There is a wealth of literature on the health and healing effects of music, its influence on emotions, physiology, cognitive skills and other aspects and numerous approaches and theories have been proposed to explain these (1, 2).
The present discussion will emphasise on the contributions of the classical composer and musicologist Peter Hübner, because we are most familiar with his developments.

The ap­pli­ca­tion of mu­sic in medi­cine has been prac­tised in all high cul­tures. The most fa­mous rep­re­sen­ta­tive for this is the fa­ther of our sci­en­tific think­ing: the Greek scholar, phy­si­cian, mu­si­colo­gist, mathe­ma­ti­cian and phi­loso­pher Pythagoras (around 500 B.C.). He not only in­ves­ti­gated the close con­nec­tion of mu­sic to mathe­mat­ics but also ex­plored its rele­vance to pro­mot­ing health and heal­ing.

As the clas­si­cal com­poser Peter Hübner pointed out in his lec­tures at the Uni­ver­si­ties of Tel Aviv, Hei­del­berg and Mag­de­burg, Pythagoras as­sumed “that those same uni­ver­sal laws of har­mony which natu­rally gov­ern the mi­cro­cosm of mu­sic also de­ter­mine the har­mony of the natu­ral func­tions in the in­te­rior world of man him­self and, fur­ther­more, ac­cord with those laws of har­mony which di­rect the en­tire course of biological evolution“ (3).

Pythagoras`s in­sights were ex­plored fur­ther 1500 years later. The fa­mous scholar and phy­si­cian Avicenna took them up again and propa­gated them in the medi­cal world. Avicenna knew about the power of emo­tions on bod­ily func­tions and medi­cal mu­sic for him was a dis­ci­pline to re­store emo­tional bal­ance and thus to re­lieve psy­cho­so­matic dis­or­ders.
For Avicenna the art of heal­ing rested on three pil­lars: the treat­ment with mu­sic, the ap­pli­ca­tion of medi­cally ef­fec­tive sub­stances and on physio­thera­peu­tic treat­ments, in­clud­ing sur­gery (4)