Newsgroups: sci.math
Subject: Bartok & golden ratio (Re: Books on Maths & Music)
From: elkies@ramanujan.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies)
Date: 27 Jan 1995 00:04:52 GMT

In article <3g96qp$b9s@news.bu.edu> spacefox@bu.edu (Godfrey Degamo) writes:
>Bartok wrote a piece, I don't recall the details, where he intentionally
>makes the piece climax at the golden mean value.  I think it's in
>his collection of pieces called Mikro Cosmos (?).  Ah well, I'm
>forgetful.

The standard instance is the first movement of _Music for Strings,
Percussion and Celeste_, where the climax occurs at bar 55 of 89
and the smaller Fibonacci numbers figure too.

--Noam D. Elkies (elkies@ramanujan.harvard.edu)
  Dept. of Mathematics, Harvard University

==============================================================================

Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1997 23:11:38 -0400
From: Jimmy St-Germain <jstg@usa.net>
To: rusin@math.niu.edu
Subject: more on the tidbit about Bartok

Hi!

I have a new tidbit about Bartok. Since he's one of my favorite
composers (if not the favorite), I know a few things about his works.
The piece your reader was referring to is "Music for Strings, Percussion
and Celesta". This work is not part of the Mikrokosmos répertoire
although it's possible he may have used the technique somewhere else.

Yours truly,

Jimmy St-Germain