JOURNALIST:
What were the doctors’ reactions to these thoughts?
PETER HÜBNER: This idea was brought to me by leading doctors during
an international conference. And so with this thought, first introduced to
our cultural area by Pythagoras, I am fighting battles with this occupational
group that have already been won. For a doctor, it goes without saying that
it is in his patients’ interest to strengthen the immune system and activate
a natural order in the biological function.
The composer of modern times is not a doctor, and he need not necessarily
share the doctor’s thoughts – neither do the manufacturers and/or
distributors of alcoholic drinks or cigarettes or the producer of other drugs.
After all, to me personally, it seemed important to act on my conscience,
as people’s health is becoming weaker and weaker. And because I assumed
that I would reach more and more people with my musical creations – I
saw my responsibility grow.
The avant-garde reaches only very few people with its disharmonious music.
And this will stay the same, because a human being, as chronomedicine has
shown, is harmonically structured from a holistic point of view, and therefore
quite spontaneously rejects this music as foreign to his nature – full
stop.
This is a medical problem, and it cannot be reconciled by musical training,
whatever that may look like.
In this matter, the avant-garde is fundamentally mistaken about nature’s
reality.
This, however, should not lessen their artistic performance. As a result of
the stated medical facts, they only have to make do with an audience that
is on the whole healthy, and voluntarily willing and able to accept stress
and strain in its leisure time, in addition to all the daily pressures.
Here, the same applies as with alcohol, nicotine or drugs: if the organism
is weakened, a stronger dose would be ill-advised.
A further problem, though, is in how far it is possible to commit people to
exposing themselves to the stress of disharmonious music, when their immune
system and therefore their health is weakened – this e.g. applies to
the group of professional musicians who, without considering their state of
health, are committed to joining in and therefore exposing their organism
to musical stress.
JOURNALIST: What can a professional musician do about that?
PETER HÜBNER: The time is surely not far away, when the first
ill musicians will successfully claim for compensation against their employers.
I was invited to an international conference as a speaker, where the main
theme was the extremely alarming state of health of the practising artists.
It was a medical congress for specialists –“Medicine for the Performing
Arts”, and the occupational group reported to be most prone to illnesses
in today’s society was the group of musicians – even before jet
fighter pilots and air traffic controllers. We should all be very concerned
about this.
JOURNALIST: That surprises me, because most professional musicians don’t
or hardly play any dissonant music at all. Most of them essentially play normal,
harmonious classical music.
PETER HÜBNER: Nature’s laws of harmony, as we find them in the
microcosm of music, apply to spatial and time structures in the same way.
As far as spatial structures are concerned, disharmonious music of the avant-garde
contradicts nature’s laws of harmony.
But relating to the time structures, the rhythmical fixation usual in the
modern interpretation practice of classical pieces – that is the so-called
fixed rhythm* – contradicts natu-re’s laws of harmony. And it looks
as if this kind of temporal disregard of nature’s laws of harmony is
not less harmful to health than its spatial disregard.
The previous investigations, and above all the results of the investigations
in the field of chronomedicine, show that especially the rhythmical violation
against the laws of harmony causes harm to people’s health.
On the basis of these scientific findings, I see particularly in the interpretation
of classical pieces by conductors and musicians, battered by their jet set
life, damage caused to one’s health which is in no way inferior to that
of music avant-garde.
In addition, the risk of tonal disharmonious music is being reduced by the
listener’s spontaneous rejection, as he recognises the structure of this
spatially disharmonious music as foreign to his nature, and in doing so rejects
it and then stays away from the performances.
Recent medical findings have revealed that our ear** is harmonically structured
even right into the physical area, and as a result of this biological constitution
alone, rejects disharmonious music.
But the spontaneous sensitive perception of that risk in the temporal field
of music – to which rhythmical fixed music also belongs as a special
case is unfortunately not so easy any more for the organism of our time which
is flooded from all sides by the acoustic noises of rhythmically fixed machines.
Therefore, in order to avert disaster, we need scientific verification and
intellectual enlightenment.
It is the same as with smoking: the first pull is spontaneously categorised
as unpleasant. But after a period of passive smoking, and a few light pulls,
the personal stimulus threshold and linked spontaneous rejection is reduced.
And then subjectively the smoker finally regards his action as pleasant and
perfectly harmless.
In our times, it is the same with rhythmically fixed, and therefore rhythmically
disharmonious music.
The danger of rhythmical fixation for a person’s health is no longer
recognised by the individual and therefore underestimated. As an infant he
couldn’t do anything about it, and now he has got used to it. And it
is no coincidence that, with the general weakening of the immune system, the
musical exertion of influence also has its effect.
Rock musicians and their consumers, pop musicians and their consumers, musicians
of the so-called folk-music and their consumers, and the musicians of the
classical orchestras and their consumers, increasingly turn to drugs (from
cocaine to designer drugs), to alcohol (from beer to vodka), and to nicotine,
because, as a result of the rhythmical and tonal disorders in their organism,
they are above average susceptible to these drugs. In all this, dissonant
music doesn’t come off so badly.
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© A A R E D I T I O N I N T E R N A T I O N A L 2001