Voice touches and reflects the state of mind. With its emotional, verbal, and vocal components, the voice is the main medium with which people communicate and come in contact with one another. In a circuit scheme developed by the author that breaks the voice into six different, but gradually intertwining aspects, emotional, verbal, and vocal expression are for the first time given equal consideration and are compared to the child's self- and playful development. Voice and vocal play are described as an important field of music therapy and are explained in terms of their therapeutically effective differentiated functions.

Making use of examples of music therapy practice with severely multiply disabled, language impaired, and cancer afflicted children, theory is combined with experience and provides an understanding to what it means to give life to one voice. Philosophical and literary texts and poems condense the models atmospherically and at the same time metaphorically point out the complexity of the "voice" phenomenon. This also makes the book interesting to people working in other professions that incorporate the voice.