Professional Documents
Culture Documents
In 1989, the Mexican artist Juan Luis Daz asked me if I could compose
music with a numeric grid that he had been using for almost fifteen
years to make his sculptures. I was immediately interested in this
project because the relationships between numbers have always
fascinated me. It is well known that many composers have used
numbers to structure their music and that there has been always an
interest in their beauty. The ancient Greeks attributed to the
association of music and numbers a predominant place in the
philosophy of the cosmos and it was perhaps Pythagoras one of the
first mathematicians to study the relationship between sounds and
numbers. From there on there have been different philosophers,
scientists and musicians that have worked on this subject with
different points of emphasis. Some researchers have studied the
physical relationships between sound and numbers, for example, the
theory of the generation of the overtones, which the Pythagorean
School developed. On the other hand, composers have used numbers
in a free and creative way to generate musical compositions.
Before presenting this numeric grid and explaining my research
towards being able to compose with it, I will describe some ways that
have been used in the past to do music with numbers and the reasons
for which so many composers have been interested in the
relationships between numbers and why have they used them to
make their music.
May be one of the principal concerns thorough history about numbers
is that they can make beauty out of chaos, and bring order into our
minds. The school of researchers that followed Pythagoras theories
taught the mathematics of music not only as a science but also as
part of a philosophical moral code.
For Leonard B. Meyer music stands somewhere in between the two
extremes of chance and total order. This happens in general with
other artistic disciplines, the creator needs to structure his work in a
coherent way, but he is also free to brake the rules and to bring the
unexpected. Nonetheless, in this century we have had composers that
explored the extremes as a way to brake up with tradition, and to
liberate them selves from their own cultural chains. The most curious
thing is that composers that went into complete chance disagreed
conceptually from the ones that went into total
(a) 1 3 5 7 9 11 2 4 6 8 10 12
(b) 1 5 9 2 6 10 3 7 11 4 8 12
(c) 1 9 6 3 11 8 5 2 10 7 4 12
(d) 1 6 11 5 10 4 9 3 8 2 7 12
(e) 1 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 12 12
(f) 1 10 8 6 4 2 11 9 7 5 3 12
(g) 1 8 4 11 7 3 10 6 2 9 5 12
(h) 1 4 7 10 2 5 8 11 3 6 9 12
(i) 1 7 2 8 3 9 etc.
11
121
1331
14641
1 5 10 10 5 1
1 6 15 20 15 6 1
1 7 21 35 35 21 7 1
Example 1. Anton Webern series for the first movement of his string quartet Op. 28
nine, and so on until we multiply 9x1, 9x2, 9x3, ...... until 9x9. The
table is shown in example 2.
Example 2.
123456789
246813579
369369369
483726159
516273849
639639639
753186429
876543219
999999999
Example 3
As you can see, the outer numbers of the grid are always nine. This is
because number nine is the number, which includes all the other
numbers, and if you notice, the product of the addition of any line in
any direction is always nine. This table was used by the Sumerians
and later by the Vedic culture, and it has to do a lot with Pythagorean
mathematics.
Example 4
In the Vedic table, the horizontal rows of numbers are equal to the
vertical rows, and you can see how there are only four different rows
of numbers because the others are the retrograde of the first. You can
also see how the rows that begin with number one and number eight
are complementary (the numbers add always up to nine), as well as
two and seven, three and six, and four and five.
Example 8. Two Octatonic scales. One starts with halve tone and
the second one starts with a whole tone.
Now I assigned the note and rhythmic values to the rows and i did a
counterpoint of two melodic lines that are always complementary
between each other. This means that i start from the top and the
bottom of the square so i have always two juxtaposed rows: 1 and 8,
2 and 7, 3 and 6, 4 and 5 which are the original and their retrograde
version (see composition I in appendix).
There was a little difficulty interpreting the four nines in the square
since i used the number eight as a unit. I decided then to assign the
nines a rest of nine beats (my basic beat is one eight note). It is
interesting that the two melodies have vertical coincidences when
they arrive at the same time to number nine in rows 3 and 6.
I think this is a very close musical representation of the Vedic table
but being so strict, there are be very few possibilities of variety, so i
decided to search for new possibilities of interpreting the table.
Finding out recently that some composers in the fifties were deeply
involved with integral serialism, i decided to find out about their
methods so i could have more ideas. One of the compositions of this
period that is quite interesting is "Structures" for two pianos written in
1952 by Pierre Boulez. This composer was a pupil of Messiaen who
was one of the first European composers to write a piece with total
organization in 1949.
Boulez piece is based on a twelve tone row. In Structure Ia (the first of
three parts) all twelve transpositions of the series and their derived
forms (inversions, retrogrades, and inverted retrogrades) are used
once each in a specific order. From the original and inverted series,
Boulez constructed two tables which he uses to compose many
details of the music. These matrices were obtained by numbering the
original series and then transposing it eleven times, starting every
time in the next note (Example 10).
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
2 8 4 5 6 11 1 9 12 3 7 10
3 4 1 2 8 9 10 5 6 7 12 11
4 5 2 8 9 12 3 6 11 1 10 7
5 6 8 9 12 10 4 11 7 2 3 1
6 11 9 12 10 3 5 7 1 8 4 2
7 1 10 3 4 5 11 2 8 12 6 9
8 9 5 6 11 7 2 12 10 4 1 3
9 12 6 11 7 1 8 10 3 5 2 4
10 3 7 1 2 8 12 4 5 11 9 6
11 7 12 10 3 4 6 1 2 9 5 8
12 10 11 7 1 2 9 3 4 6 8 5
Notice how every row of each triangle is symmetrical and how they
are complementary with each other (the numbers always add up to
nine). From these two triangles, it is possible to make a second
musical counterpoint.
I thought that i could expand this grid in order to have diversity but
always keeping complementary rows. Influenced by serial theory I
started to investigate about the tetrachords of the octatonic scale.
The numeric square is made out of eight tone rows with no pitch
repetitions except for rows number three and six where the pitches
three and six are repeated. The other rows can be divided in
tetrachords and their complementary tetrachords. We can find only
three different tetrachords in the table: 1 2 3 4, 2 4 6 8, and
4 8 3 7. Their complementary tetrachords are 5 6 7 8, 1 3 5 7 and 2 6
1 5 but they are only transpositions of the first.
There are a limited set of serial rows in the octatonic scale which
regard the complementary principle. This is because a tetrachord
cannot have two numbers, which add up to nine, if that happens then
the complementary tetrachord would have the repetition of two
numbers of the first tetrachord.
For example, if we make up the tetrachord 1 2 5 7 which does not
exist in the Vedic table, its complementary tetrachord would be 2 4 7
8 and thus we have 2 and 7 repeated. If we have 1 3 6 2 we have the
12645378
24381657
63963963
48672315
51327684
36936936
75618342
87354621
If you notice, you can generate this new table by just switching
around the threes and the sixes. All the geometric figures remain the
same but the tetrachords are new (except for the tetrachords of rows,
three and six which are the same as in the original table).
We still have two tetrachords left. Lets use
1 7 3 4 : 5 6 2 8 to construct another table:
17345628
74318652
33936966
41372685
58627314
66963933
25681347
82654371
Here i just switched the twos with the sevenths but now all the
geometric figures have changed except the one with fours and fives. I
would call this table a Hybrid table because it only has one tetrachord
and it is complementary in different orders (with the exception of the
rows at levels two and seven).
We have one more table that can be generated by the tetrachords 1 7
6 4 : 5 3 2 8.
17645328
74618352
66963933
41672385
58327614
33936966
25381647
82354671
Notice how the Hybrid table two is equal to number one but with the
threes and sixes switched. They also have the same geometric figures
but different tetrachords.
I have expanded the original Vedic Table to four tables, thus having
more information for compositional purposes.
It is also possible to use permutation with the different tables and in
this way to change the order of the pitches and enrich melodic
content. We can permute a whole row or only the first tetrachord
( the last step changes in automatic way the order of the
complementary tetrachord ). For example, we have the row:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, if we permute the row in this way:
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1, we brake with the balance of the row
because the numbers doesn't add up to nine (from the center to the
outer part). We would have to use 2 3 4 5 and find the
complementary tetrachord 4 5 6 7. The problem is that in this case,
we have the repetition of numbers four and five and this brakes with
the serial principal of no repetition. On the other hand we could get
reed off a 4 and 5 and keep only six pitches:
2 3 4 : 5 6 7. Notice how we have now a hexachord molded
by two symmetrical trichords. The only other possible hexachord in
this row is 1 2 3 : 6 7 8 and of course, the trichords can be
The new variation of the Vedic table shown in example 13 is not in the
right order because there is no symmetry in the diagonals. The proper
order of the rows is the following:
Example 16. The three octatonic scales and their common notes.
See in example 16 how one scale has always four common notes with
the other two. Any two scales we play together will then contain the
twelve notes of the chromatic scale. One more important thing to
notice is that in every scale we can begin with a halve tone or a whole
tone. It really does not matter because we keep the symmetry of the
scale but the melodic material will change in color. Using the scale
that begins with a whole step and assigning the numbers of the table
to it, i had a different mode (like major and minor have the same
intervalic content but are inverted and sound different). It is important
to consider this as a composer.
There is still much to be said about the possibilities to compose with
the Vedic Table and the eight tone scale but what I've done up to this
moment is enough to start being creative and to explore new
possibilities. I now think that to get lost in numbers and devices that
seem not to be musical is very important because it is a way of
learning how to structure something and how to make your music
coherent. All composers have been in a need to do this because
dealing with time is a very complex thing. On the other hand there
still remains the question of whether we are being too intellectual
when we make music in this way and if it is possible to decipher the
organization of this music by the listener. I think that it is possible to