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Prologue
Let’s face it: we are immersed in a great mystery. Thus, the single most
important purpose of our brain is to make understandable sense of the
extreme complexities that constitute us and our universe. This is
accomplished for three basic purposes: to adapt, to survive, and to grow. To
fulfill these goals, our brain—via our senses—picks amongst the
ever-changing myriad of information impinging upon us, analyzes only the
essence that is pertinent, and manages it to make it appear stable and
meaningful. With this information, it creates an image of ourselves and our
surroundings which is artificial and limited, but sufficient to allow us to
interact with each other and to modify our environment to better accomplish
the aforementioned three basic purposes.
In this context, how does the apparent luxury of conducting science and
making music fit with our brain’s essential purposes?; and what are the
possible relationships between these two seemingly very different human
activities?
Discovery
Curiosity is an essential component of our survival, adaptation and growth,
addressing our need to unveil the laws, the forces and the mechanisms that
make everything happen. This information empowers us not only to understand,
but to manipulate nature to better accomplish our goals. To rob nature of
its many secrets, we first ask pertinent questions, propose likely answers
(hypothesis), develop methodologies to test the predictions of the proposed
hypothesis, and establish the best answer as the leading interpretation of
the underpinnings of a particular phenomenon. This explanation remains valid
until challenged by a newer better one. This process—the scientific method
—is the best tool at our disposal to uncover the laws that govern us and our
environment and to explain how everything works. Thus, the end goal of the
scientific method is to discover.
Creativity
To catalyze the process of adaptation, survival and growth, our brains are
also endowed with a supplemental but different capacity than our ability to
discover: our power to create. Creativity plays a significant role in the
discovery process during the generation of hypotheses, the design of
experiments, and the invention of novel methodologies for testing the
hypotheses, and for interpreting the experimental results. However, there
are clear-cut differences between the processes of discovering and creating.
Since the essence of discovering is to unveil either information or a
mechanism ever present in nature waiting to be unveiled, it can be
accomplished simultaneously by numerous individuals in different
environments seeking to answer the same question and using either similar or
different methodologies. In contrast, creativity is our capacity to generate
a product that only an individual, as a result of his/her particular
experiences, knowledge, sensitivity, and interpretation of life, can
produce. A creation results from the irrepressible need that a creator has
to produce a reflection of the assertion of being alive, relevant, and
unique. The creative experience is enhanced when other humans engage the
creative object, and their own feelings and life experiences resonate with
those of the creators. This is often reflected, for example, during the
improvisational moments of jazz performance. At those moments, the spectator
becomes an accomplice of the creator and enriches his/her life with the
experience of the creator as revealed by his/her creation. Thus, the same
creative product cannot be generated simultaneously by different
individuals; it is a personal and intimate assertion of the life of a
creator. Dmitri Shostakovich’s "Leningrad" symphony (1941) could only be
created by him while serving as a fireman during the siege of Leningrad
having lived 35 years, suffering his pains, experiencing his joys and
anguishing through the second world war. Shostakovich, packs all this
information in 85 minutes of symphonic music, and delivers it to us driven
by an unstoppable need to ascertain his survival of a war and of life
itself.
The Link Between Creativity and Survival
Since creativity results from the need of a creator to share with his/her
fellow humans his/her assertion of being alive, it is no surprise that many
of the most significant breakthroughs in creativity have been accomplished
during serious personal crisis of the creators; they have been attained in
situations under which their own existence has been threatened. A few
examples follow:
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The first modern novel, Don Quixote de la Mancha, introduces for the first
time everyday speech to a literary context. It was written in a prison in La
Mancha (1605) by Miguel de Cervantes after having experienced a thorny life
which included losing in battle his left arm and being a slave of the Turks
for five years.
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Beethoven began breaking the rigid structures of the classical style of
composition and started composing in new musical forms with novel harmonies
as he learned that Napoleon betrayed the French Revolution by declaring
himself emperor (1804) and as he began to confront his ever increasing
deafness.
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The traumatic experience of the premature death of his lover, Duchess Cayetana de Alba (1802), and the invasion of Spain by the Napoleonic army
(1807) deeply affected the physical and mental health of Francisco de Goya.
As a response, he began painting very dark images (Los Caprichos and Los
desastres de la Guerra) and arguably became the first impressionistic
painter in history.
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While being unjustly imprisoned in Peru, Cesar Vallejo wrote Trilce
(1921), a book of poems which changed the course of poetry writing in the
Spanish language. The poems break with the norms of depictions of time and
grammatical structures and constituted a prelude to the surrealistic
revolution.
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An appalled and enraged Pablo Picasso revolutionized mural painting when
he composed his masterpiece, Guernica (1937), a depiction of the first
airplane-driven bombardment on a civilian population in history. He painted
the mural when he learned that the Basque town of Guernica was destroyed by
Nazi planes training for the Second World War with the blessing of Fascist
General Francisco Franco.
In sum, some of the most intense expressions of creativity arise as a
response, as a fight against set-backs, pain, anguish, death and dying.
Creativity, therefore, is at its best, a defense mechanism by which our
brain protects itself of losing its sensible and stable interpretation of
our reality. It is an essential tool for conveying a sense and purpose for
living, especially when our well being or survival is being threatened.
When Discovery Appears
as Creativity
The object of science is to discover; the object of creativity is to share
with our fellow humans the joy of enduring life. At the end, both processes
share the same three basic goals mentioned above: adaptation, survival, and
growth. Although both activities are in essence quite different, they are so
closely intertwined that sometimes it is difficult to differentiate them.
Three examples follow:
First. A few years ago, a bitter international fight arose between two
Origami masters participating in an international competition working in
different parts of the world. The dispute arose when they both presented to
the jury exactly identical intricate paper structures. Investigation of
claimed international espionage revealed that both masters attained the same
structures while working completely independently. Thus, both masters
simultaneously discovered the geometric arrangements necessary to make the
same figure. Thus, origami production results from a discovery process.
Second. In the early 20th century, Pablo Picasso and his good friend Georges
Braque realized that, independently and simultaneously, both arrived to an
identical novel style of painting: Cubism, a style in which natural forms
are reduced into geometrical shapes. Therefore, this style of painting is
also the result of discovery.
Third, Anton Webern (1883-1945) discovered that the 12-tone method of music
composition (see below) can be used to create sonic geometric patterns which
can be appreciated by the brain as beautiful. This finding influenced Pierre
Boulez (1925- ) to discover that precise control of each of the musical
parameters (frequency, amplitude and harmonics) by the composer can lead to
music of great interest.
The Science of Music
A musical composition can lie anywhere between being an exclusive exercise
in discovery or a true creative product as the case of Shostakovich
mentioned above. The strong component of discovery in music originates from
two main reasons: 1) sound production is governed by physical laws described
by mathematics; and 2) music, being a language conveyed by our sense of
hearing, is appreciated and interpreted by our brain subject to its rules,
mechanics and purposes and, as will be discussed below, is intimately
related to speech.
Until the end of the baroque period, music was strictly considered a science
pertaining to mathematics. Pythagoras discovered that plucking a string
makes it vibrate in its entirety as well as in halves, thirds, and so on.
The lowest vibration (fundamental) is generated by the vibration of the
whole string and conveys the pitch of the sound; the other vibrations are
its harmonics. Pythagoras established the mathematical relations of how
different pitches can be attained by varying the length, width and tension
of the cord. Further, he discovered that, by dividing the cord in certain
proportions it produced musical intervals some of which were pleasant to be
heard while others were not. Thus, he performed the remarkable breakthrough
of relating numbers with the appreciation of beauty. During the middle ages,
musicians became highly skilled and were required to study mathematics,
geometry and astronomy. In 1631, Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) published
Musurgia Universalis. In this book he explains the possibilities of creating
music by establishing relationships between different notes (counter-point)
from a mathematical perspective and established the numeric patterns of
music intervals, scales, and harmonies. Further, he invented a numerical
"machine" to make music (Musarithmica Mirifica) which can be used by
non-composers to make music which follows all the counterpoint rules of the
style of his time. He also invented new musical instruments and scored the
songs of birds. The mathematical basis for music making was further explored
by the members of the Societat der Musikalischen Wissen-schaften (founded by
Lorenz Christoph Mizler in 1738) which included GP Telemann, GF Handel and
JS Bach. Research of the latter composer in this society led him to write
several pieces whose structure are almost entirely based on mathematical
proportions of sounds, including "A Musical Offering" and the "Art of the
Fugue." The development of the former piece, for example, is entirely based
on a few measures which are played by the musicians backwards, inverted,
doubling the timing, changing the key or starting at a different place in
the score. This approach to music by Bach explains why he considered art
making as a rational construction process. Subsequently, in 1757 a disciple
of Bach, Johan Phillip Kirnberger published his Ever-Ready Composer of
Polonaises and Minuets, a practical guide to write music based on
mathematics and chance in which musical decisions were made by the throwing
of a dice.
Music making as a discovery process has intensely been expanded by
contemporary composers. Bela Bartok (1881-1945), developed a numeric series
(Fibonacci scale) in which tones are given numbers and the series is formed
by summing up the values of the previous two numbers (i.e., 1, 1, 2, 3, 5,
8, 13, 21,. .). He used this technique to write numerous compositions
including his “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.” Likewise, he used
the geometric proportion ratio known as Aurea system to derive the
construction of his melodies and harmonies (1). Arnold Schoenberg
(1874-1951) developed a system in which all 12 tones of the western music
scale have the same importance as established by a number of tone series
(dodecaphonic scale, see Figure 1). In 1940, Joseph Schillinger published a
mathematical system to compose music (“Kaleidophone”) which was used by
George Gershwin (1898-1937) to write some sections of Porgy and Bess and by
Heitor Villalobos (1887-1959) to make piano music. In 1955, Lejaren Hiller
published the suite Illiac, the first musical composition entirely made by a
computer using Markov chains. Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) founded in 1966 the
School of Mathematical and Automated Music. He developed a new style of
composition in which clouds of sounds are produced and are subsequently
analyzed using stochastic statistics. He applied several mathematical models
to generate clusters of sounds. (e.g., Maxwell-Boltzmann distributions and
Markov chains).
The Music of Science
Perhaps like no other art, music is capable of eliciting strong human
emotional reactions and has played a key role in the development of
civilization. Confucius (500 BC) reasoned that music possesses a moral force
able to generate goodwill and harmony between families and communities.
Plato in his Republic states that music can either make better or worse
citizens, and in classic Greece, the adjective "musical person" was reserved
for highly educated and kind individuals. The reason why music can be so
influential on human behavior and feelings lies in the fact that it is
constituted by three components deeply enrooted in human physiology: rhythm,
pitch, and harmony.
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Rhythm: The philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941) did not need to be a
scientist to realize that our brain searches and finds pleasure in
discovering patterns since the discovery of regularity provides us with a
sense of stability and well being. Desmond Morris (1928- ) reported that
people unconsciously often counteract nervousness by producing rhythmic
movements of body parts. Bergson also realized that an additional component
of our attraction to rhythms and patterns is that they empower us to predict
events in time. When the predictions are fulfilled, like when the arm of a
ballerina comes down after having been raised, it produces pleasure; when
the predictions are unfulfilled, it produces an array of reactions ranging
from surprise or instability, to plain laughter, as when a walking man
suddenly falls down in a comic film. The component of rhythm in music
provides it with a sense of continuity and steadiness. It is reported that
the great success of Reggae music resulted from the fact that its rhythm is
identical to that of a healthy adult heart at rest. When the rhythm in music
is complex and/or broken, as in Stravinsky’s "Rite of Spring," it generates
a sense of unsteadiness and awakening.
Pitch: Pitch is physically determined by sound waves which posses basic
(fundamental) frequency and periodic (harmonic) frequencies. Thus, sounds
lacking periodicity (e.g., thunder or a cascade) have no pitch.
Interestingly, pitch-containing sounds are almost exclusively produced in
nature by animals. Hence, pitch perception is very relevant for survival and
communication, and the brain must possess mechanisms to differentiate sounds
with pitch from those lacking it (i.e., noise, see Ref. 2). Perhaps for this
reason pitch perception is subjective and not strictly determined by
physical parameters. Two examples illustrate this fact. First, changes in
the intensity of a pure tone elicit in a listener the appearance of a change
in pitch. Second, primates (3) can identify the pitch of sounds in which the
fundamental frequency has been artificially removed and only the higher
harmonics are present. Thus, even if there are no spectral similarities
between the two sounds, both are similarly recognized by the brain. This
property, known as finding the missing fundamental, demonstrates that
pitch-perception is an abstract perceptual property derived from, but not
physically identical to the characteristics of the perceived sound. Two
additional examples illustrate the subjective nature of sound perception: 1)
changes in the frequency of a sound of constant intensity elicit the
appearance of a change in intensity; and 2) identification of the timbre in
a sound (e.g., whether a tone with the same frequency and intensity is
either produced by a piano or a violin), involves deciphering of the envelop
of the multiple sound waves implicated in the onset of the given sound
(i.e., starting transient). This is easily demonstrated by listening to an
audio tape of a piano played backwards. Because the onset of an organ sound
involves some similar characteristics to the sound waves involved during the
offset of a piano sound, the sound perceived while listening to the piano
tape played backwards is perceived as an organ. Likewise, when the very
brief attack of one instrument is electronically cut-off and is then
attached to the sustained sound of a different instrument, it is the attack
that dictates the perception of which instrument is being played. For
example, a listener perceives a trumpet when a few milliseconds of a trumpet
attack (splat) precede the sustained tone of a piano. Therefore, the
appreciation of pitch and timbre at the auditory temporal cortex is rather
complex and must be subjected to influences and regulation from other parts
of the brain involving training and experience.
For some scholars the history of music making corresponds to that of how
composers use pitch to produce scales. Figure 1 shows the arrangements of
some of the key scales used in music. The diatonic major and minor scales
involve seven sounds and were definitely established by Bach with his
writing of the “Well Tempered Clavier.” Interestingly, the major scale is
the closest to the natural harmonics of a given tone since it appears as
such from harmonics 8 to 16. Further, the accidentals (sharps, flats or
naturals) of the keys closest to a major scale (subdominant and dominant)
also appear in the harmonics of a tone. Various cultures in history have
used different scales including the pentaphonic and modal. C. Debussy
(1862-1918) and A. Schoenberg revolutionized music writing by introducing
their whole tones and dodecaphonic scales, respectively. Some cultures
(e.g., India) have traditionally used microtones (i.e., quarter, thirds,
eights of a whole tone) to make music. This technique has also been applied
in western music by the middle-ages composer C. Gesualdo (1566-1613) and
more recently by J. Carrillo (1875-1965). Contempo-rary composers use
synthesizers to generate and manipulate all of the sound frequencies that
our brain can perceive (20 to 20,000 Hz), but it is pertinent to note that
the pitch uncertainty for human perception is a function of the frequency of
the sound being higher at low frequencies. e.g., it is of a ¼ of a tone for
a middle La (430-450 Hz) and of a whole tone for a low Sol (89-109 Hz).
The seminal work of Dr. Diana Deutch has revealed the desperate need that
our brains have to make sense of pitch-containing sounds. Influenced by the
hemispheric side predominance and by the language and accents used while
growing up, our brains fabricate order where there is none. This is
illustrated by the following three examples (4):
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Octave Illusion: listening through stereo headphones on the right ear to a
note pattern of an octave (e.g., high Solàlow Sol) while simultaneously
listening on the other ear to the inverted pattern (i.e., low Solàhigh Sol)
produces in the great majority of listeners a simplified pattern in which
one ear hears: low Solàsilenceàlow Sol; while the other hears: silenceàhigh
Solàsilence. Thus, the subject perceives a high and a low Sol alternating
from one ear to the other. Regardless of the position of the earphones,
right-handed individuals hear the opposite pattern than left-handed ones.
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Scale Illusion: if different note patterns are presented simultaneously to
each ear and neither of them contains a scale, but if a combination of
alternate notes from the patterns presented to each ear does constitute
either an ascending or descending scale (diatonic or chromatic), the brain
of the subject will rearrange the perception of the notes leading to the
actual “hearing” of a scale in each ear.
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Tritone Paradox: dividing an octave in half produces an interval of three
whole tones (tritone). With a computer it is possible to generate tones
whose pitch are clearly identifiable (e.g., Do) but their position in the
scale is uncertain (e.g., middle Do or low or high Do). When such a tone is
presented to a subject followed by its tritone (e.g., DoàFa#), he/she
clearly reports hearing either an ascending or descending interval.
Interestingly, the perception of the interval is not determined by musical
training since professional musicians can report opposite patterns, but is
determined instead by the maternal language and specific accents to which
the individual has been exposed while growing up. This is supported by the
fact that identical patterns are reported by individuals having grown up in
similar regions of a given country and hence sharing the same accent.
In sum, connections between language and music perception are so strong that
some scholars consider music as a natural evolution of speech. Language and
musicality develop simultaneously in the brain and can in fact compete with
each other. Two month old babies can imitate the pitch, volume and melody of
their mother’s songs; at four months of age, they can also imitate their
rhythm. Furthermore, when they reach two and a half years of age, they
explore with novel intervals and begin creating their own songs mixed with
those of their mothers. But when they reach three to four years old, at the
time when the ability to speak flourishes, the melodies of the songs in
their respective cultures predominate and the creation of their own songs
disappears (5). Many pianists and violinists, as are any non musicians, can
simultaneously talk and perform numerous other activities. However, it is
very difficult for them to talk while playing their instrument. The
similarities and competencies between speech and music may result from the
fact that both use pitch as one of their primary components. Hence both
partially function by using similar brain structures, neuronal pathways and
regulatory mechanisms.
Harmony: In music, harmony is the simultaneous combination in a chord of two
or more different notes. As mentioned above, Pythagoras established that the
frequency ratios of pleasant pairs of sounds played simultaneously are
uncomplicated (e.g., 1:1; 1:2; 2:3; 4:5, etc) while the unpleasant ones are
complex (e.g., 15:16; 30:59). We now know that the oscilloscope traces of
pleasant pairs of sounds are much simpler (i.e., their waves repeat exactly
after a very short interval) than the unpleasant ones (i.e., it takes a long
time for their waves to repeat). Furthermore, a rather interesting pattern
is found if a diagram is built of all the series of harmonics naturally
produced when two pure tones are simultaneously played when one is
maintained stationary while the other is changed from the frequency of the
stationary one to the double of that frequency (i.e., one octave higher)
passing by all the intervals in between (Figure 2). The Figure shows that
when the ratios of the two sounds are simple, thus producing a pleasant
sound (as in points a, c, d and g), the pattern of harmonics is also simple.
In contrast, when the ratio is complicated (as in points b, e and f), the
harmonics pattern is also complex. These observations suggest that our
brains find it easier to deal with simpler sound ratios as compared to
complex ones. However, as mentioned above, when dealing with the perception
of pitch, there is no strict direct physical relationship between the sound
waves and the perception which they elicit. An example of this is that we
can understand the same word pronounced by different people in spite of the
fact that each person produces very different sound patterns. Likewise, our
brain can be trained to understand people talking with strong accents. Thus,
it should come as no surprise that looking at the oscilloscope recordings of
sounds produced during a performance of the second movement of Beethoven’s
fifth symphony and of the noise of the audience before the performance, it
is virtually impossible to differentiate them. Hence, our brain has the
capability of selecting sounds from the environment and conferring upon them
meaning because they contain pitch and because they are compared with our
memories of sounds of instruments, chords and previously elicited
sensations. These considerations may help to explain why our brain reacts
emotionally to a very limited number of sound frequency combinations. These
combinations may elicit emotions of joy (major keys), elation (consonant
intervals), sadness (minor keys), intrigue (difficulty in identifying the
key), unsettledness (lack of harmonic resolution), or repulsion (discordant
sounds).
Western music can be divided into two major types: tonal and atonal. Tonal
music is constructed based either on a major, minor or modal scale in which
only a given number of intervals can be used as determined by the key of the
piece (e.g., Do major, la minor). Thus, the key of the composition
determines which tone serves as the center of gravity and makes all other
tones its subordinates. Most of all occidental music written until the
post-romantic era is tonal. Wagner (1813-1883) revolutionized music writing
by introducing compositions (e.g., Tristan und Isolde) in which there are no
precise tonality. Schoenberg broke the barriers of tonal music by writing
music in which all 12 notes in a chromatic scale have the same importance.
The structure of this music is so different than all the music previously
written, that its appreciation requires significant motivation and training
from the listener. The contemporary composer Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000)
argued against atonal music stating: "To me, atonality is against nature.
There is a center to everything that exists. The planets have the sun." An
illustrative experiment dealing with this issue consisted of alternately
exposing six-month old human babies to tonal (e.g., Mozart) and atonal music
(e.g., Stockhausen) and analyzing their responses. The results showed that
the babies paid significantly more attention to the music of the former and
disregarded the second composer. This suggests that early in our lives our
brains are wired to recognize tonal music as pleasant and/or that they learn
to recognize as enjoyable the harmonies and melodies to which they have been
exposed via their maternal language and songs.
Very recently, however, Victor Rasgado wrote a children’s opera entitled "El
Conejo y el Coyote" (The Rabbit and the Coyote, 2003). This piece is
constructed using atonal music but is based on sonic geometric symmetric
designs. This arrangement allows the children to subconsciously discover
logic in the harmonies and sonic sequences leading them to enjoy the
composition without sophisticated training.
Summary
There are numerous and intricate links between music and science. One of the
most relevant is that music writing implies a strong component of discovery.
The fact that music plays such a relevant social, cultural, and emotional
role may be because it uses similar means and is interpreted by related
mechanisms and neuronal structures as language, and language is critical for
our survival, adaptation and growth. For this reason, music can also elicit
profound and immediate emotional responses from the listener. In so doing,
it empowers its creator with a compelling means for manifesting his/her
survival and helps us all adapt better. After all, what better form of
adaptation and survival could there be than enjoying our being alive?
Further, there is a complicated balance for music appreciation and enjoyment
between nature and nurturing, which remains to be fully established.
Numerous contemporary academic composers are aiming to discover how atonal
music can be appreciated and enjoyed as it is being built using a logical
and coherent system based on the physical and mathematical nature of music
sound. Another main challenge ahead of us lies on identifying the mechanisms
and pathways by which our brain interprets sounds and attributes to them an
emotional content.
And the Making of "Body Notes," A Symphonic Suite About Human Physiology
In the summer of 2002, the recently renamed Rosalind Franklin University of
Medicine and Science hosted the Midwest section of the American
Physiological Society meeting. The organizer of that symposium, Celia Sladek
asked Héctor Rasgado-Flores to perform a concert for the closing event. He
accepted and performed several of his compositions for piano and for piano
and cello accompanied by an excellent medical student cellist. Among the
people in the audience were Martin Frank (Executive Director of the American
Physiological Society, APS) and Allen Cowley Jr. (President of the
International Union of Physiological Sciences, IUPS). After the concert and
a brief chat between them, they approached the composer and asked him
whether he would write a symphonic piece for the XXXV Congress which, after
nearly 40 years, was going to be held in 2005 in the US. The composer
consulted with his wife, and the following day he agreed to carry out the
project. At that time, he had already written about 50 pieces since he began
composing for a small chorus and orchestra which he conducted in Mexico City
when he was 15 years old. He had even won, on several occasions, the music
composition contests of the National School of Music in Mexico, but he never
dreamed of writing a piece of the magnitude of a symphonic suite.
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| Conductor Nuvi Mehta
leads the San Diego Chamber Orchestra in the performance of Body Notes. |
Being a scientist and musician, the composer had crossed on several
occasions the thin boundaries that separate both endeavors. He taught for
several years the section on sensory processing to medical students and
followed the literature about the neurosciences of music listening and music
making, and in fact, in 1996, he gave a lecture for the Sigma Xi Scientific
Society at his Institution entitled "Music and Physiology:
Interrelationships and Enigmas." On that occasion he presented a summary of
the current knowledge of how our brains interpret language and music, gave
several examples using a small musical ensemble, and even carried out an
experiment with the audience about musical perception.
Once the composer accepted the offer to write the piece for the IUPS
Congress, he thought that it would make sense to combine music and
physiology into a single project. Physiology is the science that poses the
questions of how organisms work: how do we hear music? How do we create it?
How do we play an instrument? How do we dance? etc. In consequence, it is
the discipline that lends itself best to create links between science and
creativity. He thought that physiologists would appreciate and enjoy such a
concept. Furthermore, he wanted to think of this project, together with his
scientific publications, as his legacy as a physiologist. So the project
grew to become "Body Notes: A Symphonic Suite about Human Physiology."
Realization of the project involved several critical issues. The support of
his wife and his three children, the support of his Chairman and of the
President of his Institution, the support of the senior administrators and
staff of the American Physiological Society, the inspiration of his family,
friends and colleagues to whom each movement was dedicated, and the
collaboration with his brother, Victor Rasgado, one of the most
distinguished and accomplished young contemporary composers. They both had
previously collaborated in family concerts with their father, Rodrigo
Rasgado (a noted violinist and plastic surgeon), as well as in professional
concerts in Mexico, but they had never worked on anything of this magnitude
together.
Completion of the project required three years. The series of events
involved in the process was as follows: Hector developed the musical ideas
which occupied his mind as a kind of "damnation" since it was impossible to
be rid of them until they were written down as a piano version. Subsequently
he gave the scores to the wife of his brother, Cristina Galvez Correa, who
edited and wrote them for a computer program. Victor then proceeded to
orchestrate them. On numerous occasions the two brothers and their wives met
in Mexico and Chicago to discuss and modify the orchestration. The wife of
the composer served as the final judge of how an audience of scientists
would appreciate the translation of the physiological ideas to the
orchestral version.
The suite is composed of 13 movements and lasts for about 1 hour. The
movements are:
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Negentropy: A depiction of the ensemble of biomolecules into forming
cells.
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Beating: The activity of a human heart in a fetus while the tissues are
formed.
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Loving: The dance and angst of an adult heart as it tries to find
reciprocation in love.
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Working: The action of a heart while performing strenuous exercise.
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Movement’s Movement: The control and beauty of skeletal muscle
performance.
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Right Connections: The frantic communication between neurons.
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Saraband 1: The dance of hormones released during a sensation elation.
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With you: The feeling of happiness of sharing time with loved ones.
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Saraband 2: The release of hormones involved in the response of anger.
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Injustice: The inner dialog and justification of feeling angry.
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Saraband 3: The indifference of hormones in the blood stream which are
involved in the feelings of frustration and sadness.
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Without You: The mood of longing and quietness while being lonely.
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Apoptosis: A dramatic dialog between a brain who wants to live and the
body it controls which is ready for closure as they face the programmed
closing of a life.
The style of the composition was thought to be pleasant to the scientific
audience. Therefore, it encompasses several composition styles from the
baroque to post-impressionism. The most modern movements are the ones
describing the interaction between neurons (Right Connections) and the
release of some hormones (Saraband 3). In this Suite the composer did not
try to challenge the audience to listen to the music but to think instead of
the physiological ideas being described.
The suite had its world premiere during the closing ceremony of the IUPS
meeting in the city of San Diego on April 5, 2005 performed by the San Diego
Chamber Orchestra conducted under maestro Nuvi Mehta.
The booklet accompanying the CD contains a detailed description of the ideas
behind each movement. The CD can be purchased at the American Physiological
Society web site.
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| Cecilia and
Hector Rasgado-Flores. |
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The Rasgado-Flores family. |
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References:
1. Erno Lendvai (1971). Bela Bartok. An Analysis of his Music. Humanities
Press.
2. R. J. Zatorre. (2005). Finding the missing fundamental. Nature.
436:1093-1094.
3. D. Bendor & X. Wang. (2005). The neuronal representation of pitch in
primate auditory cortex. Nature. 465: 1161-1165
4. Diana Deutsch. (1995) Musical Illusions and Paradoxes. Philomel Records.
La Jolla CA.
5. H. Gardner (1993). Multiple Intelligences. New York. Basic Books.
6. C. Taylor. (1992). Exploring Music. Institute of Physics Publishing.
Bristol & Philadelphia
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