David Sulzer - Music, Math, and Mind: The Physics and Neuroscience of Music

• Who needs a book on maths and the nervous systems roles in music?

Some of the questions that will introduce these chapters lack a clear answer, but this has one: no one needs this book.

The creation and appreciation of music do not require knowledge of the math and biology that allow it to exist. These topics are not taught to music students, and musicians create great work without knowing them. Still, understanding the basis of music, sound, and perception will explain some mysteries, open deeper ones, help you understand what you hear, and provide ideas for your own work.

The approach to contemporary musical education is rooted in a system developed to train orphans and abandoned children in Renaissance Naples. The word conservatori meant places to save children, and music provided a way for those who did not inherit a family trade to learn to compose, play instruments, and sing to make a living. The original conservatory, Santa Maria di Loreto, founded in Naples in 1537, was immensely successful, training the composers Alessandro Scarlatti and Domenico Cimarosa. The movement spread, with Antonio Vivaldi teaching at the Ospedale della Piet for orphaned and abandoned girls in Venice and composing concerti like the Four Seasons for the school orchestra. The system migrated to the Paris Conservatory in 1784 and from there throughout the world as conservatories broadened their mission to accept students from any family background.

Over these five hundred years, the purpose of musical training has always been to impart tools to make a living. For example, Johann Sebastian Bach, a god for composers, taught music theory classes at the Leipzig Thomas School so that students could perform on the organ during church services. Bachs lessons were bound in a book, Precepts and Principles for Playing the Through Bass or Accompanying in Four Parts (1738), modeled on the Musical Guide (1710) by Friedrich Erhard Niedt, a pupil of Bachs cousin Johann Nicolaus Bach. These books provide clear instructions in the techniques used by the Bach family, with rules for composing fugues and the popular dances like sarabandes and jigs: learning those rules can help you create a piece in that tradition.

In contrast, the creation of music in some other styles requires no theory classesor even instrument or singing lessonsbut simply talent, opportunity, and work. A pioneer of this approach was the French radio engineer Pierre Schaeffer, who in the 1940s composed exciting music by splicing together recording tape. Fifty years later, this approach was updated by the hip-hop group Public Enemy, who created instrumental tracks entirely by juxtaposing previously recorded sounds. Schaeffer and Public Enemy prove that with perseverance and access to the right tools, one can create brilliant music immediately without requiring years of training.

A thoughtful perspective on the issue of technical training versus instinct in creating music comes from the American composer and violinist Leroy Jenkins. Leroy grew up in the 1940s performing classical violin duos on the Chicago streets with his classmate, the future rock n roll pioneer Bo Diddley, when lessons on instruments were typically part of the public school curriculum. Many of Leroy and Bos classmates at Chicagos DuSable High School trained under the violinist and teacher Walter Dyett. Dyetts students included a high percentage of the top figures in jazz and pop, including the saxophonists Eddie Harris, Gene Ammons, and Clifford Jordan and the singers Dinah Washington, Johnny Hartman, and Nat King Cole.

Despite the success of Walter Dyett and others, starting in the 1970s, support for music lessons in many American public schools evaporated. Young people, like the Bronx DJs Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa, adapted the sparse instrumental resources available to themdrum machines and turntables from stereo supply storesand used them to create a style that Bambaataa named hip-hop, presently the most popular musical style in the world.