We once asked ourselves who the most famous violinist might be: Paganini, Joachim, Kreisler, Heifetz? “Einstein”, was the answer from a computer scientist who therewith probably hit the nail on the head. Albert Einstein, who passed away 50 years ago, is not only the best known physicist of the 20th century but a legend in his own right and it is generally well known that he liked playing the violin. During the 1920s in Berlin word went round that Professor Einstein never appeared in the Academy of Science without his violin case. To what extent, though, has Einstein deserved a reputation as violinist? Did he really play the Kreutzer Sonatas in order to soothe his nerves as Friedrich Dürrenmatt suggests in “The Physicist”?

Not likely. For one thing he had a similar point of view to Goethe: Beethoven was too modern for him. He liked Bach, Mozart and some early Italian and English composers. For another thing his contemporaries reveal that his genius didn’t necessarily extend to the violin. Brigitte B. Fischer, with whom he often made music, says “There is much said about Einstein’s violin playing. I found that, while he was very musical, he didn’t have a good technique. He didn’t have a very big sound but rather played like a decent amateur”. The violinist Walter Friedrich comments rather more drastically: “Einstein had a stroke like a lumberjack”. Nevertheless Einstein played in public – due likely to a love of music and because he was always prepared to use his fame for good causes such a benefit concerts.

It is, however, difficult to identify Einstein’s influence on music directly. He mixed with influential musicians of his time but wasn’t interested in modern music. What we read in his exchange of letters with Arnold Schönberg is, apart from personal matters, more of a concern with the establishment of a future Jewish nation. Einstein’s influence on science is undisputed; nevertheless there where he is quoted as a physician is he also often misunderstood. The much talked about “fourth dimension” isn’t a mysterious addition to dimensions in space which we can’t perceive: it is simply time itself. The Theory of Relativity combines the three dimensions of space with the fourth dimension of time into a Space-Time Continuum as one cannot observe space and time as separate entities. They are linked through the existence of an extreme velocity: the speed of light. The clocks on a satellite orbiting earth at a speed of four kilometres per second lose time daily at the rate of 7.7 micro seconds: the time in which light, nevertheless, travels 2.3 kilometres. When a theory of physics makes the assertion that time and space are relative – as is the case with the Theory of Relativity – it is meant objectively. Although Einstein once joked that ‘one minute on a hotplate seems longer than one hour with a hot woman’ the Theory of Relativity isn’t concerned with a subjective perception of time.

Where then have natural science and music influenced one another? A brief foray into music history can give us some hints. First of all our perception of time has transformed in the course of technical progress. The music of Leonin and Perotin deal with time quite differently than the music of today and some may experience this old music as somewhat tedious or uneventful. The invention of irrational numbers was necessary in order to form the basis of today’s equal tempered tuning system. A tempered semitone has a frequency relation of 12√2 :1 = 1.059463… :1 which is an irrational number, i.e. a number unable to be represented by a fraction - something Pythagoras, the inventor of the first tuning system, wouldn’t have liked at all! He believed that everything in the world could be expressed in whole number relationships: “Everything is a number”.

Pythagoras (600 BC) derived his tuning system by observing ratios between the length of a string and the resulting pitch on his monochord, a primitive instrument consisting of one string and an adjustable bridge underneath. It can therefore be asserted that acoustics is the oldest experimental science!

Music could also claim to have had direct influence on natural science as illustrated by the following example. Modern physics actually only begins in the 17th century with Galileo Galilei who conducted experiments to establish laws of falling bodies. In the Middle Ages, as in antiquity, natural philosophy was limited to a passive observation and description of nature. Galileo had to assert himself against hostile attitudes from philosophers of his day whose authority remained Aristotle in matters of measurement. This is wonderfully exaggerated in “The Life of Galileo”, a play by Bertoldt Brecht, in which the philosophers refuse to look through Galileo’s telescope pursuing instead a discussion about the possibilities and even necessity for the stars discovered by Galileo. Music was further advanced than science in the Middle Ages, the use of measurement finding a practical application therein. Musicians had invented staves, the first graphs, as early as the 11th century which represented horizontally and vertically the flow of time and range of pitch respectively. This was a tool which only came into use in physics in the 18th century and is now the annoyance of every student – an invention of musicians!

One of the essential characteristics of the western tradition is the interaction of theory and practice. This is also of historical importance for music. The nature of space and time remains a perennial philosophical question and here, subconsciously, music may also have had an influence: Gregorian Chant doesn’t have a metre. Tones are matched to the rhythm of speech, each syllable receiving an appropriate amount of time. Durations aren’t based on the division of a regular pulse. Gregorian Chant is the best example of time measured according to its contents. Musical practice of the present day, by way of contrast, first establishes a time signature and measure, i.e. a division of time, even before a note is heard.

Einstein also addressed the question as to whether space and time can exist without content. His answer: “One used to believe that if everything vanished from the world then space and time would remain left over; according to the Theory of Relativity space and time vanish with its contents”. According to the field equations in his General Theory of Relativity it is the content itself, i.e. their mass and energy (which according to the famous equation, E= mc², are equivalent) which produce the structure of space-time. If there were no content, there wouldn’t be any space-time.

What would happen to music under these circumstances is something Einstein didn’t comment on. But isn’t there an expression… “Heaven and earth will pass away but music will remain”?

Published in: alla breve, the Conservatorium of Music Saar magazine, 10th year no. 2, October 2005, p. 11-12.

This artivle was translated from German by Simon Barber.