By Ng Chien Hao
Mar. 18, 2007

What has art got to do with mathematics and science?

For Elaine Chew, the answer is everything and with her performance, “The Mathematics in Music,” it seems like the United States-based pianist-engineer is making headway convincing audiences to agree with her.

Through her performance, Chew would have you think that there is more commonality than differences between music and science.

“A long time ago, music is classified as one of the sciences,” said Chew, citing ancient Arabic traditions and practices from the Middle Ages as examples. “There wasn’t this divide between science and arts.”

For Chew, the art of music is a scientific and intellectual pursuit and her dual roles of concert pianist and engineer seem to reflect just that.

Held Friday at the University Cultural Centre as part of the NUS Arts Festival, “The Mathematics in Music” was an event that presented mathematical principles in music through the performances of contemporary pieces and the presentation of musical explanations through mathematics.

 “This whole performance is about combinations and permutations of pitch and time patterns,” said Chew, who is assistant professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California.

“It’s not just a regular concert,” she said.

Though the assistance of interactive technology, namely through MuSA.RT (pronounced “muse-art”) –  a software created by Chew in collaboration with her spouse Alexandre Francois – notes are captured and analyzed as they are being played while a visualization of the analysis is displayed simultaneously on screen.

“It’s not purely entertaining visualization,” said Chew, who also heads the Music Computation and Cognition Laboratory at USC. “The visualization has informative purposes too. It actually tells you about the structures that are in the music.”

To Chew, musical performance is “not just the entertainment”.

“I’d like for people to listen to a concert knowing what’s happening as much as possible so that they can appreciate all the fine nuances,” she said.

True to her conviction that music is not solely entertainment, “The Mathematics in Music” features unconventional pieces that challenges one’s senses and perceptions and jolts audience members out of their musical comfort zone.

The featured performance pieces consist of Ivan Tcherepnin’s “Fêtes – Variations on Happy Birthday,” Peter Child’s bi-tonal “Doubles III,”  Tamar Diesendruck’s “Sudoku Variations” and “Mobiles.” – a piece composed by Ho Chee Kong, associate director of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music.

Making its Asian premiere at the NUS Arts Festival, “Sudoku Variations” was commissioned specially for “The Mathematics in Music” and is based on the popular Sudoku game.

With the Sudoku grid as its structure, the piece plays on the fact that numbers are never repeated in any direction in Sudoku and emulates that structure by progressing through combinations of different meters and time signatures – a permutation of numbers.

In “Doubles III,” the focus is on tonal combinations. The piece requires the performer to play in different tonalities and keys using the right and left hands simultaneously. At the same time, the piece challenges the audience to make sense of the clashing sounds.

Through her unconventional musical performance, Chew wants audiences to take home with them an appreciation for the “complexities of music.” 

“Music is not sort of ear-candy,” Chew explained. “It can satisfy our senses in many more dimensions than what people really associate with music.”

Apart from educating the audience on the mathematics in music, Chew also revealed glimpses into her past through her performance.

Through the fragments of familiar local tunes in “Doubles III,” audiences get to know more about Chew’s Singaporean childhood.

The piece, written specially for Chew by Peter Child, is based on Chinese and Malay songs from her childhood and incorporates familiar tunes such as “Bengawan Solo,” “Dayung Sampan,” “Precious Jewel” (“shi shang zhi you ma ma hao”) and “Spring Song” (“qing chun wu qu”).

Even though Chew was born in the United States, where her father was then teaching at the State University of New York, Buffalo, she grew up in Singapore, attending primary school right up to junior college here.

Chew only moved back to the United States for her university education at Stanford University and her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

However, it was in Los Angeles where Chew came across the opportunity to pursue a professional career as a pianist-engineer.

“It’s hard to find a job that lets you do music and math at the same time,” said Chew, who admitted she grabbed at the chance. “You go where the job is.”

As a pianist, Chew has performed widely in the greater Boston and Los Angeles areas. As an engineer, she is an honouree of the Viterbi Early Career Chair at USC and a winner of the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering, the highest honour accorded to young scientists and engineers in the US.

Chew has excelled in her dual-professions, but the achievements have come only with hard work and commitment.

 “It’s a bit crazy,” said Chew, who has to juggle between piano practices, research projects and lectures.  “It’s very challenging to have enough time to do all I want to.”

“But it’s rewarding because I feel I get to live life to the fullest,” she added, pointing out that she feels blessed to be able to pursue her two passions – music and mathematics.

“When I am listening to music, I can always say it is my work. When I think about mathematics, I can relate it to music,” added Chew, with a sense of elation and pride.
 
“It’s like pleasure. It’s like play. It’s like I’ve never worked a day in my life.”