Synopses & Reviews
Mathematics has been used for centuries to describe, analyze, and create music. In this book, Leon Harkleroad explores the math related aspects of music from its acoustical bases to compositional techniques to music criticism, touching on overtones, scales, and tuning systems (the musical dice game attributed to Mozart and Haydn). The several-hundred-year-old style of bell-playing known as ringing the changes: the twelve-tone school of composition that strongly influenced music throughout the 20th century and many other topics involving mathematical ideas from probability theory to Fourier series to group theory. He also relates some cautionary tales of misguided attempts to mix music and mathematics. Both the mathematical and the musical concepts are described in an elementary way, making the book accessible to general readers as well as to mathematicians and musicians of all levels. The book is accompanied by an audio CD of musical examples.
Review
"The Math Behind the Music does not require advanced understanding of either mathematics or music: in fact most of the text could be easily understood by an interested high school student."
Math DL"The Math Behind the Music is a text which relates music and mathematics in a manner accessible to many individuals, and provides a bibliography of further readings on each chapter's topics, so the best use of this book may be as a jumping-off point for further examinations of whichever topic interests and individual reader."
Sarah Boslaugh, MAA Reviews
Synopsis
Mathematics has been used for centuries to describe, analyze, and create music. In this book, Leon Harkleroad explores the mathematics related to aspects of music from its acoustical bases to compositional techniques to music criticism. His clear, elementary exposition will be accessible to general readers as well as to mathematicians and musicians of all levels.
Synopsis
Explores mathematics aspects of music from its acoustical bases to compositional techniques to music criticism.
Table of Contents
Preface; Acknowledgments; 1. Mathematics and music, a duet; 2. Pitch: the ground of music; 3. Tuning up; 4. How to vary a theme mathematically; 5. Bells and groups: music by chance; 6. Pattern, pattern, pattern ; 7. Sight meets sound; 8. How NOT to mix mathematics and music; 9. Bibliography; Contents of the CD; Illustration credits; Index.