Music on a Clear Möbius Strip - Numberphile

Sdílet
Vložit
  • čas přidán 1. 06. 2024
  • The mathematical genius of JS Bach - featuring Marcus Du Sautoy.
    More links & stuff in full description below ↓↓↓
    See books by Marcus, including his latest "Thinking Better: The Art of the Shortcut" --- amzn.to/3j5FygD
    Marcus' website with latest info: www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk
    Marcus on Twitter: / marcusdusautoy
    Other Marcus videos on Numberphile: bit.ly/Marcus_Numberphile
    Marcus on the Numberphile podcast: • A Chance at Immortalit...
    Unexpected Shapes: • Unexpected Shapes (Par...
    Numberphile is supported by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI): bit.ly/MSRINumberphile
    We are also supported by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science. www.simonsfoundation.org/outr...
    And support from Math For America - www.mathforamerica.org/
    NUMBERPHILE
    Website: www.numberphile.com/
    Numberphile on Facebook: / numberphile
    Numberphile tweets: / numberphile
    Subscribe: bit.ly/Numberphile_Sub
    Videos by Brady Haran
    Animation by Pete McPartlan
    Patreon: / numberphile
    Numberphile T-Shirts and Merch: teespring.com/stores/numberphile
    Brady's videos subreddit: / bradyharan
    Brady's latest videos across all channels: www.bradyharanblog.com/
    Sign up for (occasional) emails: eepurl.com/YdjL9
  • Věda a technologie

Komentáře • 814

  • @pyglik2296
    @pyglik2296 Před 2 lety +1105

    "I wrote this piece on a Möbius strip."
    "What's Möbius strip?"
    "I don't know. He hasn't been born yet."

    • @ObjectsInMotion
      @ObjectsInMotion Před 2 lety +134

      "But your children are gonna love it..."

    • @Pumpkin-man
      @Pumpkin-man Před 2 lety +25

      Oooooo a back to the future joke! Haven’t seen that in a while. Nicely done, both of you.

    • @maxlobner6428
      @maxlobner6428 Před 2 lety +2

      what about frank möbus

    • @JJONNYREPP
      @JJONNYREPP Před 6 měsíci

      Music on a Clear Möbius Strip - Numberphile 0148am 17.11.23 not to be confused with morphias strip... which is a druggy dream... waking nightmare one has with no end... maths and music... that's been delved into ad nauseam. damon albarn used numerical values to create his score for the monkey: journey to the west......................the perpetual morbius strip musical score will be the precursor to the electronic snyth sampler which takes one sound or piece of music and repeats it ad infinitum until it morphs with the addition of other mobius strip sounds added to it or morphs due to an ad hoc glitch in the electronic repetition... p.s not to mention the old bon tempi kids organ which used numbers to allow a child to learn the rudiments of keyboard playing with aplomb. hurrah!!!

    • @Triantalex
      @Triantalex Před 5 měsíci

      ??

  • @MattKitten
    @MattKitten Před 2 lety +1839

    Time to put it on a Klein bottle, so we can have more of Cliff Stoll

    • @gallium-gonzollium
      @gallium-gonzollium Před 2 lety +21

      Play Born by Klein on it

    • @diarandor
      @diarandor Před 2 lety +26

      You can't put it "inside" a Klein bottle 'cause it has no inner side.

    • @xinfinity4756
      @xinfinity4756 Před 2 lety +65

      @@diarandor nobody said "inside" besides you

    • @diarandor
      @diarandor Před 2 lety +33

      @@xinfinity4756 Yes, you said "inside" too.
      Checkmate!

    • @dlee645
      @dlee645 Před 2 lety +4

      Yes!

  • @kevinslater4126
    @kevinslater4126 Před 2 lety +385

    My father had a master's degree in physics and a doctorate in music. He would have loved to see this.

  • @Glass-vf8il
    @Glass-vf8il Před 2 lety +590

    Bringing back memories of vihart’s old video on this topic.

    • @du42bz
      @du42bz Před 2 lety +9

      Hello comrade

    • @benn-n8100
      @benn-n8100 Před 2 lety +17

      those were the days :')

    • @52flyingbicycles
      @52flyingbicycles Před 2 lety +28

      Vihart/Numberphile crossover when?

    • @barutaji
      @barutaji Před 2 lety +19

      The memories all comming bach aren't them?

    • @thatoneguy9582
      @thatoneguy9582 Před 2 lety +18

      so say you're me and you're in math class,

  • @kevwang0712
    @kevwang0712 Před 2 lety +437

    Correction at 4:30 and 4:38: as the video is still referring to the Crab Canon ("Canon Cancrizans") in The Musical Offering, it's actually not "turning the tune upside down" ("inversion" in counterpoint terminology), but rather "playing the tune backwards" (i.e. "retrograde motion"). The Musical Offering does contain a canon that involves "turning the tune upside down", which is the first of the two "Quaerendo invenietis" ("seek and you shall find") canons (the one for two voices), and this one actually has at least four possible solutions-"seek and you shall find", so Bach deliberately left this as a mystery.

    • @elijahbachrach6579
      @elijahbachrach6579 Před 2 lety +10

      The audio visuals speak for themselves. Anyone can see that he hasn’t actually flipped the thing.

    • @calebcassell3628
      @calebcassell3628 Před 2 lety +28

      @@elijahbachrach6579 The added context is still interesting regardless!

    • @elijahbachrach6579
      @elijahbachrach6579 Před 2 lety +4

      @@calebcassell3628 that’s great!

    • @querziop3.142
      @querziop3.142 Před 2 lety +31

      Interesting bit of information: In German, the retrograde motion ("playing backwards") is actually called "Krebs" or crab in English whereas the inversion is also called "Inversion" in German

    • @buzzyproton5885
      @buzzyproton5885 Před 2 lety +1

      Ok nerd

  • @Peenyouwass
    @Peenyouwass Před 2 lety +303

    I absolutely love the fact that "there are exactly Du Sautoy crossing points among the diagonals of a regular nonagon" is something that has now been stored in my brain, and I wanna thank you for that

    • @topquark22
      @topquark22 Před 2 lety +5

      I did not know that. I am a mathematician and a composer. Maybe I can create some music based on that.

    • @Triantalex
      @Triantalex Před 5 měsíci +1

      ??

  • @hughbarton5743
    @hughbarton5743 Před 2 lety +27

    I'm a mediocre musician, and certainly no sort of mathematician.
    But this presentation somehow supports something a concert pianist once said to me: "Bach is the sound of the universe in motion." I've always thought this was true subjectively, but perhaps this is why it felt so right.
    Thank you as always!

    • @meep9847
      @meep9847 Před 2 lety

      Love this comment!

    • @AdrianOlivas_
      @AdrianOlivas_ Před rokem +1

      What a fantstic comment!

    • @hughbarton5743
      @hughbarton5743 Před rokem

      Thank you for your kind words.
      PS: the same pianist said , in the same breath, that Mr. Beethoven was the very essence of the human soul.
      Think he nailed that too.

  • @rareroe305
    @rareroe305 Před 2 lety +198

    Whenever I see a piece by Bach, I'm always like, "Yup, here's someone who didn't play a wind instrument."

    • @btat16
      @btat16 Před 2 lety +30

      Unless you count a church organ, haha. But yes, his lines are looooooooong

    • @DennisKovacich
      @DennisKovacich Před 2 lety +8

      Couldn’t those long lines be played on a bagpipe?

    • @btat16
      @btat16 Před 2 lety +71

      @@DennisKovacich A bachpipe

    • @DennisKovacich
      @DennisKovacich Před 2 lety +11

      @@btat16, I’m ashamed of myself for not thinking of that!

    • @andymcl92
      @andymcl92 Před 2 lety +17

      I played a Bach piece on saxophone as one of my final exams in school. He definitely didn't write it for sax, and probably wouldn't have wanted vibrato on it, but it worked really well!

  • @OmnipotentPotato
    @OmnipotentPotato Před 2 lety +55

    As a classical and baroque music enjoyer, and an amateur mathematician, this is really one of the best videos I've ever seen.

  • @willjohnston2959
    @willjohnston2959 Před 2 lety +250

    Really super animations for this one! Great work Pete!

    • @MrDowntownjbrown
      @MrDowntownjbrown Před 2 lety +7

      Hoping there could be a podcast or video with Pete. Would love to see a BTS for Numberphile! (behind-the-scenes, not the boy band)

    • @HyenHks
      @HyenHks Před 2 lety +3

      @@MrDowntownjbrown I'm guessing he's using Blender

    • @brandonwilson7371
      @brandonwilson7371 Před 2 lety +1

      Those imperfections in the mirrors surface. I noticed. I appreciated.

    • @ChristopherWanha
      @ChristopherWanha Před 2 lety +1

      As the light approaches the mirror its reflected image shouldn't show or getting further away.

  • @Volvith
    @Volvith Před 2 lety +6

    I've never understood why we'd send music into space, after all, it's just a collection of notes.
    But now i do.
    Because it's probably the most objectively complex piece of audio/visual data we _can_ send.
    It's beautiful.

  • @vincentblair4019
    @vincentblair4019 Před 2 lety +116

    🎶 This is the song that never ends. It goes on and on, my friends...🎵

    • @jwwthree
      @jwwthree Před 2 lety +13

      Some people started singing it, not knowing what it was...

    • @lyrablack8621
      @lyrablack8621 Před 2 lety +13

      @@jwwthree And they'll continue singin' it forever just because…

    • @vincentblair4019
      @vincentblair4019 Před 2 lety +10

      🎶 This is the song that never ends. It goes on and on, my friends...🎵

    • @dabrusterguy
      @dabrusterguy Před 2 lety +8

      Some people started singing it, not knowing what it was.

    • @stylis666
      @stylis666 Před 2 lety +9

      And they'll continue singing 'til forever just because...

  • @existentialcrisisactor
    @existentialcrisisactor Před 2 lety +50

    I love seeing mathematicians analyze music.

    • @strayling1
      @strayling1 Před 2 lety +4

      I was going to say I'd like to see musicians analyse mathematics, but then realised that's what Bach did.

  • @spyguy318
    @spyguy318 Před 2 lety +12

    Mozart got into this too! There’s a violin duet that only uses one sheet of music, it’s placed flat on a table and the violinists stand on either end, one playing from beginning to end, the other playing upside down and backwards, and it’s a pleasant duet.
    There’s so much crazy math/patterns/codes in music. Bach would often encode his own name (Bb A C B, which could be read as H in German) into his music as well.

    • @rosiefay7283
      @rosiefay7283 Před 2 lety

      It's been attributed to Mozart -- do we know for sure that Mozart composed it?

  • @stapler942
    @stapler942 Před 2 lety +321

    I have a bit of a correction here, Bach did not invent the puzzle canon, those were an established tradition in polyphony from the Late Medieval/early Renaissance at least.

    • @alextemplemusic
      @alextemplemusic Před 2 lety +68

      True! I bet fans of this channel would be interested in Johannes Ciconia's infamous puzzle canon "Le ray au soleil," in which the same melody is played simultaneously at three different speeds with a ratio of 4:3:1. And that was about 300 years before Bach!

    • @stapler942
      @stapler942 Před 2 lety +18

      @@alextemplemusic Nice!
      Of course if we go to the 1900's and onwards...Messiaen's rhythmic canons and modes of limited transposition are straight out of mathematics. ☺️

    • @elijahbachrach6579
      @elijahbachrach6579 Před 2 lety +31

      That claim wasn’t made in this video. The correction is still welcome However, because inattentive viewers might have have felt that it was implied.

    • @wyattreed4024
      @wyattreed4024 Před 2 lety +4

      @@stapler942 I was really hoping they would name drop some serialist composers haha

    • @stapler942
      @stapler942 Před 2 lety +3

      @@wyattreed4024 Yeah combinatorics and set theory is referenced by name in 20th-century theory but I think it's largely the kind that says "we'll use a little bit of this here, some of that, but it's still up to your own personal spice."
      Determinism and stochastic processes, it's like a box of chocolates.
      Uh...some other kinda metaphor here.

  • @Bill_Woo
    @Bill_Woo Před 2 lety +112

    One thing that was at first unclear it that the reverse playing is still right side up. I initially thought that you turned the page over. So in my imagination you would not be not playing the same notes backwards, but rather their counterparts on an inverted staff. EITHER OF THOSE WAYS, that he figured it out without recording devices or software is mind blowing. Actually, it seems that doing it as he did without inverting, using the same notes, would seem to be _more_ difficult!!

    • @QuantumHistorian
      @QuantumHistorian Před 2 lety +15

      Fully agree, saying "upside down" to mean "in reverse" is just plain confusing (if not downright wrong).

    • @jamesrockybullin5250
      @jamesrockybullin5250 Před 2 lety +8

      I get what you're saying about reversing. On a mobius canon, the parts are swapped and inverted rather than played in retrograde. I actually wrote four Mobius canons and posted them on my youtube channel here: /watch?v=HdSnwb_X6q4 if you'd like.
      Recording devices or software won't really help you to compose this type of music, it really is about identifying and following a set of rules about what melodic and harmonic intervals you can use. Mobius canons are actually much easier to write than some other types of canons, where there are many more restrictions!

    • @p0gr
      @p0gr Před 2 lety +1

      but the sign painted at the end indicates where the base tone is. so for it to be upside down too he'd have to have drawn it near the top of the line.

    • @patricktho6546
      @patricktho6546 Před 2 lety

      agreed.

    • @GreatWhiteElf
      @GreatWhiteElf Před 2 lety

      To be fair, he did have a recording device. It was just pen and paper.

  • @geraldsnodd
    @geraldsnodd Před 2 lety +11

    As a person who loves Mathematics my favorite composer is also Johann Sébastien Bach particularly his Brandenburg concerto 3,4,5 and Minuet & Bardinerie.

  • @DanielTompkinsGuitar
    @DanielTompkinsGuitar Před 2 lety +6

    I think Bach's Fugue in E minor (Well-Tempered Clavier book I) can also be visualized on a Möbius strip. Also, one of the many neat things of his Musical Offering is that the music is printed such that the music can be placed on a table, musicians can stand on either side of the table, pretend that their side is right-side-up, and the same melody makes counterpoint. So not only is it mathematically interesting, but it's also creative in how musicians occupy their space.

  • @samueldelacruz2659
    @samueldelacruz2659 Před 2 lety +121

    The book "Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Dr Hofstadter is a must read to really appreciate the level of intelligence needed to compose something like this.

    • @IDoNotLikeHandlesOnYT
      @IDoNotLikeHandlesOnYT Před 2 lety +7

      And now (not having read that book yet) I finally understand why Bach is included in the title :)

    • @ndwind
      @ndwind Před 2 lety +3

      Just wanted to say the same

    • @endthisnonsense7202
      @endthisnonsense7202 Před 2 lety

      Indeed, mandatory for any mathematician that has an interest in Bach, any musician that has an interest in math.

    • @robin888official
      @robin888official Před 2 lety

      Came to the comments to write that. Learned about what makes Bachs music so special in there. That book is a masterpiece by itself.

    • @JJONNYREPP
      @JJONNYREPP Před 6 měsíci

      Music on a Clear Möbius Strip - Numberphile 0156am 17.11.23 allegedly, it's mobius strip appreciation day if you interact with BING....

  • @GODDAMNLETMEJOIN
    @GODDAMNLETMEJOIN Před 2 lety +4

    Your dedication to pronouncing the umlaut on the Ö in Möbius is impressive

  • @AmadeusFisarmonicus
    @AmadeusFisarmonicus Před rokem +3

    There’s now a three-tune canon on a transparent mobius strip written by Jacques Raffine. It’s on his youtube channel.

  • @donaldasayers
    @donaldasayers Před 2 lety +5

    Going back to the 60s, the BBC drama Z-Cars had a very distinctive theme tune. The spin off series "Softly Softly" was the same piece of music simply turned upside down.

  • @stapler942
    @stapler942 Před 2 lety +125

    I do think we're kind of overselling the idea that Bach was a strictly "mathematical" composer and that distinguished him from all his contemporaries.
    Bach was a master of counterpoint, which relies heavily on the European Renaissance tradition of polyphonic style which is arguably even more "complex" than the Baroque style. It was the sort of thing you dedicated your life to in mastering. It's not as simple as "learn math and then learn composition". Just the sort of person who learned composition in Europe tended to have a pretty rounded education in all sorts of things.
    It's not like Handel, Telemann, Vivaldi, Scarlatti, etc., were not "mathematical" in the same sense...

    • @topsecret1837
      @topsecret1837 Před 2 lety +1

      As it is, Vivaldi and Bach very much knew about each over and transposed each over’s works to their respective instruments (Bach transposed Vivaldi’s Concerto Grosso in D minor, for example, to organ).
      But the thing about Bach is the extent that he filled his music with symmetry and mathematics. Never did anybody before attempt such levels of polyphony, and nobody since him seems to have attempted to.
      Unless I’m wrong, where you can specifically give me examples of composers before Bach at this level, and the composition that they wrote that did instead of going ad hominem.

    • @cheaterman49
      @cheaterman49 Před 2 lety

      @@topsecret1837 From my limited knowledge of the subject I believe Ravel would count as someone who tried it since? But obviously centuries later.

    • @stapler942
      @stapler942 Před 2 lety +7

      @@topsecret1837 I'm not sure how this comment is an ad hominem?

    • @pullt
      @pullt Před 2 lety +1

      @@stapler942 Of course he's wrong, what with having a username like Top Secret....

    • @tinfang-warble
      @tinfang-warble Před 2 lety +10

      @@topsecret1837 Oh, there's tons of examples. Johannes Ockeghem, for instance, wrote music that involves insane transformational polyphony like the Missa prolationum or which exhaustively explores certain combinatorial spaces, like the Missa cuiusvis toni. And for sheer number of voices in polyphony, Bach rarely competes at the level of the Renaissance masters. Thomas Tallis's Spem in alium is a famous example, but even something simpler like Palestrina's Magnificat primi toni uses 8 independent polyphonic voices. Bach is great, but the mathematical hero worship of him isn't historically accurate. Plus one really ought to consider the fact that his musically great works--the ones that are actually loved the most, like the Brandenburg concertos, the keyboard suites, the WTC, the cello suites, and so on--aren't really "mathematical" in the naive way of a puzzle canon. They're certainly musically rich in a way that music theory can elucidate, and in a sense music theory is a branch of math like game theory is, but the actually interesting structures there are more complicated than the simple symmetries in this video. (And Bach is hardly the only composer to do really sophisticated stuff with them.)

  • @TheKaveSF
    @TheKaveSF Před 2 lety +8

    It's strange that i'm just sitting here today trying to overlay a guitar bridge-solo onto a section written this week by my bassist which puts us working in opposite compositional directions until the big chorus drop comes back. Cuz, why not? I think it's always important to remember that Bach also was exploring these ideas as a vehicle for a bit of whimsy (as you embody here), even if most listeners did not, and will not ever, recognize these mechanisms. (The real trick was a sexy modality on top of all this.) Thank you for this very cool post which feels a lot like Hofstadter's fun musings in video form.

  • @oreodog
    @oreodog Před 2 lety +4

    This is kinda only scratching the surface of Bach. Smalin is a youtuber who visualizes a lot of pieces of music, and he especially loves Bach pieces. Look them up on his channel :)

  • @John_Ridley
    @John_Ridley Před 2 lety +15

    Interestingly as a choral singer, I have always found Bach's music to be very easy to memorize, once I get a few bars in I can generally tell where it's going. Only if I don't think about it too much, my subconscious is certainly smarter than I am :D

    • @MaggaraMarine
      @MaggaraMarine Před 2 lety +1

      Not all Bach's music was this "mathematical", though. I mean, sure, his music does always have a clear structure behind it (and it is definitely carefully structured, and not just random train of thought), but this kind of "games" were probably just him having fun. A lot of the complexity behind most of Bach's music has to do with counterpoint, i.e., multiple melodic lines that happen at the same time.

    • @TheMursk
      @TheMursk Před 2 lety +1

      You're a highly trained neural network

  • @Nikioko
    @Nikioko Před 2 lety +9

    Crab canon is also the perfect example of how a counterpoint works. Just flip it vertically as well.

  • @AthAthanasius
    @AthAthanasius Před 2 lety +82

    FWIW, ignoring any case of course:
    'du sautoy' = 126
    'marcus du sautoy' = 201

    • @canrex7540
      @canrex7540 Před 2 lety +6

      Thank you, was hoping someone took the time for this

    • @EvanTse
      @EvanTse Před 2 lety +16

      Of which 126 is the number of crossings of the diagonals in a regular nonagon

    • @Primaeros
      @Primaeros Před 2 lety +1

      @@EvanTse Oh so that's what the cut-in figure was about

    • @Abigail-hu5wf
      @Abigail-hu5wf Před 2 lety +2

      While 201 is not prime, it is semi-prime as its factors are 1, 3, 67, and 201. :)

    • @fromdarknesscomeslight6894
      @fromdarknesscomeslight6894 Před 2 lety +4

      Just "Sautoy" is 101.

  • @ahobimo732
    @ahobimo732 Před 2 lety +2

    I like the smart corner of CZcams. It's peaceful here.

  • @robertwalker-smith2739
    @robertwalker-smith2739 Před 2 lety +15

    I have always known that there is a connection between music and mathematics, because they're the two academic subjects I find hardest to understand.

    • @meep9847
      @meep9847 Před 2 lety +1

      Made me laugh hahahaa

  • @DeclanMBrennan
    @DeclanMBrennan Před 2 lety +1

    Marcus Du Sautoy is always a joy to listen to but the illustrator deserves a special round of applause also.

    • @DeclanMBrennan
      @DeclanMBrennan Před 2 lety

      Who I just found out is Pete McPartlan. Informative while still being quite simple which I'm sure is far easier said than done.

  • @jasonsavory9748
    @jasonsavory9748 Před 2 lety +114

    Bordering on condescending here, music is maths and to land so hard on “Bach couldn’t have made this music without studying maths” is to misunderstand how complex a craft composition is and that the study of it likely was akin to the study of maths anyway

    • @prdoyle
      @prdoyle Před 2 lety +14

      Nonsense. Music and maths are "akin" but they are most definitely not the same thing. To claim otherwise is to overlook Bach's particular mathematical talents that are not shared by most musicians, just as his musical talents are not shared by most mathematicians.

    • @rosiefay7283
      @rosiefay7283 Před 2 lety

      I disagree. You argue that composition is a craft. To me your argument rather indicates that it is an art, and thus cannot be reduced to just maths.

    • @tabaks
      @tabaks Před 2 lety

      You're trying too hard. He never claims what you're hearing. Hearing voices much?

    • @willtowers1532
      @willtowers1532 Před 2 lety +4

      @@prdoyle not only did Bach compose music that he had very particular restrictions, fugal structure, counterpoint and the rules of 18th century western harmony, but he also made his compositions musical

    • @jasonsavory9748
      @jasonsavory9748 Před 2 lety +15

      @@rosiefay7283 my point is that to use a mathematical, highly structured approach to your music the options are more than ‘get it by chance’ or ‘study maths’

  • @Thirst4livingwater
    @Thirst4livingwater Před 2 lety +5

    As a musician and math nerd this just brings me joy

  • @TheMrByrom
    @TheMrByrom Před 2 lety +6

    There is a type of music called table music where you place the music on the table and the 2 musicians play on opposite sides of the table. One is playing it normal and the other backwards and upside down.

    • @dereksheldon0356
      @dereksheldon0356 Před rokem

      Yes - check out Golden Syrup by Jacques Raffine, it's a fine example of table music.

  • @markjreed
    @markjreed Před 2 lety +10

    If you apply the Bach=14 algorithm to "Du Sautoy", you get 4 + 21 + 19 + 1 + 21 + 20 + 15 + 25 = 126. So close to not only a prime but a Mersenne prime (2⁷-1=127), but not quite there. :)

    • @MattBaker789
      @MattBaker789 Před 2 lety

      No one will have a last name of a prime number unless their name is just one of these letters (e.g., B, C, E, G, K, M, Q, S, or W), secret agents notwithstanding.

    • @andrewbennu
      @andrewbennu Před 2 lety +5

      @@MattBaker789 Counterexample: If my last name was Bart, the letters would add up to 41, which is a prime number. ( B=2 , A=1 , R=18, T=20 ; 2+1+18+20 = 41 )

    • @sunriseinspector
      @sunriseinspector Před 2 lety +2

      @Mark Reed It missed that Mersenne Prime by one, but is... 2+4+8+16+32+64

    • @markjreed
      @markjreed Před 2 lety +2

      @@andrewbennu Indeed. Other counterexamples just within the top 50 US surnames: Baker=37, Harris=73, Hill=41, Jackson=73, King=41, Nelson=79, Rivera=73, Roberts=97.

    • @colinslant
      @colinslant Před 2 lety +1

      A Parker prime?

  • @HeyMJ.
    @HeyMJ. Před 2 lety +10

    Excellent episode! Thank you very much for sharing a beautiful aspect of Bach’s music. Ahhhh.. 🎧

  • @alaspooryorick9946
    @alaspooryorick9946 Před 2 lety +4

    A composer's favorite composer too. The Newton of music.

  • @liammcooper
    @liammcooper Před 2 lety +3

    Now we're talking.
    There's also 'table canons' which are one sheet of music which are placed on a table with a person on either side, written in such a way that they can both read their individual parts. And of course, Schoenberg's 12-tone systems.
    Also if you didn't know, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences has the ability to listen to the sequences.

  • @kjl3080
    @kjl3080 Před 2 lety +52

    It's a very interesting way of conveying the 12-tone technique, as a musician that's an interesting thought that you could visualize the transformations using a mobius strip!

    • @lepidotos
      @lepidotos Před 2 lety

      I learned about crab canons years ago, it didn't even occur to me to use a möbius strip. I don't think I'm entirely fond of how it's explained here, though.

  • @peterkelley6344
    @peterkelley6344 Před 2 lety +9

    Did not know these things about Bach! The depth of his understanding just amazes me! I wonder what he would do in our time? (2020's) Probably even MORE impressive music.

  • @samuelvilz
    @samuelvilz Před 2 lety +1

    Numberphile back at it again with the marvellous content. Thank you for sharing!

  • @karenmcgady7637
    @karenmcgady7637 Před 2 lety +1

    MUSIC = MATHS! YES!!!!! Thank you for this beautiful little video!!! I must get this sheet music!

  • @knexman427
    @knexman427 Před 2 lety +1

    Brilliant video, absolutely hooked from the first second

  • @PC_Simo
    @PC_Simo Před rokem +4

    ”Sautoy” is 101. So, it is a prime number; *_AND_* a very important number in the context of education. It’s also a prime in base-10, *_AND_* base-2, where it’s ”5”, the only ”cyclops prime”, in binary. Very nice 👍🏻. Now, if you add the ”Du” to it, you will, unfortunately be adding 4 + 21 = 25 to it; so, it won’t be prime, anymore; since it’s even, and greater than 2. So, 126 = 2n > 2.

  • @bradipogigante
    @bradipogigante Před 2 lety +6

    At 2:29 and 2:30, the synthesizer plays two wrong notes. These errors present themselves each time the canon is repeated.

    • @DCaff21
      @DCaff21 Před 2 lety

      Commenting to give this comment more attention

  • @Qenton
    @Qenton Před 2 lety +7

    Made me have to go back and listen to "Switched-on Bach" again.

  • @terryplatt8115
    @terryplatt8115 Před 2 lety +1

    If there had been three of him (Bach), being obsessed with the number 14, they would have been the answer to Life, The Universe And Everything - and Douglas Adams was very appreciative of the mathematical aspects of Bach's music.

  • @user-qb2cy5kb6t
    @user-qb2cy5kb6t Před 2 lety +9

    Great video! Bach’s own signature as a third topic in the unfinished Contrapunctus XIV (14!) of the Art of Fugue would probably be worth mentioning here as well :)

  • @macronencer
    @macronencer Před 2 lety

    Brilliant! As a maths graduate of course I've read Hofstadter... but I didn't realise how far this rabbit hole went. There were people corresponding about the maths in the music? Amazing!

  • @worlddestroyer2499
    @worlddestroyer2499 Před 2 lety +9

    I always feel so smart when I get notifications for these types of videos

  • @telectronix1368
    @telectronix1368 Před 2 lety +23

    8:40 This is the assertion that I don't think is actually proved by "oh well it was just....SO.....complex that he must have explicitly been thinking of the music in abstract mathematics as well".
    Music has rhythm, harmonies that you can, as a musician and composer, **feel** while you are playing/composing.
    The assertion 'no one could have such a complex and experienced sense of music.....so he must have been knowingly following an algorithm' is closer to "well WE can't believe any other human is capable of this" than 'and this work could ONLY have been completed with explicit use of maths'.

    • @SgtSupaman
      @SgtSupaman Před 2 lety +4

      Yeah, it's like saying that a professional basketball player that hits more jump shots than anyone else must have a thorough understanding of the math behind trajectory and optimal arc angles, when, in reality, it is something one can get a feel for without learning a single equation.

    • @yashrawat9409
      @yashrawat9409 Před 2 lety +2

      @@SgtSupaman yes just as a ⚽ scores his free kicks, simultaneously all the equation and numbers are flying bu

    • @VaughanMcAlley
      @VaughanMcAlley Před 2 lety +1

      The artistry is making the maths serve the music, rather than the other way around.

    • @telectronix1368
      @telectronix1368 Před 2 lety +1

      @@SgtSupaman Plus the absence, afaik, of any reference by Bach to 'and this is the algorithm/mathematics that I used' or evidence of using these techniques.
      (Just as you aren't going to have basketball players writing about 'I saw it like numbers' )
      **We** would need to use those sorts of tools but Bach.....not necessarily.

    • @willjohnston2959
      @willjohnston2959 Před 2 lety

      @@telectronix1368 The evidence is in the humorous use of upside down or backwards clefs, indicating the kind of rotation or reflection to use, and in the transpositions and shifts (fugue-like) in the notations, which mathematicians use in describing symmetries. I don't think du Sautoy is saying Bach "used mathematics" so much as that mathematics offers a way to describe some of these feats. These highly constrained pieces are short and not representative of all of Bach's work.

  • @handavid6421
    @handavid6421 Před 2 lety +3

    Bach is forever. Thank you.

  • @dedge8425
    @dedge8425 Před 2 lety

    Playing the one side of the strip... together... Love it.

  • @aL3891_
    @aL3891_ Před 2 lety +1

    really cool, would love to have more videos on bach and math and music in general :)

  • @dabrusterguy
    @dabrusterguy Před 2 lety +6

    Interesting that Contrapunctus 14 is the fugue in which Bach introduced his name as the fugal subject (and which he never completed). Didn't realize before Bach associated his name with the number 14.

    • @clarabatty8696
      @clarabatty8696 Před 2 lety

      Bach is made up of letters 1,2,3 and 8 of the alphabet, which sum to 14, maybe that's why?

    • @pablom.5698
      @pablom.5698 Před 2 lety

      @@clarabatty8696 Correct

  • @SuperMaDBrothers
    @SuperMaDBrothers Před 2 lety +12

    3:19 the light is going in the same direction in the mirror… how very odd

    • @KimonFrousios
      @KimonFrousios Před 2 lety +3

      The light shows the note played. The music piece is mirrored and the mirror image is then played normally, at the same time as the original non-mirrored piece.

  • @joseph7858
    @joseph7858 Před 2 lety +1

    so much joy! thank you! (this is how I can approach music, probably) ☺️

  • @VallisYT
    @VallisYT Před 2 lety +6

    I never quite had the courage to delve into classical music, yet it is absolutely fascinating to see the inner complexities and mathematical intricacies beneath something that was already impressive and beautiful on the surface.

    • @ericherde1
      @ericherde1 Před rokem

      Well, Bach is Baroque, not Classical.

  • @dhy5342
    @dhy5342 Před 2 lety +1

    You might also see "der Spiegal", a violin duet attributed to Mozart where two violinists play at the same time while reading from opposite sides of the same sheet of music. Also Mozart's K.388 Serenade for Winds.

  • @Burubrikoos
    @Burubrikoos Před 2 lety +1

    What a brilliant video! Great story, told so vividly!

  • @JxH
    @JxH Před 2 lety

    More with Prof Marcus Du Sautoy please. Some of his old BBC podcasts about numbers and maths are simply wonderful. :-)

  • @InYourDreams-Andia
    @InYourDreams-Andia Před 2 lety +1

    Interesting! I use numbers in musical comps all the time, play the math, and have a few numerical features that kept popping up.. So I adopted them as a universal truth. This mobious strip blew my mind!

  • @KarstenJohansson
    @KarstenJohansson Před 2 lety +8

    Playing music backward and playing it upside down aren't the same thing. Thankfully there are visuals so I know which one it is he actually means. Since he demonstrates exactly that difference when explaining how the particular Goldberg Variation was to be played, I'm surprised he would have confused upside down and backward earlier in the same video.

  • @FrankBenlin
    @FrankBenlin Před 2 lety

    Pardon the marathon comment but it does have a point if you have the time.
    When I was in high school the combination of my severely dyslexic brain, basic algebra, and a horrible algebra teacher had me attempting to quit school and go full time at the steak house I worked at until I was old enough to join the navy just to escape the situation. Mom was having nothing to do with that plan. During this same time, I was in band and couldn't make heads or tails of sheet music. Fortunately during the first read of new music the conductor would always sing the parts as he was going through the piece with each part of the orchestra. Hearing the part was all I needed to be able to play it. It was my little secret that I compare to people who can't read that have little tricks to cover for their illiteracy.
    Fast forward to years later when I was teaching myself to play the cello, if I could whistle it I could play it. As I was learning more and more songs that darn algebra, that same algebra that had me thinking that putting my life at risk to escape as a better option, kept popping into my head. Then I started realizing that music was a huge algebraic equation. This equals that. Everything I played had a point where = fit right in.
    Does this make any sense to anyone? Any other dyslexic, play by ear people out there?

  • @jgunther3398
    @jgunther3398 Před rokem

    So refreshing to see a bow casually in the background instead of an electric guitar

  • @ze_rubenator
    @ze_rubenator Před 2 lety +8

    These ways of transforming a melody, also known as inversions, is one of the fundamental ideas of invertible counterpoint, which is the style Bach is most known for. Each melody, or _theme_ is subsequently broken into smaller pieces, or _motifs._ Then composition is all about interweaving and playing these themes and motifs in all manner of ways; forwards, backwards, upside down, backwards _and_ upside down, faster, slower, in different keys, in different scales, with different rhythm, broken up into smaller pieces and rearranged, and so on.
    Usually we call such a piece of music a fugue (or a fugato if it is short). It is a fiendishly difficult form to master, because the line between beautiful harmony and incomprehensible cacophony is super thin.

    • @eatpant1412
      @eatpant1412 Před 2 lety

      Very informative, thanks

    • @mattgio1172
      @mattgio1172 Před 2 lety +1

      If you're talking about the mobius strip, calling it a fugue isn't really correct - fugues and canons both use invertible counterpoint. In a fugue, an entire musical theme is stated (or mostly stated) before the next one starts, and fugues have development after the exposition. Also - it's rare for a fugue to only be two voices. This, however, fits the definition of 'canon' nearly perfectly, and Bach was known for writing many different types of these.

    • @ze_rubenator
      @ze_rubenator Před 2 lety +3

      @@mattgio1172 I should have made it clear that I'm not talking about the möbius strip. I could have gone into the difference between a fugue and a canon too, and a whole host of other things, but there's only so much you can cram into a CZcams comment before it becomes too dense and incomprehensible to the layman. I already felt there was too much unexplained jargon.

  • @Diana-he5rl
    @Diana-he5rl Před 2 lety +1

    Yet another evidence that music is a beautiful gift from the higher dimension ✨

  • @ianviljoen9036
    @ianviljoen9036 Před 2 lety

    The plastic paper at 7:29 blew my mind away

  • @TheBlindfischLP
    @TheBlindfischLP Před 2 lety +3

    I loved the crab canon so much, that I learned to play it on the piano this spring, although I can't play the piano otherwise.

  • @ValkyRiver
    @ValkyRiver Před 2 lety +1

    I wrote the piece “Ricercar a 7” during my school camp. It was a 7-part fugue on the king’s theme.
    I used it as a symbol for nostalgia.

  • @damarisparker7348
    @damarisparker7348 Před 2 lety

    I knit and crochet true mobius strips. Fascinating fun with fibre

  • @GreRe9
    @GreRe9 Před 2 lety +1

    Btw, in German the musical note B is called H and B-flat (B♭) is simply called B. Hence Bach was able to write is surname in music: B♭ - A - C - B.

  • @BenisenB99
    @BenisenB99 Před 2 lety

    Put Marcus’ shirt on the numberphile shop! That things is amazing! And awesome video as usual of course

  • @kevgermany
    @kevgermany Před 2 lety

    Fascinating, thanks.

  • @chinmaychandraunshuh
    @chinmaychandraunshuh Před 2 lety

    Wow, this is soo beautiful.

  • @seedrank_a
    @seedrank_a Před 2 lety

    Thank you very much for the outro, It is my new ringtone now! 🎵📱🎶

  • @Ozymandi_as
    @Ozymandi_as Před 2 lety

    John Eliot Gardiner makes a convincing case that Bach's obsessive pursuit of symmetry and harmony derived from a personality disorder caused by childhood trauma. There is something profoundly cleansing about the clarity that emerges from his polyphony, in the same way that mathematics can discern order in a chaotic universe. We often turn to Bach's music in moments of crisis, to help us through the storm. It's fascinating to think that he did the same.

  • @maynardtrendle820
    @maynardtrendle820 Před 2 lety +1

    I was certain this was going to be a Cliff Stoll video!🙃 I'll accept a Sunday du Sautoy as long as he seems 1/4 as excited about this as Cliff does about literally anything.🤸

  • @melody3741
    @melody3741 Před 2 lety

    I know about this!! I used to write weird songs on lsdj a gameboy tracker for making 8 bit music. I used to mix up the music in different ways to make different parts of a song or different songs. I thought it was just weird, but it actually reminds me quite a lot of this. I think the fact that classical music has weird keys and weird beats because it just hadn’t developed much yet is actually really interesting and special.

  • @TheTgator359
    @TheTgator359 Před 2 lety

    Harmonious AND complex...an interesting way to describe this. Sounds like a great intimate relationship.

  • @alexakalennon
    @alexakalennon Před 2 lety

    Enjoyed this neat little vid a lot

  • @encodedpr
    @encodedpr Před 2 lety +1

    Bach is just amazing

  • @matthewsaulsbury3011
    @matthewsaulsbury3011 Před 2 lety

    Wow, this is amazing and fascinating! 👍🏼😀

  • @michaelhobbs8082
    @michaelhobbs8082 Před 2 lety

    Really up’d the graphics game here guys. Bravo!

  • @artbygarth
    @artbygarth Před 2 lety

    FANTASTIC!

  • @kryzethx
    @kryzethx Před 2 lety

    This is actually incredible

  • @Maddin1313
    @Maddin1313 Před 2 lety

    Brilliant video!

  • @adamabele785
    @adamabele785 Před 2 lety +1

    Bachs music is more than using a theme and using mathematics on it to create a composition. There is often a certain point where he breaks the mathematics to create something that really sticks out, something that makes it genius. And at the same time the rules of mathematics still apply, just a bit different. That is why a computer can not recreate Bach's compositions just by using a theme and mathematics. And sometimes he uses the exact same notes with a different text. To perform it the right way, you need to perform it totally different, with different speed, different timing, different instruments, different key, that makes it a different piece entirely.

  • @magnamon88
    @magnamon88 Před 2 lety

    I knew that fourteen obsession with Bach since that beautiful speech that you can find in the videogame "The Witness", so now I can sure that was not a mess up. And so apparently there is only portrait of J.S.Bach, and in that portrait is depicted with an enigma sheet music!

  • @YourWealthCome
    @YourWealthCome Před 2 lety

    This was mind blowing!

  • @NuclearSlayer52
    @NuclearSlayer52 Před 2 lety

    its nice to know that the song that truly never ends actually sounds like music

  • @microdesigns2000
    @microdesigns2000 Před 2 lety +4

    The animations in this video are as remarkable as the math content.

  • @thecomplainer2431
    @thecomplainer2431 Před 2 lety +2

    I love it when I know a little bit of something about math and a little bit of something about music and they come together in the most fantastic forms! There has to be a Designer.

  • @jesusthroughmary
    @jesusthroughmary Před 2 lety +3

    The seven liberal arts of the classical curriculum are divided into the trivium of grammar, logic and rhetoric, and the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy, the latter being also known as the "four mathematical arts".

  • @maniestacio9245
    @maniestacio9245 Před 2 lety +1

    Unrelated to the subject of this video, but Marcus has such a fascinating half-English, half-American sounding accent. The rhotic R and certain vowel sounds just confound my little brain 😅

  • @kaspierro
    @kaspierro Před 2 lety

    Dziękujemy.

  • @vivekram6362
    @vivekram6362 Před 2 lety

    3 Videos in a Week 🔥🔥🔥..Well Done Brady 😁🤟

  • @kiryls1207
    @kiryls1207 Před 2 lety

    ok this actually blew my mind.

  • @Yezpahr
    @Yezpahr Před 2 lety +1

    That see-through möbius strip should go to Objectivity and be donated to the Royal Museum. It really shows what the creator meant and intended and would be nice for prosperity to ponder about.

  • @wewe_ndrs
    @wewe_ndrs Před 2 lety +3

    At ~2:30 the audio is playing the incorrect notes for measure #6. It should be a down chromatic scale, but it's making some jumps and ascending where it shouldn't.