Organic and Created Patterns Through Pulse: Musicality Book Club, Week 3
Last week, we delved into Music as Body (Chapter 1) in Bridge of Waves: What Music Is and How Listening to It Changes the World. Time for Chapter 2! This chapter, titled Music as Mind, discusses at length the philosophical, practical, and technical aspects of musical concepts like pulse, tone, meter, interval, scale, key, melody, harmony, and polyphony. Those unfamiliar with music theory may glaze over in some spots, but gradual familiarity through multiple readings should do the trick and may be valuable in making some connections previously unthought of, both intellectually and emotionally.
Although the more mathematical and technical aspects of music are definitely interesting, I find myself drawn more to the parallels of music in nature and humanity. Both the former and the latter are at once patterned and unpredictable, and it’s the tension between the two that makes life so beautifully comfortable and mysterious at the same time. In the context of music, and pulse (i.e., the beat) more specifically, Mathieu draws out some of this tension by discussing how pulse (what he often calls periodicity) manifests itself organically. What I like about much of what he writes is that he tries to reveal the naturalness that exists beneath the complexity of music theory. Let’s read a few of his thoughts on periodicity:
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