Mathematics, Melodies, and the Mind

During a minitutorial presentation at the 2018 SIAM Conference on the Life Sciences, currently taking place in Minneapolis, Minn., Daniel Forger presented a series of talks exploring the mathematics behind auditory processing, musical representation and music theory, and the neuroscience of performance. Forger tested Tymoczko’s theory on various pieces of music and found that chords do not typically stay in the center, but rather jump around the diagram. He examined the chords of J.S. Bach’s Trio Sonatas for organ, a complicated set of pedagogical pieces consisting of 18 movements. Forger found that Bach implemented 354 of 364 possible chords, and used 6,582 unique chord progressions. “He’s got this tremendous palette, and he’s not using the same chord progression over and over,” he said. Moreover Forger then addressed the growing relationship between mathematics and neuroscience, which begins with the inner ear’s dynamics.

(Thanks for Lina Sorg who is the associate editor of SIAM News. )