Issue 73

19 January 1999

Preview

Members of Sinfonia 21

The science of music

Music and the art of mathematics have gone together since the very earliest attempts to organise sound.

One only has to think of 10th and 11th century polyphony or the later music of Machaut and Dufay to realise that music organised by mathematical principles was an expression of devotion to God’s creation.

Friday 29 January Stefan Asbury (conductor); Rosemary Hardy (soprano); Britten Prelude and Fugue; Jonathan Harvey From Silence; Charles Ives Three Places in New England; Julian Anderson Poetry Nearing Silence; Shostakovich Chamber Symphony (arr. Barshai). For information or to book telephone 0171-594 9359.Tickets £10 (concessions £4). Special IC student price £3 (student number must be supplied). Great Hall, Sherfield Building, at 19.30.

Today, although the sacred associations have largely gone, music has maintained its mathematical link to give its essence form and structure.

Britten and Shostakovich, part of the 29 January concert programme, often used ‘old’ disciplines such as fugue to make their language relevant to the listener and the apparent chaos caused by Ives is actually the result of extremely tightly woven layers of material. Tonal and structural construction expresses the poetry in more recent works by Julian Anderson and Jonathan Harvey.

The concert on 29 January also marks the beginning of a new venture with students at the Royal College of Art who have devised a programme using video and projection to enhance and highlight the concert’s musical context.