Studying One Art through Another Art
cwhite0714
art through another. For instance, a composer might study visual art,
not to gain proficiency in that discipline but to gain a better
understanding of composition.
Does anyone have personal experience to share in terms of a second
discipline informing your primary discpline?
Thunder9...@dsemail.net
What are you, an education major?
Thunder9
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Knute Hestness
down, there are basic patterns or a code. Once you figure out the code or
rules in a discipline you tend to make comparisons between what you know and
what you have just learned.
In my experience,
~ Knute
"cwhite0714" <cwhit...@fsi.net> wrote in message
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Richard Hofheimer
studied for the sake of well-roundedness. Also, the big ideas that surface
in musical composition, like form, structure, romantic ideals,
impressionism, nationalism, nature, whatever, have their roots in other
forms of expression (literature, philosophy, art, poetry, DANCE,...). Some
study of the other disciplines is inevitable. How much is a good question.
"cwhite0714" <cwhit...@fsi.net> wrote in message
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Thunder9...@dsemail.net
This sounds like a real good bull shit research paper.
"And so in conclusion, there are many benefits of studying one art
through another... blah blah blah"
Thunder9
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cwhite0714
> In musician biographies it seems a matter of course that other art forms are
> studied for the sake of well-roundedness. Also, the big ideas that surface
> in musical composition, like form, structure, romantic ideals,
> impressionism, nationalism, nature, whatever, have their roots in other
> forms of expression (literature, philosophy, art, poetry, DANCE,...). Some
> study of the other disciplines is inevitable. How much is a good question.
You touch on exactly the problem I've seen. Particularly on the
graduate level (but also undergraduate), arts and music curricula tend
to be so full of courses in the major that there isn't time, let alone
encouragement, to make any formal study other art forms. Any
interdisciplinary study seems left up to the individual. That's
certainly how I ended up learning about visual art. And yet it was in
6 months of visual art that I finally understood what my music
teachers had been trying to teach me for years.
It's my personal experience as well as my observation of other
"successful" creative individuals that they have at least one
secondary discipline that very much informs their primary field of
endeavor. In fact, the most widely acknowledge thinkers have not been
specialists in their own field. DaVinci, Newton, Galileo, Pythagoras
and Michelangelo come to mind, as well as this year's Nobel winner in
economics, who is a cognitive psychologist.
Given the statistics of less than 50% of music graduates actually
working in music, and dwindling audiences and funding for all the
arts, I find it frightening that such an apparently crucial
educational vehicle is being left up to personal whim. I'd like to see
arts curricula changed, but it's going to take some pretty compelling
data to make the argument. So I raise the question again:
Does anybody here have personal experience to share in terms of a
second discipline informing your primary discipline?
M. Slater
>Date: 12/30/2002 1:09 AM Eastern Standard Time
>Does anybody here have personal experience to share in terms of a
>second discipline informing your primary discipline?
Yes, I do. When in college , I not only majored in music and music history, but
took literature, theatre and dance courses that corresponded to the music that
I was learning. It makes a difference if you play William Byrd's music and also
know who Shakespeare and Christopher Wren are. Same with Couperin and Bach. I
finished college with what I called a degree in "Cultural History". A book to
recommend to all interrsted in this subject: Northrop Frye, Anatomy of
Criticism, University of Toronto Press.
Mark
Bonnie Granat
Particularly on the
| graduate level (but also undergraduate), arts
and music curricula tend
| to be so full of courses in the major that there
isn't time, let alone
| encouragement, to make any formal study other
art forms. Any
| interdisciplinary study seems left up to the
individual. That's
| certainly how I ended up learning about visual
art. And yet it was in
| 6 months of visual art that I finally understood
what my music
| teachers had been trying to teach me for years.
|
Can you expand on your last statement above? How
did visual art help you to understand what your
music teachers were trying to teach you?
--
BONNIE GRANAT
Editing & Writing
http://www.editors-writers.info
Marc Sabatella
> I'm considering research into the effects and efficacy of studying one
> art through another. For instance, a composer might study visual art,
> not to gain proficiency in that discipline but to gain a better
> understanding of composition.
I see this sort of thing all the time. First, as someone else said, I
find connections between my experience as a software developer and jazz
improvisation. In both directions, actually. The logic of software has
applications to the theory of harmony, and skills in improvisation help
in debugging a computer program. Of course, few people outside that
field consider programming an art. I also have been playing with visual
art for the last few years, and am finding connections there too. The
role of improvisation is a significant point of reference, one that I am
just figuring out. For example, I've found that something within me
tells me it's time to stop working on a painting after a few hours, when
I *could* keep fiddling with it for weeks, and this seems to be the same
thing that allows me to accept a not-quite-perfect take of a recording.
On the other hand, as far as someone actually studying one art with the
specific goal of improving in another, I haven't done that, nor do I
know many people who do. Maybe football players taking ballet
lessons...
--------------
Marc Sabatella
ma...@outsideshore.com
Check out my latest CD, "Falling Grace"
Also "A Jazz Improvisation Primer", Sounds, Scores, & More:
http://www.outsideshore.com/
cwhite0714
Your program sounds wonderful! I know this is a hard thing to
describe, but can you offer any 'concrete' examples of the difference
you think your knowing "who Shakespeare and Christopher Wren are"
might have made in your performance of William Byrd?
And thanks for the book referral!
cwhite0714
I sure can. I'll give you a specific example:
As a graduate music student, I modeled for classes in my university's
art school. One of the things that threw me about art students is that
they used "my" vocabulary (texture, theme, line, harmony, rhythm,
etc.) in "their" discipline. At some point each meeting, the prof
would stop the class's work and ask volunteers to post their projects
so that everyone could critique. Since the students weren't drawing me
at that point, I could relax and watch their work. During one class, a
kid posted a piece with chairs in various sizes and positions around
the paper. A particularly perceptive classmate pointed to the upper
lefthand portion of the piece and said, "It needs another chair
there." I looked at that area, and I could see clearly that another
chair was exactly what that composition needed to balance it. I could
even picture what size and position the missing chair should be.
It wasn't as though I'd had lousy music teachers. I studied with some
world-renowned composers. It also wasn't as though my composition
teachers hadn't been trying to teach me balance and structure. It was
that I needed to *see* composition to understand it, and my music
teachers were all using aural and symbolic means to convey their
message. After a few experiences like the one above in the drawing
class, and just seeing what amazingly diverse compositions each art
student created from the same "raw" material (pun intended), I would
go to a concert, and it was as though the composer had put the score
in my lap. I could hear structure and function and tell exactly where
a composition failed or succeeded. I approached my own compositions
differently. I wrote prose better. At a gut level, I understood
composition for the first time.
M. Slater
>Your program sounds wonderful! I know this is a hard thing to
>describe, but can you offer any 'concrete' examples of the difference
>you think your knowing "who Shakespeare and Christopher Wren are"
>might have made in your performance of William Byrd?
I had a major in music and a minor in theatre. My senior year project was a
co-production with a theatre major of a Jacobean Wedding Masque with words by
Ben Jonson. I organized a band of lutes and recorders together with my spinet.
The lyrics contained all the silly double-entendres of the day. There was an
Ode to Hymen, and the obligatory chorus of "Seamen". Voice majors sang the
major roles, dance majors participated . We actually were able to rig up a
"cloud machine"! The two professors adjudicating sat on the royal thrones.
Sack was served to the audience. Researching the original theatres or ballrooms
that these masques were performed in turned up many famous names including
Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren. Our proscenium was designed after Jones. Had
I not already studied the histories of music, dance, art and theatre, many of
the finer details would have been neglected. A great time was had by all. And,
I got an A.
Mark
anebt
> Does anyone have personal experience to share in terms of a second
> discipline informing your primary discpline?
Well, in a small way. My piano instructor tried to explain to me what
"expressive" was as I was beginning a Schubert piece. Being a contractor, I
honestly couldn't understand him, as I am hopelessly linear and
mathematically inclined. However, he knew I was a very visual person, since
I often use visual metaphors to describe my experiences. (Right now my head
feels as if they are packed with white cotton.)
Then he pulled out a book on 19th century art, and another one on 16th
century art. He held up a photo of a Van Gogh painting and told me to look
at it. Then he held up a photo of a Da Vinci (Last Supper) and told me to
look at it.
He then said that the DaVinci is Purcell (what I was playing beforehand),
and that the Van Gogh is Schubert. I instantly caught on.
In five minutes he taught me something that could have taken me years to
learn.
musa
it's a very interesting topic and one i think should not be
over-rationalized.
i mean it should be natural for an artist to get interested, at one
point or the other, in other forms of expression.
just as any experience in life will be reflected in one's art, even
more would be one's experience in other arts.
visual arts would give a musician a very interesting different
perspective since they deal with time in a completely different way
and their result is a (relatively speaking) fixed one that trascends
time.
in my personal experience i found a great benefit from the practice of
martial art (kendo -the way of the sword- in particular) to my
principal activity of an improvising musician (drummer for the
record).
the basic principles of this (and most other) marltial art (breathing,
balance, concentration, resolution and determination etc.) all apply
to the art of playing an instrument expecially in an improvisational
context.
but i feel every art should be approached with full respect, even if
it's not going to be our primary activity otherwise little or no
benefit could come from it. honesty and purity of intention is behind
any real archivement.
hakim musa
Thunder9...@dsemail.net
And this goes to show that my statement about this being a bull shit
paper was only evidence of my own ignorance. I have been enlightened
in this matter and I thank you for sharing your quest for knowledge on
this topic.
Thunder9
xx_NOSPAM is antispam
cwhite0714
cute connection. I wonder if ballet does anything for the players'
understanding of the game, rather than just increasing their body
control and strength?
"Marc Sabatella" <ma...@outsideshore.com> wrote in message news:<cs0Q9.458$sp5....@news.uswest.net>...
cwhite0714
> I have found that my programming experience has helped in my music. Broken
> down, there are basic patterns or a code. Once you figure out the code or
> rules in a discipline you tend to make comparisons between what you know and
> what you have just learned.
Hi, Knute.
You and I make comparisons, but I don't know that transfer is always
automatic. In fact, I'm not sure what it is that makes people transfer
knowledge and understanding from one medium to another. In education,
they stress thorough understanding of the concept in the first field,
then having an explicit connection taught to the other fields. But in
my explorations of big-time creators, I don't see people who had this
thorough teaching, rather people who made exactly the kinds of "head"
connections all by themselves, or perhaps via discussions with peers.
What I'm afraid of is discovering that my theory is debunked by
discovering that what makes a good creator is being naturally
polymathic. That would mean it doesn't make much difference what
formal education you have in any field. You were basically destined to
be smart and creative. I really hope I find evidence that education is
more important than that.
Thanks for responding!
Cathi
Frank H. Weeden
>
> I hadn't thought about football players and ballet. That's actually a
> cute connection. I wonder if ballet does anything for the players'
> understanding of the game, rather than just increasing their body
> control and strength?
No, but the linemen just love wearing the pink tutu as they
dance Swan Lake. ;)
Actually, in bodybuilding, quite a number of bodybuilders
engage in crossover sports like basketball, judo, raquetball,
surfing, swimming, or boxing. While training groups of muscles
specifically has its own benefits, there is a plus factor that
comes into play when engaging in vigorous sports. Coordination,
symmetry, cooperation between the muscles, more neuromuscular
pathways, greater overall condition, flexibility, and the
aviodance of an exclusively gym-built physique.
I'm not Bruce Lee or anything, but my own years of training in
karate and some aikido have helped to hone my own ability to
focus and concentrate to a greater degree, and this is an
immense help in learning piano. Having engaged in various
sports, (including bodybuilding), I've learned to listen to
my body, and that translates into listening to my hands and
fingers. When something doesn't feel right, or when fatigue
or pain are beginning to set in, I don't push it. Better off
to take a break and come back to it later.
Cheers,
-Frank
Riaz F. Abdulla
Well said.
And of course, as you alluded to in your post. Art imitates life. Just got
through a couple of really tough years, and I think it has made my music
more mature sounding.
I must agree with you completely. I think sometimes people can be
dishonest when they approach art without that seriousness you mention for
fear of looking stupid. That fear of looking stupid, of expressing
oneselfy through one's art can often ruin that purity of intention of
which you speak.
Riaz
M. Slater
>I'm not Bruce Lee or anything, but my own years of training in
>karate and some aikido have helped to hone my own ability to
>focus and concentrate to a greater degree, and this is an
>immense help in learning piano.
LOL Frankie. TFF
Mark
cwhite0714
Great project! Thanks for sharing. :-)
cwhite0714
"Frank H. Weeden" <pla...@charter.net> wrote in message news:<3E110F1D...@charter.net>...
cwhite0714
"anebt" <an...@startrek.net> wrote in message news:<x_3Q9.3485$134.4...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net>...
Buffy The Cache Coder
> arts and music curricula tend
> to be so full of courses in the major that there isn't time, let alone
> encouragement, to make any formal study other art forms. Any
> interdisciplinary study seems left up to the individual. That's
> certainly how I ended up learning about visual art. And yet it was in
> 6 months of visual art that I finally understood what my music
> teachers had been trying to teach me for years.
>
Just curious. What was the thing you comprehended in the visual arts?
Also, how do you know that it was the visual arts that led to this
comprehension? And not, well, taking a break from music?
For me the visual arts that has helped me appreciate more of Debussy's
later music, is that of Impressionism.
When looking at an impressionistic painting, I have to 'step back' to
know what is 'going on'. The pieces look better the further away
you get. (which reads like an insult, but that's not my intention.)
So likewise, I use to complain about how Debussy' later work was just
not as lyrical/melodic as his early works. I also knew that Debussy
was trying to capture impressionistic painting in his music.
It wasn't til I learned to 'step back' from Impressionistic painting,
that I realized I also had to do the same with Debussy' later works.
To follow Debussy' melodies, you cannot follow it note for note
individually like you would a Mozart piece. It is like listening
to Chopin's Fantasy Impromptu, but even this impromptu you can kinda
follow it through the 'point' in time.
With Debussy 'melodies', you have to take it in as a whole. You need
to 'step back'. Then I 'got' Debussy later music. And everything
became happy again. :)
And when I got that, it opened my mind to consider other possible ways
to piano composition.
> In fact, the most widely acknowledge thinkers have not been
> specialists in their own field. DaVinci, Newton, Galileo, Pythagoras
> and Michelangelo come to mind, as well as this year's Nobel winner in
> economics, who is a cognitive psychologist.
>
Don't really know enough to comment, but let me do so anyways :)
Not much is known about Pythagoras, right? so how can you make
this claim?
Also for other know-it-alls... look at Kolomogrov, Poincare,
Buckminster Fuller.
Poincare. He's my favorite mathematician, and he's considered
to be the last universalist.
> Given the statistics of less than 50% of music graduates actually
> working in music,
Sad stat man. I wonder about the classical world. If it wasn't for
donations, what would happen?
> and dwindling audiences and funding for all the
> arts, I find it frightening that such an apparently crucial
> educational vehicle is being left up to personal whim. I'd like to see
> arts curricula changed, but it's going to take some pretty compelling
> data to make the argument.
Well, I'd rather you change the schools so that art is more appreciated.
Focus on the non-art, non-musician majors. Those guys (including me)
need to fork over more money to the starving artists out there!
> So I raise the question again:
>
> Does anybody here have personal experience to share in terms of a
> second discipline informing your primary discipline?
Well, mathematics has helped my visual art activities, believe it or not.
Unfortunately, none of my art activities -music, drawing- has helped
me with math.
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
m b nelms
it?
<Thunder9...@dsemail.net> wrote in message
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m b nelms
gave me a different window on my own learning process as well as another way
to communicate to students about the learning process.
The posts about martial arts have alluded to this already, but the crucial
element in learning new material is immersion (at least in my case). I
notice I also do this when I'm doing research, learning a new tune,
preparing class materials, etc. I get as much relevant material at my
fingertips as I can and then I dive in. Usually there is some internal
question I need answered (often a vague one), and sometimes, once it is
answered, my interest in the area lessens considerably.
I really enjoyed painting for a few years, and then somehow stopped. (Going
to grad school had an impact.) I've had chances to pick it back up again and
yet I don't.
I've often thought that if I could create one piece of music that could do
what any great poet can do with one page of text I could die a happy man
(hopefully I can die happy anyway!).
cwhite0714
> I took drawing and painting classes on my own. The thing I liked was how it
> gave me a different window on my own learning process
Hm. I hadn't thought of all this in terms of metacognition. But it
ended up having that effect on me too, since I was so embarrassed that
I'd learned in an art class what 11 years of music composition study
hadn't taught me. Eventually, I ran into the theories of Howard
Gardner and realized I'm just a visual-kinesthetic learner. It
shouldn't surprise me that I couldn't "get" composition aurally. But
it's good to know from now on that if I want to understand something,
I'd better see, touch and write notes about it.
> as well as another way
> to communicate to students about the learning process.
I've found that very helpful as well.
> Usually there is some internal
> question I need answered (often a vague one), and sometimes, once it is answered, my interest in the area lessens considerably.
This made me laugh, because it's so like me. I took something like 5
first-year languages while I was in college. Once I understood the
structure of the language, I lost interest. (Memorizing vocabulary, in
contrast to learning how the language is put together, is *hard
work*!)
> (hopefully I can die happy anyway!).
I hope you can too. :-)
cwhite0714
thanks! I'll address your points with inserts in your quoted portions
below.
buff...@hotmail.com (Buffy The Cache Coder) wrote in message news:<e3850c89.02123...@posting.google.com>...
> Just curious. What was the thing you comprehended in the visual arts?
> Also, how do you know that it was the visual arts that led to this
> comprehension? And not, well, taking a break from music?
I wasn't taking a break from music. I was just paying some of my
living expenses by modeling in art classes.
I think I may have addressed "the thing [I] comprehended" in another
post, but I'll try again here. What I finally "got" in those art
classes that I'd missed in composition lessons, as well as innumerable
music theory and analysis classes, was what I'd call the concept of
composition. Other people might consider it a concept of form, but for
me it was more fundamental than exposition, development, recap. After
sitting in those art classes, I could hear how a whole piece fit
together, and what parts of it didn't fit so well, and WHY they didn't
fit well. There would be a new theme introduced at the "wrong" point,
an orchestration that stuck out where it "shouldn't" have, a note that
sounded like it came out of another piece. OTOH, there was the theme
that subtly controlled all the other themes and even the pacing of a
section, movement or entire work. Suddenly I could hear that in
composers like Holst, where no amount of reading and analysis would
have clarified it for me before.
Does that help?
> It wasn't til I learned to 'step back' from Impressionistic painting,
> that I realized I also had to do the same with Debussy' later works.
> To follow Debussy' melodies, you cannot follow it note for note
> individually like you would a Mozart piece. It is like listening
> to Chopin's Fantasy Impromptu, but even this impromptu you can kinda
> follow it through the 'point' in time.
Very interesting. I'll have to try that with Debussy. Thanks for the
pointer.
> > In fact, the most widely acknowledge thinkers have not been
> > specialists in their own field. DaVinci, Newton, Galileo, Pythagoras
> > and Michelangelo come to mind, as well as this year's Nobel winner in
> > economics, who is a cognitive psychologist.
> >
> Don't really know enough to comment, but let me do so anyways :)
> Not much is known about Pythagoras, right? so how can you make
> this claim?
Actually, I'm not basing it on any major analysis but on a particular
definition of specialist and the fact that Pythagoras made major
contributions to both math (a la Pythagorean Theorem) and music
(Pythagorean scale tuning), which means he excelled in at least two
different fields. Since specialists "specialize," or focus all their
work, in one field, by that definition Pythagoras wasn't a specialist.
> > and dwindling audiences and funding for all the
> > arts, I find it frightening that such an apparently crucial
> > educational vehicle is being left up to personal whim. I'd like to see
> > arts curricula changed, but it's going to take some pretty compelling
> > data to make the argument.
>
> Well, I'd rather you change the schools so that art is more appreciated.
> Focus on the non-art, non-musician majors. Those guys (including me)
> need to fork over more money to the starving artists out there!
I think a change in the way we teach (and view) the arts would filter
down to audiences as well. In fact, if we taught the arts more through
each other, that would happen at levels below college. If seeing the
connections "wakes up" music majors, surely it would wake up middle
schoolers as well.
> Well, mathematics has helped my visual art activities, believe it or not.
> Unfortunately, none of my art activities -music, drawing- has helped
> me with math.
Perhaps it depends on your definition of math. The way math was taught
when I was growing up, we tended to think of it as a set of procedures
you learn to accomplish certain tasks. For instance, you add up (or
estimate) your groceries so you don't overspend. You calculate the
mileage to see if your car needs tuning. You use a compass to find the
center of a circle so you can screw your new towel rack to the wall on
the level.
In contrast, the Kindergarten and first grade teachers I see nowadays
all teach patterns. I've seen that pattern orientation in 4th-6th
grades too, where kids create Escher-like art forms sometimes called
"tesselations." If you see math as patterns, visual art could be
tremendously useful. If you want to understand the concept of a loop,
draw a triad or make a Mobius strip. Then look carefully at Escher's
"Relativity," "Waterfall," or "Möbius Strip II" (which gives me the
creeps). If you want a deeper understanding of negative and positive,
skip the images of floors of a building above ground and underground
or walking backward and forward on a number line. Instead, look at
Escher's "Mosaic II" or "Metamorphosis II." Or even (in terms of
convex and concave), Escher's 1955 lithograph of the same name.
You can also get an idea of mathematical proportions by looking at art
(or creating art!) that has those proportions. A great example is
Rembrandt's "Night Watch," where the only people in white occur at two
of the Golden Sections of the painting. The larger one is at .618 of
the way across the entire painting, and the smaller figure is at .618
of the way from the larger figure to the side of the painting. An
example created specifically to demonstrate the Golden Mean is
Leonardo DaVinci's "Man." That's the double dude inscribed in a
circle. If you look closely, he has lines drawn across various parts
of his body. Those lines represent the Golden Proportion in all those
aspects of the "perfectly" proportioned human body.
If you prefer doing this in music (and this is, after all, a music
newsgroup), the Golden Mean is perhaps most easily heard in Stephen
Foster songs. (Get out your piano music now....) For ease of
calculation, take the total number of quarter notes and multiply by
.618 (the Golden Proportion, or Golden Mean). Then count the number of
quarter notes from the beginning of the piece until you reach the
quarter note with the number you found in your multiplication problem.
See what note that is and how it might be different from the other
notes in the piece. In Stephen Foster, who usually writes 16-measure
verse songs, the Golden Mean usually arrives around the beginning of
the third line. Since Foster tends to write AABA forms, the Golden
Mean tends to occur where the B part start, and it often is or leads
immediately to a higher note and different harmony than has occurred
previously in the piece. After listening to this regular proportion,
you can begin to hear it in longer and more complex pieces of music.
And then of course, there's the Mozart Effect, a wonderful experiment
where two (randomly chosen) groups of little kids were asked to do
basic math exercises like assembling blocks into a pattern matching
the one in a picture. The first group of kids heard Mozart's music
for some period before the exercise and the second group (a control
group) did not. The Mozart group performed the math exercise around
EIGHTY PERCENT better than the control group. Maybe your piano playing
has already done more for your math than you realize!
Ed Vogel
> discipline informing your primary discpline?
I enjoy drawing with colored markers particularly perspective studies.
I will sometimes disassemble a piece of music into "picture elements"
such as chords and motifs and project them to the vainsihing point in
the order that they appear in the music. It helps me memorize.
Ed Vogel
cwhite0714
Ed, that sounds spectacular. Any chance you might be able to scan one
of these "pictures" of a piano piece (preferably with ID as to which
piece it is), and email it to me? (If this were a binary group, I'd
ask you to post it.)
Ed Vogel
> of these "pictures" of a piano piece (preferably with ID as to which
> piece it is), and email it to me? (If this were a binary group, I'd
> ask you to post it.)
I will see if I can scan something this weekend and email it to you.
They are kind of juvenile and also may be packed up for shipping to
NYC.
An intersting link to someone who explores visualizing sound:
http://www.bway.net/~jackox/colororgansite/#Anchor-Landscapes-23240
I corresponded with Jack(Jaqueline) Ox regarding a perfomance of
Ursonate by Schwitters in 1998.
Ed V.
Carl Tait
>
>I'm considering research into the effects and efficacy of studying one
>art through another. For instance, a composer might study visual art,
>not to gain proficiency in that discipline but to gain a better
>understanding of composition.
>
>discipline informing your primary discpline?
Like many others in this group and elsewhere, I find there to be a strong
connection between music and the natural sciences, especially the
mathematical ones. On the other hand, I certainly don't favor an
"objective" style of music making. Quite the contrary; I loathe the whole
bizarre notion of "letting the music speak for itself."
The science/music connection has more to do with an analytical way of
thinking. This is most obvious in technical matters, where ruthless
dissection -- and dogged tenacity! -- are applied to solve problems. Even
in purely musical issues, we mathy types are often fascinated by trying to
discover how a piece is put together. The insights gained by this
computer-programmer mentality often lead to a deeper musical understanding
of the piece and a more satisfying and coherent performance.
Two years ago at Rockefeller University in NYC, there was a symposium
called "Polymaths and the Piano." A number of M.D.'s and Ph.D.'s who were
also serious amateur pianists gave a concert and then had a panel
discussion about the mysterious link between science and music. It was an
interesting evening, though no firm conclusions were reached. The New York
Times published an article on the event; a copy can be found at:
http://www.bebeyond.com/LearnEnglish/DailyReadings/Opinions/MusicScience.htm
(One minor complaint: For some reason, Stephen Hubbard and I were deprived
of our doctorates in the article. The Times apologized by e-mail.)
- Carl Tait