First Person to Make the Connection

The first person to make the connection between math and music was Pythagoras of Samos, a famous philosopher and cult leader who lived most of the time in southern Italy in 5th century, BC. He is one of western civilization's strangest, but most influential thinkers and the first to believe in the idea that mathematics is everywhere. One bit of evidence of underlying rational numbers was in Greek music. At the time, music was not as complicated as it is today. The Greek octave had a mere five notes. Pythagoras pointed out that each note was a fraction of a string. He used the example of a string that played an A. The next note is 4/5 the length (or 5/4 the frequency) which is approximately a C. The rest of the octave has the fractions 3/4 (approximately D), 2/3 (approximately E), and 3/5 (approximately F), before you run into 1/2, which is the octave A. Pythagoras was excited by the idea that these ratios were made up of the numbers 1,2,3,4, and 5, and that there were five planets that moved along similar ratios and that all this meant something (ultimately the universe turned out to be irrational, which may explain a lot). Pythagoras imagined a "music of the spheres" that was created by the universe - a wonderful idea that inspired many composers. The 18th century music of J. S. Bach has mathematical undertones, as does the 20th century music of Philip Glass.


Reference:

Fauvel , John, Raymond Flood, and Robin Wilson. "Music and mathematics : from Pythagoras to fractals." Oxford University Press (2003): 189.