Math & Performing Arts

Schools engage students in many activities which are meant to improve their sensitivity for aesthetics. Aesthetics is about appreciation of beauty and beauty comes in many different forms. Drawing, painting, craft, music, dance, drama are some activities that students engage themselves in schools. Collectively they are called co-curricular or extra-curricular activities. For some reason, schools consider them less important than academics!

These activities can broadly be divided into visual arts & performing arts. Math plays an important part in deciding the parameters of beauty in the above activities. In this chapter, we will study the math in performing arts. We will look at drawing, painting & others known as visual arts in detain in the next chapter.

Music

Music is made of sounds & beats. The musicality of sounds (called notes) depends on the ratio of their frequencies of vibration! Pythagoras is supposed to have noticed this when listening to the sounds of iron pieces being hammered. He is also supposed to have noted that the notes whose frequencies were simple fractions were most melodious when sounded together. So he grandly declared that the entire universe is governed by numbers!

In music all over the world, the notes Sa & Sa (upper) are in the ratio 1:2, Sa & Pa in the ratio 2:3 & Sa & Ma in the ratio 3:4. Indian music has further subdivided these frequencies into smaller intervals called “swars”.

Any beat again is the division of a time interval into smaller time intervals using the concept of fractions!

Indian musicologists have developed the theory of melody & rhythm to make it the most sophisticated system in the world.

The understanding of the mathematical base of music has enabled development of computer software which can reproduce any combination of notes and beats. Today an entire orchestra of musicians can be replicated on an electronic keyboard.

Dance

Dance is the art of expressing feelings through body movements in tune with music and rhythm. The various poses in dance can be seen as dynamic geometrical shapes, which flow from one formation to another in a smooth manner.

When several dancers dance together to the same musical piece, choreography is needed. A choreographer uses coordination of the movements of dancers, balanced coverage of the stage to create beautiful images.

Modern choreographers use computer software to graphically plan an entire concert using simple stick figures to represent the dancers.