Stephon Alexander
Autor de The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe
Sobre El Autor
Stephon Alexander is a professor of physics at Brown University and the winner of the American Physical Society Bouchet Award for his pioneering work in cosmology and quantum gravity. He is also a jazz saxophonist and electronic musician. Alexander lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
Obras de Stephon Alexander
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
Miembros
Reseñas
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También Puede Gustarte
Estadísticas
- Obras
- 2
- Miembros
- 244
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- #93,239
- Valoración
- 3.5
- Reseñas
- 4
- ISBNs
- 17
- Idiomas
- 3
Alexander points out that both jazz musicianship and problem-solving in theoretical physics depend upon conceptual tools and practices worked out by past masters. 21st-century jazz musicians still count on ideas that originated with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and others. In the 17th century, Johannes Kepler extended the Greeks’ geometrical-musical reasoning to develop his three laws of planetary motion, and even transcribed Pythagoras’ celestial music into a workable score. (In 2011, Willie Ruff and John Rogers released a CD of Kepler’s score called The Harmony of the World: A Realization for the Ear of Johannes Kepler’s Astronomical Data from Harmonices Mundi 1619— “an auditory representation of the harmonies the planets make as they go around the sun in elliptical orbits, blending to create a unified rhythm corresponding to the periodic orbits of the planets.”)
The correspondence between musical and mathematical notions recurs through physicists’ work on special relativity, quantum mechanics, supergravity, and more, as Alexander shows. His own work on the origins and structure of the universe drew inspiration from the ‘spontaneous’ improvisations of Lennie Tristano and Warne Marsh, but as Alexander points out, what seems spontaneous in jazz improvisation requires a deep understanding of music theory and harmony, years of practice, memorization and making mistakes—an approach familiar to the practicing physicist.
The device that symbolizes for Alexander the ultimate correspondence between music and physics is the hand-drawn circular chart of musical scales that John Coltrane gave to Yusef Lateef in 1957. The ‘mandala,’ as Alexander calls it, is a geometric structure that identifies patterns between some of the key scales and harmonic devices that Coltrane used in his repertoire. Coltrane reportedly told David Amram that he was inspired by Albert Einstein to find a simple idea for his music; the mandala suggests that that idea was symmetry. As Alexander explains, Coltrane played symmetric scales to create tension or a sense of ambivalence, and used symmetric chords with multiple tonal centers. The consonant or dissonant relationship between notes played simultaneously opened new harmonic possibilities. Alexander also sees an analogy between jazz improvisation and Richard Feynman’s description of quantum mechanics: just as all potential paths are open to a particle moving between two points, so does a musician subconsciously consider all notes in a scale before deciding which note to play. “The ability to improvise is to find the hidden patterns and regularities underlying harmonic forms and to use those insights to generate new kinds of melodic sequences.” The physicist in search of answers is also an improvisor.
Alexander also claims as an influence Ornette Coleman. Instead of moving through scales and chords, Ornette played with sound, giving melody, harmony and rhythm equal place in his improvisations. Ornette’s polytonal motifs are like the lattice of vortices formed by magnetic fields in the quantum realm, says Alexander, and Quantum Field Theory can be understood in terms of the elements of modern jazz: broken symmetries, inherent uncertainties (improvisation), the idea that each outcome is the sum of all possible outcomes.
Alexander takes the link between math and music back to the origins of the universe, then, and discovers Coltrane particles and Coleman fields in the music of the cosmos. His solution to the Fine-Tuning Problem posits vibrational patterns in the early universe generating a complex structure with an improvisational nature. In the best jazz improvisation, the vibration and resonance of notes and tones, like the vibration and resonance of quantum fields, tend to harmonize into a self-tuning structure. A harmonic or cyclical universe, undergoing an infinite succession of expansions and contractions, arrives at the optimum cosmological constants (a pure tone) by continually improvising new values during the ‘bounce’ between a contraction and expansion.
…the unfolding of the structures in the universe has a musical character. The dance among harmony, symmetry, instability, and the gaps of improvisation—all cooperate to sustain cosmic structure. It is as if the unfolding cosmos transpires like a John Coltrane solo.
It would be fun to know what Plato thinks of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, or quantum mechanics for that matter. We’ve come a long way since the Greeks, but they were on to something, and they raised all the good questions first. What Alexander gives us in The Jazz of Physics is another way to think about and hear the work of musical geniuses, whether or not we can make heads or tails of the physics. When he says that the solos on Coltrane’s Interstellar Space ‘expand and free themselves from the gravitational pull of the rhythm section,’ I think I know what he means.… (más)