The universe led to a brain that led to music that led to rock music that will lead to a different brain that will lead to a different planet that will lead to a different universe.

1. From Cosmology to Neuroscience to
Rock Music and back
piero scaruffi
Jan 2015
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2. The Universe
• Einstein: matter distribution determines
spacetime geometry that determines the
motion of matter
• Schroedinger: the total energy of a system
determines the probability of its position at
any given time
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3. The Universe
• Entropy: Entropy can never decrease
• Indeterminacy: The more precise, the less
precise
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4. The Planet
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5. The Brain
• Problems
– How to survive in a nonlinear(chaotic) world
– How to process an infinite amount of information
• Solution
– An organ to simulate the nonlinear world
– Memory (which is NOT storage)
Regulated
By biorhythms
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6. The Brain
• A tool to find regularities in nature (that
actually don’t exist: no two seasons are
identical, no two rocks are identical)
• A tool to predict the future
• A tool to turn the incomprehensible into
mathematics
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7. Non-human civilizations
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8. Human Civilization
• Actually, mammals are not that good at
civilization
• Anyway…
Human civilization over the millennia
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9. Human Civilization
• Three stages of brain development
– Child: helpless, selfish, dumb
– Young person: rebellious, violent, reckless, immature
– Adult: a computer (symbol processor)
• Simulation
• Theory of mind
• Planning
• Communication
• Cooperation
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10. Human Civilization
• Note: In prehistory most brains never made it
to the adult stage
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11. Human Civilization
• Cave art
• Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Vedic, Greek deities
• Monumental architecture
• Monotheism: Mazdaism, Judaism, Christianity,
Islam
• Philosophy: Upanishad, Greeks, Qiu Kong, Lao-
tsu
• Math: Babylonia, Pythagoras, India
• Literature: Gilgamesh, Sinuhe, Homer
• Science: Archimedes
• And, above all, warfare
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12. Human Civilization
• Mysteries, theater, dance, music
• Poetry rhymes = rhythm
• Singing poetry: a tool to memorize long epics
Symposium scene
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13. Greek Tragedy
• Theater (550BC)
– "Theatron" = "seeing place", the place where the
audience sat
– "Tragedia" = "goat-song" (goat skins of the chorus)
– "Chorus" = "dance"
– Theater began as a religious ceremony
– The Anthenian theatre focused on Dionysus, god of
fertility, wine, sexuality, agriculture
– Yearly Dionysian fertility festival in March, including
• one week of public wine drinking
• phallus-worshiping orgy
• dithyrambos (dance and chant to the god)
– The dithyrambos evolves into tragedywww.scaruffi.com

14. Greek Tragedy
• Theater (550BC)
– The first plays were transcriptions in verse form of
these religious rites
– The first playwrights were poets and the first plays
were mostly recited (or sung) and danced by the
chorus
– Contests and competition like in athletic games
– The chorus danced in front of the stages ("orchestra”)
– A play included loud music, bright colors, spectacular
dancing
– The performance took place in an open-air theater
– The audience was 15-17,000 peoplewww.scaruffi.com

15. The Birth of Reading
• First popular literature: inscribed epigrams
(especially in sanctuaries) since 7th c BC
• The Attic tragedies were the first books (for
the purpose of documenting how to produce
the play)
• Then people started reading them for
entertainment
• Communal reading (aloud)
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16. The Birth of Reading
• Aristophanes’ “Frogs” (405 BC)
mentions the reader Dyonisos
• Logographers (e.g. Lysias, 5th BC)
• Book market (book exported from
Athens as far as the Black Sea,
Socrates mentions that a book by
Anaxagoras costs one drachma)
• Child literacy (Herodotus: in 495BC in
Chios 120 schoolchildren died in an
accident while learning how to read
and write)
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17. The Birth of Reading
• Douris
Douris, 5th c
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18. The Birth of Composition?
• Written text: removal of enaction,
the text has to be emotionally self-
contained
• Did the same happen to music?
• Advantage of music: no need for
glasses or lighting!
• Disadvantage: no recording medium
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19. The Birth of Composition
• The Seikilos epitaph (1st c AD) is the
oldest surviving musical
composition
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20. Music as Religious Power
• Schola Cantorum (5th c, Rome): a place for
training ecclesiastical singers (future
popes Sergius I, Sergius II, Gregory II,
Stephen III, Paul I trained there)
• Gregorian monody (7th c until the 15th
century)
• The original metrical performance of
Gregorian monody disappears by 1050
• Secular monody (12th c, e.g. troubadours
in France)
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21. Music as Religious Power
• Ars Nova (John XXII complains in
1324 against the risks of
secularising sacred music)
• Avignon pomp (especially Clement
VI from 1342)
• Polyphony
– Cathedrals: choir and/or organ
– Vast majority of places:
improvisation “Cantus super
ltbrum” (13th c)
• Splendor and might
Giovanni Battista Facchetti’s
organ (Piacenza, 1544)
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22. Music as Political Power
• 14th th: Princes’ private chapels are
redesigned for polyphonic music
• Princes become patrons and practitioners
of music (French king Charles the Bald of
9th c. was a harp player)
• Courts compete for music and musicians
• Guillaume Dufay (15th c, Burgundian
school), Josquin Desprez (15thc, Franco-
Flemish School), etc
• Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor (1486)
Quaternionenadler by
Hans Burgkmair (1510)
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23. Western Music
• Folk music: stories and sex
• Meistersinger (14th-16th c)
• Frottola (Italy, 16th c)
• Opera (Jacopo Peri's “Daphne” in 1597; Venice’s opera house of
1637)
• Instruments: harpsichord, lute, violin, contrabass, viola, cello, harp,
trombone, trumpet, guitar, flute, pipe organ
• Freedom to improvise
• Symphony
• Ballet
• Classical music for both God and the King
• The piano (Bartolomeo Cristofori , 1709)
• Romanticism to Wagner: love, death
• Music is the ultimate, “total” art
• Formal dance
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24. Western Music
• Music magazines
• Musical Times (England, 1844)
• Billboard (USA, 1894)
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25. Western Music
• The 19th century for the middle class
– Industrialization
– Lighting
– Tourism
– Phonograph
– Urbanization
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26. The 20th Century
• The century of the avant-garde (1908-52,
Cubism to Cage)
• The century of women
• The century of the young generations
• The century of democracy
• The century of globalization
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27. • Electricity
• Regriferator
• Automobile
• Airlane
• Telegraph
• Telephone
• Phonograph
• Camera
• Cinema
• Radio
• Typewriter
• Calculator
• Skyscraper
• Plastic
The 1910s
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28. The 1910s
• Futurism (1909): machines and noise
• Carl Jung (1912): the collective subconscious
• Alfred North Whitehead’s and Bertrand Russell’s
“Principia Mathematica” (1913): math logic
• Suprematism and Constructivism in Russia (1915)
• Franz Kafka’s "The Trial" (1915)
• Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity
(1915)
• Dadaism (1916): chance, irrationality
• Jazz (1917): improvisation
• World War I (1914-18)
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29. The 1910s
• The 1910s set the stage for a confrontation
between the extremely rational and the
extremely irrational
EINSTEIN
RUSSELL
DADA
JAZZ
KAFKA
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30. You are a
formulaEverything
is relative
You are and
you are not
You are just
a reflex
You are a
probability
Everything is
uncertain
Everything is
moving away
from you
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31. The
emancipation of
the dissonance
History is a
nightmare from
which I am trying
to awake.
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32. There will always
be something you
cannot prove
Your mind
creates reality
Truth is an
opinion
Life and machines
obey the same
laws of nature
Everything is
information
Everything
comes from just
one point
Mind is a
symbol
processor
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33. The post-Newtonian world
• The mind is a symbol processor
• Living beings are machines
• The universe is evolving
• New frontiers in the conquest of nature
(electronics, nuclear energy, space)
• There is a limit to scientific knowledge
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34. The 1940s
• World War II
• The Holocaust
• Hiroshima
• Disintegration of the British Empire
• Rise of the USA and Soviet Union
• The computer
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35. The 1940s
• Existentialism (Sartre, Camus, …)
• Abstract painting (Pollock, Kooning, …)
• Electronic music (Cage, Darmstadt school,
Schaeffer)
• Bebop
• 1949: George Orwell’s “1984"
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36. What the Mid-century inherited
• Nonconformism
• Anxiety
• Chance
• Freedom
Salvador Dali
Charlie Chaplin John Cage
Charlie Parker
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37. Music after WWII
• Noise
• Free jazz
• Psychedelic rock
• Ambient music Karlheinz Stockhausen
Brian Eno
John Coltrane
Velvet Undergroundwww.scaruffi.com

38. Popular Music of the 20th century
• Storytelling and protest
– Blues
– Singer-songwriters
– Rock
– Rappers
• Dance
– Jazz
– Dance crazes (charleston to twist)
– Rock
– Techno/house/etc
• Love/sex
• Soul
• Rock
• Pop
• Soundscape
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BRAIN OF THE
IMMATURE YOUNG
ADULT

39. Popular Music of the 20th century
• Instruments
– Electric guitar
– Electronic keyboard
Jimi Hendrix
Klaus Schulze
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40. Rock music = neuroscience
Sex
Dance (rhythm)
Stories
(language) Rebellion
Innovation
?www.scaruffi.com

41. Rock music = neuroscience
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42. Rock music = neuroscience =
cosmology
42
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43. “The best way to predict your future
is to create it” –Peter Drucker
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