source file: mills2.txt Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 12:45:47 -0800 Subject: emotional response From: Gary Morrison <71670.2576@compuserve.com> > Are the realtions between musical structures comparable to > the relations between mathematical structures? Is a great theme somehow a > great musical theorem and the musical development of the theme its proof? Musical math, to me, is a lot like any other form of applied math: It's a model of how our ears hear (or a collection of models actually). That in the sense that it's based upon experimental observation, and can be used to predict structures that may prove musically useful - structures that would have been hard to predict otherwise. And as with any other model, its predictions must be tested experimentally in real music. As for proofs though... That's probably be a pretty good analogy at the level of musical form and, as John suggested, thematic development. Most classical forms, are designed to make the unfolding of the music not only interesting and emotionally exciting, but also to take on a sense of inevitability, indeed somewhat like a mathematical proof. I doubt, however, if there's much similarity between mathematical proofs and, for example, the whole-number-ratio notion of consonance. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Wed, 1 Jan 1997 21:43 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA06378; Wed, 1 Jan 1997 21:46:43 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA06376 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id MAA27407; Wed, 1 Jan 1997 12:46:40 -0800 Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 12:46:40 -0800 Message-Id: <199701011543_MC1-E20-3ABB@compuserve.com> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu