Is God Dead?: The Beauty of Music

Ty B. Kerley

DMin

The ancient Egyptians built the pyramids with the ratio of the height to the base equal to 1:1.618 — The Golden Ratio. The ancient Athenians, those masters of architecture, built the Parthenon with its column configurations and dimensions based upon the Golden Ratio. We looked last week at several examples from nature that satisfy the Golden Ratio as well: the facial features of people that society generally deems “attractive” is one fascinating aspect of the Golden Ratio.

In a sense, facial recognition technology can be thought of as a method that analyzes how much a person’s facial proportions deviate from the Golden Ratio. In fact, Leonardo da Vinci painted portraits using the Golden Ratio; the Mona Lisa is a fine example.

And it is not just facial features, the Golden Ratio is present in a rose as well as many other flower petal and leaf configurations, and it is present in all sorts of seashells such as the Nautilus. But these are all tangible, concrete forms of soul food.

What about the semi-abstract world of music? I say semi-abstract because although you can see music on paper, the notes played and traveling through the air are essentially abstract, they linger in the air just for a moment then they are gone … abstract.

Mozart, among many other composers, intentionally followed the Golden Ratio in writing many of his piano sonatas. From last week, remember, the Golden Ratio is obtained from The Fibonacci Sequence: 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34 … Interestingly, and closely related to this, music PhD Carla Pinkney notes the following facts: “An octave on the piano consists of 13 notes: 8 white keys and 5 black keys.

A scale consists of 8 notes, of which the 3rd and 5th notes make up a basic cord. In a scale, the dominant note is the 5th note, which is also the 8th note of all 13 notes that make up the octave. Mathematically, 8 divided by 13 equals 0.6153 … the approximate Golden Ratio.” Here is the interesting part, all these numbers are found in the Fibonacci Sequence. But how did Mozart do this?

 A piano sonata is usually made up of three parts: exposition, development, and recapitulation. Mozart, it turns out, arranged his piano sonatas so that the number of bars (a small segment of music that holds a number of beats) in the development and recapitulation sections, divided by the number of bars in the exposition would equal 1.618; the Golden Ratio.

In fact, in Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 1 in C Major, the first movement is made up of 100 bars, 38 in the exposition, and 62 in the development and recapitulation. 62/38 = 1.6, The Golden Ratio.

It is not just Mozart, many artists have believed that if you can fit your music into a construction determined by the Golden Ratio, you’ll be injecting a kind of natural beauty, similar to Da Vinci’s portraits.

Songwriter Gary Ewer lets us in on the secret: “Measure the length of your song in seconds, and then have some important event occur at the 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc. — second mark. For example, the bridge of a song will naturally want to occur at that moment. Take the length of your song, multiply it by 0.618, and you will get a spot in your song that’s almost two-thirds of the way along.

Let something significant happen there (perhaps a cymbal crash followed by a momentary silence, a change of time signature, etc.). Let it be the climactic point of your song. Change something about the instrumental accompaniment at different spots along the Fibonacci series.”

Finally, Ewer says “working backward through your song, finding moments to make significant events occur along a backward-running Fibonacci series.” Lady Gaga used the Golden Ratio in her song Perfect Illusion which contains a rather significant and bold key change at the 111-second mark of the 179 second song. By doing that, 111/179 = 1.618, Lady Gaga hit the Golden Ratio.

Soul food. I am too old to make a judgment call as to whether Lady Gaga can produce music that would be considered soul food, but that is what we have been talking about. These beautiful things in the world speak to the immaterial part of a man’s inner self; that part that is what it is like to be you, and in doing so confirm we do indeed have souls. And so, it would seem, in the words of German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer; “music gives us ‘veil-free’ access to reality itself.”

Music, it seems to me, is just one more thin place: a place where the soul is fed through communion with its Creator; a place where the distance between heaven and earth is very thin indeed. Join us next week as we continue to see what beauty has to do with the question: is God dead?

Gloria in excelsis Deo!

Ty B. Kerley, DMin., is an ordained minister who teaches Christian apologetics, and relief preaches in Southern Oklahoma. You can contact him at: dr.kerley@isGoddead.com.