| In his April, 1978 Mathematical Recreations column of
Scientific American, Martin Gardner expresses the importance of
novelty and familiarity, the two opposing aspects of aesthetic appeal, in this way: |
| "It is commonplace in musical criticism
to say that we enjoy good music because it offers a mixture of order and surprise.
How could it be otherwise? Surprise would not be surprise if there were not sufficient
order for us to anticipate what is likely to come next. If we guess too accurately,
say in listening to a tune that is no more than walking up and down the keyboard
in one-step intervals, there is no surprise at all. Good music, like a person's
life or the pageant of history, is a wonderous mixture of explanation and
unanticipated turns. There is nothing new about this insight, but what Voss
has done is to suggest a mathematical measure of the mixture." |
|
| In the postscript to "White, Brown, and Fractal Music," on pg 393 of The
Night is Large, Martin Gardner writes |
|
"Frank Greenberg called my attention to some 'mountain
music' composed by Sergei Prokofiev from Sergei Eisenstein's
film Alexander Nevsky in 1938. 'Eisenstein provided
Prokfiev with still shots of individual scenes of the movie
as it was being filmed. Prokofiev then took these scenes
and used the silhouette of the landscape and human figures
as a pattern for the position of the notes on the staff.
He then orchestrated around these notes." |
|
| The natural fractal profile of the mountain range led to Prokofiev's composing
fractal music to accompany the film. |