Chemistry is an intriguingly artistic subject. When I applied to university, I cited the artistic nature of chemistry as one of my biggest initial interests in the subject and the admissions interviewers often found it very amusing. It is not difficult to explain why, even to non-chemically minded audiences – the colours of solutions, the symmetry, or lack thereof, of molecular structures, or the intricate arrangements of macromolecules such as proteins and DNA. It is oddly satisfying to work with some of these structures and not difficult to see the parallels between chemistry and visual arts such as paintings and sculptures.
One thing I have always wondered, however, is whether there is any link between chemistry and music. If so, can we compose music using chemistry? Let’s face it, chemistry is not a sonically interesting subject. The most entertaining sound one hears in the laboratory is probably the moment when one inserts a sample tube into an NMR spectrometer, and the next in line would perhaps be the noises from the pumps of the HPLC – really, there is nothing more fascinating to hear in a cold room than pumps working at different pitches in different rhythms. The late Hungarian composer György Ligeti would have called that “micropolyphony”.
It is relatively rare for classical composers to take inspirations from natural sciences, and rarer still from chemistry. Sir Edward Elgar and Alexander Borodin are famous for being both chemists and composers, with the latter being a professor in chemistry, but neither appear to relate chemistry to their music. Edgard Varèse entitled two of his complex compositions Ionisation and Density 21.5 (the latter refers to the approximate density of platinum at room temperature in g cm^-3, as the work was written for a platinum flute), but both seem to have little to do with chemistry other than the title. Perhaps the most relevant example is Pithoprakta (Greek: actions through probability) for 50 instruments, by Iannis Xenakis, where the composer treats each instrument like a molecule in an ensemble (no pun intended) and let the musical material evolve according to statistical mechanics. It is certainly a grand, if non-canonical, way to compose.
Approaching it from the other angle, there is an attempt to “hear” molecules using their vibrational modes, and a method has been developed to generate notes from chemical reactions. In either case, they are methods to generate notes and less so about using them to write complete pieces of music. Can we go further?
The art of musical composition, to put it in the most unromantic way, is the 2D visual representation of a time-dependent sonic event to be interpreted and realised by performing musicians. The music of legendary classical composers such as Bach, Beethoven and Brahms are rigorously structured as well as sonically captivating. The narration, emotions and sophistication of the composer are immortalised by carefully constructed melodies, harmonies and/or rhythms.
As noted above, chemistry is full of building blocks for art – structural motifs, symmetry, sequences, etc. – and, as it turns out, for life itself. Is it possible, then, for chemistry to play a role in musical compositions? Here are two quick proposals inspired by famous composers. Firstly, there is an established compositional method called serialism, where musical parameters – pitch, duration, dynamic, etc. – are determined by strict mathematical rules. Many composers have worked with this technique, including important figures such as Shostakovich and Stravinsky. There is a lot of material in chemistry to form the basis of serial compositions. For example, one can form a legitimate melody from a protein structure by assigning musical notes to its sequence. Rules can then be applied to determine how the notes are played. This then becomes the seed of the composition and one can apply operations to permute the notes, to harmonise and to give it a rhythmical drive.
Alternatively, the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos used to compose music by sketching out contours from geographical landscapes in works such as New York Skyline and Symphony No. 6, which is subtitled “On the Outline of the Mountains of Brazil”. One can imagine a lot of experimental data from chemistry, such as IR spectra of organic molecules or structures of amorphous materials, are suitable for such compositions. Mass spectrometry data of proteins seem to be particularly useful.
If I were able to finish the endless rounds of protein purification, I might finally get a chance to sit down with manuscript paper to compose my own chemical music. Just to brainstorm, I have a 340-note melody from my PhD project, a rhythmic pattern for four instruments from the HPLC, a dynamic distribution from the screams of my lab-mates, and a vast disconnectivity graph from my computational chemistry friend. This could be the beginning of a very dramatic symphony.
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The above article was previously submitted to the magazine Chemistry World (Royal Society of Chemistry, United Kingdom) for the Chemistry World Science Communication Competition 2014, and won a finalist award.
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