Listen by numbers: music and maths | Music | The Guardian

Listen by numbers: music and maths | Music | The Guardian: "Listen by numbers: music and maths Who says maths is all cold logic and music all emotion? That's nonsense, writes Marcus du Sautoy – the two are intimately connected Share Tweet this inShare 17 Email Marcus du Sautoy The Guardian, Monday 27 June 2011 22.00 BST Jump to comments (…) Sound thinking . . . composer Karlheinz Stockhausen lecturing. Photograph: Garp/Redferns I used to do a lot of counting as a trumpeter in my local youth orchestra. Sitting in the brass section, counting out rests so I didn't crash in early with a fanfare, I began to realise that mathematics and music had even deeper links. It is certainly a connection people have commented on throughout the ages. "Music," wrote the great 17th-century German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, "is the sensation of counting without being aware you were counting." But there is more to this connection than counting. As the French baroque composer Rameau declared in 1722: "I must confess that only with the aid of mathematics did my ideas become clear.""

Sound thinking . . . composer Karlheinz Stockhausen lecturing. Photograph: Garp/Redferns