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Admittedly, I peruse these forums far more than my posts indicate. In other words, I spend hours gathering information here but post far less than my time spent here. In short, I love playing but feel as if my daughter is talented. Her love for the piano has driven her science fair topic to focus on mathematical patterns in Bach's music. I especially appreciate those very knowledgeable in theory who post here. Please share with me any resources that may help her research. She's an eighth grader at an IB school so in addition to a globally based curricular foci, she chose a minor in performing arts. That is band and clarinet, but she studies piano with a private teacher. Thanks

Presumably, if she has decided to focus her project on this topic, she must have already done some research and discovered some patterns - it would be a good idea for you to summarize the work she has done so far so we can have an idea of the direction the project could go.

Half step ... a little more info as Polyphonist has requested would be really helpful ...

Just as a test, I googled:

. . . bach music mathematics

and got over 3 million hits!

A Wikipedia entry for the classic book "Godel Escher Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid" was toward the top of the list.

It's a rich lode. Thinking of the classic musical transformations that composers use -- repetition, transposition, inversion, time-translation (which gives us the canon) -- as _mathematical_ transformations has been fascinating, to those who do it.

The threads run deeply into twelve-tone music (which is outside the scope of this discussion).

. Charles

Didn't Albert Schweitzer write a book about the meanings of patterns in Bach's work? I seem to remember reading it in high school.

Hi Halfstep. You wouldn't be your daughter's parent, by any chance?!!!



Her reasearch ??? Perhaps she could post here herself?



"Globally based curricular foci" ?????

Godel Escher Bach is a long and dense book. There's a course for high school students available online about this book: http://ocw.mit.edu/high-school/humanities-and-social-sciences/godel-escher-bach/

The video lectures and lecture notes are posted. That could help if she's looking into it. The book is more of a philosophy book though, that may not be what your daughter is look into.

I had a friend in high school who wrote a computer program to auto-generate fugues, or maybe two part pieces. She won the Texas state science fair (math fair? computer fair?) with that project. I think she also did a little survey and most non-professional musicians couldn't tell the difference between the computer generated sequences and actual Bach.

I find that hard to believe. People couldn't tell the difference between Bach and a computer? These automatically-generated fugues must really be something. Or perhaps it's back to the old adage, "People are stupid."

FWIW --

To most ears, a fugue is a fugue.

. . . "Yeah, that sounds like Bach."

. . . "No, it's by Buxtehude."

. . . "Who's he?"

It's not that "people are stupid". It's that a lot of people don't hear the difference between "inspired" music and "pedestrian" music.

. Charles

In other words...

In other words there are a lot of folks who are musically uneducated - it doesn't mean they're stupid.

Listening to music sometimes gets confused with connoisseurship.

A long-term project from David Cope has a lot to say about that: Experiments in Musical Intelligence - explanation of the project w/links to examples

For the OP, David Cope's research is about patterns used in music by any composer, Bach included. Software David Cope wrote finds patterns and uses them to compose more music "in the style of ____."

So some knowledge of what David Cope's already done, if only in the background and as context, could help a resourceful teacher who's leading students who are interested in finding patterns. Because David Cope didn't just say "Are there patterns and where can they be found?" To the contrary - his computer programs uses the patterns it finds find to write more music. "In the style of ....."

A great example of "music composed in the style of ....." was was the subject of an article in the NY Times.

Who wrote it? Bach? Computer? Music theorist?

Douglas Hofstadter (author of Godel Escher Bach), is part of that story.

The music that comes from Dave Cope's software - not always, but sometimes - has fooled professional and non-professional listeners when they're asked "Who composed that music?" Of course, some professionals are not pleased to find they've been fooled by a computer program that possibly knows maybe a little more than they do.

Here's an example of David Cope's software churning out the style of Vivaldi.



Some will hear it as a pretty good copy of Vivaldi. Some will say it's obviously not Vivaldi. Whether it's a good copy of not, that example is at least as good and probably better than anything students would write for a theory class if the assignment was "compose in the style of Vivaldi."

On a related track - here's software (some programming necessary - in Python) that'll do all kinds of quantitative measures in scores.

http://web.mit.edu/music21/

Quantitative in the sense of "How many 1st inversion C major triads are in Bach Chorales with a key signatures other than C major?" In other words, how many of "this" can be found in "that."

Cope used information of that sort to re-create music styles of great composers. But that rubs many music professionals the wrong way. Because no one wants to think the music they love de-composes into some finite number of key principles. Because if music can be de-composed and then re-composed the question that always comes with that is "Where's the magic in the music?"

David Cope has always been a lightning rod for that question. Computer scientists and others outside of music are much more comfortable with what he's done than are musicians. So when Douglas Hofstadter, to an example, is writing stuff like Godel Escher Bach his knowledge of David Cope's work is part of the background context.

For the OP, David Cope and spinoffs are state-of-the-art stuff in pattern research in music. 'd recommend your daughter's teacher take a look at that - as background context - for wherever he/she is leading the students in their projects.

I don't think these are musically uneducated people - the poll was given to "non-professional musicians."

If the survey results show that "most non-professional musicians" can't tell Bach from computer generated sequences one would have to question whether the category meant musicians who weren't professional or anyone passing by that wasn't a professional musician such as toddlers, the deaf, or parents not wanting to offend those asking.

You'd have to be stupid to take it at face value and not think a little, wouldn't you?

And what would you be if, as a result of your lack of thought, you labelled people as...?

Searching "bach science fair" might bring up some more useful hits for a kid looking for a science fair project.

I think we may be reading the term "non-professional musician" differently. You're reading it as "anyone who is not a professional musician." I'm reading it as "any musician who is not a professional." The English language is not perfect.

I'm not reading it as anything. I'm allowing for flexibility whereas you're labelling people as stupid.

I'm sure when Polyphonist says "People are stupid" he means it in the nicest possible way.

Some people would do well to note that I never asserted anything in the first place.

Perhaps it was inferred; perhaps it was implied.