[Smt-talk] Math-music structure of Plato's Dialogues

[matralab]

Hello
My own two cents are more philosophical in nature:

We all know that it is possible to find numerological patterns
in any sufficiently long and reasonably complex string or matrix.

Especially if you are willing to gloss over slight deviations from the ideal
- as you must when you deal with strings that follow
non-closed rule systems such as grammar or dramaturgy -
it is indeed almost impossible not to find some pattern.

As a composer who works heavily with constructive tools
(which sometimes include numerological concepts)
I am convinced of their usefulness in structuring score and performance
- i.e. production -
and yet deeply sceptical of their ability
to actually add experiential meaning to a text/score/performance.
The scaffolding is not the dwelling.

In my experience, most of the math-analyses of texts/scores I have
encountered
are far too simplistic for any serious understanding of the analyzed work.
And those math-analyses that are not simplistic must treat the work as they
would
a natural phenomenon, assuming that intentionality plays no part.

And if it does - e.g. in the works of Xenakis, to choose another Greek
classic:
has anyone ever backtracked the mathematical processes from the score alone
*without knowing about them beforehand *(which is how math-analysis proceeds
on
all the other composers and in our Plato example) ?

Have there been any double-blind math-analyses of Barlow, Ferneyhough or
even Webern
(to name only a few of the most obvious) where the analysts do not rely
on the oral and academic tradition, on the composer's assertions -
and thus previous knowledge of their production methods ?

I would be curious to know the results of such backtracking experimental
math-musicology.

Perhaps at this point we need the math-musicological equivalent of placebo -

how statistically significant are the results
compared to the same method of analysis applied to a random string ?
Or how significant is this analysis compared to one with another math-method
?

Do we perhaps need a consensus on ethics in math-music analysis ;-) ?

Best
Sandeep Bhagwati
Composer
Canada Research Chair in Inter-X Art
Concordia University Montréal

2010/6/30 Soderberg, Stephen <ssod at loc.gov>

>  Speaking of cross-discipline. . .
>
>
>
> I may be coming late to this, but I just learned of Dr. Jay Kennedy at
> University of Manchester who is publishing his  fascinating discovery
> relating Pythagorean math & music theory and stichometry to hidden formal &
> symbolic content in Plato's Dialogues:
>
>
>
> http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/jay.kennedy/
>
>
>
> Any comments?
>
>
>
>
>
> Stephen Soderberg
>
> Senior Specialist
>
>    for Contemporary Music
>
> Music Division
>
> Library of Congress
>
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