<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">The Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy has a book called Symmetry (2008) which includes a chapter on music, ranging from Rameau to change-ringing to Xenakis. The discussion is not that deep, but still enlightening. It's just one chapter out of a book which includes discussions on a whole lot of things, including Galois, the Alhambra and a 196,883-dimensional figure (!) called the Monster.<div><br></div><div>As a lay-person's introduction to symmetry I thought it was fantastic - he also has an excellent book on prime numbers, "The Music of the Primes," which covers everything from Pythagoras to internet encryption, and includes quite a bit of music as well.</div><div><br></div><div>Best wishes,</div><div>Steve</div><div><br></div><div><div apple-content-edited="true"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>_________________________________</div><div>Stephen Taylor</div><div>Associate Professor of Composition-Theory</div><div>School of Music</div><div>University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign</div><div><a href="http://www.stephenandrewtaylor.net">http://www.stephenandrewtaylor.net</a></div></div><a href="mailto:staylor7@illinois.edu">staylor7@illinois.edu</a></span></div><br><div><div>On Dec 9, 2010, at 12:55, Laurel Parsons wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">Dear colleagues,<div><br></div><div>An upper-level undergraduate student at our liberal arts and sciences university is embarking on a long-term interdisciplinary study of the relationship between symmetry and beauty. She is an accomplished violinist, but is not a music major and has no post-tonal theory background as yet; however, she is both well-versed and interested in calculus, statistics, and other mathematical forms so could pick it up fairly easily. While there are hundreds of scholarly articles on various kinds of compositional symmetry in the music of Western composers to which I could refer her, I'm wondering if anyone can recommend:</div> <div><br></div><div>1) a good historical overview of how symmetry has been used in Western music, and/or</div><div>2) scholarly writing that addresses the <i>aesthetics</i> of musical symmetry rather than (")simply(") the compositional mechanics of its usage in the works of specific composers. </div> <div><br></div><div>Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.</div><div><br></div><div>Best wishes,</div><div>Laurel Parsons<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Laurel Parsons, Ph.D.<br>Co-ordinator, Humanities Division<br>Quest University Canada<br> 3200 University Blvd.<br>Squamish, BC<br>VB8 0N8<br><a href="mailto:laurel.parsons@questu.ca" target="_blank">laurel.parsons@questu.ca</a><br><a href="http://www.questu.ca" target="_blank">www.questu.ca</a><br><br> </div> _______________________________________________<br>Smt-talk mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Smt-talk@lists.societymusictheory.org">Smt-talk@lists.societymusictheory.org</a><br>http://lists.societymusictheory.org/listinfo.cgi/smt-talk-societymusictheory.org<br></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>