A short rant*
Dear all (specifically, certain science students who shall remain nameless)
Music is not a cop out subject. It is not easy.
Music, while an arts subject, requires mastery of more than one discipline, and can be rigorously academic. Music is another language. Musical clouds, aleatoric counterpoint, isorhythm, musique concrète. A musician has, to some degree, be a performer; a composer; a mathematician; an historian; an essayist; a philosopher; a scientist. In the Middle Ages, music was classed as a science. Analyse any work from that period, particularly motets and sacred music, and it is possible to reduce these works entirely to mathematical proportions. A motet such as Dunstaple's Ave Maria Sanctissima decreases in each section by a factor of three. Yes, this was largely because three was a sacred number representative of the core beliefs of Christianity, but to write a work deliberately expressing complex number series and proportions, to analyse it, you would need a good grasp of mathematics.
Acoustics and tuning is wholly based on science. Musicians have always known the overtone series and the frequencies at which certain intervals resonate. The perfect fourth, fifth and octave have the fewest possible frequencies, are the most stable sounds, and therefore form the basis of consonant Western harmony.
Hands up how many of you scientists need to know about Divine Proportion, the Golden Section? Biologists, certainly - it crops up in nature in thistles, nautilus shells. But it also appears with surprising frequency in music. Bartók, a composer with a great interest in science and nature, wrote entire works based around the Fibonacci series and its relationship to the Golden Section. What you thought was a bloody awful, dissonant piece of "music" is actually based on pure mathematics and the natural world.
I could have done almost any of your subjects. How many of you could do mine? A lot of you play instruments, but could you perform to grade 8 standard for half an hour, do a three-hour harmony exam, write a 3,000 word analytical essay on Gorecki and write a film score in the style of mature Lutoslawski?
No love,
Me.
*...That turned into a mini-essay.
Music is not a cop out subject. It is not easy.
Music, while an arts subject, requires mastery of more than one discipline, and can be rigorously academic. Music is another language. Musical clouds, aleatoric counterpoint, isorhythm, musique concrète. A musician has, to some degree, be a performer; a composer; a mathematician; an historian; an essayist; a philosopher; a scientist. In the Middle Ages, music was classed as a science. Analyse any work from that period, particularly motets and sacred music, and it is possible to reduce these works entirely to mathematical proportions. A motet such as Dunstaple's Ave Maria Sanctissima decreases in each section by a factor of three. Yes, this was largely because three was a sacred number representative of the core beliefs of Christianity, but to write a work deliberately expressing complex number series and proportions, to analyse it, you would need a good grasp of mathematics.
Acoustics and tuning is wholly based on science. Musicians have always known the overtone series and the frequencies at which certain intervals resonate. The perfect fourth, fifth and octave have the fewest possible frequencies, are the most stable sounds, and therefore form the basis of consonant Western harmony.
Hands up how many of you scientists need to know about Divine Proportion, the Golden Section? Biologists, certainly - it crops up in nature in thistles, nautilus shells. But it also appears with surprising frequency in music. Bartók, a composer with a great interest in science and nature, wrote entire works based around the Fibonacci series and its relationship to the Golden Section. What you thought was a bloody awful, dissonant piece of "music" is actually based on pure mathematics and the natural world.
I could have done almost any of your subjects. How many of you could do mine? A lot of you play instruments, but could you perform to grade 8 standard for half an hour, do a three-hour harmony exam, write a 3,000 word analytical essay on Gorecki and write a film score in the style of mature Lutoslawski?
No love,
Me.
*...That turned into a mini-essay.