[A journey with Euterpe. Sinfonia concertante for music, heart and brain]

Unlike the Overlords, the highly cerebral alien beings of the Arthur Clarke's novel "Childhood's End", humans are strongly oriented toward music. Since the ancient cultures, the impact of music in eliciting physical and emotional reactions has been acknowledged, but its relationship with organic reactions has been mostly attributed to the domain of magic. Consistent experimental evidence shows that certain types of melody and rhythm might truly influence cardiovascular and neurophysiologic behaviours, while producing biochemical effects (e.g., reduction of stress), depending on the personal musical background of the listeners. As such, although the physiological basis is still poorly recognized, listening to the music has been proposed as a therapeutic for the treatment of a variety of disorders (the "Mozart effect"). This article, written in a "musical-like" form, provides a comprehensive analysis of reliable evidence supporting the influence of music on biochemistry and physiology, and concluding that the influence of music on human behaviours should be no longer confined to the realms of anecdote.