RE: [microsound] Fibonacci in music

[david golightly <davigoli@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yes, I suppose the "classic" example, where just absolutely everything's 
governed by Fibonacci/Golden Section is Bartok's "Music for Strings, 
Percussion and Celesta", especially the 1st movement, which was just covered 
to death in 20th century analysis classes at my music school.  It's true 
that artists, especially, for instance, renaissance-era painters as well as 
composers like Palestrina and classical architects (i.e. the Parthenon) all 
used the Golden Section, because of its "natural" proportion.  In fact, it's 
probably one of the best-known proportions out there.

I find, though, too often composers pick this tool up too quickly, and 
automatically cause their work to conform to these proportions, where others 
might in fact be better for a given piece.  It's almost *too* perfect - too 
easy to just apply these proportions whenever you're at a loss for form.  
Which is not to say that they can't still be used - just that not every 
piece, not every aesthetic experience is best organized in this way.  A more 
interesting approach would be, taking the natural inclination to experience 
things in accordance with the Golden Section, to play off that by skewing 
proportions so key events don't come when expected.  It's a little boring to 
be able to expect, for a 10 minute piece, that the climax will come at 6 
minutes and change, and find this again and again in piece after piece.

> From: Richard Zvonar <zvonar@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Reply-To: microsound <microsound@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: microsound <microsound@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: RE: [microsound] Fibonacci in music
> Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2005 09:32:12 -0800
>
> At 11:06 AM -0600 3/21/05, David Powers wrote:
> > Well, I don't know if you can "wear out" something that may not be 
> > directly accessible to the listener...  Composers often find inspiration 
> > from engaging in rather arbitrary mathematical games (fibonacci, but also 
> > serialism, fugue, canon, etc.).  I think the real question is whether such 
> > techniques are useful springboards for the composer's imagination.
>
> The Fibonacci series is also a natural phenomenon that gives shape to many 
> living things and that forms the basis for the Golden Proportion. Humans 
> seem to find this proportion universally pleasing and therefore the use of 
> Fibonacci proportions is a natural and easy way to create structures that 
> "work" aesthetically.
>
>
> P.S. The Fibonacci series (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21...) is formed by adding 
> two consecutive terms to derive the next term in the series (therefore 13 + 
> 21 gives the next term 34). The Golden Mean (or Golden Proportion or Ratio) 
> may be approximated by dividing consecutive Fibonacci numbers (13/21 = 
> 0.61905..., 21/13 = 1.61538...).
>
> The higher up the series the closer the approximation to the proportion, 
> which is commonly represented as "phi" and equals 1.6180339887499... or 
> -0.61803398874989...  For more details and an explanation of why phi has 
> two values, see:
>
> http://www.vashti.net/mceinc/golden.htm
> --
>
> ______________________________________________________________
> Richard Zvonar, PhD
> (818) 788-2202
> http://www.zvonar.com
> http://salamandersongs.com
> http://ill-wind.com



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