-
Paul McCartney talk about piano, harmonies, Bach, and math. Love it.
Here Paul McCartney talk about piano, harmonies, Bach, and math. My favourite things, I love it!
-
30 Replies
-
Nice find Jung.
I wonder how recent that is.
I guess that it’s current.
Cheers
-
Jung,Math is my favorite subject and Bach is my favorite composer. I find it amazing that he only had a basic understanding of math and yet (according to the almighty Google):
Bach was able to write in every key so successfully because mathematicians found better ways to calculate the 12th root of two. This is related to the musical problem of dividing the octave into 12 equal intervals, which involves splitting sound waves into ratios rather than equal lengths.
Fascinating
-
Hi Diana,
I was at Brian Wilson’s website and uncovered how much he admires Bach. I know he mentioned in interviews how Bach influenced songs like California Girls, I Get Around, but never knew how much he admired Bach. Here are some quotes from Brian.
Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks are Bach admirers too.
-
Hi Jung,
What a great quotes!! I totally agree.
-
-
Hi Jung, still a very exciting topic to which spontaneously some ideas come to my mind (which may be boring for one or the other. So here is a short answer for a quick feedback and for the one who wants to read it there is a long idea on this topic). 🙂
The short reply is: very interesting
The long reply looks like this: I always find it very exciting to watch artists in their creative process and I try to understand what may be going on in their minds and thoughts. When I listen to the words of Paul McCartney (and if I have understood him correctly), this strengthens me in my opinion that many musicians and artists practice their art intuitively. They don’t need formulas and theoretical or technical understanding. Whether painter, musician or man of letters, first there is an idea. The painter may have some shapes and colors in mind, the musician spontaneously comes up with a melody or a rhythm and the writer suddenly has a theme in mind to which he wants to write something. I think the rest happens automatically or unconsciously. Some areas in the brain are activated, cognitions linked, and automatically generate associations, ideas and new thoughts (In the interview, Paul points to his head and says: it’s here). The artist will describe this as a creative process. The painter picks up his brush, the musician his instrument, and both will keep trying until a feeling of satisfaction arises, the whole thing looks good or sounds good. Of course, both artists are unconsciously influenced by things they have already seen or heard (one perhaps by van Gogh, the other one by van Beethoven). But the creative process is more subconscious and that is the creative process itself. The musical notation is an ingenious invention to write down what is played and heard. But a musician does not need an understanding of notes or even of mathematics. Both are only constructs to describe a certain fact. We inherit the rhythm and the beat with our birth. A young child that learns to walk does not know anything about step length, rhythm etc. It just walks. But without a sense of rhythm, it would constantly stumble or fall over. The feeling for rhythm is therefore already innate in all humans. What I want to say is this: Mathematics may help us to describe the phenomenon of music, but it does not help us to understand how music is actually created in our heads and how we then realize it. Music and rhythm are much older than the idea of mathematics and formulas. At least that is my idea. I am still looking for an approach to understand the phenomenon and not only to describe it.
PS: Bach was not a good student, not even in mathematics. In the student ranking of his school in Eisenach, where religion, grammar, and arithmetic were emphasized, he ended up in 47th place in 1693. Sixth last! Whether he had a high school diploma is uncertain.
(Source: Bach researcher Christoph Wolff )
-
Hi Jurgen,
Definitely agree, Bach, Beethoven, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Brian Wilson, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon etc..they all created their music subconsciously and I think had a feel for the music theory behind it intuitively as well. In the David Bennett video I posted previously he explains music theory is a tool that can help song writers make their songs more emotional and expressive, but the great song writers knew this intuitively I think. Paul in the interview acknowledges after the fact the existence of the music theory and math underlying it, to appreciate it. Here Brian talks about the creative process which is quite interesting.
-
-
Jurgen,
I totally agree. Bach didn’t know higher laws of mathematics, yet his musical genius and depth of his soul fit in the whole scheme of things like a perfect equation. It truly is the mystery of the art that appeals to me and feeds my soul. It is that intangible quality. I can’t even really put it into words.
Diana
-
Hello Diana,
we humans always tend to understand and explain everything. You are so right: sometimes it is much more beautiful when things remain inexplicable and thus retain a magic that fascinates and enchants us again and again. When you can’t even put it into words, then it speaks the language of the heart and feeds your soul.
Jürgen
-
-
Hey Jurgen,
Our conversation reminded me of this song by Suzanne Vega. If you’re not familiar with her, she is in the alternative folk rock genre (starting way back in the 80’s).
-
Hello Diana,
I know „Luca“ and „Tom’s Diner“ from Suzanne Vega. The title “Language” was unknown to me until now. Thanks for posting. A wonderful song with poetic lyrics which I like very much. When I listen to this song the following comes to my mind: Sometimes it might really be better to listen to your feelings and inner voices instead of discussing everything and destroy beautiful things by talk. Just like Depeche Mode describe it in their song:
-
-
Hi Everyone,
I was riding in a the car of a math geek friend a number of years ago and he was playing a CD of Bach. I don’t remember which piece, but Bill was marveling at the six degrees of symmetry in this piano sonata.
That much symmetry seems to violate the delicate balance between order and chaos but it sure sounded peaceful and reassuring.
Cheers
-
B+A+C+H = 14
In the German city of Eisenach, so there the place where Bach went to school, the special exhibition ” B+A+C+H=14 ” took place in the Bach House on March 21, 2014, which explored the question of numbers and other riddles in the work of Johann Sebastian Bach with plenty of tongue in cheek. It is pure coincidence that Bach celebrates his 329th birthday on this day – cross sum: 14.
Bach’s vest on the famous Bach portrait from 1746 has 14 buttons. The monogram on the front of the ‘Bach Cup’, the drinking glass from Bach’s possession kept in the Bach House, contains 14 dots. Since its discovery in 1935, experts have been trying to decipher the symbolism of the Bach Goblet. A mirror monogram with the letters J, S and B is cut into the front – a play on the initials of Bach’s name. The ends of the letters run out in 14 dots. 14 is the “Bach number” because according to the natural number alphabet (A=1, B=2, etc.), B+A+C+H equals 2+1+3+8 equals 14. On the reverse is a poem with elaborate staves that reveal the baroque play with symmetries, reflections, and inversions.
Bach wrote 14 canons on the bass motif of the Goldberg Variations. 14 ‘Contrapuncti’ are contained in Bach’s ‘Art of Fugue’. All this is hardly a coincidence. For in the Baroque period, people playfully related numbers and letters to each other with the ‘number alphabet’. Such number games become ‘number mysticism’ in the so-called ‘Kabbalah’, which assigns numbers to terms in the Bible and interprets their appearance elsewhere as a divine hint, a revelation. Some think that such number mysticism is also hidden in Bach’s works: secret messages that can be deciphered by counting measures, stanzas, or note values.
It was not the composer himself who pointed out this number. It was the Protestant theologian Friedrich Smend, librarian at the Berlin State Library from 1923, who first noticed strange numerical regularities, especially in the great oratorios. These became widely known through Douglas Hofstadter’s 1979 bestseller “Gödel, Escher, Bach.”
Hofstadter called them “strange loops.” Some examples: The 43 Credo calls in the B minor Mass correspond exactly to the number of C+R+E+D+O, calculated according to the natural number alphabet. Also in the 63 Christ calls of the St. Matthew Passion a secret self-portrait of the composer is hidden in the form of the sum of 49 (= 7 x 7) + 14 (the Bach number).
The theory is too good not to be true. For this reason it passed historically without a break into the realm of legend. Musicologists of the past believed to be able to prove that Bach had predicted the date of his own death by the number of measures in his “Goldberg Variations”. According to a Leipzig joke, the total sum of the movements in the cantatas, arranged by groups of works, corresponds to the number of Bach’s account at the local savings bank (financial institution).
(source: Deutschlandfunk / welt)
-
Gematria in the English alphabet. I love it.
My understanding is that the letters in Hebrew are equivalent to numbers and that the sum of a word – or name – has meaning in itself.
BTW the gematria sum of bitcoin = money.
-
Hello Tom,
I just searched once for the term Gematria. Yes sounds very interesting but is also kind of hard stuff. It seems to me you like to play with numbers. Personally, I’m like Bach: mathematics was not necessarily my favorite subject. The numbers didn’t find their way to me and I wasn’t really looking for the numbers 🙂
-
Hi Jurgen, Diana, and Thomas.
Some pretty interesting discussion with numbers and Bach. Where noise is random, music is ordered/structured and can be described mathematically. What I know about music and connection to math is the symmetry and ratios. Bach used symmetry in his music that created beauty and harmony. Another fascinating fact is the interaction of sound wave or frequencies, and how their ratios create emotions. Chords and triads that form simple whole ratios between the frequencies tend to evoke pleasant and more happy emotions (Consonance), and more complex ratios that form irrational numbers in the frequencies tend to evoke tension and melancholy (Dissonance).
I found these two videos explain it well about symmetry and ratios in music.
-
Ratios and emotions in music:
-
The connection between music and emotion is to me one of the most interesting questions in psychology. Consonance and dissonance kind of make sense, but why certain types of chords seem to correlate with feelings of happiness, sadness, etc. across all cultures is baffling.
-
Great conversation guys!
I just wish we were all at a pub in Liverpool having this discussion. I’m sure you all know that music changes the brain’s neural pathways. This helps improve memory and is used as an intervention for people with dementia. Once again, fascinating!!
-
Jung, et al,
the music and math video has me thinking.
Beethoven must have felt the consonant (and dissonant) vibrations in some sense.
Maybe he was only deaf to human speech. Maybe the set of steady vibrations were perceived in a hightened sense like a blind person hearing better.
Just thinking
-
Tom, I heard somewhere (probably in one of the videos posted on this site) that Beethoven eventually sawed the legs off his piano and put his ear to the floor while he played. This would have allowed him to hear the vibrations directly through solid materials, which transmit sound waves much more efficiently than the air.
Log in to reply.
