[Myrtle]

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How does this involve science, math, and philosophy.

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The prelude title to the question is off key. In fact the question is poorly done for what I was initially intending to ask, but perhaps I was predestined to make this mistake.

-Zeno

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Well, Zeno, I don't know if it was a mistake.....I've been out digging ditches for the past couple of hours.....manual labor is good for the soul.. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Have also been thinking more about your question while laboring and I'd like to take a more detailed (for me) stab at it.

I would preface this attempt with the statement that advanced math is a weakness on my part, so if I make some sort of error, after you're through chuckling, please consider that.

The Math & Science component - I attempted to touch on it in my last post. Let me try to expand and see if it makes any sense at all.

'Music' is comprised of a complex set of tones, which can be mathematically described by what we call their frequency. That frequency (or tone) can be measured (in cycles per second, today called Hertz [Hz]) and a set of numbers ascribed to it. One Hz is then defined as a sound that is produced as sound that completes one sinusoidal waveform. It therefore follows that 30Hz = 30 cycles of that waveform....... 1,000Hz = 1K....etc. etc.

Tones exhibit a number of different behaviors. There is the ‘basic’ tone, and there are other tones that are also generated as a component of this basic tone that we describe as ‘overtones’. Those overtones we have defined as ‘harmonics’. To further complicate this, harmonics can be either ‘even’ or ‘odd’ as multiples of the original tone.

The best practical example that I can think of is: Consider middle C; played on a trumpet, piano, violin, or any of the number of different instruments used to generate music. We immediately recognize the different ‘sound’, however the basic tone is the same. The difference is the complex and unique set of harmonics generated by the each instrument. Once we have experienced middle C on a trumpet, we can immediately differentiate it from middle C on a piano.

Now let me make a jump, and propose that there is a possibility that each of us has a ‘sympathetic set’ of these complex harmonics that is unique to each of us and is determined by our own physical structure.

If that is possible, and we are uniquely ‘pre-tuned’ to physically respond to a particular set of harmonics, could that not possibly be an explanation of the ‘chills up & down our spine’ that many of us experience from time-to-time when listening to music? When we hear the right combination of harmonics that match our own natural physical ‘resonances’, we actually physically respond.

Philosophy - Different discipline, of course, but let me give it a whirl. We are the sum of our experiences: intellectual, emotional, sensual. There are conscious and unconscious aspects of the sum of our experiences, that in my experience can be very deep and personal, and very difficult to describe.

The best way that I can address this issue is to share a few examples and see if it strikes a chord......No pun intended.

Beethoven was going deaf during the composition of his 6th Symphony. By the time he began composing his 7th Symphony, he was completely deaf. Sit down and listen to the 7th sometime, and keep that fact in mind. Listen to the elegiac beauty of the 2nd movement and realize that Beethoven created this without the ability to hear his own creation. My mind boggles when I think of this. Yes, Beethoven was clearly a genius, but the ability to do what he did, handicapped by being totally deaf, goes beyond genius to something that I can’t begin to describe or truly understand. It touches me deeply in ways that I am unable to describe with mere words.

And, oh yea, he then went on to compose his 9th Symphony.....Totally deaf; He never got to hear either of them......

Next experience, with a preface: It’s 1969, I’m an aircrew member in the Navy and in Vietnam. One of our planes goes into the drink on final to a carrier in the Gulf on Tonkin. There are no survivors. I was a friend of everyone on the plane. Herb, the pilot was one of the finest men I have ever met. Jack, one of my best friends was also a pilot, and a close friend of Herbs. When the news got to us, we were dumbfounded, and really didn’t know what to say to one another. Jack pulled out a copy of Prokofiev’s 5th, and we just sat there, not saying a word to each other, and listened to the whole symphony.

Now I’m not sure at all if any the above falls into the category of ‘Philosophy’ vs. personal emotional experience, but to this day, when I listen to the 5th, the intensity of that experience is so vivid, that it all comes back, as if it just happened again.

These are just two of the many ‘connections’ that I experience surrounding music. It has always been my feeling that it affects most others in a similar fashion.

Tell me what music does it for you, and you give me an insight into your soul that I cannot get from mere words......