Both physicists and composers are in the everyday business of dealing with complex abstract patterns. While some artists might take the Keatsian approach that cold scientific scrutiny of anything aesthetic “will clip an angel’s wing, conquer all mystery by rule and line”, all music is, at some level, physics – from the vibration of strings to the sound waves produced from the way an instrument is constructed to the physiology of what happens in our ear when we hear it played. That would usually resolve all his difficulties.” Einstein was obsessed with composers such as Bach and Mozart but maybe he would also have got a kick out of Jarvis Cocker’s relativity ballad “Quantum Theory”, Moby’s astrophysics-infused “We Are All Made of Stars” or John Adams’ Oppenheimer-based opera Doctor Atomic.īrian May, the Queen guitarist, is now an astrophysicistīut if the themes of physics persistently insinuate themselves into the musical universe, the connection goes far deeper than mere inspiration. According to his son, whenever Einstein felt he had “come to the end of the road or into a difficult situation in his work, he would take refuge in music. Professor Brian Cox was the keyboard player in 1990s pop group D:Ream (and now regularly professes a love of Mahler).Īnd of course, the most famous physicist of all was a passionate musician. Brian May, who is affiliated to Imperial’s astrophysics department, also happens to be the guitarist of Queen. But it’s no coincidence that physicists often make superb musicians – indeed the leading science and engineering university, Imperial College, offers a joint degree with the Royal College of Music. A relation of my music to physics is logical and natural: one is an outgrowth of the other.”Īt first glance, the yoking together of a rigorously analytical natural science with the most ephemeral and soulful of art forms might seem a stretch. For him, “electronic music is firmly based on scientific principles. “My musical work was a vehicle to assist in the dissemination of these concepts,” he says. Mueller’s physics knowledge was absorbed, he says, “in the fashion of an autodidact”, though he was always interested in natural science. His live stage shows incorporate spectacular imagery from the world of physics. But Dopplereffekt’s albums include Calabi Yau Space, a reference to the Calabi Yau manifold, whose properties, in case you need a quick refresher, yield applications in theoretical physics such as superstring theory. Dopplereffekt’s club nights around Europe draw huge crowds, and he is the last person with whom I’d expect to discuss atomic entities and quantum behaviour. He is a techno music producer, one half of the legendary outfit Dopplereffekt. “Quantum behaviour,” he says – and all of a sudden I’m having to concentrate very, very hard in my physics lesson – “would have a relevance, since we are considering atomic entities, namely the movement, storage and manipulation of electrons.” I can’t pretend ever to have fully grasped the space-time continuum but two minutes into a conversation with Heinrich Mueller and I appear to be shuttling back through time.
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