SOUNDTRACK: ROBERT SCHNEIDER-“Reverie in Prime Time Signatures” (2009).
Robert Schneider is the lead singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer of The Apples in Stereo. He also received a PhD in mathematics from Emory University in 2018.
So he seems like the perfect person to write this complex score (even if he wrote it before he got his PhD).
In the back of the book, Schneider explains in pretty great detail how he chose to write what he did.
He also says that the music was written and and first performed at an experiemntal reading of the original script at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton on Dec 12 2009. Schneider played synth along with cellist Heather McIntosh and clarinet Alex Kontorovich. The musical score is included in the book and you can hear it here
The piece is two minutes with harpsichord and a lead cello and flute with a synthesizer underneath.
It is mournful and quite pretty.
For a song that is all about odd time signatures, it somehow doesn’t feel awkward or choppy. I don’t know enough about time signatures to even tell where the different parts are–I can’t hear it at all. But I find the piece to be quite nice. And it is reasonable to think that the victims could have the melody stuck in their heads.
[READ: June 19, 2019] Prime Suspects
Raise your hand if you want a graphic novel (illustrated by Robert J. Lewis) that is a CSI-styled investigation but is actually a pretty thorough look into higher mathematics.
I have a hard time summing up what this book is all about because I didn’t get all the math that’s going on here. But the story itself is pretty fun and easy to follow.
The book opens with two cops finding a dead body in a tunnel There’s also a documentary crew filming everything for the show MSI: Mathematical Science investigation.
A man in a hat and trench coat welcomes us to his world–a world where you don’t have to understand everything to know something. Where a legendary mathematics professor became the subject of a documentary.
That professor is Professor Gauss. His assistant Mr Langer is in the precinct with Gauss to talk about what hey have found.
Langer is a formally educated student. A bit uptight and stuffy. One day in Professor Gauss’ class a young woman with a ring in her nose and unique fashion sense came in. Her name is Emmy Germain and she proves to be incredibly smart. But she is self-educated–an abomination to Langer. But she turns out to be a delightful surprise to the documentary crew that is inexplicably filming Guass’ class. (more…)
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