Sounds like Einstein

The intriguing links between music and physics and the latest results from the Large Hadron Collider are the subjects of a lecture illustrated with music followed by a concert of music Einstein loved. Charmian Smith reports.

Albert Einstein, the physicist who changed our concept of the universe, used music to help him solve problems, according to Prof Brian Forster, of Oxford and Hamburg universities and European director of the Linear Collider Collaboration at Cern.

With violinist Jack Liebeck, he will, later this month, give an illustrated lecture about Einstein, his love of music, his work and his part in the development of the atomic bomb, as well as the latest news from the Large Hadron Collider, which is based on Einstein's work. It will be followed by a concert of works associated with Einstein, a joint project by Chamber Music New Zealand and the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Einstein used to say he found playing music very relaxing, Prof Forster says.

''If he was working at a particularly difficult problem, he'd put it aside for a while and play music, either his violin or his piano. During his playing, somehow, an idea would come into his mind about the solution and it would often work,'' he says.

Prof Forster, a violinist himself, also finds music helps him relax.

''What I tend to do is play late at night, so at that point I'm not usually thinking about particular problems I was working on, but nevertheless it sets you up for going to sleep and changes the way your brain is thinking. Often if you can't solve a problem, it runs around and around in your brain and you don't get to sleep. Certainly, I find playing an instrument before I go to bed is very relaxing.''

It may not be scientifically proven that changing from working on a difficult problem to a completely different but still mentally taxing activity, such as playing a musical instrument, can help ideas shake free in your head, but it seems to work, he says.

''Somehow your brain carries on working subconsciously while you do something else, but it has to be something mentally taxing - if you just sit in front of the TV, you'll probably go to sleep - that's why I think a musical instrument is best.''

Einstein once said that if he had not been a scientist, he would have been a musician, and his fame as a physicist led to him being invited to play at benefit concerts.

It turns out that a number of great physicists and mathematicians are musicians of one sort or another - perhaps not so surprising, as great scientists are creative people.

''There's also the methodological aspect of music that makes it rather similar to some sorts of problems you see in physics. For instance, fugues have repeating patterns in a particular order which have patterns inside those patterns, which are quite similar to mathematical sequences. From my point of view, some sorts of music also have a fair connection to physics,'' Prof Forster says.

It is simple to analyse the various intervals in music and to see which are in harmony and which are dissonant, and there are more complex analyses that show how stringed instruments work.

''But in terms of describing how music is played - those things are purely to do with emotions and what the composer thought and are not part of physics at all.''

Einstein was conservative in his musical taste, enjoying Bach, Mozart and Brahms. Despite his innovative work in physics, which led to a different way of looking at the universe, he had little interest in modern developments in music or art that aimed to find new ways of approaching their subjects, Prof Forster says.

All these innovations, whether 12-tone music, Cubism or theories of relativity, happened about the same time worldwide communications such as radio were being developed.

''Einstein became an enormous celebrity because mostly, I think, it was a period in which newspapers were looking for headlines. For the first time, it was possible to reach worldwide with new ideas in music, art and science.''

Prof Forster and Liebeck devised the concept of a lecture illustrated with music back in 2005, for the Unesco World Year of Physics celebrating 100 years since Einstein's special theory of relativity was published. Since then they have repeated the format, varying the lecture and the music.

''You reach two different audiences - the scientists who come to hear about Einstein and get exposed to great music, and then you get the musicians who want to hear great music but also get exposed to science. It's a very successful format,'' Prof Forster says.

On the New Zealand tour he will be talking about how Einstein played a part in developing accelerators and how that led to the atom bomb and how that led to our view of the universe. The second part of the 80-minute lecture focuses on the latest discoveries from the Large Hadron Collider and what that means. Liebeck plays music with an Einstein connection and at the end they play a violin duet, an arrangement of a Mozart violin and piano sonata.

The lecture is followed by a concert of chamber music, also with connections to Einstein. In Dunedin the programme includes Mozart's Violin Sonata in E Minor, Brahms' Piano Quintet in F Minor, Martinu's Madrigal stanzas, which were written for Einstein when they were both teaching at Princeton, and his friend Ernst Bloch's Baal Shem.

Also to be performed is a newly commissioned work, Matter, by 2013 Mozart Fellow Samuel Holloway. He says he ''was struck by the extremities of the scale of the phenomena considered by physics, from elementary particles to universes, the infinitesimally small to the unimaginably huge''.

He was also fascinated by the notion of a correspondence between ''the micro and the macro, an idea that has preoccupied many, from the Neo-Platonist philosophers and practitioners of Hermeticism to William Blake (''To see a world in a grain of sand'') - and perhaps even physicists in their ongoing search for a grand unifying theory''. Matter is a modest reflection on these things, he says.

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Catch it
Prof Brian Forster and Jack Liebeck will give the illustrated lecture ''The ideas that shaped our concepts of space, time and the universe'' in the Glenroy Auditorium in Dunedin at 5.30pm on Tuesday, July 30, followed by the concert at 8pm. They repeat the lecture and concert in the Civic Theatre, Invercargill on Wednesday, July 31 at 5.30 and 8pm.

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