Music and Mathematics

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Image courtesy of CosmoCaixa.

Music and mathematics share many similarities. Music excites us mathematically and, thanks to mathematics, we understand the purest essence of music.

This exhibition offers a sound journey that, starting from absolute silence, investigates the sound of nature: the music of matter and the mathematics that govern musical patterns.

Music and mathematics are fields of study that share many similarities. It is accepted that Pythagoras and his disciples were the first to establish a direct link between music and mathematics. Since then, many other mathematicians have attempted to refine the relationships between these two worlds. Even Kepler spent decades trying to describe the music generated by the movement of the stars. His theory was wrong, but he was right in considering that music was present everywhere.

Both disciplines study abstract objects, have complex structures, manipulation rules, well-defined notation and are absolutely precise in their results. Working on them requires practice, creativity and an analytical mind. But their relationship goes far beyond the skills necessary for their study. Mathematics is present in all aspects of music, from the physics of sound to the construction of instruments, from rhythmic patterns to tonal harmony, from classical to electronic music.

Music and mathematics is a historical journey through both disciplines. Through seven areas, like the notes of the diatonic scale, it guides us through the conjunction that is established between one and the other, so close that it helps us understand why order, regularity and proportion feed the music and why emotion, feeling and affection nourish numbers. After exploring myths and meeting characters from science and music, we start from absolute silence to immerse ourselves in the origin and chaos of the universe, in the sound of nature. It is about exploring what sound is, how we capture it and why music has this great capacity to move us, to make us appreciate its structure, the aesthetic experience it entails and how it is mathematized.

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