Medi­cal Me­dia Group: This means, that from your Is­rael visit al­ready two great de­vel­op­ments in re­gard to Medi­cal Reso­nance Ther­apy Mu­sic^® have de­vel­oped: the in­ves­ti­ga­tions in the states of the for­mer So­viet Un­ion and the big sci­en­tific in­ter­est in the USA?

Peter Hübner: And the in­ter­est in Ger­many; be­cause it was from the “In­ter­na­tional Con­fer­ence on Pre- and Peri­na­tal Medi­cine“ in Je­ru­sa­lem that I was in­vited to the con­gress in Tübingen, on which I came across the lead­ing hor­mone re­search­ers of the world. In this re­spect there is also a di­rect line from Je­ru­sa­lem to Ger­many, but also an­other line from Je­ru­sa­lem via the for­mer states of the So­viet Un­ion to Ger­many.


Peter Hübner: Yes, a lot. Firstly I met there quite a few lead­ing per­son­ali­ties from the field of clas­si­cal mu­sic, and I think here in par­ticu­lar of the in­ter­na­tion­ally re­nowned com­poser and pre­sent di­rec­tor of the Rubin-Acad­emy of Mu­sic of the Uni­ver­sity of Tel Aviv, Noam Sher­iff, who, as is known, was for a long time also mu­sic di­rec­tor and prin­ci­pal con­duc­tor of the Is­rael Sym­phony Or­ches­tra.

But sec­ondly I also met vari­ous con­duc­tors – I think here of Zubin Mehta, prin­ci­pal con­duc­tor of the Is­rael Phil­har­monic and dur­ing his career prin­ci­pal con­duc­tor and mu­sic di­rec­tor of many other great clas­si­cal or­ches­tras in the whole world like in Los An­geles and New York and at pre­sent also in Munich, and I think of Ronly Riklis, con­duc­tor of the Je­ru­sa­lem Sym­phony Or­ches­tra, and of Stanley Sperber, prin­ci­pal con­duc­tor of the Haifa Sym­phony Or­ches­tra and of the Is­rael Na­tional Choir.

Fur­ther­more I met the fa­mous phi­loso­pher Yeshayahu Leibovitz and had a very long, in­ten­sive con­ver­sa­tion with him, and I met the proba­bly most sig­nifi­cant mu­sic thera­pist of Is­rael, Prof. Dr. Rothenberg, who gave me the most im­por­tant in­spi­ra­tions, which you can wish to get from an ex­pert for your ac­tiv­ity.

Medi­cal Me­dia Group: He spoke about your mu­sic at vari­ous oc­ca­sions.

Peter Hübner: But his most im­por­tant in­spi­ra­tion proba­bly was the very firm, un­per­turbed ad­vice, to let my­self, by no means, be in­flu­enced by the sci­en­tific method of dif­fer­en­tiat­ing by fac­ul­ties, so usual to­day, in or­der to de­velop then, as a re­sult, spe­cial mu­sic for the dif­fer­ent medi­cal dis­ci­plines and dis­eases – an ad­vice that had been given to me by ex­perts over and over again and about which I had asked him.

He said I should con­tinue to con­cen­trate on noth­ing else than on the sphere of uni­ver­sal­ity, for this would be the strik­ing unique po­ten­tial at our dis­posal with clas­si­cal mu­sic.

This se­ri­ous and un­com­pro­mis­ing word of this im­por­tant man – he had founded the Haifa Sym­phony Or­ches­tra and had di­rected the con­ser­va­tory of Haifa for 28 years – I have not for­got­ten un­til to­day. And al­ways, when the “highly mod­ern” as­pect of dif­fer­en­tia­tion is brought up to me, then think­ing of this meet­ing sup­ports me in my clear “no” to dif­fer­en­tia­tion, or to split­ting re­spec­tively, and in my in­ner “yes to uni­ver­sal­ity” and “unity”.

Medi­cal Me­dia Group: Fur­ther­more you met Prof. Shmueli, the di­rec­tor of the musi­co­logi­cal de­part­ment at the Uni­ver­sity of Tel Aviv.

Peter Hübner: Next to my plan of cre­at­ing a new mu­sic fac­ulty of the fu­ture I spoke with him also about that an­cient plan of Pythagoras of in­ter­con­nect­ing the most di­verse fields of knowl­edge by us­ing the na­ture-given link of the mi­cro­cosm of mu­sic, where sub­jec­tiv­ity and ob­jec­tiv­ity meet – simi­larly how we know this, in a lim­ited way, from mathe­mat­ics.

As a re­sult Prof. Shmueli or­gan­ized meet­ings with heads of other fac­ul­ties of Tel Aviv Uni­ver­sity, and I met with great reso­nance there with these con­sid­era­tions, and in fur­ther talks we con­tin­ued look­ing into this matter.

Medi­cal Me­dia Group: Prof. Sperling, di­rec­tor of the medi­cal fac­ulty, for in­stance, or­gan­ized a meet­ing with medi­cal doc­tors from the dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines of his fac­ulty.

Peter Hübner: Af­ter my return to Ger­many, how­ever, my other ac­tivi­ties as well as a whole lot of trav­el­ing abroad ab­sorbed me so much, that to this very day I did not find the time to look into this matter any fur­ther – but now I want to de­vote my­self to it more in­ten­sively again.

Medi­cal Me­dia Group: So Is­rael played an im­por­tant role in the de­vel­op­ment of this new branch of medi­cine?

Peter Hübner: If you start from the “here” and “now” and dis­re­gard the as­pect of con­scious­ness, dis­re­gard my ear­lier re­search into the mi­cro­cosm of mu­sic and, last not least, dis­re­gard the works of Pythagoras 2.500 years ago and in con­se­quence, the many eco­nomic and tech­ni­cal de­vel­op­ments con­nected to it un­til to­day – on which, next to other things, also the de­vel­op­ment of de­moc­racy was bound, in Europe and else­where –, then I would say: yes, in Is­rael the es­sen­tial prac­ti­cal fun­da­men­tals were laid to make this new branch of medi­cine avail­able in­ter­na­tion­ally.