The connection between Music and Mathematics

Introduction

Music is more than art and feelings (emotional awareness), music is also mathematics and rationalism (mental awareness). In some paragraphs I will try to explain that.

1. Frequencies: healthy and not healthy frequencies

Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. The term frequency is also used in music, because every note has an own repeating wave, a frequency. Last week I read a highly interesting blog post about the influence of music on us, human beings, in the way it is performed. The writer uses terms as Herz, and to be able to understand the following text: Herz is the unit for frequency, each difference of height in sound is related with its own unique frequency. All in the universe has a frequency, also you, me, stones, stars, everything what exists on earth and the universe. All is one and connected. There are natural, creative, constructive frequencies, there are unnatural destructive frequencies which lead to demolition.

The natural frequency of Nature (and therefore also you) is 432 herz and known as Verdi’s A.
Verdi (1813-1901) was an Italian classical music composer.
To understand the difference between a composition with the natural vibes (frequences) or the unnatural vibes (frequencies) on our feelings, our being, there is a video where you can compare the one in 432 herz and another one in 440 herz, click here.

The unnatural 440 Herz is a destructive frequency, that pollutes the individual and social existence of human beings (and animals, plants, all life). In a paper entitled ‘Musical Cult Control’, Dr. Leonard Horowitz writes: “The music industry features this imposed frequency that is ‘herding’ populations into greater aggression, psycho social agitation, and emotional distress predisposing people to physical illness.”

For all the details about this article go here. 

2. The positive effects of healthy frequencies (classical music) 

In the “The Vancouver Sun” I found an article about the positive influences of frequencies. You can read the full article here. Shortly: Though it is excellent to be a listener, a way of practicing music in a passive way, it is proven that active practicing a musical instrument, studying music, even in a most simple way, offers many positive effects on the healthy psychological human development. 

Dr. Frances Rauscher of the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh has been heavily involved in research on music and cognitive performance. She gives far more credit to the active playing of instruments than simply passive listening.

In her 2006 article published in the Educational Psychologist, she explains that “young children provided with instrumental instruction score significantly higher on tasks measuring spatial-temporal cognition, hand-eye coordination and arithmetic.” Part of this is due to the amount of overlap between music skills and math skills. For example, Rauscher says the part-whole concept that is necessary for understanding fractions, decimals and per cents is highly relevant in understanding rhythm. “A literate musician is required to continually mentally subdivide beat to arrive at the correct interpretation of rhythmic notation,” she writes. “The context has changed, but the structure of the problem is essentially the same as any part-whole problem posed mathematically.”

The visual and spatial skills that a child exercises every time he practises an instrument and plays music strengthen his mental-physical connection.

The link between the physical practice of music and strong mathematical abilities are demonstrated in studies that show that kids who play a musical instrument can perform more complex arithmetical operations than those who do not play an instrument. The slow work of practice, the attention to detail and the discipline it takes to learn an instrument are also excellent preparation for the practice involved in building strong math skills. 

3. Johann Sebastian Bach and the mathematics of a genius

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was a German composer of Classical Music. His music is revered for its technical command, artistic beauty, and intellectual depth.Analyses of music, classical music, prove that music is not only “Art”, and it is much more than “feelings”. Musicians/composers need to be gifted with the talent of sensitivity, emotions, creativity, emotional intelligence, but they also need to be gifted with a rational intelligence, a strong excellence in mathematics, algebra, arithmetic: this must not be understood as a must to study it to be talented with it, naturally, so: gifted, without studies. Bach did not study it, he knew without knowing, or learning. This was a part of his being, as a genius.

Bach has been working with numbers, aware or not aware, but analysts of his music notice it. Bach was a genius. Damian Thompson writes in “The Telegraph“: “Bach didn’t invent musical numerology: from medieval Masses to the eerie atonalism of Anton Webern, composers have used sound to perform feats of maths and logic that are among the great achievements of Western thought, not just “art”. You don’t have to be a musicologist to experience this; we’re not talking about formal equations that you either get or you don’t. A smattering of basic musical theory is all you need to recognize that the greatest fugues perform mind-blowing somersaults.”

Classical music in schools

Damian Thompson: “The problem is that most schools don’t teach the rudiments of “elitist” music. They regard it as the province of middle-class nerds who, if they’re that keen on learning about keys and intervals, can damn well persuade their parents to pay for private lessons.””This makes me angry, because it could so easily be put right. But it won’t be – not even by this government, which is so desperate to stretch young brains in other subjects. As a result, the ears of most British children will never be unblocked, and they’ll be deprived of an experience that no equation can provide: that of actually hearing a mathematical miracle.”

4. Summary

All together it is obvious that music is a must in the education of children, in the healthy development of children, and a must for all human beings to stay healthy or to become healthy. The harmonious sounds of Classical Music are a must for the needed change in life on earth to stop the negative spiral, to create healthy human beings, to stop (physical, emotional, and mental) diseases/illnesses. Classical Music is not there for the elite, it is there for all.

Sources and additional information

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