Music, culture, history and current events from the Christian Commie Cowboy perspective.

The short answer is: music weds passion and logic. The interplay of feeling and reason is a pretty good definition of being human.

In my work as a busker (street musician) I am reminded every day that a thirst for music is built into to us. Children one-, two- or three-years old will positively astonish me in the exuberance of their gleeful response to, say, "Twinkle, Twinkle". One little girl, Elke, for example, hops up and down turning in a circle, pounding each knee with each hand each time she lands, laughing in vigorous rhythmic grunts. Her parents and I watch and are warmed by her pure delight.

Thus is music a great purveyor of empathy, an expression of our common bond as people.

The melody of "Twinkle, Twinkle" (which is also the melody of "ABC" and "Baa Baa Blacksheep") is a very old French folk tune. Young Mozart, when he stayed in Paris for a while, amused himself composing variations on the tune. It was decades later, in the mid-1800's, that the lyrics of "Twinkle, Twinkle" were grafted onto the tune.

The interval between the first "Twinkle" and the next "Twinkle" expresses an exact mathematical ratio: 2:3. That is, when you sing "Twinkle, twinkle...", on the second twinkle your vocal cords vibrate 50% faster (to the extent you're on pitch!). Say you start on the note designated as concert "A". On the first "twinkle", you vocal cords vibrate at a rate of 440 times per second. On the second "twinkle" they vibrate at 660/sec.

This interval, expressing the ratio of 3/2, musicians call a fifth, because it is the distance between the first note of the scale ('do") and the fifth note of the scale ("so"). These two notes played simultaneously form the second most harmonious chord (a chord being any two or more notes sounding simultaneously).

The number one most harmonious chord, of course, is the octave. The "do"'s that start and end "do,re,mi,faso,la,ti,do" bracket an octave. The first two notes of "Over the Rainbow" ("some where...") are an octave apart. The sound of the second note is vibrating twice as fast as the first note (e.g., 220>440; that would begin "Over the Rainbow" in the key of "A").

If you pluck a taut string and then "stop" it (by, say, pressing it against a hard surface) at the exact mid-point of its length, then pluck it again, thus stopped, so that only half of the string vibrates, the second note will be an octave higher in pitch.

So you can begin to see how logical, mathematical is this thing we call music. Yet every musician is acutely aware (or better be!) that music is feeling! ("It don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing") When we hear Judy Garland sing the first two notes of "Over the Rainbow" (or better yet, check out the Ray Charles/Johny Mathis duet of this song on the recent "Genius Loves Company" CD), our heart is like to be pierced. Yet fundamental (as it were) to that is the octave, expressing the 2:1 ratio in sound.

The great wonder of it is that our ear "hears" this mathematical relationship unmediated by calculation. Im-mediately.

Just the other day I was goo-gooing with the newborn baby of a friend (Christine, actually) who stopped by my busking pitch. You know how we do when meeting an infant staring at all the streaming stimuli and just barely starting to knit it together? Well, I finally broke into song, an acapella "Twinkle, Twinkle". That brought a wide baby-grin to the infant's face. The mom observed that the little guy (Matthew, Jr.), not yet two months old, "loves it when I sing to him".

This baby, so new, but already en-joying those "logical" sounds. Clearly "music appreciation" is somehow built into us. Why so, I don't think anyone yet can ultimately say. But it's fun to wonder.

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