Introduction
January 16
Get acquainted, organizational matters: how will the course be
run, grading, assignment, quizzes, final paper. Web access,
Music, Mathematics, and Science. What kind of music are we
going to talk about. How familiar is everybody with 20th century
"art"/"concert"/experimental music ?
Music can:
- entertain.
- experiment.
- speculate.
- deliver a world view (a philosophy).
Historical relationship between mathematics and music.
- Pythagoras (600 BC) and the music of spheres
- Rameau and his Treaty on Harmony: his explanations
were based on acoustics.
- the use of the golden mean
Aesthetic trends and how do they are reflected in the choice
of musical tools by composers.
- Medieval music and the contrast between
"human" and "divine" passing of time.
- Baroque and classical periods.
Tonal system as a hierarchy.
Relationship between music, science, philosophical and social attitudes.
Monteverdi (1567-1643) and Galileo (1564-1642) as contemporaries;
Bach (1685-1750), Haendel (1685-1759), Newton (1642- 1727), and the
Enlightment;
John Cage (1912-1992), indeterminism and quantum mechanics
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