Mathematics has been used for centuries to describe, analyse and create music. In this book, Leon Harkleroad explores the math-related aspects of music from its acoustical bases to compositional techniques to music criticism, touching on:
🎵 overtones, scales and tuning systems
🎵 the musical dice games attributed to Mozart and Haydn
🎵 the several-hundred-year-old style of bell-playing known as ringing the changes
🎵 the twelve-tone school of composition that strongly influenced music throughout the twentieth century
...and many other topics involving mathematical ideas from probability theory to Fourier series to group theory. He also relates some cautionary tales of misguided attempts to mix music and mathematics.
Both the mathematical and musical concepts are described in an elementary way, making the book accessible to general readers as well as to mathematicians and musicians of all levels. The book is accompanied by an audio CD of musical examples.
The author of the book, Leon Harkleroad gives frequent lectures on mathematics and music for the Mathematical Association of America and other groups. He has been published in many journals, and he has received the George Pólya Award from the MAA for one of his papers.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources?isbn=978-0521009355
Create, play back and print beautiful sheet music with free and easy to use music notation software MuseScore, for Windows, Mac and Linux musescore.org
See also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musikalisches_Würfelspiel
