Ques­tion: And how can medi­cal mu­sic cor­re­spond to natu­ral evo­lu­tion?

Peter Hübner: The medi­cally cor­rect course of ac­tion of a sci­en­tifi­cally ori­ented mu­sic medi­cine lies in the har­monic re­in­force­ment of the natu­ral struc­ture of or­der of the bio­logi­cal sys­tem through the ap­pli­ca­tion of the laws of har­mony which natu­rally de­ter­mine the struc­ture of or­der of the bio­logi­cal sys­tem and also the mi­cro­cosm of mu­sic.

This was the view of the learned doc­tor, mu­si­colo­gist and mathe­ma­ti­cian Pythagoras – and, fol­low­ing ex­ten­sive re­search, this is also the view of mod­ern sci­ence.

One must, how­ever, ac­quaint and fa­mil­iar­ise one­self along the way with these natu­ral laws of na­ture and the mi­cro­cosm of mu­sic and – if one wishes to employ mu­sic as a thera­peu­tic me­dium – one must then also learn the high art of clas­si­cal com­po­si­tion.

And this then is not only true for the tonal as­pects of the mu­si­cal spa­tial or­der, but also for the rhyth­mic as­pects of its tem­po­ral or­der – the area of its tem­po­ral struc­tur­ing.

When music is employed for the structuring of natu­ral har­monic or­der in the bio­logi­cal sys­tem via the ear, it must defi­nitely be a work of mu­si­cal craft which em­ploys po­lyph­ony, the coun­ter­point and the high art of the fugue. For it is these kind of mu­si­cal struc­tures that are to be found in the mi­cro­cosm of mu­sic – and not ho­moph­ony which, on mere su­per­fi­cial ob­ser­va­tion of the mi­cro­cosm of mu­sic, one may be­lieve one rec­og­nises as in­trin­sic fea­tures in the over­tones.
The cor­re­spond­ing is then also true for the tem­po­ral har­monic or­der of the mu­sic. Here too there is no rhyth­mic defi­ni­tion like it is pre­sented to us by rock, pop, light mu­sic and, in the same way, by mod­ern in­ter­pre­ta­tions of clas­si­cal works.

From this it fol­lows that it is noth­ing short of stupid, if one uses some kind of sound car­rier with mu­si­cal re­cordings from those ar­eas of mu­sic cited as mu­sic medi­cine. Here too the or­der of the mu­si­cal struc­tures is just as in­cor­rect as in the case de­scribed, where elec­tri­cal im­pulses of an or­gan­ism whose har­mony is dis­rupted is used struc­tur­ally for the ther­apy.

So here too, if the cited cus­tom­ary mu­sic re­cordings are used for mu­sic medi­cine, the proc­ess of natu­ral evo­lu­tion is turned upside down.

Such a course of ac­tion is cer­tainly the sim­plest, but also the least in­tel­li­gent way of per­form­ing mu­sic medi­cine, since it re­quires of the thera­pist nei­ther musi­co­logi­cal nor medi­cal train­ing.

The cen­tral fail­ing of this kind of ther­apy us­ing cus­tom­ary mu­sic pro­duc­tions from the ar­eas cited lies in the fact that none of them are har­moni­cally struc­tured and thus are not har­monic in­for­ma­tion car­ri­ers – that they are dis­cor­dant ei­ther in their tonal or rhyth­mic as­pect and, as such, do not meet the har­monic re­quire­ments set by the natu­ral or­der of our bio­logi­cal sys­tem.

Also be­long­ing to this sec­tor is the fa­tal en­deav­our to struc­ture a piece of mu­sic ac­cord­ing to the av­er­age rhythm of any or­gan – for ex­ample, of the heart­beat or the res­pi­ra­tion. This run-of-the-mill form of in­sis­tent rhythm-fix­ated pro­ce­dure con­tra­dicts the prin­ci­ples of natu­ral har­monic or­ders and so gives rise to dis­rup­tion of the natu­ral bio­logi­cal or­der. Here too, thera­pists must learn to comply with na­ture, as na­ture will not comply with their re­stricted in­sight.
Any such dis­rup­tions aris­ing from the thera­peu­tic ap­pli­ca­tion of non-har­moni­cally struc­tured mu­sic do not be­come im­me­di­ately ap­par­ent, as eve­ry­day a mul­ti­tude of cor­re­spond­ing dis­rup­tions set in on the in­di­vid­ual any­way. How­ever, they are then pre­sent in the com­pound to­tal of these dis­rup­tions.
In phar­ma­ceu­tics the harm caused by this com­pound ef­fect is al­ready well-known – this is why pa­tients, doc­tors and phar­ma­cists are al­ways seek­ing new ways of re­duc­ing this com­pound ef­fect.

Ques­tion: What are then the es­sen­tial fea­tures of medi­cal mu­sic with­out side-ef­fects?

Peter Hübner: Har­moni­cally struc­tured medi­cal mu­sic will al­ways have par­ticu­lar fea­tures: no fixed or de­fined rhythm, no fixed or de­fined to­nal­ity, but in­stead a multi-lay­ered, in­te­grated poly­rhythm and a mul­ti­form, in­te­grated poly­tonal­ity – both of which are them­selves in­te­grated via the art of the fugue, po­lyph­ony and the coun­ter­point.

The high art of clas­si­cal com­po­si­tion will then be­come in­te­grated in har­moni­cally struc­tured medi­cal mu­sic.

So if to­day, a crea­tor of mu­sic ful­fils those com­po­si­tional re­quire­ments cited, but is un­able to find mu­si­cians who, in the range of their in­ter­pre­ta­tive skills, mas­ter the es­sen­tial poly­phonic art men­tioned, then he must take the matter into his own hands.

He must turn to elec­tronic or digi­tal in­stru­ments, ac­quire the knowl­edge and skills there, and exe­cute the in­ter­pre­ta­tion him­self.
For the clas­si­cal com­poser this is, with­out a doubt, a great ad­di­tional and costly learn­ing and work­ing proc­ess, but he has no al­ter­na­tive – if he wishes to struc­ture har­monic mu­sic ac­cord­ing to the laws of har­mony of the mi­cro­cosm of mu­sic which can then be used in the medi­cal field to sup­port the main­te­nance and struc­tur­ing of natu­ral bio­logi­cal or­der.

Ques­tion: Is your Medi­cal Reso­nance Ther­apy Mu­sic^® – mu­sic, medi­cine, or a type of in­for­ma­tion? The term ‘mu­sic’ sug­gests mu­sic; the terms ‘medi­cal’ and ‘ther­apy’ sug­gest medi­cine or me­di­ca­tion; and the term ‘reso­nance’ sug­gests some kind of physi­cal fact. How are these things con­nected?

Peter Hübner: We all know such things from other fields which can­not be clearly clas­si­fied.
Take, for ex­ample, elec­tri­cal cur­rent. One per­son might say cur­rent flows, whilst an­other might speak of a chang­ing mag­netic en­ergy field. Both are cor­rect.

Judge­ment is in the eye of the be­holder, or arises out of the method of ex­ami­na­tion: one ex­am­ines the elec­tric­ity, the other ex­am­ines the mag­net­ism.

But there is a still more gen­eral ex­ample in the natu­ral sci­ences. In phys­ics the ques­tion arose at one point: is light also some­thing ma­te­rial or does it con­sist merely of vi­bra­tions? Two theo­ries were fi­nally de­vel­oped here, the cor­pus­cu­lar the­ory and the wave the­ory. But nei­ther could prove to the other that only his own point of view is cor­rect.

It is much the same with Medi­cal Reso­nance Ther­apy Mu­sic^®. From the musi­co­logi­cal point of view, it is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the struc­tural re­al­ity of the mi­cro­cosm of mu­sic, the aim of which is to convey in­for­ma­tion about its in­te­gral laws of har­mony – noth­ing more, noth­ing less.

As I make use of sounds in this pres­en­ta­tion of the har­monic world – like a writer makes use of the printed word on paper for his in­for­ma­tion – one ini­tially thinks that it is mu­sic.