Episode
Dmitri Tymoczko on The Shape of Music: Mathematical Order in Western Tonality
COMPLEXITY · Jun 18, 2022 · 1 h 25 min
Math and music share their mystery and magic. Three notes, played together, make a chord whose properties could not be predicted from those of the separate notes. In the West, music theory and mathematics have common origins and a rich history of shaping and informing one another’s field of inquiry. And, curiously, Western composition has evolved over several hundred years in much the same way…