the ex­ami­na­tion of cul­ture and of the mind’.

Does this not come very close to the an­swer which Vladimir Ashkenazy – one of the most im­por­tant pian­ists of our time, lead­ing con­duc­tor of the Ger­man Sym­phony Or­ches­tra in Berlin and mu­si­cal di­rec­tor of the Lon­don Royal Phil­har­monic Or­ches­tra – once for­mu­lated and which I think pro­vides very apt words to close with:

‘Mu­sic plays a very im­por­tant role in our life – whether we are aware of it or not. And dif­fer­ent kinds and struc­tures of mu­sic can have an ex­tremely nega­tive or up­lift­ing ef­fect – not only on the in­di­vid­ual’s psy­che, but also on the en­tire spec­trum of a so­ci­ety’s psy­cho­logi­cal and emo­tional cli­mate.

I hope that eve­ry­one who wishes to con­trib­ute to a state of natu­ral har­mony – in­di­vid­ual and so­cial –, will give se­ri­ous thought to Peter Hübner’s sci­en­tific work and be­comes aware of its im­mense im­por­tance.’