Pythagoras is the father of harmonic theory, and during World War II, musicians proved exceptional code breakers. In May, Elaine Chew, SM ‘98, PhD ‘00, who directs the Music Computation and Cognition Laboratory at the University of Southern California, came to Killian Hall for a concert and lecture exploring the long-established connection between music and mathematics.
The concert opened with Ivan Tcherepnin’s Fêtes, a fantasia on the melody of “Happy Birthday.” Chew used the piece to demonstrate techniques of “melodic transformation” such as stretto, in which one voice repeats a tune before another has finished it, and inversion, or turning a melody upside down. A projected display of the real-time output of software developed by Chew and USC’s Alexandre François accompanied the performance. As Chew played, the software mapped the piece’s chord progression as a series of geometric shapes moving around a three-dimensional helix.
The final three pieces were written specifically for Chew. Or perhaps “written” is the wrong word, since the next piece, A Simple Gift for Elaine, was generated in part by computer. Rodney Waschka, a professor of arts studies at North Carolina State University, wrote an arrangement of the Shaker melody “Simple Gifts” and fed it through a set of what are called “genetic” algorithms, which randomly deleted notes and recombined bars in new ways. The resulting melodies lurched and feinted surprisingly, but the piece also had passages of great rhythmic vigor.
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