The Poetics of Simple Mathematics in Music.(Review)

Publication: Computer Music Journal

Publication Date: 22-MAR-01

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COPYRIGHT 2001 MIT Press Journals

Softcover, 1999, ISBN 0-9634500-5-0, 124 pages, illustrated, index; Publication Contact International, 24 Avon Hill, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02140, USA; telephone/fax (617) 868-0215

Do universal principles underlie the construction of musical form? And if so, what do they look like? By means of numerous illustrations and accompanying descriptive prose, composer and theorist Pozzi Escot ventures provocatively in search of answers to these questions. She draws on H. E. Huntley's The Divine Proportion: A Study in Mathematical Beauty (1970), citing his notion "that there is a definite connection between music and mathematics ... based on the similarity between the deep-seated structure of musical form and that of mathematical ideas." Although all of her analyses include discussion of this "divine proportion" (or Golden Mean), she also investigates ways in which arithmetic, harmonic, and geometric means create compositional structure. In the process, she identifies multi-layered symmetrical constructions present within the organization of pitch and rhythm, discusses the notion of...

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