On melody, math, and whalesong

Until recently, scientists have long regarded music as evolutionarily unimportant – considering language instead to be the key to unlocking human intelligence. Melodic constructions were disregarded as “auditory cheesecake” by researchers such as Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker. But contemporary neurological research at Duke University postulates that language and music are intrinsically connected…and equally important.



In the 500s B.C. the Greek mathematician Pythagoras dedicated his life to analyzing the relationship between numbers and the nature of reality. He believed that studying numbers and harmonious mathematical relationships could reveal divinity and life’s fundamental order. In experimenting with music, Pythagoras discovered a direct relationship between a music note and the physical dimensions of the object that produced it. A plucked string will play a note one octave lower than a string half its length, and one fifth lower than a string two-thirds its length.


Music is math. Math is music.



But this theory necessitates that music exists only in an abstract state, seperate from reality– similar to mathematics, where numbers and proportions are found everywhere but do not themselves concretely exist in our everyday experience. The relationship between music and reality is more complicated than simply math...it involves language as well.



Duke researchers took 100,000 brief segments of speech and recorded which frequency was most emphasized in each sound. The resulting frequencies corresponded almost precisely to the chromatic scale. So, either musical notes are based in language or vice versa. Which developed first? There’s really no way to know for sure…except when you consider that animals existed before humans and have not evolved language – yet have music of their own. Yes, animals create muisc! Just as we prefer music similar to our language, animals make music through their own respective modes of communication, and so humans generally don't recognize the melodies of other species because the method is unfamiliar.



Like, for instance, whales. Humpback and blue whales produce whale song (“the most complex in the animal kingdom”, according to marine biologist Philip Clapham) during mating season. The base units of the song (“notes”) are extended sounds, varying by frequency or amplitude, that last for several seconds. A collection of four to six units is a sub-phrase, lasting around ten seconds. A pair of sub-phrases is a phrase. A whale will generally repeat the same phrase over and over for two to four minutes, creating a theme. A collection of themes creates a full song. Whales sing their unique songs (which can be up to 30 minutes long) over and over for hours or days in their serenading, melodic pursuit of a mate.



Pythagoras was right in believing that all things are connected through numbers. Math is music is abstract auditory cheesecake is whale song. The soul is an eternal, self-moving number that passes from body to body through metempsychosis. Life lasts as long as the flight of a snowflake from the leaden winter skies to the gently swaying surface of the sea – then vanishes without a trace.