By Hannah Messenger, CWRU (B.S. – Physics & B.A. – Music | Dec. 2020)

Musical notes on an Ising spin lattice.

What do music theory and statistical mechanics have to do with each other? The connection may not seem obvious, but it’s exactly what Ryan Buechele is studying in his senior project.  “I love seeing ways where the tools of physics can be applied to solve problems in other fields like biology, economics, and, of course, music theory,” he says. A CWRU senior pursuing both a B.S. in physics and mathematics and a B.A. in music, Buechele is working with Associate Professor Jesse Berezovsky on a project combining the tools of statistical mechanics and music theory.

The project started about five years ago when Berezovsky, a musician as well, noticed that most Western music, from classical to jazz to heavy metal, uses the same pitches, scales, and chords. “You have sound in general where things are disordered – any frequencies can occur – and then music where you are really constrained to follow pretty strict rules,” Berezovsky explains. He started thinking about music as a phase transition much like those in statistical mechanics. His method has been able to produce different tuning systems used in Western music history, as well as the twelve-fold division of the octave that gives us the chromatic scale.

Berezovsky and Buechele’s work is just one example of interdisciplinary research in the department. Professor Harsh Mathur has found himself far deeper into the art world than he ever expected to be after he and graduate student Katherine Jones-Smith made the news in 2006 by debunking a fractal analysis of Jackson Pollock paintings. Since then, Mathur has been a consultant for art authentication, an unusual role for a cosmologist. He says, laughingly, of his first art related project, “We learned more about fractals than we did about Pollock.”

Buechele says that working on the project makes him “wonder what sorts of underlying principles (of acoustics, physiology, psychology, or something else) could be responsible for determining how and why humans make music.” Looking forward he sees lots of possibilities in this area, saying he’s “most excited to see what kinds of new directions beyond physics that this work can take.”

Berezovsky and Buechele’s work is just one example of interdisciplinary research in the department. Professor Harsh Mathur has found himself far deeper into the art world than he ever expected to be after he and graduate student Katherine Jones-Smith made the news in 2006 by debunking a fractal analysis of Jackson Pollock paintings. Since then, Mathur has been a consultant for art authentication, an unusual role for a cosmologist. He says, laughingly, of his first art related project, “We learned more about fractals than we did about Pollock.”  

Also in the visual art world, Professors Michael Hinczewski and Ken Singer are using machine learning to identify a painter’s hand based on their brushstroke. They use topographic data to train a model to determine which of four artists painted a piece. The ultimate goal is to be able to use machine learning to identify which areas of El Greco paintings can be attributed to El Greco and which to his students.

Art and Physics is not a new thing at CWRU. Dayton Miller, physics department chair from 1895-1941, was an accomplished flautist and acoustical researcher. His collection of acoustical instruments still resides in Rockefeller. Robert Shankland, who was at the department from 1930-76 and was a student of Miller’s, did research related to concert hall acoustics. He and faculty member Arthur Benade were involved in a project to improve the acoustics of Severance Hall. In addition to being a nuclear physicist, Benade contributed an enormous amount to the acoustical physics field during his time in the department from 1955-87. His work focused on the specifics of musical instrument design ranging from clarinet (his own instrument) to the brass family.

Author’s Note

 I first got interested in this research through my dad, who did research with Benade while an undergraduate physics major at CWRU. As a musician myself, I am endlessly fascinated by the ways in which physics and the arts collide and it seems I’m not the only one at CWRU. Interdisciplinary research has flourished at CWRU and it appears it will continue to do so. Overlap between physics, El Greco, and music theory may not seem obvious, but has proved fruitful so far, and there’s no telling what connections are still to be made.