Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Franck Jedrzejewski
Looking
at Numbers
Looking at Numbers
Looking at Numbers
Tom Johnson
Paris
France
Franck Jedrzejewski
Viroflay
France
ISBN 978-3-0348-0553-7
ISBN 978-3-0348-0554-4
DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0554-4
(eBook)
Preface 1
I am a composer and all of my professional training has been in music, but my compositions
often derive from patterns I find in combinations of numbers, and this exploration has
required me to make many drawings. These drawings usually become pieces of music in one
way or another, but at the same time, they are self-sufficient, and they have a beauty of their
own that does not depend on music. One can regard them all by themselves, with no
reference to music, and appreciate the forms simply by looking at numbers. But let me try
to explain why I work in this way.
I have returned many times to three particular books in my library, and I now realize that
each of them, in its own way, conveys the same basic message that I have been trying to
convey in my music these recent years. The authors are neither artists nor musicians, and they
are not very well known, though they all received serious recognition in their particular times
and places, and they are all quite important for me. My appreciation of these men, all from
the generation of my grandparents, came directly from seeing what they did, but now, reading
more carefully some of the things they wrote, and thinking more carefully about how they
worked, I see that they all had one thing in common. They were careful observers of the
world, and each of them showed us something about the nature of nature that we can not
observe elsewhere. It will please me very much if one day someone will say that my own
work here is equally revealing. Probably the best way to introduce my own intentions here in
this collection of drawings is simply to talk about what these three men did.
Daniel Sheets Dye (18841976) was an American from Ohio, who spent most of his
professional life teaching academic courses at the West China Union University in Chengtu,
Szechuan, where he often visited villages, mostly in Szechuan, copying the geometric designs
of windows. His only book is A Grammar of Chinese Lattice (Harvard University Press,
1937), in which he put together several hundred drawings of the lattices he found, constructed
by Chinese carpenters using sticks of wood, probably ever since 1000 B.C (Fig. 1).
As he found and drew these patterns and accumulated the vast collection that became the
material of his book, he tried to find particular styles for particular regions and particular
periods, but realized that such divisions were difficult to demonstrate, since the same patterns
recur in many places at many times. Sometimes he found a lattice that he felt was truly
unique only to find exactly the same thing in an other place a year or two later. Nor was it
possible to find written studies about such things. Chinese intellectuals never concerned
themselves much with the work of anonymous craftsmen. They did of course look at precious
objects of porcelain and bronze, especially those coming from the remote past, but window
lattices are simply architectural decoration and dont last very long. Western scholars on the
other hand did not have access to this information, even if they might have found it
interesting.
In a seemingly futile attempt to find some order in all this, Dye hypothesized categories
such as octagon or octagon square or wedge-lock or parallel waves, but these
categories are as nebulous as their names and dont clarify much. We can, however, conclude
that the patterns he found, the accumulative work of centuries of artisans, represent some
vii
viii
kind of universal geometric taste. After centuries of constructions and experiments, we now
know the many forms that window lattices have to take, no matter what individuals are
making them, and that is why they are so pleasing.
Karl Blossfeldt (18651932) wanted as a young man to be a photographer but earned his
living as a professor of applied arts in Berlin, taking photographs of plants as a way of
showing his students the forms he saw in nature. The title of his book Urformen der Kunst
(1928) means the basic forms of art, and the photographs it contains are a dramatic display of
the remarkable symmetries found in plant life. Beginning around 1890, with still rather
primitive photographic equipment, he made long journeys, searching for unusual plants at
just the right season, finding just the right light and angles that would best show their
Preface 1
Preface 1
ix
particular forms. For him these Urformen underlie all nature, and are the basis of good art
as well. Curiously, he found that the flowers most highly prized by gardeners were not good
examples of what he was looking for. His favorite photos came from leaves and roots and
weeds that he found in the countryside, when he made field trips by bicycle or by train.
Blossfeldt was particularly pleased to go to the darkroom and enlarge his photos. He
sometimes focused on tiny interior parts of some flower, then blew up the image 12 times, so
that it had a rich complexity not visible to the naked eye. Only partially formed little leaves
blown up 4 times became tiny rolls of matter. He found other amazing basic forms in a tiny
bud blown up 15 times its actual size or in the delicate root of a blade of grass, or in the tiny
seed pods of a great linden tree. With these photos he could show his students how nature and
her laws always strive for simplicity, reduction, the essential.
The conflict between figurative and abstract styles was particularly strong during the years
he was a professor in the Kniglichen Kunstschule, and after World War I in the Hochschule
fr die bildenden Knste, but I dont think he cared whether his students did so-called
figurative or so-called abstract art. For him the basic laws of form applied to both. Two
specialists in the work of Blossfeldt, Ann and Jrgen Wilde, summarized his point of view in
this way (Fig. 2):
The growing and temporary forms of crystals, animals and plants are so infinitely varied that they were
certainly called into existence by some inflexible eternal law from another world, and obey the
unfathomable secret word of command of creation.
Waclaw Szpakowski (18831973) a Pole born in Warsaw and educated in architecture at the
Institute of Technology in Riga (Latvia), led a difficult life, interrupted tragically by two
world wars, but wherever he was, he worked with architectural projects to earn a living and
made geometric drawings of rhythmic lines or infinite lines in his spare time. He never
had a single exhibition of his drawings during his lifetime, but five years after his death his
series of Rhythmic Lines was shown in the Museum Sztuki in Lodz, and in 1994 a larger
collection was exhibited in the National Museum in Warsaw and also in the Willem Hack
Museum in Ludwigshafen, with a catalogue published by Atelier 340 (Brussels). Szpakowskis geometric single-line drawings (Fig. 2) seem to be decorative art, and in fact, he did
some true decorative art in the 1950s when he needed money, designing a geometric ceiling
for a cultural center, but he insisted that his drawings were more than decorative. He certainly
recognized that the simple zigzags and labyrinths he drew had similarities in textiles and
decorations of many cultures, but he saw this simply as proof of the universality and profundity of what he was doing.
Szpakowski took photos and made sketches when he traveled through Latvia, White
Russia, and Russia, observing the landscape, the natural lines, and trying to abstract them,
trying to find the true geometry behind the accidental variations. In one of the notebooks he
wrote this. A man who communes with nature and sees constantly the same objects must
learn automatically their characteristic features, and creates in his mind their image
Szpakowskis work is original and singular, despite the fact that it sometimes resembles
patterns seen in the decorative art of many cultures. As the Belgian art critic Marc Renwart puts
it, his work comes from the sources of decorative art, but it is not itself decorative art. Contrary
to general opinion, Szpakowski believed that straight lines do exist in nature, that trees are
basically two parallel lines, and that what he was doing was derived directly from nature.
Szpakowski played the violin rather well and liked to think of his rhythmic lines as music.
It is true that if one follows one of his infinite lines from beginning to end, as he wanted the
viewer to do, one does experience up-down-forwardbackward rhythms that resemble melodies. The geometrical structures created in this way during a period of over 50 years, from 1900
to 1954, were treated at the same time as sound recordings, almost as scores of musical pieces,
discovered in nature . Cycles of sketches, invariably drawn with a single line, never crossing,
referring to both visual, sound and psychological spheres of human experience, became
Szpakowskis method of describing the world.
Preface 1
Preface 1
xi
Always thinking of simply imitating nature, he never tried to impress the viewer or call
attention to himself as artist. He was content to simply follow the simple movements he saw as
basic natural forms, but of course, this apparent simplicity conceals many subtleties that
become apparent if one follows one of Szpakowskis lines far enough. Szpakowskis daughter,
the painter Anna Szpakowski, speaks of the importance of geometry and mathematics in what
he did.
Everything convinced my father that this was the only approach: The order he found in the world, in
nature, the logic with which a simple leaf is structured, the lines of the trees and other forms found in
nature, instinctive logical forms found in primitive cultures, in their buildings and folk patterns etc.
Now they were geometric lines.
Here one sees how Szpakowski is related to Dye and Blossfeldt. Like them he felt that
natural formations were superior to those of mans hand, and that these were the models to
follow. True Platonists, all three, they were always looking for the mathematical truth
underneath the visual illusions, and I am no doubt attempting to do the same thing in my own
way. TJ
Preface 2
The diagram and its relation with intellectual creation has a long tradition. It occurs very
early in Euclid, Aristotle, Kant, Euler, Nicolas of Cusa, Charles de Bovelles and many other
authors. Gilles Chatelet studied the diagrams of Nicole Oresme (Les Enjeux du Mobile, Seuil,
1993) and showed the power that a diagram could have for reasoning, and has updated its
capacity of virtual power. In my philosophical essay Ontologie des categories (in French,
LHarmattan, 2011), taken from my thesis Diagrammes et categories (University of Paris 7,
2007), I studied how the diagram is different from figures, sketches, schemes, and structures,
and demonstrated its specific detailed relationship to philosophy and to the mathematical
theory of categories. This work also has some similarities with a study by Tim Ingold, Lines.
A Brief History (Routledge, 2007).
In the arts, diagrammatic drawings of Mark Lombardi have often been cited as models of
narrative without beginning or end, which try constantly to make sense, by all sorts of
processes such as proximity of different elements or convergence of several paths at the same
point. The Preparatory Drawings of Mark Lombardi have in common with those of Tom
Johnson that they follow the same way of thinking: forcing the diagram to better reveal new
meanings and relationships in the world. Tom Johnsons music is subordinate to the diagram,
forcing itself to follow the laws of arithmetic and combinatorial nature. Like all diagrams,
these drawings stand at the border line between the virtual and the actual. FJ
xiii
Contents
Permutations . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Symmetric Group. . . . . . . . . . . .
Bruhat Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Euler Characteristic . . . . . . . . . .
Group Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Permutohedra and Cayley Graphs
Coxeter Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Homometric Sets . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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1
5
7
9
11
14
16
18
20
Sums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Integer Partitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
21
23
29
Subsets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Combinatorial Designs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
31
33
35
37
39
55
Twelve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(12,4,3). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
57
58
67
(9,4,3). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Decomposition of Block Designs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
69
70
72
55 Chords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Chords and Designs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
73
83
83
Clarinet Trio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Strange Fractal Sequences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
85
87
91
Loops. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Self-Replicating Melodies .
Rhythmic Canons. . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . .
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96
98
99
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xv
xvi
Contents
10 Juggling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Juggling, Groups, and Braids. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
101
103
105
11 Unclassified . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Some Other Designs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
107
107
118
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
119
Looking at Numbers has a unique history, and it will help to orient the reader if we explain it.
It began as a book by one author, Tom Johnson, who between 2008 and 2012 had done many
drawings as he attempted to map out his mathematical music. It was clear that many of these
drawings had a value in themselves, quite apart from musical applications, and they appeared
in exhibitions several times. He decided to assemble a collection of these in book form and
wrote about 40 pages of explanatory text to go with the drawings. The book was attractive to
Birkhuser, but since this house is known generally as a publisher of scientific books, the
editors thought their readers would be more pleased if a mathematician added notes at the end
of each chapter, going deeper into the structures depicted. This was a very good idea, and it
was not difficult to find a mathematician to collaborate, because Johnson had come to know
Franck Jedrzejewski rather well after some 10 years of mutual experiences through MaMuX,
the mathematics-and-music seminars held almost every month at IRCAM. Jedrzejewski has
many obligations at Saclay, the research center where he works as a mathematician, and he is
always pursuing independent research in musical and philosophical subjects as well, but
Johnsons request arrived in the summer time, when he was relatively free, and he found it
stimulating to study the mathematical questions underlying Johnsons music, which he
already knew rather well. He accepted the challenge without hesitation and then spent a great
deal of time studying the drawings and writing what was much more than mere mathematical
notes. Jedrzejewskis ideas stimulated Johnson to amplify his own text, the composer found
new questions for the mathematician to answer, it became clear that their many ideas about
juggling needed to be a chapter in itself, and after some weeks and several intense meetings,
the project became a real collaboration, a book by two authors.
Of course, the texts written from the composers point of view and those written from the
mathematicians point of view remained quite different and needed to be separated somehow.
We did not want to encumber the book with signatures every time it moved from one author
to another, so we simply ordered the book in a way that should clearly separate the two
authors. The basic texts at the beginning of each chapter are the texts by Johnson, and all the
subchapters are by Jedrzejewski. Certainly some readers will prefer the chapters, some will
prefer the sub-chapters, some will mostly just look at the drawings, and no two readers will
approach the book in quite the same way. Best wishes as you find your own way.
Paris, 2012
Tom Johnson
Franck Jedrzejewski
xvii
Permutations
1 Permutations
like (0, 1), only two connections are possible. The 0 can
move down to 3 making (3, 1) or the 1 can move up to 2
making (0, 2). But in cases like (0, 2), the 0 can either move
down to 3 or up to 1, and the 2 can either move down to 1 or
up to 3, making four connections. I was pleased to see that
these six formations are all Hamiltonian, which means that
one can pass through all the possible connections, once
each, with a single continuous line. Following these lines, I
was able to make a seven-minute composition in six
movements, each one longer than the last. This little piece,
Falling Thirds with Drum, interprets the numbers as beats
within the measure rather than pitches. So in the initial 03
formation, (3, 2) means that a little melody will begin on
beat three of one measure, and stop a third lower on beat 2
of the following measure. The drum simply plays on the
zero points, providing a frame of reference.
The piece could have gone on forever, but the page was
already rather full with these six formations, and that was
enough for the concentration capacities of most performers
and most listeners as well, so I stopped there. But since I
Permutations
0; 1; 3; 5; 6 0; 1; 2; 4; 7
0; 1; 3; 4; 8 0; 3; 4; 5; 8
0; 1; 4; 5; 8 0; 1; 2; 5; 8
1 Permutations
Fig. 1.5 .
Permutations
Fig. 1.6 .
Symmetric Group
Permutations play a key role in Johnsons theory. They are
applied to any kind of musical objects, but mostly to pitch
class sets and rhythms. A permutation is a rearrangement of
n objects denoted by digits f1; 2; . . .; ng. A permutation a
which pairs the jth object with the aj th object is characterized by a 2 n matrix
1 2 n
a
a1 a2 an
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
a
; b
;
2 3 4 1
3 4 1 2
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
ab
4 1 2 3
3 4 1 2
2 3 4 1
1 Permutations
Fig. 1.7 .
1
2
1
a1 a
4
a
2
3
2
1
3
4
3
2
4
2 3 4 1
1 2 3 4
; a1
1
1 2 3 4
4 1 2 3
4
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
e
3
2 3 4 1
1 2 3 4
A permutation a is called a cycle of length if a preserves n objects invariant and changes the remaining
objects in order, and is denoted by a one-row matrix,
a1 a2 a1 a a1 an
a
a2 a3 a a1 a1 an
a1 a2 a3 a1 a
Two cycles are independent if they do not contain any common object. Any permutation can be decomposed as a product
of independent cycles. For example (1, 4, 2) and (3, 5)
are independant cycles of the permutation
1 2 3 4 5
1; 4; 23; 5
a
4 1 5 2 3
A transposition is a cycle of length 2, a permutation ai ; aj
that displaces only elements ai and aj . Any permutation can
be written as a product of transpositions in many ways.
Permutations
Fig. 1.8 .
a1 ; a2 ; . . .; a a1 ; a2 a2 ; a3 . . .a1 ; a
a cardfi; j : i\j; ai [ aj g
i;j
a \ a0
Bruhat Order
A crucial role is played in a symmetric group by a certain
partial order structure. Let a be a permutation of Sn and
define the inversion count of a 2 Sn (or the length of a) as
the number of its inversions:
8
Fig. 1.9 .
Fig. 1.10 .
1 Permutations
Permutations
for all a 2 Sn
for all a 2 Sn
3;4
1;4
4231!2431!2341!2314
Fig. 1.11 .
The relation a ! b means that a!b for some transposition t i; j with i \ j. The relation a b for a; b 2
Sn means that there exists a chain of permutation p; q; r; . . .
of Sn such that
a ! p ! q ! ! r ! b
This is a partial order on the set of permutation Sn called
Bruhat order. The Bruhat graph is the directed graph whose
vertices are the elements of Sn and the edges are given by
the relation a ! b.
The following result is a criterion to answer the question
whether two permutations are comparable in Bruhat order.
For a 2 Sn , let
ai; j cardfk 2 f1; 2; :::; ig : ak jg
Euler Characteristic
The Euler characteristic vM of a closed surface M is a
topological invariant describing the topological structure of
the surface. It can be calculated by a triangulation of the
surface into v vertices, e edges and f faces according to the
formula
10
1 Permutations
vM v e f 2 2g
It is also related to the genus g of the surface, which is the
number of tori in a connected sum decomposition of the
surface (roughly speaking, the number of handles) if the
surface can be orientable, and the number of real projective
planes in a connected sum decomposition of the surface if
the surface can not be orientable.
For example, any convex polyhedron or connected plane
graph has characteristic 2:
vef 2
So for the cube, 8 12 6 2, the disk has Euler characteristic 1, the torus 0 and the sphere 2. The Moebius strip
and the Klein bottle have characteristic 0. There are many
generalizations of the Euler characteristic concept involving
algebraic topology theory such as Betti numbers and CWcomplexes.
Since the graph is planar and connected, Figs. 1.2 and
1.3 have the same Euler characteristic v 2: In Fig. 1.2,
this characteristic can be calculated by counting the
number of vertices v 4! 24, the number of edges e
36 (one edge is not drawn which links the top to the
bottom) and the number of faces (6 squares and 8
Permutations
11
1X
deg f
2 f 2C
Group Action
A group action is a description of the symmetries of the
elements of a set X under the action of the elements of a
group G. It is an extension to the definition of a symmetry
group. Mathematically, a group G acts on the elements of a
set X if there exists a map called the action of G on X from
G X ! X such that
(i) the identity e does not change the elements of X:
e x x;
for all x 2 X
(ii) the action is associative:
gh x g h x;
for all g; h 2 G; 8 x 2 X.
There are two important notions associated with such an
action. The stabiliser of a point x 2 X is the subgroup of G
defined by
12
1 Permutations
Stabx fg 2 G : gx xg
and the orbit of the point x 2 X is a subset of X :
Orbx fgx 2 X : g 2 Gg
Sylow subgroups play a major role in the theory of finite
groups. For a prime number p, a Sylow p-subgroup of a
group G is a maximal p-subgroup of G that is not a proper
subgroup of any other p-subgroup of G. In 1872, Ludwig
Sylow established three theorems.
Theorem 1 For any prime factor p with multiplicity n of
the order of a finite group G, there exists a Sylow p-subgroup of G of order pn .
Theorem 2 All Sylow p-subgroups of a finite group are
conjugate to one another.
Theorem 3 The number of p-Sylow subgroups of a finite
group divides the order of the group and is congruent to one
modulo p.
Permutations
13
14
1 Permutations
3;4
xyzt!xytz
Since the order of group G is 12 22 3, G has two Sylow
subgroups, namely G1 SylowG; 2 generated by u
1; 23; 4 and v 1; 32; 4 of order 4 and G2
SylowG; 3 generated by w 1; 3; 4 of order 3. The first
component is then a rectangle. This is quit a different view
of the two graphs of Fig. 1.11, because the actions are
different, but since it is simpler than Fig. 1.11, the relationship may be clearer.
1234
!
w#
3241
uv
!
w#
uv
!
w#
4213
2143
2314
!
2431
!
w#
v
!
w#
v
3412
4132
w#
uv
!
w#
u
!
1342
4312
1423
w#
!
3142
In Fig. 1.10, the group G is generated by the three permutations a 1; 2 , b 1; 3 and c 1; 4 and has order 24.
D
E
G a; b j a2 b2 c2 ab3 ac3 bc3 cacb2 1
vu
1234
! 2413
! 4321
! 3142
! 1324
! 2143
! 4231
w#
w#
w#
w#
w#
w#
w#
w#
3241
! 1432
! 2314
! 4123
! 2341
! 4132
! 3214
! 1423
vu
! 3412
v
w#
w#
w#
w#
w#
w#
w#
w#
4213
! 3421
! 1342
! 2134
! 4312
! 3124
! 1243
! 2431
vu
Permutations
15
16
1 Permutations
Coxeter Groups
Schlfli symbols are deeply connected with reflection
groups and Coxeter groups (see e.g. [1]). The group of
symmetries of a polytope P is the group of all motions of a
finite-dimensional Euclidean space that send P to itself. The
symmetry group of a regular polytope is a reflection group.
Two reflections ri and rj for i; j 1; 2; . . .; n satisfy the
relation
mij
1
ri rj
meaning that the product of these two reflections in two
hyperplanes meeting at an angle p=mij is a rotation by the
angle 2p=mij : This relation is exactly the relation that
defines Coxeter groups:
m
G r1 ; . . .; rn j ri rj ij 1
Permutations
17
and mij is the Coxeter matrix where mii 1 and mij mji 2
for i 6 j, or mij 1 (no relationship between ri and rj ).
Now what we have said about Bruhat order can be generalized to Coxeter groups, and we can see the connections
between all these concepts. For a Schlfli symbol fp; qg of a
regular polyhedron in a 3-dimensional Euclidean space, a
presentation of the polyhedron group is a Coxeter group
G \r; s j r p sq sr2 1 [
where the two generators r and s are rotations by 2p=q and
by 2p=p respectively. For example, for the cube, the polyhedron group has the following presentation:
C \r; s j r 3 s4 sr2 1 [
6!
90 (vertices or)
If we look at Fig. 1.14, we see the 2!2!2!
permutations of the set {1,1,2,2,3,3} connected with 180
edges. Two permutations are connected by adjacent position
transpositions si i; i 1, The elements 112233 at the
top has only two connections, while other elements have as
many as five. I can not deny the logic of Johnson drawing,
but mathematically it seems clearer to construct the system
begining with concentric circles as in Fig. 1.20. Note that
the dark circles all follow a sequence of transposition types
545454, that is transposing element 5 and 6, the 4 and 5, etc.
The symmetric group
s1 ; . . .; s6 j si sj sj si forji jj 2
S6
si si1 si si1 si si1 for i 1; 2; 3; 4
18
1 Permutations
Homometric Sets
Two musical chords A and B are Z-related in Zn if they have
the same interval content (ic), up to translation and
inversion.
A Zn B () icA icB
In 1944, Lindo Patterson [8] gave the following example,
for a finite group Z8 :
0; 3; 4; 5 Z8 0; 4; 5; 7
In Fortes classification, pitch class set 6Z24, namely (0, 1,
3, 4, 6, 8), and its complementary set 6Z46, (2, 5, 7, 9, 10,
11) = (0, 1, 2, 4, 6, 9), have the same interval content: ic =
233331. For two given chords A and B, the interval function
ifuncA; B 1A 1B
X
X
ifuncA; Bn
1A j1B n j
1A k1B n k
j
Fx
ci xi
ci 2 ifunc A
x2n 1
x1
, Tx Ax Tx1 Ax1 AxAx1
, Tx Tx Ax1 Ax 0 mod x2n 1
, Tx Tx Ax1 Ax kTxx 1
, Tx Ax1 Ax kx 1
Permutations
19
0; 1; n 2; n 1; n 1 Z2n 0; 1; 2; n 1; n 2
A Zn B ) Mm A Zn Mm B
0; 1; 2; n 2; n 1 Z2n 0; 1; 3; n 1; n
A 0; a; a n; 2n Z4n B 0; a; n; 2n a
(ii) In Z13n ,
A 0; n; 4n; 6n Z13n B 0; 2n; 3n; 7n
A related problem is to find a group and a group action
whose orbits are the homometric classes. It has been shown
in [7] that there is no reasonable group action whose
orbits are the homometric classes for all homometric sets.
But all Z-related pairs of a given length are generated by a
group of permutations. In the chromatic scale (n 12), there
are 19 homometric pairs, up to translation and inversion.
For four-note chords, there is only one Z-related pair:
0; 1; 3; 7 Z12 0; 1; 4; 6
but applying translations and inversions leads to a set of 48
elements. The group of order 3072 has six generators:
a 3; 9; b 4; 10; c 5; 11
d 2; 58; 11
e 1; 24; 57; 810; 11
f 0; 13; 46; 79; 10
For five-note chords, there are three Z-related pairs of
length 5:
0; 1; 3; 5; 6 Z12 0; 1; 2; 4; 7
0; 1; 3; 4; 8 Z12 0; 3; 4; 5; 8
0; 1; 4; 5; 7 Z12 0; 1; 2; 5; 8
The set of all Z-related five-note chords has 108 elements.
The group of order 48 has 3 generators:
a 1; 52; 104; 87; 11
b 1; 73; 95; 11
c 0; 12; 113; 104; 95; 86; 7
The action of the group on the 108 elements is shown in
Fig. 1.15. The set of Z-related five-note chords splits into
four components.
For length 6, there are 15 Z-related pairs and the set of
all Z-related pairs has 552 elements. The group of order 144
has 3 generators:
20
1 Permutations
References
1. Bjrner, A., and F. Brenti. 2005. Combinatorics of Coxeter
Groups. New York: Springer.
Sums
21
22
Sums
Sums
23
Integer Partitions
pnqn
n0
4;
3 1;
2 2;
2 1 1;
1
1
qn
n1
1111
n2Z
24
Sums
pn
1
1
1k1 p n k3k 1 p n k3k 1
2
2
k1
X
k
X
pi n k
i0
Integer Partitions
25
26
Sums
Integer Partitions
27
28
Sums
Integer Partitions
References
Aigner, M. 2007. A Course in Enumeration. Berlin: Springer.
Andrews, G.E., and K. Eriksson. 2004. Integer Partitions. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Bna, M. 2002. A Walk Through Combinatorics: An Introduction to
Enumeration and Graph Theory. Singapore: World Scientific
Publishing.
29
Bryant, V. 1993. Aspects of Combinatorics. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Stanley, R.P. 1999. Enumerative Combinatorics, Vol. 1, 2. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Starr, D. 1978. Sets, Invariance and Partitions. Journal of Music
Theory 22(1):142.
Subsets
the inner triplets twice. The larger circle below this does the
same thing with another single line and 20 triplets formed
from the set 0,1,2,3,4,5. Note that the triplets 0,2,4 and 1,3,5
must be visited three times in this case. If logically laying
out a system like this is still an impossible task for a
computer, it is also extremely difficult for us human beings
to untwist all these connections and to place the elements in
a formation that produces something coherent that we can
see. It is amazing how many trials are necessary before one
can find a reasonably coherent formation, and of course, one
can never be sure that one has arrived at the core of the
system.
Connecting subsets within subsets can lead to surprising
results. Figure 3.5 is really four drawings. Single elements
are connected with duplets in all cases, but first we consider
only the small set 1,2,3, then we go on to 1,2,3,4 and
1,2,3,4,5 and finally 1,2,3,4,5,6.
One day I tried to connect all the duplets within all the
triplets in 1,2,3,4,5 and was surprised at the lovely graph
that resulted, so I tried lots of other situations. Figure 3.6
treats only the set 1,2,3,4,5, connecting duplets within
triplets, duplets within quadruplets, then triplets within
quadruplets. With five elements, it is not surprising to find
five-pointed stars, but in one case we dont see pentagonal
formations at all.
Figure 3.7 connects triplets within quadruplets in the set
1,2,3,4,5,6 and shows how all of this can become rather
complicated rather quickly.
You may still think that such things are not complex
enough for someone of your intelligence, in which case you
may wish to try to connect the quadruplets within the
quintuplets in the set 1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Connecting the 35 quadruplets to the 21 quintuplets containing them will require
connecting each quadruplet to three quintuplets, and each
quintuplet to five quadruplets, and you may lose your way
for days in the maze of 105 connecting lines, even if you do
it in three dimensions. As for myself, I think I will stop
here.
31
32
Fig. 3.3
Fig. 3.4
Subsets
Subsets
33
Combinatorial Designs
The first figure of subsets (Fig. 3.1) concerns all of the
5-choose-2 subsets, while the second concerns all of the
5-choose-3 subsets. Block designs such as we will see later
work with symmetrical collections of subsets rather than
complete sets of subsets, but we can look at these subsets in
a similar way. Let us review first some definitions of the
block designs. A t-design t-v; k; k is a pair D X; B
where X is a set of v elements, also called a v-set and a set B
of k-subsets of X called blocks such that every t-subset of X
is contained in exactly k blocks. A 2-design is called a
Balanced Incomplete Block Design (BIBD) or simply a
Block Design and is denoted by v; k; k. One of the simplest
block design is the Fano plane. It is a 2-7; 3; 1 design
whose blocks are written vertically by this matrix:
3654656
1242534
0001123
34
Subsets
rk 1 kv 1
Combinatorial Designs
35
1111122233
2234534544
3456665656
For v 5, it is exactly 5; 3; 3.
Moreover, in Fig. 3.2, the upper drawing has elements
16 instead of 15 as Fig. 3.1 and is a true block design
with an incomplete set of subsets. Defined as (6,3,2), it has
these 10 blocks, where the complete set of 6-choose-3 has
20 blocks. Curiously, the remaining 10 blocks are the
References
Colbourn, C., and Dinitz, J. 2007. Handbook of combinatorial designs.
Boca Raton: CRC Press
Fano, G. 1892. Sui postulari fondamenti della geometria projettiva.
Giornale di Mathematiche 30: 106132.
Kaski, P., and stergrd, P. 2006. Classification algorithms for codes
and designs. Berlin: Springer
Reye, T. 1876. Geometrie der lage I. Hannover: Rmpler.
what order one chooses, the four chords will always have one
note in common with the chord before and another in common with the subsequent chord. These sub-groups of three
notes might also become little interconnecting melodies or
rhythms, and it is obvious that a tight formation of this sort
could be applied to musical composition in countless ways.
And of course, with a block design containing 33 sub-groups
instead of only four, one could go much further.
Symmetries of this sort are reminiscent of some of the
wonderful moments in the serial music of Anton Webern,
particularly the Variations for piano and the Symphony, and
Im sure that many of the mirror images and echoes that one
hears in Weberns music are also side effects rather than
consciously calculated phenomena. But the symmetrical
effects and side effects produced by the inversions and
retrogrades of Weberns serial music are limited, as Webern
didnt know about Pasch configurations and combinatorial
designs, and in fact, had very few mathematical tools to
work with. But lets go back to that day in the library of the
Institute Henri Poincar.
The crucial starting point I found in the library that day
had to do with Kirkmans Ladies, which is one of my
favorite stories in the whole history of mathematics. Its a
story that took place in 1847 and has to do with a problem
posed by Reverend Thomas Penyngton Kirkman, an English pastor who was also an amateur mathematician:
Fifteen young ladies in a school walk out three abreast for
seven days in succession; it is required to arrange them daily so
that no two shall walk twice abreast. (Ladies and Gentlemans
Diary, Query VI, p. 48)
37
38
few additional solutions, and soon professional mathematicians were thinking about it as well. The discussion
quickly grew to include all sorts of investigations of similar
kinds of questions, and even the original 15-ladies problem
went on long after the death of Kirkman.
The basic Kirkman structure later became known as a
(15, 3, 1) combinatorial design, because it takes 15 elements
and divides them into subsets of three so that each pair of
elements comes together exactly once. Of course, many
solutions are just permutations and rearrangements of other
solutions, but some are completely different, or as mathematicians say, are non-isomorphic, and one of the first
questions that this little puzzle posed for serious mathematicians was: How many non-isomorphic solutions are possible?
One would think that such a question could not be
answered without running thousands of trials with a computer, but mathematicians are amazingly clever sometimes,
and a man named H.S. White solved this problem already in
1919 in a paper you can download among the files of the
Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences [2]. He
demonstrated that exactly 80 unique solutions are possible.
Among these 80 solutions, all fulfill the basic requirements
of 15 elements divided into 35 sets of three elements, each
pair of elements coming together once, but very few permit
all 15 ladies to walk in trios for seven days. Most solutions
give us trio arrangements that oblige one lady to stay at home
and another to walk in two different rows on the same day.
Quite a few solutions permit us to line up the ladies for all
seven days, provided we put the same three ladies together
on a couple of different days. Other solutions permit us to
line them up for one or two or four days without any
duplication, but not for the whole week. One solution permits us to line them up for six days if one permits four
different trios to be together on three days and two other trios
to be together on two days. Another solution permits us to
line the ladies up in 16 ways, provided three trios march
together four times and four trios march together twice. One
solution allows the ladies to take their walks in 56 different
ways for 56 days, but the same seven trios have to walk
together eight times each, which rather spoils the friendly
equality that was at the root of Kirkmans problem.
In 10 of the 80 15; 3; 1 solutions there is not a single
way in which one can put all 15 ladies into five rows for
their daily walk. I find it a little hard to believe that with 35
triplets there is not a single way to fit five of them together
and have all 15 elements, but this does happen. The 14th
solution, as given in the standard book on the subject, The
Handbook of Combinatorial Design, edited by Charles J.
Colbourne and Jeffrey H. Dinitz, [3], is one example. Can
you find combinations here that will put the 15 ladies all
together in five lines of three?
ch[1] := f1; 2; 3g
ch[2] := f1; 4; 5g
ch[3] := f1; 6; 7g
ch[4] := f1; 8; 9g
ch[5] := f1; 10; 11g
ch[6] := f1; 12; 13g
ch[7] := f1; 14; 15g
ch[8] := f2; 4; 6g
ch[9] := f2; 5; 7g
ch[10] := f2; 8; 10g
ch[11] := f2; 9; 11g
ch[12] := f2; 12; 14g
ch[13] := f2; 13; 15g
ch[14] := f3; 4; 7g
ch[15] := f3; 5; 6g
ch[16] := f3; 8; 11g
ch[17] := f3; 9; 12g
ch[18] := f3; 10; 15g
ch[19] := f3; 13; 14g
ch[20] := f4; 8; 13g
ch[21] := f4; 9; 15g
ch[22] := f4; 10; 12g
ch[23] := f4; 11; 14g
ch[24] := f5; 8; 14g
ch[25] := f5; 9; 10g
ch[26] := f5; 11; 13g
ch[27] := f5; 12; 15g
ch[28] := f6; 8; 15g
ch[29] := f6; 9; 14g
ch[30] := f6; 10; 13g
ch[31] := f6; 11; 12g
ch[32] := f7; 8; 12g
ch[33] := f7; 9; 13g
ch[34] := f7; 10; 14g
ch[35] := f7; 11; 15g
As I kept looking at the correct 15-lady formations, which
mathematicians call parallel classes, I wanted to see how
they were fitting together, so I began to draw them, and the
result is the 22 drawings Figs. 4.24.23. Thats only a small
part of the complete list of 80 solutions, since the solutions
with only one or two or zero line-ups were not very interesting to draw or to look at, but in most of the other cases the
overlapping pentagons and circles and crossing lines
exhibited lovely formations, and finding the best way to
place them on a piece of paper was a nice challenge. Day
after day I looked at these patterns, admired their symmetries, and thought, yes, there is a logic here, and its not a
logic that I invented. Its something that came directly out of
the numbers generated by that seemingly banal problem
posed by Reverand Kirkmans little 1847 article.
A thornier problem presented itself when mathematicians began to ask: Would it be possible for Kirkmans
ladies to continue their daily walks for a complete semester
of 13 weeks, so as to include all 455 possible three-lady
combinations once each? A few courageous souls thought
about this already early in the century, but here electronic
computation really was necessary, and it was not until 1974
that computers were sufficiently advanced that R. H. F.
Denniston of the University of Leicester could publish a
solution to this larger problem. His solution is probably the
only one, and thanks to it, I had enough information to write
a piece of music 13 pages long instead of only one, one
solution per page.
Incidentally, Dennistons 13-week solution was not calculated with one of the rich solutions permitting 16 formations or 56, but Jeff Dinitz confirmed for me that it came
out of the 61st solution, which you see in Fig. 4.1. What
you see there suffices for only one week, but the formation
can be permuted 12 more times in order to calculate all 13
weeks and the complete set of 455 three-lady formations.
In my score, entitled Kirkmans Ladies, the 15 ladies
become a scale of 15 notes, and the daily walks of five rows,
three ladies in each row, become phrases of five chords with
three notes in each chord. Each lady/note occurs once in each
sequence of five chords, each pair of ladies walks together
once a week, and by the end of the 13 weeks/sections, all 455
possible trios of women, all 455 possible combinations of
three notes, have passed by. The music may be played by
other combinations, though I suggest in the score that the
most appropriate instruments for these attractive well dressed
English ladies will probably be three flutes or a harp.
39
afg
bhj
cio
dmn
ekl
Tuesday
abc
dik
ejn
flo
ghm
Wednesday
ade
bil
cjm
fhn
gko
Thursday
ano
bdf
chk
eim
gjl
Friday
ahi
beg
cln
djo
fkm
Saturday
alm
bkn
cdg
eho
fij
Sunday
ajk
bmo
cef
dhl
gin
40
bk
v! k t!
v t! k!
1; 2; 10
3; 5; 13
6; 11; 12
8; 9; u
4; 7; v
1; 3; 8
4; 5; 9
6; 7; 13
10; 12; u
2; 11; v
1; 4; 12
2; 8; 13
7; 9; 11
3; 6; u
5; 10; v
1; 5; 7
2; 9; 12
3; 10; 11
4; 13; u
6; 8; v
1; 6; 9
2; 3; 4
7; 8; 10
5; 11; u
12; 13; v
1; 11; 13
4; 6; 10
5; 8; 12
2; 7; u
3; 9; v
2; 5; 6
3; 7; 12
4; 8; 11
9; 10; 13
1; u; v
ayz;
bwz;
bxy
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
References
1. Kirkman, T.P. 1847. On a problem in combinatorics. Cambridge
and Dublin Mathematical Journal 2: 191204.
2. White, H.S., F.N. Cole, and L.D. Cummings. 1919. Complete
classification of the triad systems on fifteen elements. Memoirs of
the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
14: 189.
3. Colbourn, C. and J. Dinitz. 2007. Handbook of combinatorial
designs. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
55
4. Mulder, P. 1917. Kirkman Systemen. Groningen Dissertation.
Leiden, Netherlands.
5. Cole, F.N. 1922. Kirkman parades. Bulletin of the American
Mathematical Society 28: 435437.
6. Ray-Chauduri, D.K., and R.M. Wilson. 1971. Solution of
Kirkmanschool girl problem. Proceedings of Symposia in Pure
Mathematics American Mathematical Society 19: 187204.
7. Rees, R.S., and D.R. Stinson. 1989. On combinatorial designs with
subdesigns. Discrete Mathematics 77: 259279.
8. Colbourn, C., and A. Rosa. 1999. Triple systems. Oxford: Oxford
University Press
9. Steiner, J. 1853. Combinatorische aufgabe. Journal of Reine
Angewandte Mathematik 45: 181182.
10. Denniston, R.H.F. 1974. Sylvesters problem of the fifteen
schoolgirls. Discrete Mathematics 9: 229233.
Twelve
57
58
Twelve
Fig. 5.1 Solutions of (12, 4, 3) connecting blocks when they have no common elements
these lists of 33 chords. Everything results from the organization found in 12; 4; 3 block designs. I often say that I
want to find the music rather than to compose it, and that is
exactly what I was doing here.
When the 12 short piano pieces were finally finished, I
had pretty much forgotten about the drawings. The
sequences of chords I worked from had all come rigorously
from the drawings, but I hadnt looked directly at the
drawings for some time and wasnt quite sure which piano
piece came from which drawing. In fact, a year or so after
composing this piece, the musicologist Gilbert Delor gave a
lecture at IRCAM about it, in which he determined that I
had used the same drawing three times and some of the
other drawings not at all. Of course, you cant tell by listening to the pieces that three of them have the same origin,
because a composer can follow the lines of a drawing in
quite a few different ways. And sometimes, instead of following the lines, which connected chords when they had no
notes in common, I found other routes where each chord
had two notes in common with the next, and wrote another
kind of music. But all that is not terribly important here,
because now we are primarily just looking at numbers.
(12,4,3)
Block designs with twelve objects play an important role in
music since there are twelve notes on a keyboard. However,
for many composers, twelve is not only a reference to pitch
classes, but also to rhythms and more abstract musical
objects. The following example of a 12; 4; 3-design, like
all 12; 4; 3 designs, has 33 blocks:
111111111112222222233333344445567
222334455683345667944567a55686978
345787b67a9458878ba56998b67a97a89
69c9cac8bba7aab9ccb8bbcac9ccbacbc
(12,4,3)
59
Fig. 5.2 Solutions of (12, 4, 3) connecting blocks when they have no common elements
60
Fig. 5.3 Solutions of (12, 4, 3) connecting blocks when they have no common elements
Fig. 5.4 Solutions of (12, 4, 3) connecting blocks when they have no common elements
Twelve
(12,4,3)
Fig. 5.5 Solutions of (12, 4, 3) connecting blocks when they have no common elements
61
62
Fig. 5.6 Solutions of (12, 4, 3) connecting blocks when they have no common elements
Twelve
(12,4,3)
Fig. 5.7 Solutions of (12, 4, 3) connecting blocks when they have no common elements
63
64
Fig. 5.8 Solutions of (12, 4, 3) connecting blocks when they have no common elements
Fig. 5.9 Solutions of (12, 4, 3) connecting blocks when they have no common elements
Twelve
(12,4,3)
Fig. 5.10 Solutions of (12, 4, 3) connecting blocks when they have no common elements
Fig. 5.11 Solutions of (12, 4, 3) connecting blocks when they have no common elements
65
66
Fig. 5.12 Solutions of (12, 4, 3) connecting blocks when they have no common elements
Twelve
(12,4,3)
67
References
1. Colbourn, C., and J. Dinitz. 2007. Handbook of combinatorial
designs. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
2. Forte, A. 1973. The structure of atonal music. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
3. Ilomki, T. 2005. Group structures and equivalence classes in
extended twelve-tone operations. In: Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference, Barcelona, 487490.
4. Morales, L.B., and C. Velarde. 2001. A Complete Classification of
(12,4,3)-RBIBDs. Journal of Combinatorial Designs 9: 385400.
Further Reading
stergrd, P.R.J. 2000. Enumeration of 2-(12, 3, 2) designs. Australasian Journal of Combinatorics 22: 227231.
(9,4,3)
69
70
(9,4,3)
71
000000001111122234
111223351133533446
246454674745656557
357867886887887768
has five orbits (see Fig. 6.1). One with two elements (0123,
4678) and four orbits with four elements each.
Any block of four elements in the top drawing of Fig. 6.1
is related to a block of four having the same position on the
bottom drawing on one of these orbits.
In Fig. 6.2, the block design
000000001111122223
111233562334433444
225544777556666555
346678888787878786
5
6
5
6
8
7
8
7
1;25;67;8
7
8
3;45;67;8
7
8
7;8
7
There are seven orbits. Two orbits with only one block each
(1278) and (3456). Four orbits of two blocks and one orbit
of eight blocks.
In Fig. 6.4, the block design
0;7;3;61;4;2;8
on the top drawing leads to the bottom drawing. The design
of Fig. 6.1
000000001111122223
111233452334533444
225546677467656565
346787888578888677
72
(9,4,3)
and gives the interest. But then comes the translation of the
mathematical structure into music. For him, this generally
has to do with pitches or rhythms, but we can also imagine
that it has to do with frequencies, timbres and other
parameters, though dealing with many secondary parameters goes against the nature of his minimalist position. The
interest of the music necessarily emerges from the mathematical structure.
References
1. Colbourn, C., and J. Dinitz. 2007. Handbook of Combinatorial
Designs. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Further Reading
Breach, D.R. 1979. The 2-(9,4,3) and 3-(10,5,3) designs. Journal of
Combinatorial Theory Series A 27:5063.
Butler, G. 1991. Fundamental Algorithms for Permutations Groups.
Berlin: Springer.
Hoffmann, C.M. 1982. Group-Theoretic Algorithms and Graph
Isomorphism. Berlin: Springer.
Seress, A. 2003. Permutation Group Algorithms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stanton, R.G., R.C. Mullin, and J.A. Bate. 1976. Isomorphism classes
of a set of prime BIBD parameters. Ars Combinatoria 2:251264.
55 Chords
74
7 55 Chords
this far, considering all the other symmetries one can find
within this extraordinary group of 55 chords.
Figures 7.8, 7.9, 7.10, 7.11, 7.12, 7.13, 7.14, 7.15, 7.16, 7.17
and 7.18: The next 11 drawings come out of the same (11,4,6)
structure, the same 55 chords, but each drawing involves only
one part of the system. I realized I could write another kind of
music if I grouped together all the chords containing a certain
note. The common tone could simply be sustained while
the remaining notes passed by as three-note chords. Lets look,
for instance, at the 20 blocks/chords that contain note no. 4:
55 Chords
75
76
7 55 Chords
55 Chords
77
78
7 55 Chords
55 Chords
79
80
7 55 Chords
55 Chords
81
82
7 55 Chords
2f1; 3; 4; 11g
3f1; 2; 4; 5g
5f3; 4; 6; 7g
6f4; 5; 7; 8g
12f2; 4; 7; 9g
14f4; 6; 9; 11g
18f2; 4; 8; 10g
20f1; 4; 6; 10g
24f3; 4; 7; 8g
25f4; 5; 8; 9g
31f3; 4; 10; 11g
32f1; 4; 5; 11g
34f2; 4; 5; 7g
36f4; 6; 7; 9g
42f1; 2; 4; 10g
44f1; 3; 4; 6g
47f2; 4; 8; 9g
49f4; 6; 10; 11g
53f3; 4; 8; 10g
54f4; 5; 9; 11g
If we look at block/chord no. 36 from this list, the numbers
(4,6,7,9), we can observe that six others have only the
number 4 in common with it:
2f1; 3; 4; 11g
3f1; 2; 4; 5g
31f3; 4; 10; 11g
18f2; 4; 8; 10g
32f1; 4; 5; 11g
53f3; 4; 8; 10g
But if we look at block/chord no. 2, the numbers (1,3,4,11),
we can observe that only two other blocks have only the
number 4 in common with it.
18f2; 4; 8; 10g
36f4; 6; 7; 9g
Among these 20 blocks/chords, each containing note 4, 10
have six connections and 10 have only two connections, and
the same situation arises if we take the blocks containing the
note 1 or the note 2, or whatever. I liked this situation, and
the music that came out of it, so I set about drawing all 11
configurations, each time finding a new way to tie together
the 10 blocks having six connections and the 10 blocks
having only two connections.
I dont remember which mathematician friend pointed
out to me that, of course, any graph containing 20 elements,
10 with two connections and 10 with six connections, is
necessarily the same graph. I looked back at my drawings
and saw that this is true. Each drawing could be somehow
pushed and pulled and twisted into one of the other
55 Chords
83
contains all trichords except 3-8 and 3-11. In this way, one
can have the whole set of trichords using two sets of blocks
of the same design.
References
000011122236
134534534547
268787676858
1. Andreatta, M., F. Jedrzejewski, Johnson, T. 2009. Musical experiences with block designs. In ed. E. Chew, A. Childs, C.-H. Chuan,
154165. MCM 2009, CCIS 38, Springer.
2. Colbourn, C., J. Dinitz. 2007. Handbook of combinatorial designs.
Boca Raton: CRC Press.
3. Colbourn, C., A. Rosa. 1999. Triple systems. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
4. Mathon, R., A. Rosa. 1985. Tables of parameters of BIBDs with
r 41 including existence, enumeration, and resolvability results.
Annals of Discrete Mathematics 26: 275307.
5. Mathon, R., A. Rosa. 1990. Tables of parameters of BIBDs with
r 41 including existence, enumeration, and resolvability results:
ANnupdate. Ars Combinatoria 30: 6596.
6. A. Seress. 2003. Permutation group Algorithms. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Clarinet Trio
85
86
Clarinet Trio
Figure 8.6 is called Pasch because it involves formations studied by a mathematician named Pasch. Following a
Pasch configuration, which we explained in Fig. 4.1, one
can form four chords with six notes in such a way that each
chord has one common note with each other chord, and
each note falls into two different chords. Pairs of pairs are
formed when two of the chords are followed by the other
two chords, all derived from the same six notes. The difference between the first pair and the second is quite subtle,
though the ear can hear that something has changed. Are we
really hearing four three-note chords, or a single six-note
chord?
I counted 99 different Pasch configurations that can be
constructed in this design, but the Clarinet Trio was falling
into 11 sections, so I selected only the 11 configurations that
had the best balance between high notes and low notes.
With each configuration we hear the four chords very
quickly, like a flash out of nowhere, and then in a more
audible tempo. One is not quite sure if one is hearing four
three-note chords or one six-note chord, but therein lies the
interest.
Clarinet Trio
87
88
Fig. 8.3
Pairs
Clarinet Trio
89
9; 7; 5; 3; 1; 10; 8; 6; 4; 2; 11
90
Clarinet Trio
References
Benson, D. 2005. Mathematics and music. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press
Fauvel, J., Flood, R., Wilson, R. 2006. Music and mathematics: From
pythagoras to fractals. New York: Oxford University Press
91
Grnbaum, B., and Shephard, G.C 1986. Tilings and patterns. New
York: Freeman
Zvonkin, A., and Lando, S.K 2004. Graphs on surfaces and their
applications. Berlin: Springer
Loops
94
9 Loops
the same thing. And of course, others could play four times
slower or eight times slower or two times faster, and they
would be in unison as well.
Figure 9.11 represents the loop used in Kientzy Loops
(2000). Here the melody self-replicates at a ratio of 3 to 1, as
you can see in the upper drawing. The slow version follows a
star shape in the middle, and if you begin at the points marked
by the arrows, you can see how both melodies have the same
numbers: 4,3,2,1,2,3,4,1. Curiously, if you follow the arrows in
the lower drawing, you can see how another player can follow
the same circle counter-clockwise and be playing the same
melody seven times slower than the original, and a fourth
player can follow the star in the reverse direction and play the
same melody five times slower. Someone could even play three
times slower than the person playing three times slower, or five
times slower than the person playing three times slower, and
Loops
95
they would be in unison too, since they are all in correct proportions. Someone might even play 9 times faster than the
person playing five times slower, and that would come out in
unison too, but the problem would be that this person would
96
9 Loops
Self-Replicating Melodies
A self-replicating melody is a self-similar periodic set of
musical events. Taking one object every a beats yields the
same melody at another tempo. The parameter a is called
the ratio of the self-replicating melody. We assume that this
ratio a is coprime with the period n of the melody. As we
have seen, any affine map x ! ax b mod n of Zn Z=nZ
is associated with a permutation. The cyclic decomposition
of this permutation forms the orbits of the melody. In
Fig. 9.10, the mapping
f x 2x mod 15
Self-Replicating Melodies
97
is associated with
10
11
12
13
14
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 1 3 5
1; 2; 4; 83; 6; 12; 95; 107; 14; 13; 11
11
13
0 1
10
11
12
13
14
15
98
9 Loops
Rhythmic Canons
Figures 9.1, 9.2, 9.4, 9.3, 9.5, 9.6, 9.7, 9.8, and 9.9 are
rhythmic canons. From the mathematical point of view, a
(finite) rhythmic canon is a tiling of the cyclic group Zn by
translations. In other words, the generic cyclic group is
decomposed into two subsets.
A B Zn
n is the period of the canon, A is called the inner voice and
the set of offsets B is the outer voice. Factor A is periodic if
9k; 0\k\n, such that A A k: In the middle of the 20th
century, Hajs thought that one of the factors had to be
periodic. In fact, the two factors can be non-periodic. In a
series of papers, Dan Tudor Vuza studied what he called
A0
A5
99
k2A
7; 5; 1; 1; 1; 4; 5; 7; 2; 4; 2; 5; 2; 4; 7
x1
ratios 1, 2, 4, 5 and 7. For n 21, the following perfect
rhythmic tiling has index 7.
In the 1950s, de Bruijn, Redei, Sands [3], Hajs [4] and
others were working on the Hajs conjecture: in the
9; 5; 6; 1; 1; 1; 5; 3; 6; 9; 3; 5; 4; 3; 6; 2; 4; 2; 9; 2; 4
decomposition of the cyclic group Zn in two factors, one of
these factors is necessarily periodic. They found counter- In a special issue of Perspectives of new music (2011),
examples and classified the groups into good groups or Davalan [6] gave the following definition. A perfect
Hajs groups for which the conjecture is true and bad rhythmic tiling with order n and index k is a collection of n
groups. Zn is a non-Hajs group if and only if n can be arithmetic sequences with different ratios whose union is
expressed in the form p1 p2 n1 n2 n3 where p1 , p2 are primes, the set Zkn (n and k are non-negative integers[ 3). Davalan
pi ni 2 for i 1, 2, 3 and gcdn1 p1 ; n2 p2 1: The showed that the shortest non-trivial perfect rhythmic tiling
smallest values of n for which Zn is a non-Hajs group are: with index 4 has order 15 and length 60.
72, 108, 120, 144, 168, etc. A Vuza canon is a counterexample to Hajss conjecture.
In 2004, I gave a simple way to compute a Vuza canon. References
Let p1 , p2 be prime numbers and ni , i 1; 2; 3 as above.
Then denoting a; b fa; a 1; . . .; b 1g, we construct
1. Amiot, E. 2009. Autosimilar melodies. Journal of Mathematics
and Music 3(1): 126.
for n p1 p2 n1 n2 n3 a Vuza canon S R Zn with
A n2 n3 0; p2 p2 n1 n2 n3 0; p1
B n1 n3 0; p1 p1 n1 n2 n3 0; p2
S p2 n2 n3 0; n1 p1 n1 n3 0; n2
R 1; n3 B [ A
Since the exchange of inner and outer voices does not
change the table of the canon, if A; B is a canon of Zn ,
then B; A is also a canon of Zn : Moreover if a is coprime
with n, aA b; B is also a canon of Zn . Replacing the
motif by itself several times,
Further Reading
10
11
12
13
14
A2
2A 4
4A 5
5A 1
7A
Coven, E., and A. Meyerowitz. 1999. Tiling the integers with translate
of one finite set. Journal of Algebra 212: 161174.
Feldman, D. 1996. Review of self-similar melodies by Tom Johnson.
Leonardo Music Journal 8: 8084.
F. Jedrzejewski. 2006. Mathematical theory of music. Paris: Ircam
Delatour.
Szab, S. 1985. A type of factorization of finite abelian groups.
Discrete Mathematics 54: 121124.
Juggling
10
102
10 Juggling
with this drawing, which actually represents a pattern juggled by a single juggler in my Three Notes for Three Jugglers, a piece that uses electronic balls developed by Steim,
a research center in Amsterdam, the balls producing particular notes whenever they are caught.
10
Juggling
103
104
10 Juggling
1 X n
b 1d bd
l
n djn d
where l is the Mbius function
8
1 if n is a square-free integer with an even number of prime factors.
>
>
<
ln 1 if n is a square-free integer with an odd number of prime factors.
>
>
:
0 if n is not square free
ht f t t
ht is the number of beats between two thrown. We suppose that the height function is periodic ht n ht for
some n. A juggling pattern is thus a bijection f : Z ! Z;
t ! t ht where ht is n-periodic ht n ht 0. A
juggling sequence or a site swap is the sequence
h0; h1; . . .; hn 1
The most basic patterns are the cascade f t t 3; where
three balls go back and forth from hand to hand, the fountain f t t 4, with two balls in one hand and two in the
other, and the shower
t1
if t is odd
f t
t5
if t is even
where the fives are always in one hand and the ones in the
other and the balls make circles. The number of distinct
height functions of all juggling patterns of length n with less
than b balls is bn and the number of juggling patterns of
period n with exactly b balls is, up to equivalence
Some site swaps are canons, but often the objects have
different trajectories. A juggle is perfect if all trajectories of
the balls are pairwise distinct. A very simple perfect juggling sequence is 312 (period 3 and 2 balls). Each perfect
juggling sequence of period p with n balls is decomposable
into subsequences A1 ; A2 ; . . .; An such that each Aj is a
partition of p. With 2 balls, and period 4, there is a unique
perfect sequence
4112 4 112
For n 5, there are three perfect sequences
51112 5 1112
14113 14 113
22312 23 212
With 3 balls, there is a unique perfect juggling sequence of
period 5:
53142 5 14 32
10
Juggling
105
References
1. Buhler, J., D. Eisenbud, R. Graham, and C. Wright. 1994. Juggling
drops and descents. American Mathematical Monthly 101(6):
507519.
2. Devadoss, S., and J. Mugno. 2007. Juggling braids and links.
Mathematical Intelligencer 29: 1522.
3. Duijvestijn, A. 1978. A simple perfect square of lowest order.
Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series B 25: 240243.
4. Polster, B. 2003. The Mathematics of Juggling. London: Springer.
11
Unclassified
# Blocks
Figure
(6,3,2)
10
11.1
(7,3,2)
14
11.2
(12,3,2)
44
11
(11,4,5)
55
20
11.5
(10,3,2)
30
11.6
(13,5,5)
39
15
11.8
(15,5,4)
42
14
11.11
(12,4,3)
33
11
11.13
107
108
11
Designs
# Blocks
Generators
7; 3; 1
13; 4; 1
13
0; 1; 3; 9
21; 5; 1
21
0; 1; 4; 14; 16
31; 6; 1
31
0; 1; 3; 8; 12; 18
0; 1; 3
57; 8; 1
57
73; 9; 1
73
Fig. 11.2
Fig. 11.1
Fig. 11.3
Unclassified
Fig. 11.4
109
110
Fig. 11.5
11
Unclassified
Fig. 11.6
111
112
Fig. 11.7
11
Unclassified
Fig. 11.8
113
114
Fig. 11.9
11
Unclassified
Fig. 11.10
115
116
Fig. 11.11
11
Unclassified
Fig. 11.12
117
118
11
Unclassified
Fig. 11.13
References
1. Blossfeldt, K. 1928. Urformen der Kunst, Photographische Pflanzenbilder, Berlin: Wasmuth.
Index
A
Alhambra, 31
Amiot, Emmanuel, 93
Andreatta, Moreno, 93
B
Block design, 3335, 37, 70, 72, 83, 118
Blossfeldt, Karl, x, 9
Braids, 15, 16, 101, 103, 105
Bruhat order, 7
C
Canon, 98, 99, 103
Cayley graph, 10, 13
Combinatorial, 33, 37, 38, 57, 69, 70, 73, 107
Coxeter Groups, 14
Coxeter, Harold Scott MacDonald
Cycle, 5, 6, 24, 25, 40, 85, 97, 98, 101, 102
D
Delor, Gilbert, 58
Dinitz, Jeffrey, 34
Dye, Daniel sheets, 10
E
Euler, 7
F
Fano plane, 33, 39
Fractal, 87
Fripertinger, Harald, 93
G
Gandini, 101
Girard, Bernard
H
Hajs, Gyrgy, 98, 99
Hamiltonian, 2, 24, 25, 85
Hivert, Florent, 101
Homometric, 16, 17, 19, 20
I
IRCAM, 58
Isomorphic, 14, 34, 39
J
Juggling, 101, 103105
K
Kirkman, 34, 3739
L
Lardillier, Jonathan, 101
Links, 9, 105
Logic, 1, 15, 22, 31, 38, 57, 69, 107
Lombardi, Mark, 13
Loops, 85, 9698, 101
M
MaMuX, 93, 101
Melody, 2, 94, 96
N
Nature, 710, 72
Network, 1, 3, 4, 21, 69
Non-isomorphic, 3840, 55, 59, 107
Novelli, Jean-Christophe, 101
O
Octagon, 7
Order, 6, 7, 1114, 19, 20, 71, 72, 99
P
Pasch configuration, 37, 40, 55, 86
Patterson, Lindo, 16, 17
Permutation, 17, 1216, 19, 38, 59, 72, 96, 97, 104
Permutohedron, 13, 14
Pitch class set, 16, 59, 83
Planar graph, 10, 14
Platonists, 10
Polytope, 14
Prechac, Christophe, 103
119
120
R
Resolvable, 39
Rhythmic canon, 93, 94, 98
Rhythms, 22, 33, 58, 72, 101
S
Schlaeffli symbol, 14
Self-replicating melody, 96
Steiner, 39, 107
Supplementary set, 93
Symmetry group, 7, 10, 14, 15, 24
Szpakowski, Waclaw, 10, 107
T
Tiles, 101
Tiling, 98, 99
Topological invariant, 7
Index
U
Undirected graph, 14, 24
V
Vriezen, Samuel, 37
Vuza, Dan Tudor, 93, 98, 99
W
Webern, Anton, 37
Wilson, Luke, 101
Z
Z-relation, 17, 19