From: John Soward Bayne <John_Bayne@nt.com>
Newsgroups: sci.math
Subject: Re: Music and Mathematics
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 09:18:21 -0500

The elder Birkhoff did some mathematical analysis of
what constituted "pretty" music in his work on aesthetics.
He treated rhythm, melody and harmony, and used his
"rules" to produce a song.

This is worthwhile studying.  He also went after poetry
and the visual arts.  Re: this last topic he produced a
set of plates with a hundred or so polygons ranked from
prettiest to ugliest based on the aesthetic criteria
and metrics he developed.

JSBayne

Dave Rusin wrote:
> 
> In article <58l9kk$hrg@agate.berkeley.edu>,
> Mark Rajesh Das <rmarkd@uclink2.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> 
> >I'm just curious as to exactly how math(s) and music are related? Is
> >there a distinct mathematical pattern for each composer's piece
> >or a distinct pattern for a type of music or period? What is analyzed,
> >the notes, or phrases or rests?
> 
> Well, one can analyze all sorts of things.

(deletion)

> on a larger scale, there is clearly a structure to musical
> compositions.  Whether mathematics has anything useful to say about
> this structure is not clear, but one can certainly see similarities with
> the structure of mathematical objects.

(another deletion)

> 
> There is abundant literature on connections between math and music (mostly
> between music and sound). I've saved a few such items from the net at
>         http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/uses-math/music/
> dave