A few years ago I discovered (and became fascinated by) the various ways in which music and science overlap. I’ve even managed to write two books on the subject: The Science of Sc-Fi Music (Springer, 2020) and The Science of Music (Icon Books, 2023). So I was very pleased when Brian Clegg sent me a brand new book on the subject to review for his website: Quantum Mechanics and Avant-Garde Music by Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin (my 4-star rating on Brian’s site reflects the book’s rather specialized audience – my own personal rating on Goodreads was 5 stars). I learned plenty of interesting things I was previously unaware of, and added a few snippets to things I did know. For example, I knew that Albert Einstein and Arnold Schoenberg, two of the most famous figures in 20th century physics and music respectively, had met each other, but I’d never seen the photo of them together that Rakhat-Bi includes in his book (that’s an AI-enhanced version of it above). This prompted me to try a small “quantum musical” experiment of my own, just in time for Halloween!
I mentioned in my sci-fi music book that Schoenberg was the (unintentional) originator of many of the tropes of “spooky” B-movie background music. You can hear this to some extent in the early Schoenberg piece I’ve used here, his Klavierstück no. 2 from 1909. In the video, I’ve coupled that with Einstein’s famous quote about “spooky action at a distance”, with deepfake vocals courtesy of the excellent fakeyou.com site. Here’s the result:
