How the sounds of spoken language arise is ultimately still a mystery to researchers. Acoustic phonetics has analyzed sound phenomena, whereas articulatory phonetics determines the physiological formation of spoken language. Little is known about the air, however, the central element of speech both within and immediately outside the body as it relates to audible sounds.

In 1924, Rudolf Steiner expressed the wish that an experimental method would be found by which sounds from the speaker's mouth could be rendered visible and thereby confirm the primal phenomenon embodied in the art...

Music is not simply something we hear. We experience it and love it; it is a primal human need. If, as the pianist Alfred Brendel put it, that we are able to "take music at its word," we confront questions that also moved the author since his adolescent years: What takes hold of me when I experience music? What reality touches me when music is playing? What happens physiologically in the human body when we experience and make music? The author approaches these questions from three perspectives: first, from his personal experience and active love of music; second, from the physiological...