Composing Music and the Science of the Heart: How to Serve Two Masters

ABSTRACT The author, both a composer and a physician, chronicles his development as a musician—from his childhood fascination with improvising on the piano to the eventual performance of one of his compositions in the church of Saint Stefan in Vienna—and his career as a medical doctor studying heart disease and researching new cures. He finds that the common denominator in composing music and doing medical research is the creative impulse. In his life, music and medicine have never been in competition. Rather, when frustrated by difficulties in medical research, the author has found renewal in composing music.