The Fredösphere

The black swan strikes: out of the blue, everybody's talking math at me all of a sudden.

Barnes & Noble interviews Neal Stephenson at length, and the links that come with it are very good. Neal's new novel Anathem is all about an alien world where the cloistered monks devote themselves to science and math, not religion. Neal's friend (David Sutz of the Seattle-based ensembles Tudor Choir and Cappella Romana) created chant music inspired by pi, quadratic equations, you know--all the usual math-type stuff. I especially commend to your (freely-downloadable) listening pleasure the "Thousander Chant" with it's contrabass throat singing. Whoa.

Neal creates a special playlist for each novel he writes. I've tried a corresponding trick; I used photos of classical ruins to inspire the composition of some severe chant-like vocal music; the result was a little too ruinous, I'm afraid, and I've never tried that trick since. The intersection of choral music and SF: it's my blog's great theme, and Neal Stephenson is singing it.

Next, we find out about the musical importance of the number 5 as we wander down an Overgrown Path. We'll also meet Pythagoras and the Golden Mean while we do.

Oh, and that business about the swan? Daniel Wolf has the musical connection.

Finally, today a friend emailed me a Newsweek article about certain countries good at producing girls who are high achievers in math. The author concludes math ability is culturally determined, and in a beautiful expression of self-parody, says she's going to "scream" if she hears anyone talk about "hard-wired" brains ever again. I invite everyone to go to the very convenient website of International Mathematical Olympiad results and spend a few minutes with the data as I did. The obvious conclusion you will reach is that boys continue to dominate, and if girls are surging (even if only in select countries) then the effect is subtle. Maybe the metaphor we're looking for is "firmware."

Labels: Choral, sci-fi, vocal