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The Infinite Symphony: Will We Ever Run Out of Music?
By Carolyn Bls
Eran Egozy, a professor of the practice in music technology at MIT and a co-founder of Harmonix, the studio behind hit games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, challenges us to ponder the vast potential for musical creativity. Let's explore this through the lens of one piece of Western classical music - Johann Sebastian Bach’s first Cello Suite.
This iconic suite, often featured in commercials and movies, was composed for solo cello in G Major, with its opening movement comprised almost entirely of sixty-four sixteenth notes spread over forty bars. That translates to 640 notes total from this single movement alone. Considering an instrument typically spanning three octaves, Egozy calculates that the number of possible variations for just these 640 notes is approximately 36^640, a figure so immense it exceeds our capacity to compreh its magnitude.
Bach’s suite isn’t isolated; music encompasses a myriad of styles and genres across cultures worldwide. Even if no new compositions were created, Egozy suggests that the possibilities for rearrangements alone would yield an astronomical number of songs, practically limitless as far as imagination can perceive.
The story of John Cage’s 4’33’’ serves as a testament to music's subjective nature. This piece, which took the form of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence during a concert in Woodstock, New York, highlights that music exists not just in notes but in every moment - within the ticking of a clock or the rustle of leaves.
Research indicates that music significantly benefits well-being by reducing stress, enhancing focus, and improving memory. Fortunately for us, there’s no shortage of new tunes on the horizon. Moreover, if we consider that any sounds can be combined or occur in any sequence, as John Cage suggested, then perhaps music is everywhere around us.
In , with each note played, composed, or imagined, and with every unique combination or moment of silence it creates, we are adding to the universe of musical expressions. The infinite possibilities in sound, from Bach's baroque intricacies to Cage's minimalist silences, illustrate that no matter the future holds for music creation, there will always be more sounds to come.
Thank you to Crg Cohick from North Kansas City, Missouri, for sparking this inquiry into the limitless universe of musical creativity.
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This article is reproduced from: https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/is-there-a-finite-number-of-musical-combinations-that-can-be-made-before-all-new-music-is-exhausted/
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