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Music and Mathematics: From Pythagoras to Fractals [2006]
From Ancient Greek times, music has been seen as a mathematical art, and the relationship between mathematics and music has fascinated generations. This collection of wide ranging, comprehensive and fully-illustrated papers, authored by leading scholars, presents the link between these two subjects in a lucid manner that is suitable for students of both subjects, as well as the general reader with an interest in music. Physical, theoretical, physiological, acoustic, compositional, and analytical relationships between mathematics and music are unfolded and explored with focus on tuning and temperament, the mathematics of sound, bell-ringing and modern compositional techniques.
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First published September 14, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 13, 2013
as a math prof. working on some music/math projects i thought this was a very good collection of articles. many get into a nice amount of mathematical depth, you may need to get out some pencil and paper here and there. i especially liked the chapter on equal temperament - I finally get pythagorean/just/equal tuning and the importance of 2^(1/12) - and chapter 8 on twelve-tone (and related) music. if you are interested in the math-music connection, have some math interest and are willing to roll up your sleeves a bit here and there, you will find something of value in this book. i learned a lot.
June 4, 2022
Literally the perfect book for the intro to math and music. It was so inspirational for me to start my own research project!
April 12, 2013
Maurice Sendak, a lover of Mozart, said he can't read music at all, but that gives him a greater appreciation for the beauty of Mozart's manuscripts than a musician can have. It's that way for me with mathematics. (Except I don't claim to appreciate it better than mathematicians.) That is a way of saying that I didn't understand much of the math from Pythagoras to fractals in reading this book but I was fascinated by the rhythms and shapes of the math as related to the shapes in music.
October 23, 2011
Totally boring, this is not for musicians IMO. So many fucking numbers. Jesus Christ.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews