Music and computing

Abstract

There may be those who find that the terms music and computing form an unlikely pair. We remind them that the monochord, a device usually associated with music, was one of the first scientific measuring instruments. We need not stop there. In virtually any historical period one finds an interaction between music and science and mathematics. With respect to the seventeenth century, for example, Claude Palisca has observed:In any discussion of science in the seventeenth century, among the names that inevitably arise are those of Galileo Galilei, Marin Mersenne, Rene Descartes, Johannes Kepler, and Christian Huyghens. It is no mere coincidence that these... were all trained musicians and authors on musical subjects... because music until the seventeenth century was a branch of science and held a place among the four mathematical disciplines of the quadrivium beside arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy.