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MONTGOMERY COLLEGE STUDENT JOURNAL OF SCIENCE & MATHEMATICSVolume 1 September 2002
The Relationship Between Math and Musicby
Ezinne Uzo-Okoro
Under the supervision of: Professor Florence Ashby
 
The Relationship Between Math and MusicbyEzinne Uzo-Okoro
For many individuals, math is an enigma. Music, on the other hand, seems to relate toemotions, thoughts, and life. It is a way of creative expression and a part of everyone’sexistence. Mathematics and music play very different roles in the society; however, theyare closely related to each other than they are perceived to be. Hence, the insight thatmusic often has some mathematical characteristics and that artistic aspects can be foundin mathematics are hereby examined.The motivation for investigating the connections between these two apparent oppositestherefore is not obvious, and it is unclear in what aspects of both topics such arelationship could be seeked. Moreover, if one accepts some mathematical aspects inmusic such as rhythm and pitch, it is far more difficult to imagine any musicality inmathematics. The countability and the strong order of mathematics do not seem tocoincide with any artistic pattern.In the time of the ancient Greeks, mathematics and music were strongly connected.Music was considered as a strictly mathematical discipline, handling with numberrelationships, ratios and proportions. In the quadrivium (the curriculum of thePythagorean School), music was placed on the same level as arithmetic, geometry andastronomy as illustrated in the figure below.
Mathematic(The study of the unchangeable)Quanitity(the discrete)Magnitude(the continued)Alone(the absolute)ArithmeticIn relation(the relative)MusicAt rest(the stable)GeometryIn motion(the moving)Astronomy
 
This interpretation totally neglected the creative aspects of musical performance. Musicwas the science of sound and harmony. The basic notions in this context were those of consonance and dissonance. The Greeks discovered that to a note with a givenfrequency, only those other notes whose frequencies were, for instance, 440, 660, 880,1100 Hz, were most played when together with the first note (Xenakis 103).There is a growing support for a theory of consonance and dissonance of intervals, whichwere both harmonic and melodic. The theory is that dissonance is caused by the beatsbetween the sine wave component of the tones. The measure is a weighted sum, theweights being beat frequency dependent (this is, having very high and very low beatfrequencies are not obnoxious). Some experimental support for this was carried out inOctober 1993, and the experimenters used synthesized instrumental timbres, includingsome with non-harmonic overtones (Bloch 86). The striking result was that the preferredscales on these extreme pseudo-instruments differed markedly from the normal Westernscale.Furthermore, examinations of different sounds show that these integer multiples of thebase frequency always appear in a weak intensity when the basic note is played. If astring whose length defines a frequency of 220 Hz is vibrating, the generated sound alsocontains the components of the frequencies of 440 Hz, 660 Hz, 880 Hz, 1100 Hz…,which is quite similar to the harmonic series in Mathematics. While the listenersperceive mainly the basic note, the intensities of these so-called overtones define thecharacter of an instrument. It is primarily due to this phenomenon that a violin and atrumpet do not sound similar even if they play the same note (Garland 90).The most important frequency ratio is 1:2, which is called an octave in the Westernsystem of music notation. Two different notes in such a relation are often considered asprincipally the same (and are, therefore, given the same name), only varying in theirpitch, but not their character (Mazzola 161). The Greeks saw a “cyclic identity” in theoctave. The following ratios build the musical fifth 2:3, fourth 3:4, major third 4:5, andthe minor third 5:6, which all have their importance in the creation of chords.
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