Mirando Numero

Tom Johnson
Franck Jedrzejewski
Looking
at Numbers
Looking at Numbers
Tom Johnson Franck Jedrzejewski
Looking at Numbers
Tom Johnson
Paris
France
Franck Jedrzejewski
Viroflay
France
Additional material to this book can be downloaded from http://extras.springer.com/

Rational Melody No. 15 from Tom Johnson: Rational Melodies. New World Records #80705-2
(P) 2008 2008 Anthology of Recorded Music. Inc. Used by permission
ISBN 978-3-0348-0553-7
ISBN 978-3-0348-0554-4
DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0554-4
(eBook)
Springer Basel Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013937613
Springer Basel 2014
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is
concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting,
reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter
developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis
or material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive
use by the purchaser of the work. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the
provisions of the Copyright Law of the Publishers location, in its current version, and permission for use must
always be obtained from Springer. Permissions for use may be obtained through RightsLink at the Copyright
Clearance Center. Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not
imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and
regulations and therefore free for general use.
While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither
the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may
be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.
Printed on acid-free paper
Springer Basel is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.birkhauser-science.com)
While I am describing to you how Nature works, you

wont be able to understand why Nature works that
way. But you see, nobody understands that.
Richard P. Feynman
in QED: The Strange Theory of
Light and Matter (1985)
Preface 1
I am a composer and all of my professional training has been in music, but my compositions
often derive from patterns I find in combinations of numbers, and this exploration has
required me to make many drawings. These drawings usually become pieces of music in one
way or another, but at the same time, they are self-sufficient, and they have a beauty of their
own that does not depend on music. One can regard them all by themselves, with no
reference to music, and appreciate the forms simply by looking at numbers. But let me try
to explain why I work in this way.
I have returned many times to three particular books in my library, and I now realize that
each of them, in its own way, conveys the same basic message that I have been trying to
convey in my music these recent years. The authors are neither artists nor musicians, and they
are not very well known, though they all received serious recognition in their particular times
and places, and they are all quite important for me. My appreciation of these men, all from
the generation of my grandparents, came directly from seeing what they did, but now, reading
more carefully some of the things they wrote, and thinking more carefully about how they
worked, I see that they all had one thing in common. They were careful observers of the
world, and each of them showed us something about the nature of nature that we can not
observe elsewhere. It will please me very much if one day someone will say that my own
work here is equally revealing. Probably the best way to introduce my own intentions here in
this collection of drawings is simply to talk about what these three men did.
Daniel Sheets Dye (18841976) was an American from Ohio, who spent most of his
professional life teaching academic courses at the West China Union University in Chengtu,
Szechuan, where he often visited villages, mostly in Szechuan, copying the geometric designs
of windows. His only book is A Grammar of Chinese Lattice (Harvard University Press,
1937), in which he put together several hundred drawings of the lattices he found, constructed
by Chinese carpenters using sticks of wood, probably ever since 1000 B.C (Fig. 1).
As he found and drew these patterns and accumulated the vast collection that became the
material of his book, he tried to find particular styles for particular regions and particular
periods, but realized that such divisions were difficult to demonstrate, since the same patterns
recur in many places at many times. Sometimes he found a lattice that he felt was truly
unique only to find exactly the same thing in an other place a year or two later. Nor was it
possible to find written studies about such things. Chinese intellectuals never concerned
themselves much with the work of anonymous craftsmen. They did of course look at precious
objects of porcelain and bronze, especially those coming from the remote past, but window
lattices are simply architectural decoration and dont last very long. Western scholars on the
other hand did not have access to this information, even if they might have found it
interesting.
In a seemingly futile attempt to find some order in all this, Dye hypothesized categories
such as octagon or octagon square or wedge-lock or parallel waves, but these
categories are as nebulous as their names and dont clarify much. We can, however, conclude
that the patterns he found, the accumulative work of centuries of artisans, represent some
vii
viii
Fig. 1 Window lattices found by Daniel Sheets Dye
kind of universal geometric taste. After centuries of constructions and experiments, we now
know the many forms that window lattices have to take, no matter what individuals are
making them, and that is why they are so pleasing.
Karl Blossfeldt (18651932) wanted as a young man to be a photographer but earned his
living as a professor of applied arts in Berlin, taking photographs of plants as a way of
showing his students the forms he saw in nature. The title of his book Urformen der Kunst
(1928) means the basic forms of art, and the photographs it contains are a dramatic display of
the remarkable symmetries found in plant life. Beginning around 1890, with still rather
primitive photographic equipment, he made long journeys, searching for unusual plants at
just the right season, finding just the right light and angles that would best show their
Preface 1
Preface 1
ix
particular forms. For him these Urformen underlie all nature, and are the basis of good art
as well. Curiously, he found that the flowers most highly prized by gardeners were not good
examples of what he was looking for. His favorite photos came from leaves and roots and
weeds that he found in the countryside, when he made field trips by bicycle or by train.
Blossfeldt was particularly pleased to go to the darkroom and enlarge his photos. He
sometimes focused on tiny interior parts of some flower, then blew up the image 12 times, so
that it had a rich complexity not visible to the naked eye. Only partially formed little leaves
blown up 4 times became tiny rolls of matter. He found other amazing basic forms in a tiny
bud blown up 15 times its actual size or in the delicate root of a blade of grass, or in the tiny
seed pods of a great linden tree. With these photos he could show his students how nature and
her laws always strive for simplicity, reduction, the essential.
The conflict between figurative and abstract styles was particularly strong during the years
he was a professor in the Kniglichen Kunstschule, and after World War I in the Hochschule
fr die bildenden Knste, but I dont think he cared whether his students did so-called
figurative or so-called abstract art. For him the basic laws of form applied to both. Two
specialists in the work of Blossfeldt, Ann and Jrgen Wilde, summarized his point of view in
this way (Fig. 2):
The growing and temporary forms of crystals, animals and plants are so infinitely varied that they were
certainly called into existence by some inflexible eternal law from another world, and obey the
unfathomable secret word of command of creation.
Waclaw Szpakowski (18831973) a Pole born in Warsaw and educated in architecture at the
Institute of Technology in Riga (Latvia), led a difficult life, interrupted tragically by two
world wars, but wherever he was, he worked with architectural projects to earn a living and
made geometric drawings of rhythmic lines or infinite lines in his spare time. He never
had a single exhibition of his drawings during his lifetime, but five years after his death his
series of Rhythmic Lines was shown in the Museum Sztuki in Lodz, and in 1994 a larger
collection was exhibited in the National Museum in Warsaw and also in the Willem Hack
Museum in Ludwigshafen, with a catalogue published by Atelier 340 (Brussels). Szpakowskis geometric single-line drawings (Fig. 2) seem to be decorative art, and in fact, he did
some true decorative art in the 1950s when he needed money, designing a geometric ceiling
for a cultural center, but he insisted that his drawings were more than decorative. He certainly
recognized that the simple zigzags and labyrinths he drew had similarities in textiles and
decorations of many cultures, but he saw this simply as proof of the universality and profundity of what he was doing.
Szpakowski took photos and made sketches when he traveled through Latvia, White
Russia, and Russia, observing the landscape, the natural lines, and trying to abstract them,
trying to find the true geometry behind the accidental variations. In one of the notebooks he
wrote this. A man who communes with nature and sees constantly the same objects must
learn automatically their characteristic features, and creates in his mind their image
Szpakowskis work is original and singular, despite the fact that it sometimes resembles
patterns seen in the decorative art of many cultures. As the Belgian art critic Marc Renwart puts
it, his work comes from the sources of decorative art, but it is not itself decorative art. Contrary
to general opinion, Szpakowski believed that straight lines do exist in nature, that trees are
basically two parallel lines, and that what he was doing was derived directly from nature.
Szpakowski played the violin rather well and liked to think of his rhythmic lines as music.
It is true that if one follows one of his infinite lines from beginning to end, as he wanted the
viewer to do, one does experience up-down-forwardbackward rhythms that resemble melodies. The geometrical structures created in this way during a period of over 50 years, from 1900
to 1954, were treated at the same time as sound recordings, almost as scores of musical pieces,
discovered in nature . Cycles of sketches, invariably drawn with a single line, never crossing,
referring to both visual, sound and psychological spheres of human experience, became
Szpakowskis method of describing the world.
Fig. 2 Rhythmic lines by Waclaw Szpakowski
Preface 1
Preface 1
xi
Always thinking of simply imitating nature, he never tried to impress the viewer or call
attention to himself as artist. He was content to simply follow the simple movements he saw as
basic natural forms, but of course, this apparent simplicity conceals many subtleties that
become apparent if one follows one of Szpakowskis lines far enough. Szpakowskis daughter,
the painter Anna Szpakowski, speaks of the importance of geometry and mathematics in what
he did.
Everything convinced my father that this was the only approach: The order he found in the world, in
nature, the logic with which a simple leaf is structured, the lines of the trees and other forms found in
nature, instinctive logical forms found in primitive cultures, in their buildings and folk patterns etc.
Now they were geometric lines.
Here one sees how Szpakowski is related to Dye and Blossfeldt. Like them he felt that
natural formations were superior to those of mans hand, and that these were the models to
follow. True Platonists, all three, they were always looking for the mathematical truth
underneath the visual illusions, and I am no doubt attempting to do the same thing in my own
way. TJ
Preface 2
The diagram and its relation with intellectual creation has a long tradition. It occurs very
early in Euclid, Aristotle, Kant, Euler, Nicolas of Cusa, Charles de Bovelles and many other
authors. Gilles Chatelet studied the diagrams of Nicole Oresme (Les Enjeux du Mobile, Seuil,
1993) and showed the power that a diagram could have for reasoning, and has updated its
capacity of virtual power. In my philosophical essay Ontologie des categories (in French,
LHarmattan, 2011), taken from my thesis Diagrammes et categories (University of Paris 7,
2007), I studied how the diagram is different from figures, sketches, schemes, and structures,
and demonstrated its specific detailed relationship to philosophy and to the mathematical
theory of categories. This work also has some similarities with a study by Tim Ingold, Lines.
A Brief History (Routledge, 2007).
In the arts, diagrammatic drawings of Mark Lombardi have often been cited as models of
narrative without beginning or end, which try constantly to make sense, by all sorts of
processes such as proximity of different elements or convergence of several paths at the same
point. The Preparatory Drawings of Mark Lombardi have in common with those of Tom
Johnson that they follow the same way of thinking: forcing the diagram to better reveal new
meanings and relationships in the world. Tom Johnsons music is subordinate to the diagram,
forcing itself to follow the laws of arithmetic and combinatorial nature. Like all diagrams,
these drawings stand at the border line between the virtual and the actual. FJ
xiii
Contents
Permutations . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Symmetric Group. . . . . . . . . . . .
Bruhat Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Euler Characteristic . . . . . . . . . .
Group Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Permutohedra and Cayley Graphs
Coxeter Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Homometric Sets . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1
5
7
9
11
14
16
18
20
Sums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Integer Partitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
21
23
29
Subsets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Combinatorial Designs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
31
33
35
Kirkmans Ladies, A Combinatorial Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Steiner and Kirkman Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
37
39
55
Twelve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(12,4,3). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
57
58
67
(9,4,3). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Decomposition of Block Designs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
69
70
72
55 Chords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Chords and Designs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
73
83
83
Clarinet Trio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Strange Fractal Sequences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
85
87
91
Loops. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Self-Replicating Melodies .
Rhythmic Canons. . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . .
93
96
98
99
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
xv
xvi
Contents
10 Juggling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Juggling, Groups, and Braids. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
101
103
105
11 Unclassified . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Some Other Designs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
107
107
118
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
119
Instructions for the Reader
Looking at Numbers has a unique history, and it will help to orient the reader if we explain it.
It began as a book by one author, Tom Johnson, who between 2008 and 2012 had done many
drawings as he attempted to map out his mathematical music. It was clear that many of these
drawings had a value in themselves, quite apart from musical applications, and they appeared
in exhibitions several times. He decided to assemble a collection of these in book form and
wrote about 40 pages of explanatory text to go with the drawings. The book was attractive to
Birkhuser, but since this house is known generally as a publisher of scientific books, the
editors thought their readers would be more pleased if a mathematician added notes at the end
of each chapter, going deeper into the structures depicted. This was a very good idea, and it
was not difficult to find a mathematician to collaborate, because Johnson had come to know
Franck Jedrzejewski rather well after some 10 years of mutual experiences through MaMuX,
the mathematics-and-music seminars held almost every month at IRCAM. Jedrzejewski has
many obligations at Saclay, the research center where he works as a mathematician, and he is
always pursuing independent research in musical and philosophical subjects as well, but
Johnsons request arrived in the summer time, when he was relatively free, and he found it
stimulating to study the mathematical questions underlying Johnsons music, which he
already knew rather well. He accepted the challenge without hesitation and then spent a great
deal of time studying the drawings and writing what was much more than mere mathematical
notes. Jedrzejewskis ideas stimulated Johnson to amplify his own text, the composer found
new questions for the mathematician to answer, it became clear that their many ideas about
juggling needed to be a chapter in itself, and after some weeks and several intense meetings,
the project became a real collaboration, a book by two authors.
Of course, the texts written from the composers point of view and those written from the
mathematicians point of view remained quite different and needed to be separated somehow.
We did not want to encumber the book with signatures every time it moved from one author
to another, so we simply ordered the book in a way that should clearly separate the two
authors. The basic texts at the beginning of each chapter are the texts by Johnson, and all the
subchapters are by Jedrzejewski. Certainly some readers will prefer the chapters, some will
prefer the sub-chapters, some will mostly just look at the drawings, and no two readers will
approach the book in quite the same way. Best wishes as you find your own way.
Paris, 2012
Tom Johnson
Franck Jedrzejewski
xvii
Permutations
Despite the fact that I am a musician and composer, this is

not a book about music. It is a book about looking at
numbers. Sometimes a particular number in one of these
drawings represents a particular note in a particular composition, but all the numbers here represent a particular
point in some sort of logical sequence, in some system of
permutations or combinations, in some network of sets and
subsets. In cases where some drawing is also a piece of
music, I will usually explain a bit about how the musical
applications came about, but in many cases the drawings
never did find musical applications. This was sometimes
disappointing, since as a composer I do like to produce
scores one can listen to, but sometimes the drawings reveal
a numerical structure that I find quite lovely all by itself.
Sometimes it seems even better when a discovery remains
in a pure abstract form, without being translated into banal
musical characteristics like tempo and instrumentation.
Sometimes just looking at numbers is quite enough.
Looking at numbers can be frustrating though, as many
relationships and symmetries are not immediately clear, and
you will no doubt sometimes want to understand better the
logic behind them, so I have written quite a bit of text to try
to explain what goes on in the drawings, and Franck Jedrzejewski has added much mathematical information
under subtitles at the end of each chapter. But I hope you
will sometimes look at the drawings without consulting any
of the explanations. Finding the logic by yourself can be
quite rewarding, and often what you see will not be what we
see, but rather another equally valid way of understanding
the same thing. So please regard the explanations primarily
as footnotes, as a sort of glossary, a place to find out what I
was thinking about when I made these drawings, a place to
find some clues as to how you can interpret these patterns in
your own way. But let us move on to the explanations.
How can we clearly see the structure of the 24 possible
permutations of (1, 2, 3, 4)? That was one of the simplest
and yet most fruitful questions I tried to answer when I
began drawing numbers. I began my exploration with one
simple rule: connect two permutations when the only
T. Johnson and F. Jedrzejewski, Looking at Numbers,
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-0348-0554-4_1, Springer Basel 2014
difference is the exchange of an adjacent pair. Thus 1234

must be connected to 2134, and also to 1324 and to 1243,
but to no others. Each permutation is connected to three
other permutations, and somehow we want to link the 24
permutations together into one network. The first results of
this exploration can be seen in Figs. 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3. For a
mathematician all three are the same graph, since each
permutation connects with three other permutations, but
they look very different to me.
You can draw this network in countless additional ways,
and the result will always be different, depending on which
permutation you start with and where you place it on the
page. No matter how you do it, you will find that every
route you take mirrors another route, every three-armed
four-number block is connected to every other, every right
turn is eventually echoed by a left turn, and so forth. With a
little effort, you can find a route that enables you to follow a
path from one permutation through all the others, always
following the connections, and returning to your point of
departure. I think such a path always exists, and that one can
prove this, but youd have to ask a mathematician to know
for sure.
For me the important thing is that no computer is capable
today of calculating a single one of these three networks.
Computers are very good at following well-defined rules,
but they are really worthless when it comes to making
graphs without intersecting lines, finding symmetries,
finding the logic, judging what formation is the clearest and
most pleasing. Such things can not easily be reduced to
rules for a computer, and we are left to do this work ourselves. At the same time, we can never be sure that we have
found the structure of these 24 permutations. I am sure that I
could have found several other nice symmetrical forms with
this same rule, but I was already happy with these three and
went on to other things. You can do so yourself though. Im
sure you will enjoy it.
Little did I know that a few years later, with a bit more
experience in how permutations work, I would find many
others ways of permuting 1234, and every time a lovely new
1
1 Permutations
Fig. 1.1 Permutations of 1234 connected by transposition of adjacent

elements
form appeared. The subsequent eight drawings, Figs. 1.4,

1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9, 1.10 and 1.11 all came out of this later
investigation. In these cases the rules I used to make the
connections are defined as part of the drawings, so I dont
need to explain those details here. I will just remark that
these rules are all pretty simple, but that they each produce
quite a different form. Indeed, in the case of Fig. 1.6 they
produce two disconnected forms, and there is no way to
pass from the 12 permutations on the left to the 12 on the
right by using the prescribed rules. In every case I tried to
draw all the symmetries as clearly as possible, but I can
never be sure that someone else might not find a better
solution. And perhaps I myself might find a solution that
pleases me more if I come back to the problem again after a
few more years.
The following drawing, Fig. 1.12, is a sequence of systems that connect duplets around the circle. The smallest
formation involves only the duplets 02 and the subsequent
formations involve the duplets 03, then 04, and so on
until 07. Again the duplets are ordered, so (0, 1) is not the
same as (1, 0), and they are connected by minimal differences. Looking at the second formation, involving the duplets 03, we see that when the two digits are consecutive,

elements
like (0, 1), only two connections are possible. The 0 can
move down to 3 making (3, 1) or the 1 can move up to 2
making (0, 2). But in cases like (0, 2), the 0 can either move
down to 3 or up to 1, and the 2 can either move down to 1 or
up to 3, making four connections. I was pleased to see that
these six formations are all Hamiltonian, which means that
one can pass through all the possible connections, once
each, with a single continuous line. Following these lines, I
was able to make a seven-minute composition in six
movements, each one longer than the last. This little piece,
Falling Thirds with Drum, interprets the numbers as beats
within the measure rather than pitches. So in the initial 03
formation, (3, 2) means that a little melody will begin on
beat three of one measure, and stop a third lower on beat 2
of the following measure. The drum simply plays on the
zero points, providing a frame of reference.
The piece could have gone on forever, but the page was
already rather full with these six formations, and that was
enough for the concentration capacities of most performers
and most listeners as well, so I stopped there. But since I
Permutations
formation, shown in Fig. 1.13, as it could take 20 minutes

or so to follow out all the moves of the long line, but Ill just
leave it there as something to look at.
Figure 1.14 involves permutations of six digits, 112233.
The rules are the same as with the old 1234 permutations at
the beginning of this exploration, with connections only
when an adjacent pair is exchanged. But the situation is
quite a bit more complicated here, since there are six digits.
If adjacent digits are often the same, there are less connections, and thus 112233 can only be connected to 121233
and 112323, whereas a permutation where the adjacent
digits are all different, has to be connected with five other
permutations. With a total of 90 different permutations, and
a relatively complex network involving pairs that can have
2, 3, 4, or 5 connections, we get quite a mass of routes. As
you can imagine, it took a lot of time to unscramble all this,
but things went better after I learned that all the permutations including all three digits in the first half and all three
digits in the second half would have to go in the middle, and
the others would fit together around that.
Figure 1.15 arranges a curious collection of three pairs
of five-note chords having the same interval content and
thus a certain mathematical and musical homogeneity:
elements
liked the way these long lines wound around, I made an

additional larger drawing with duplets 010, just to look at.
I dont think you would want to listen to this full page
Fig. 1.4 .
0; 1; 3; 5; 6 0; 1; 2; 4; 7
0; 1; 3; 4; 8 0; 3; 4; 5; 8
0; 1; 4; 5; 8 0; 1; 2; 5; 8
1 Permutations
Fig. 1.5 .
It was my mathematician friend Franck Jedrzejewski who

pointed out this unique set of chords and told me how I
could get from one to the other via these three permutations.
The total of 108 permutations ended up in four separate
systems, which must be profoundly logical, despite the
disorderly appearance when we look at all four together.
After finally finishing the drawing, I hoped to find lovely
music winding through these networks, but so far I havent
found any. To begin with, five-note chords are not as easy to
hear as three-note and four-note chords. With five voices,
there is much more going on, and the chords tend to sound
similar. Even when the differences are rather large, two
five-note chords in the same range sound pretty similar,
whereas it is immediately clear that two three-note chords in
the same range each have quite different personalities. Also
curious, I couldnt find two chords in my whole drawing
where four of the five notes are the same, only a few cases
where no notes are common. As one moves from one chord
to another, two or three notes are usually changing, the two

chords are never very similar or very different, and the
chords seem to be moving aimlessly, no matter what permutations they follow. Still, the interval content of all these
chords is the same, so there must be profound relationships
somewhere in this network of 108 chords, and perhaps a
whole new world of harmony, if we could just understand it.
Jedrzejewski calls these relationships homometric, and
they seem to be as mysterious for mathematicians as they
are for a musician like myself. Franck Jedrzejewskis
remarks are lengthy for this chapter, as they cover not only
permutations, but also groups and group actions and quite a
bit of other information that is already familiar to mathematicians, but which will be new and useful for others. His
graphs of Coxeter groups and his treatment of those mysterious homometric sets, however, should stimulate even
the most sophisticated readers.
Permutations
Fig. 1.6 .
Symmetric Group
Permutations play a key role in Johnsons theory. They are
applied to any kind of musical objects, but mostly to pitch
class sets and rhythms. A permutation is a rearrangement of
n objects denoted by digits f1; 2; . . .; ng. A permutation a
which pairs the jth object with the aj th object is characterized by a 2 n matrix

1 2 n
a
a1 a2 an
Most of the time, permutations are denoted by the second

row a a1 a2 . . .an in Johnsons graphs. The multiplication
ab of two permutations is defined as successive applications
of b and then of a. The multiplication of two permutations is
another permutation. For example,

1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
a
; b
;
2 3 4 1
3 4 1 2

1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
ab
4 1 2 3
3 4 1 2
2 3 4 1
1 Permutations
Fig. 1.7 .
The multiplication of permutations is associative abc

abc, but it is generally not commutative ab 6 ba. The
identity e is the permutation whose two rows are exactly the
same (ea ae e). Each permutation a has an inverse a1 .
The matrix of a1 is obtained from that of a by switching
two rows (a1 a aa1 e),
1
2
1
a1 a
4
a
2
3
2
1
3
4
3
2

4
2 3 4 1
1 2 3 4
; a1
1
1 2 3 4
4 1 2 3

4
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
e
3
2 3 4 1
1 2 3 4
There are exactly n! nn 1n 2 3 2 1 different

permutations among n objects. The set of these n! permutations verifies the axioms for a group and forms the symmetric
group or the permutation group, denoted by Sn . The order
of the group Sn (the number of elements in its set) is n!. The
set Sm of m permutations with m\n is a subgroup of Sn :
A permutation a is called a cycle of length if a preserves n objects invariant and changes the remaining
objects in order, and is denoted by a one-row matrix,

a1 a2 a1 a a1 an
a
a2 a3 a a1 a1 an
a1 a2 a3 a1 a
Two cycles are independent if they do not contain any common object. Any permutation can be decomposed as a product
of independent cycles. For example (1, 4, 2) and (3, 5)
are independant cycles of the permutation

1 2 3 4 5
1; 4; 23; 5
a
4 1 5 2 3
A transposition is a cycle of length 2, a permutation ai ; aj
that displaces only elements ai and aj . Any permutation can
be written as a product of transpositions in many ways.
Permutations
Fig. 1.8 .
a1 ; a2 ; . . .; a a1 ; a2 a2 ; a3 . . .a1 ; a
a cardfi; j : i\j; ai [ aj g
The decomposition is not unique. However, for a given

permutation, the parity of the number of factors in its
decomposition into transpositions is independent of the
method of decomposing it. A permutation is called even (or
odd) if it is decomposed into a product of even (or odd)
transpositions. The subset of all even permutations of Sn is
an invariant subgroup called the alternating group An .
The relation a!a0 describes the move from permutation

a a1 a2 . . .an to permutation a0 by transposing positions i
and j (i.e. elements ai and aj ) where i \ j and ai \ aj :
Since the inversion count increases when one moves from
permutation a to permutation a0 , the length of a is less than
the length of a0 .
i;j
a \ a0
Bruhat Order
A crucial role is played in a symmetric group by a certain
partial order structure. Let a be a permutation of Sn and
define the inversion count of a 2 Sn (or the length of a) as
the number of its inversions:
For example, the permutation 132 in S3 under the

position transposition (1, 3) becomes the permutation 231.
The length 132 equals 1 is less than the length 231
equals 2.
8
Fig. 1.9 .
Fig. 1.10 .
1 Permutations
Permutations
for j 1; 2; . . .; n. Let a; b 2 Sn . Then the following holds:

a b if and only if
ai; j bi; j;
for all i; j 2 f1; 2; . . .; ng
In Figs. 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3, Johnsons graphs are subgraphs of

the non-oriented Bruhat graph of S4 . Two permutations are
connected by adjacent permutations si i; i 1. They
have two fixed points, while non-adjacent permutations
have only one fixed point (Fig. 1.6). In some sense, Bruhat
graph of S4 is decomposed in two graphs: one graph with
adjacent permutations as actors (e.g. Fig. 1.1), and another
graph with non-adjacent permutations (e.g. Fig. 1.6).
Since the set of permutations Sn is finite, Sn has a
greatest element (for the Bruhat order) denoted u and called
the top element.
a u;
for all a 2 Sn
This element u has nice properties such as u2 e, u

jT j; where T is the set of all transpositions, and
uau a;
for all a 2 Sn
For the symmetric group, the top element u is the retrograde

of u, namely i ! n 1 i: The mapping a 7! uau is an
inner automorphism of Sn which preserves invariant the set
S of all adjacent permutations: uSu S. For example, in
Fig. 1.3, permutations are connected by (1,2) along the
vertical line, (2,3) along the first diagonal and (1,3) on
the opposite diagonal. The horizontal line in the middle of
the figure has three permutations:
2;4
3;4
1;4
4231!2431!2341!2314
Fig. 1.11 .
The relation a ! b means that a!b for some transposition t i; j with i \ j. The relation a b for a; b 2
Sn means that there exists a chain of permutation p; q; r; . . .
of Sn such that
a ! p ! q ! ! r ! b
This is a partial order on the set of permutation Sn called
Bruhat order. The Bruhat graph is the directed graph whose
vertices are the elements of Sn and the edges are given by
the relation a ! b.
The following result is a criterion to answer the question
whether two permutations are comparable in Bruhat order.
For a 2 Sn , let
ai; j cardfk 2 f1; 2; :::; ig : ak jg
The top element is 4321 and the mapping a 7! uau leaves

invariant the whole graph. Starting from the middle of the
figure, the permutations on the right are the retrogrades on
the permutation on the opposite side. Similarly, begining
with 1234 at the lower left and moving upwards, we find
four permutations echoed by four that continue from 4321.
A mathematician might say, but these relationship are quite
obvious, so why draw them? But the answer is simple: to
see how they look.
Euler Characteristic
The Euler characteristic vM of a closed surface M is a
topological invariant describing the topological structure of
the surface. It can be calculated by a triangulation of the
surface into v vertices, e edges and f faces according to the
formula
10
1 Permutations
Fig. 1.12 Connecting duplets with minimal differences
vM v e f 2 2g
It is also related to the genus g of the surface, which is the
number of tori in a connected sum decomposition of the
surface (roughly speaking, the number of handles) if the
surface can be orientable, and the number of real projective
planes in a connected sum decomposition of the surface if
the surface can not be orientable.
For example, any convex polyhedron or connected plane
graph has characteristic 2:
vef 2
So for the cube, 8 12 6 2, the disk has Euler characteristic 1, the torus 0 and the sphere 2. The Moebius strip
and the Klein bottle have characteristic 0. There are many
generalizations of the Euler characteristic concept involving
algebraic topology theory such as Betti numbers and CWcomplexes.
Since the graph is planar and connected, Figs. 1.2 and
1.3 have the same Euler characteristic v 2: In Fig. 1.2,
this characteristic can be calculated by counting the
number of vertices v 4! 24, the number of edges e
36 (one edge is not drawn which links the top to the
bottom) and the number of faces (6 squares and 8
Permutations
11
Fig. 1.13 More duplets with minimal differences
hexagons). Dont forget to count the exterior hexagon

(4321 3421 3241 2341 2431 4231). Thus v e f
24 36 14 2:
The closure of Fig. 1.4 is rather difficult: each corner
needs to be linked with the others. 4321 is connected horizontally with 4312 and vertically with 3421. In the same
manner, 3421 is connected horizontally with 3412 and vertically with 4321. The pemutation 3214 has to be connected
diagonally with 2314, etc. Redrawing Fig. 1.4 in the following way leads to the Cayley graph of S4 (see Fig. 1.16).
Thus, we can easily compute the Euler characteristic v
e f 24 36 14 2: The Euler characteristic is the
same as for a connected planar graph. Another result can
help to count the number of edges. The degree of a face
degf is the number of edges adjacent to this face. The half
sum of the degree of all faces of the graph C is exactly the
number of edges
e
1X
deg f
2 f 2C
In the Fig. 1.16, we have 6 squares of degree 4 and 8

hexagons of degree 6, which leads to 6 4 6 8=2
36 edges.
Group Action
A group action is a description of the symmetries of the
elements of a set X under the action of the elements of a
group G. It is an extension to the definition of a symmetry
group. Mathematically, a group G acts on the elements of a
set X if there exists a map called the action of G on X from
G X ! X such that
(i) the identity e does not change the elements of X:
e x x;
for all x 2 X
(ii) the action is associative:
gh x g h x;
for all g; h 2 G; 8 x 2 X.
There are two important notions associated with such an
action. The stabiliser of a point x 2 X is the subgroup of G
defined by
12
1 Permutations
Fig. 1.14 Permutations of 112233
Stabx fg 2 G : gx xg
and the orbit of the point x 2 X is a subset of X :
Orbx fgx 2 X : g 2 Gg
Sylow subgroups play a major role in the theory of finite
groups. For a prime number p, a Sylow p-subgroup of a
group G is a maximal p-subgroup of G that is not a proper
subgroup of any other p-subgroup of G. In 1872, Ludwig
Sylow established three theorems.
Theorem 1 For any prime factor p with multiplicity n of
the order of a finite group G, there exists a Sylow p-subgroup of G of order pn .
Theorem 2 All Sylow p-subgroups of a finite group are
conjugate to one another.
Theorem 3 The number of p-Sylow subgroups of a finite
group divides the order of the group and is congruent to one
modulo p.
The Sylow theorems imply that for a prime number p; if

a subgroup has order pn , then it is a Sylow p-subgroup. The
computation of the Sylow p-subgroups gives detailed
information about the subgroups and help us to define the
action of a group on a set of permutations.
The group G depicted in Fig. 1.11 is generated by two
permutations a 1; 2; 3 and b 2; 3; 4 and has order
12. This group acts on the set S4 of the permutations of {1,
2, 3, 4}.
D
E
G a; b j a3 b3 ab2 1
The action of a (or b) on each element x of S4 determines a
triplet x; ax; a2 x since a3 1 represented on Fig. 1.11 by
triangles. For example x 1234 is connected to ax 2314
and to a2 x 3124. The same is true for the permutation b.
The action of G on S4 of order 24 leads to two connected
components: the orbit of 1234 (top) and the orbit of 1243
(bottom). These orbits are related by simply transposing the
last two digits of each permutation
Permutations
Fig. 1.15 Permutations of homometric chords
13
14
1 Permutations
Fig. 1.16 Another drawing of Fig. 1.4
3;4
xyzt!xytz
Since the order of group G is 12 22 3, G has two Sylow
subgroups, namely G1 SylowG; 2 generated by u
1; 23; 4 and v 1; 32; 4 of order 4 and G2
SylowG; 3 generated by w 1; 3; 4 of order 3. The first
component is then a rectangle. This is quit a different view
of the two graphs of Fig. 1.11, because the actions are
different, but since it is simpler than Fig. 1.11, the relationship may be clearer.
1234
!
w#
3241
uv
!
w#
uv
!
w#
4213
2143
2314
!
2431
!
w#
v
!
w#
v
3412
4132
w#
uv
!
w#
u
!
1342
4312
1423
w#
!
3142
In Fig. 1.10, the group G is generated by the three permutations a 1; 2 , b 1; 3 and c 1; 4 and has order 24.
D
E
G a; b j a2 b2 c2 ab3 ac3 bc3 cacb2 1
Since 24 23 3, the group G has two Sylow subgroups,

namely G1 SylowG; 2 generated by u 2; 3 and v
1; 2; 4; 3 of order 8, and G2 SylowG; 3 generated by
w 1; 3; 4 of order 3. Again the system may be simplified
by placing the 24 permutations in this rectangle, using new
group generators u, v and w.
vu
1234
! 2413
! 4321
! 3142
! 1324
! 2143
! 4231
w#
w#
w#
w#
w#
w#
w#
w#
3241
! 1432
! 2314
! 4123
! 2341
! 4132
! 3214
! 1423
vu
! 3412
v
w#
w#
w#
w#
w#
w#
w#
w#
4213
! 3421
! 1342
! 2134
! 4312
! 3124
! 1243
! 2431
vu
To understand better, try to describe the structure of the

group action in Fig. 1.7, here group G is generated by the
permutations a 1; 2; 3; 4 and b 1; 3; 4; 2, and has
order 24.
D
E
G a; b j a4 b4 ba2 2 1; aba bab
This group has two Sylow subgroups: G1 generated by the
permutations u 2; 3 and v 1; 2; 4; 3 of order 8
D
E
G1 u; v j u2 v4 uv1 2 1
and G2 generated by the permutation w 1; 2; 4;

G2 w j w3 1
which is a cyclic group of order 3.
Permutohedra and Cayley Graphs

A Cayley graph C encodes the mathematical structure of a
group G. Let S be a generating set of G. The vertices of the
graph C are the elements of G and the edges of C connect
Permutations
15
Fig. 1.17 Cayley graph of S4
pairs of vertices g; sg with g 2 G and s 2 S. For example,

the finite cyclic group of order n
C n h s j s n 1i
has a generating set S containing two elements r and its
inverse r 1 . Its Cayley graph is an oriented circle, with n
vertices on it. One moves from one element to the other by
the action of r or r 1 , clockwise or counterclockwise. In
Johnsons Fig. 1.1, the group G is the set of permutationsS4
of order 24, and the transpositions i; j with i 6 j form the
set of generating elements. Figure 1.1 is the Cayley graph
of S4 : It can be drawn as a standard planar graph (see
Fig. 1.17) or in 3D, on the permutohedron of order 4,
composed as in Fig. 1.4 of six squares and eight hexagons (see Fig. 1.18). The vertices and edges of the
permutohedron are isomorphic, as an undirected graph, to

the Cayley graph of the permutation group.
Tom Johnson feels that my Fig. 1.17 is a correction of
his Fig. 1.1, because it works with no intersecting lines, but
he considers that I was cheating in the second example,
because I altered the permutation in order to show you a
lovely permutohedron of order 4. What do you think?
The permutohedron is generated by three transpositions
(1, 2), (2, 3) and (3, 4). The permutohedron of order n has n!
vertices, n 1n!=2 edges and 2n 2 faces. It lies entirely
in the n 1-dimensional hyperplane
H fx1 ; x2 ; . . .; xn 2 Rn : x1 x2 xn nn 1=2g
Some graphs are projections of polyhedra. A polyhedron is

a connected set of ordinary plane polygons such that each
16
1 Permutations
Fig. 1.18 Permutohedron of

order 4
Fig. 1.19 Braid relations
side of any polygon is simultaneously the side of exactly

one other. Any two of the polygons shall have in common
either a side, or a single vertex, or nothing at all. A higherdimensional polyhedron is also called a polytope. The
simplest examples of polyhedra are the five regular polytopes or Platonic solids: the tetrahedron, the cube, the
octahedron, the dodecahedron and the icosahedron. In a
regular polyhedron, all faces are congruent regular polygons
and all polyhedral angles are equal. Any regular 3-polyhedron is denoted by the Schlfli symbol fp; qg where p is the
number of vertices or sides of a face and q is the number of
edges or faces at a vertex. For example, {4,3} is a cube. In
one dimension, the symbol fpg represents p-sided regular
polygons and in higher dimensions the Schlfli symbol is
defined recursively. Regular polytopes can have star polygon elements, like the pentagram, the five-pointed star, with
symbol {5/2}, represented by the vertices of a pentagon but
connecting the points in the order 1, 3, 5, 2, 4.
Coxeter Groups
Schlfli symbols are deeply connected with reflection
groups and Coxeter groups (see e.g. [1]). The group of
symmetries of a polytope P is the group of all motions of a
finite-dimensional Euclidean space that send P to itself. The
symmetry group of a regular polytope is a reflection group.
Two reflections ri and rj for i; j 1; 2; . . .; n satisfy the
relation
mij
1
ri rj
meaning that the product of these two reflections in two
hyperplanes meeting at an angle p=mij is a rotation by the
angle 2p=mij : This relation is exactly the relation that
defines Coxeter groups:

m
G r1 ; . . .; rn j ri rj ij 1
Permutations
17
and mij is the Coxeter matrix where mii 1 and mij mji 2
for i 6 j, or mij 1 (no relationship between ri and rj ).
Now what we have said about Bruhat order can be generalized to Coxeter groups, and we can see the connections
between all these concepts. For a Schlfli symbol fp; qg of a
regular polyhedron in a 3-dimensional Euclidean space, a
presentation of the polyhedron group is a Coxeter group
G \r; s j r p sq sr2 1 [
where the two generators r and s are rotations by 2p=q and
by 2p=p respectively. For example, for the cube, the polyhedron group has the following presentation:
C \r; s j r 3 s4 sr2 1 [
6!
90 (vertices or)
If we look at Fig. 1.14, we see the 2!2!2!
permutations of the set {1,1,2,2,3,3} connected with 180
edges. Two permutations are connected by adjacent position
transpositions si i; i 1, The elements 112233 at the
top has only two connections, while other elements have as
many as five. I can not deny the logic of Johnson drawing,
but mathematically it seems clearer to construct the system
begining with concentric circles as in Fig. 1.20. Note that
the dark circles all follow a sequence of transposition types
545454, that is transposing element 5 and 6, the 4 and 5, etc.
The symmetric group

s1 ; . . .; s6 j si sj sj si forji jj 2
S6
si si1 si si1 si si1 for i 1; 2; 3; 4
18
1 Permutations
is a subgroup of the braid group. The graph lies on a torus.

The outer circle has to be glued with the inner circle, and we
can do this by transpositions [121212], moving from
213132 at the top of the graph to 123132, 132132, 312132,
. . . This sequence, like the others in Fig. 1.20, are all braid
relations.
The remaining connections follow shorter braid relations: 232=323, 343=434, 454=545 and now we have
explained everything with three simple braids.
Tom Johnson was very impressed when he saw this, but
he still prefers his own drawing, because it shows so symmetricaly the six permutations with only two connections
on the outer circle, and the six palindromic permutations in
a nice hexagon near the center. We are not sure which of us
came closest to the truth of this system, and it is quite
possible that someone else will someday find a solution that
is better than either of ours.
Homometric Sets
Two musical chords A and B are Z-related in Zn if they have
the same interval content (ic), up to translation and
inversion.
A Zn B () icA icB
In 1944, Lindo Patterson [8] gave the following example,
for a finite group Z8 :
0; 3; 4; 5 Z8 0; 4; 5; 7
In Fortes classification, pitch class set 6Z24, namely (0, 1,
3, 4, 6, 8), and its complementary set 6Z46, (2, 5, 7, 9, 10,
11) = (0, 1, 2, 4, 6, 9), have the same interval content: ic =
233331. For two given chords A and B, the interval function
ifuncA; B 1A 1B
X
X
ifuncA; Bn
1A j1B n j
1A k1B n k
j
counts how many times k of A has its n-transpose in B. For a

given chord A, ifuncA ifuncA; A. The vector ifuncA
is composed by the cardinality of A, followed by the
interval vector icA and the retrogradation of icA. The
Patterson function appears in x-ray cristallography, where it
is a well known fact for over eighty years that the picture
obtained by x-ray diffraction of a crystal depends on the set
of vectors between its atoms. From the mathematical point
of view, the Patterson function is the auto-correlation
function whose coefficients are the components of the
interval function.
Fx
ci xi
ci 2 ifunc A
This function is related to the characteristic polynomial of

chord A:
Fx A A x AxAx1
For example, A 0; 2; 3; 5; n 12:
Ax 1 x2 x3 x5
Ax1 1 x10 x9 x7
Fx AxAx1 4 x 2x2 2x3 x5 x7 2x9 2x10 x11
ifuncA 4; 1; 2; 2; 0; 1; 0; 1; 0; 2; 2; 1
Two chords A and B are homometric if they have the same

Patterson function A A B B . In ZN , the set A is
trivially homometric to all inversions and transpositions. If A
and B are Forte pitch class sets, A and B are said to be nontrivially homometric or strictly homometric. The Z-relation
is equivalent to strict homometry. In 1944, Patterson proved
two theorems: (1) If two subsets of a regular n-gon are homometric then their complements are. (2) Every n-point
subset of a regular 2n-gon (i.e. in Z2n ) is homometric to its
complement. For example, the chords A 0; 1; 3; 5 2 Z8
and Ac 2; 4; 6; 7 are homometric, since they have the
same interval content icA icAc 1; 2; 2; 1:
A nice application of the theory of homometric sets is to
recover the hexachordal theorem of Babbitt and Lewin
(1959): Two complementary sets A; Ac in Z2n of length n
have the same interval content. Since we have to show that
they have the same Patterson function, the proof is as follows. Let Tx be
Tx 1 x x2 x2n1
x2n 1
x1
We have Tx1 Tx and

Ac Ac A A

, Tx Ax Tx1 Ax1 AxAx1

, Tx Tx Ax1 Ax 0 mod x2n 1

, Tx Tx Ax1 Ax kTxx 1
, Tx Ax1 Ax kx 1
This is true because T1 A1 A1 2n n n 0:

Thus x 1 dividesTx Ax1 Ax; and this completes the proof.
The Z-relation is stable by multiplication. Let m be an
integer such that the gcdm; n 1 and m 6 1; m 6 n 1:
Denote Mm the multiplication by m modulo n: If A and B are
Permutations
19
Z-related, then the sets Mm A and Mm B are also Z-related,

where Mm x mx mod n, for all x 2 A.
0; 1; n 2; n 1; n 1 Z2n 0; 1; 2; n 1; n 2
A Zn B ) Mm A Zn Mm B
but the classification of Z-related pairs remains an open

problem. J. Rosenblatt [9] classified the Z-related pairs of
length 4. If A Z B with cardA cardB 4 then A and
B are of the following two types:
(i) In Z4n , 9a 2 f1; 2; . . .; n 1g; n 2;
For example, in the usual well-tempered scale, since the two

sets A 0; 1; 2; 3; 5; 6 6Z3 and Ac 0; 1; 2; 3; 4; 7
6Z36 are Z-related (ic = 433221), the new chords
M5 A 0; 1; 3; 5; 6; 10 6Z47 and M5 Ac 0; 3; 5; 8; 10; 11 6Z25
are also Z-related (ic = 233241).

In 2008, J. ORourke, P. Taslakian and G. Toussaint
established the pumping lemma [10]. The vertices a 2 A and
b 2 B are isospectral if they have the same histogram of
distances to all other vertices in their respective sets. Let
A; B be homometric sets with isospectral vertices a 2 A and
b 2 B: Then the sets A0 obtained from mA by replacing ma
with fma; ma 1; . . .; ma rg and B0 obtained from mB by
replacing mb with fmb; mb 1; . . .; mb rg have the same
interval content in Zmn with r 1 m. For example, for
m 2, r 0; 1, we have seen that 0; 1; 2; 5 is homometric with 0; 1; 3; 4 in Z8 . Since A 0; 1; 2; 5, B
0; 1; 3; 4; 2 2 A and 3 2 B are isospectral, the pumping
lemma shows the new Z-relation:
0; 2; 3; 4; 5; 10 Z16 0; 2; 5; 6; 7; 8
If A and B are Z-related in Zn ; then the sets obtained
using the translation Tn x x n mod 2n are also Zrelated in Z2n .
A Zn B ) A [ Tn A Z2n B [ Tn B
More generally, the following sets are Z-related in Znm
A Zn B ) A [ Tn A [ . . . [ Tnm1 A Znm B [ Tn B [ . . . [ Tnm1 B
where the translations are related to Znm ; Tk x

x k mod nm:
Similar results can be proved for multiplication. If
A Zn B, and m is an integer such that gcdn; m 1, m 6 1,
and m 6 n 1 then
Mm A [ T1 Mm A [ . . . [ Tm1 Mm A Znm Mm B [ T1 Mm B [ . . . [ Tm1 Mm B
For example, from the relation 0; 1; 3; 4 Z8 0; 1; 2; 5;

since M3 A 0; 3; 9; 12, and M3 B 0; 3; 6; 15; we get
0; 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 9; 10; 11; 12; 13; 14 Z24 0; 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7; 8; 15; 16; 17
and some relations can be established. For example, for

n 5, we have
0; 1; 2; n 2; n 1 Z2n 0; 1; 3; n 1; n
A 0; a; a n; 2n Z4n B 0; a; n; 2n a
(ii) In Z13n ,
A 0; n; 4n; 6n Z13n B 0; 2n; 3n; 7n
A related problem is to find a group and a group action
whose orbits are the homometric classes. It has been shown
in [7] that there is no reasonable group action whose
orbits are the homometric classes for all homometric sets.
But all Z-related pairs of a given length are generated by a
group of permutations. In the chromatic scale (n 12), there
are 19 homometric pairs, up to translation and inversion.
For four-note chords, there is only one Z-related pair:
0; 1; 3; 7 Z12 0; 1; 4; 6
but applying translations and inversions leads to a set of 48
elements. The group of order 3072 has six generators:
a 3; 9; b 4; 10; c 5; 11
d 2; 58; 11
e 1; 24; 57; 810; 11
f 0; 13; 46; 79; 10
For five-note chords, there are three Z-related pairs of
length 5:
0; 1; 3; 5; 6 Z12 0; 1; 2; 4; 7
0; 1; 3; 4; 8 Z12 0; 3; 4; 5; 8
0; 1; 4; 5; 7 Z12 0; 1; 2; 5; 8
The set of all Z-related five-note chords has 108 elements.
The group of order 48 has 3 generators:
a 1; 52; 104; 87; 11
b 1; 73; 95; 11
c 0; 12; 113; 104; 95; 86; 7
The action of the group on the 108 elements is shown in
Fig. 1.15. The set of Z-related five-note chords splits into
four components.
For length 6, there are 15 Z-related pairs and the set of
all Z-related pairs has 552 elements. The group of order 144
has 3 generators:
20
1 Permutations
a 2; 103; 114; 85; 9

b 1; 32; 104; 85; 117; 9
c 0; 12; 34; 56; 78; 910; 11
By combining the hexachordal theorem, the Patterson theorems and the pumping lemma, it is clear that homometric
groups are deeply significant, and not only in music. The
problem of determining homometric sets is connected to
another problem called the phase retrival, a problem of
reconstructing a subset A of Zn , up to translation, from the
collection of its subsets of size k, given up to translation.
This problem was studied by Rosenblatt [9] and recently in
the musical field by Mandereau and others [7].
References
1. Bjrner, A., and F. Brenti. 2005. Combinatorics of Coxeter
Groups. New York: Springer.
2. Coxeter, H.S.M. 1959. Introduction to Geometry. New York:

Wiley.
3. Coxeter, H.S.M. 1963. Regular Polytopes. New York: Macmillan.
4. Coxeter, H.S.M. 1999. The Beauty of Geometry: Twelve Essays.
Mineola: Dover Publications.
5. Jedrzejewski, F. 2005. Permutation groups and chord tessellations.
In Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference,
231234. Barcelona.
6. Mandereau, J., D. Ghisi, E. Amiot, M. Andreatta, and C. Agon.
2011. Z-relation and homometry in musical distributions. Journal
of Mathematics and Music 5(2): 8398.
7. Mandereau, J., D. Ghisi, E. Amiot, M. Andreatta, and C. Agon.
2011. Discrete phase retrieval in musical structures. Journal of
Mathematics and Music 5(2): 99116.
8. Patterson, A.L. 1944. Ambiguities in the X-ray analysis of crystal
structure. Physical Review 65: 195201.
9. Rosenblatt, J. 1984. Phase Retrieval. Communications in
Mathematical Physics 95: 317343.
10. ORourke, J., P. Taslakian, and G. Toussaint. 2008. A Pumping
Lemma for Homometric Rhythms, 20th Canadian Conference on
Computational Geometry. Montreal.
11. Stein, S.K., S. Szab. 1994. Algebra and Tiling, The Carus
Mathematical Monographs. Washington, DC: Mathematical
Association of America.
Sums
Another interesting way of looking at numbers is simply to

put them together when they have the same sum. I first
became interested in this when I wanted to construct groups
of chords having the same average height, that is, when the
sums of the notes would all be the same. That would permit
me to write harmonies that would move a lot without ever
really going up or down. To make the music even more
immobile, I wanted to link these chords by minimal differences, so that with each move one voice would move up
a notch and one would move down a notch, and the rest
would not change. How does this work?
Lets begin with sets of four different numbers, of which
the lowest possible sum is 1 2 3 4 10. The only
way to have a sum of 11 with four different numbers is
1 2 3 5, but with higher sums there are more possibilities. Five different chords have sums of 14, for example,
and now we cannot logically put them in a line. Since
1,2,5,6 has a minimal difference with 1,2,4,7 and 1,3,4,6,
and 1,3,4,6 has a minimal difference with 1,2,4,7 and also
with 2,3,4,5, we now have a whole network of possible
moves, and this becomes quite a tangle in Fig. 2.1, which
shows the connections for four-note chords having the sums
of 17 and 18. To translate this into chords one can simply
think of the notes as positions on a chromatic scale, though
of course, one may assign the numbers to all sorts of other
scales too.
Putting together the four-number sets with sums of 22
would be a nightmare of unintelligible knots and crossings,
but if we take only sets of three numbers, as in Fig. 2.2, we
can do this rather neatly. We can maintain the same sum
and have minimal differences if one of the numbers moves
up a notch and another moves down a notch, and the only
ways of doing that are to follow the lines here. The high
numbers are unchanging along the rising diagonals, the
middle numbers are unchanging along the falling diagonals,
and the lower numbers are unchanging along the vertical
axes. From any point in the middle of the network one may
move up or down vertically, or up or down diagonally in

two different ways, thus moving from one chord to six

others without ever really rising or falling. Of course, along
the edges there are limits, assuming that the low number
cant be less than one, and remembering that the total has to
be 22.
I never used the sums of 22 in a composition, but in my
Trio the three instruments play sums of 72. The piece begins
with the chord (23,24,25) and ends with the chord (0,24,48).
Another related piece is Hexagons, which permits two different sums, 30 and 31, so that the music, in order to move
with minimal differences, bobs up and down continuously
between sums of 30 and 31. Both graphs made nice visual
images when I drew them, and in fact, they appear on the
covers of those scores, but the images are quite dense and
have a horizontal format that would not fit nicely into this
book, so I took the same idea on a smaller scale and made a
drawing that you can see here as Fig. 2.3. In this case we
see all the combinations of three different numbers that have
the sum of 39. At the bottom is the tightest grouping, 12
13 14; and at the top is the most spread out grouping,
1 13 25. The highest of the three numbers are all the
same if one reads descending diagonals, the central numbers
are the same if one reads the vertical columns, and the low
numbers are the same if one reads ascending diagonals.
Curiously, a kite-like shape results, and this was not
because I did any trimming. The form just emerges like that
if we follow these rules. The subsets all connect in a single
line, but this line is not as neat as one might expect, as the
zigzags have to be interrupted by straight lines in order to
turn around and go the other way. The nice thing about this
arrangement for a composer is the way the music stays on
an even keel. It just keeps flying along at one altitude. I
wonder if there are non-musical contexts where such an
arrangement might also be useful?
But we can also construct a network with long series of
sums. In Fig. 2.4 we begin at the top with 1 2 3 and
end at the bottom with 8 9 17. All numbers greater
than 9 have been disallowed, which contains the network
21
22
Sums
Fig. 2.1 Sums of 17 and 18
considerably. Here there is no way to connect all the

combinations, but there are lots of ways of winding around
in this world where nothing jumps around. Were always
just moving up one or down one.
Figure 2.5 involves another series of sums. Here we see a
network of six-note chords where the note 1 is included in
each chord. One chord has only one connection and one has
six. The consistent 1 is probably because I was thinking of
rhythms rather than notes and wanted to mark the bar lines,
though I never finished this as a piece of music.
In Fig. 2.6 we find three notes in each chord, beginning
with 123 at the left and ending with 678, with the sums of
621. Now the beginning and ending chords have only one
connection, but two in the middle have six. The result is a
kind of hierarchy between ordinary chords and special ones.
Figure 2.7 is a somewhat more twisted network, because
now there are four notes in each chord. In this case, however, they are not really notes, but rather rhythms in a cycle
of 8 beats. With rhythms of four notes in the space of 8
beats, there are more possibilities, so the drawing is denser
and the music lasts longer. As in Fig. 2.6, we are now
looking at an actual piece, a movement from a composition
for three percussionists called Mocking.
If you are not a mathematician, you might think that
graphing this same set with subsets of five digits would be
even more dense, but if you are a mathematician, you will
immediately see that eight numbers taken five at a time

have to produce a simpler graph than eight numbers taken
only four at a time. The result is Fig. 2.8, which is essentially the numbers that we wouldnt have had if we were
looking at the eight numbers taken three at a time. These
combinations are just the complements of the combinations
in Fig. 2.6. Its the same graph, though it was drawn quite
differently.
Figure 2.9 shows us all the six-digit subsets of the
numbers 18 having the sums of 2133, and now the network thins out even more, because were just looking at the
complements of a two-digit graph. The music is quite a bit
noisier though, since we hear 6 notes in every 8-beat
measure. Since these rhythms can never be linked into a
single line, the movements of Mocking are divided into
several different sequences, in which the percussionists
alternate rhythms and seem to be mocking one another.
For me the network of Fig. 2.10 has quite an elegant
look, since the point 246, with its six connections,
becomes the focal point at the center of the system. The
two subsets having five connections make secondary focal
points left and right. The subsets 156 and 237 both need to
be in the very center too, and they squeeze in as best they
can, while the other subsets find their own places. The
logic by which trees find their places in the woods must be
a bit similar.
Sums
23
Fig. 2.2 Sums of 22
Integer Partitions
1; 1; 2; 3; 5; 7; 11; 15; 22; 30; 42; . . .
A partition of a positive integer n is a non-increasing

sequence of positive integers whose sum is n. The number
of such partitions pn is called the partition function. For
example, p4 5 since the partitions of 4 are
These values are given by the generating function equation

discovered by Euler
X
pnqn
n0
4;
3 1;
2 2;
2 1 1;
1
1

qn
n1
1 q 2q2 3q3 5q4 7q5
1111
Computing the partition function is a difficult task, as no

explicit formula is known except recurrence formulas. The
first values of pn starting with p0 1; is the sequence
A000041 in the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
(OEIS)
Eulers pentagonal theorem asserts that

Y
X
2
1 qn
1n q3n n=2
n1
n2Z
from which is deduced the recurrence formula
24
Sums
Fig. 2.3 Sums of 39
pn

1
1
1k1 p n k3k 1 p n k3k 1
2
2
k1
X
However, we are often interested in the number of partitions

that satisfy some condition. For example, Euler proves in
1748 that the number of partitions with odd parts is always
equal to the number of partitions with distinct parts. For
n 1;
pn j odd parts pn j distinct parts
This is a special case of Glaishers theorem. In the example
above, for n 4, there are two partitions with odd parts
3 1; 1 1 1 1 and two partitions with distinct
parts 4; 3 1. In mathematical terms, the number of
conjugacy classes of the symmetric group Sn is equal to the

number of partitions of n and the number of partitions pk n
of n of length k is given by
pk n
k
X
pi n k
i0
with p0 0 0 and p0 m 0 if m 6 0. In Johnsons

drawings, the numbers never come out right, because he
refuses to use one digit twice. This is because he was
thinking of harmonic constructions where it does not make
sense to have the same note twice.
A Hamiltonian path in an undirected graph is a path that
visits each vertex exactly once. An Eulerian is a path that
uses each edge exactly once. A circuit or a cycle starts and
Integer Partitions
25
Fig. 2.4 Sums of 3 to 17
ends on the same point. A Hamiltonian cycle is a cycle that

visits each vertex exactly once, except for the starting
vertex. An Eulerian cycle is an Eulerian path that starts and
ends on the same vertex, visiting each edge once. A graph
that contains a Hamiltonian (resp. Eulerian) cycle is called a
Hamiltonian (Eulerian) graph. All vertices of an Eulerian

graph have an even degree. For example, in Fig. 2.1, the
sums of 17 and 18 produce a Hamiltonian path, but not an
Eulerian path.
26
Sums
Integer Partitions
27
28
Sums
Integer Partitions
References
Aigner, M. 2007. A Course in Enumeration. Berlin: Springer.
Andrews, G.E., and K. Eriksson. 2004. Integer Partitions. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Bna, M. 2002. A Walk Through Combinatorics: An Introduction to
Enumeration and Graph Theory. Singapore: World Scientific
Publishing.
29
Bryant, V. 1993. Aspects of Combinatorics. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Stanley, R.P. 1999. Enumerative Combinatorics, Vol. 1, 2. Cambridge:
Starr, D. 1978. Sets, Invariance and Partitions. Journal of Music
Theory 22(1):142.
Subsets
Consider the set of digits 1,2,3,4,5. Taking the elements two

at a time, we have 10 subsets: 1,2, 1,3, 1,4, 1,5, 2,3, 2,4, 2,5,
3,4, 3,5, 4,5. This is quite obvious, and yet the forms that
result when you really look at these pairs and try to make
connections between them can be surprising. In Fig. 3.1 we
see a circle of these 10 subsets with 1,2 in the center,
connected when they have no elements in common. Just
below, the subsets of 1,2,3,4,5 taken three at a time are
connected when they have one element in common, and
look. Its the same graph.
In Fig. 3.2 we get the same graph again, but this time we
are working with subsets of the digits 1,2,3,4,5,6. How is
that possible? Well, since there are six elements now, were
looking at 20 subsets instead of only 10, and in fact, these
two drawings come from another formation altogether. The
10 triplets in the upper circle are actually a combinatorial
design or block design called (6,3,2), because the six elements are distributed in groups of three and each pair of
elements appears in two different blocks. In the lower circle,
the 10 subsets are just the complements of the subsets
appearing in the upper circle. Franck Jedrzejewski will
explain more below, and it will be good to try to follow
what he says, if youve never worked with combinatorial
designs before, as we will be looking at lots of these in later
chapters.
Now lets see what happens if we connect duplets by
minimal differences in the set 1,2,3,4,5,6, and this time lets
make it a circle and call the elements 0,1,2,3,4,5. That
means that 0,1 connects with 5,1 (or 1, 5), because the zero
just moved over a notch to 5, and 4,0 connects with 4,1 (or
1, 4) by that same logic. The result is shown in Fig. 3.3, a
lovely form that reminds me of Arabic geometric art,
though I dont remember ever having seen anything like this
in the Alhambra.
Figure 3.4 shows triplets in a set of five elements connected by minimal differences around a circle, and one can
see how the result is a single line that connects the 10
triplets. The line makes 15 different moves, because it visits

the inner triplets twice. The larger circle below this does the
same thing with another single line and 20 triplets formed
from the set 0,1,2,3,4,5. Note that the triplets 0,2,4 and 1,3,5
must be visited three times in this case. If logically laying
out a system like this is still an impossible task for a
computer, it is also extremely difficult for us human beings
to untwist all these connections and to place the elements in
a formation that produces something coherent that we can
see. It is amazing how many trials are necessary before one
can find a reasonably coherent formation, and of course, one
can never be sure that one has arrived at the core of the
system.
Connecting subsets within subsets can lead to surprising
results. Figure 3.5 is really four drawings. Single elements
are connected with duplets in all cases, but first we consider
only the small set 1,2,3, then we go on to 1,2,3,4 and
1,2,3,4,5 and finally 1,2,3,4,5,6.
One day I tried to connect all the duplets within all the
triplets in 1,2,3,4,5 and was surprised at the lovely graph
that resulted, so I tried lots of other situations. Figure 3.6
treats only the set 1,2,3,4,5, connecting duplets within
triplets, duplets within quadruplets, then triplets within
quadruplets. With five elements, it is not surprising to find
five-pointed stars, but in one case we dont see pentagonal
formations at all.
Figure 3.7 connects triplets within quadruplets in the set
1,2,3,4,5,6 and shows how all of this can become rather
complicated rather quickly.
You may still think that such things are not complex
enough for someone of your intelligence, in which case you
may wish to try to connect the quadruplets within the
quintuplets in the set 1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Connecting the 35 quadruplets to the 21 quintuplets containing them will require
connecting each quadruplet to three quintuplets, and each
quintuplet to five quadruplets, and you may lose your way
for days in the maze of 105 connecting lines, even if you do
it in three dimensions. As for myself, I think I will stop
here.
31
32
Fig. 3.2 Six choose two subsets

Fig. 3.1 Five choose two and five choose three subsets
Fig. 3.3
Fig. 3.4
Subsets
Subsets
33
Combinatorial Designs
The first figure of subsets (Fig. 3.1) concerns all of the
5-choose-2 subsets, while the second concerns all of the
5-choose-3 subsets. Block designs such as we will see later
work with symmetrical collections of subsets rather than
complete sets of subsets, but we can look at these subsets in
a similar way. Let us review first some definitions of the
block designs. A t-design t-v; k; k is a pair D X; B
where X is a set of v elements, also called a v-set and a set B
of k-subsets of X called blocks such that every t-subset of X
is contained in exactly k blocks. A 2-design is called a
Balanced Incomplete Block Design (BIBD) or simply a
Block Design and is denoted by v; k; k. One of the simplest
block design is the Fano plane. It is a 2-7; 3; 1 design
whose blocks are written vertically by this matrix:
3654656
1242534
0001123
Fig. 3.5 Subsets of 123, 1234, 12345 and 123456

Fig. 3.6 Subsets contained in
other subsets
Elements of block designs can be identified with musical

objects such as pitch classes, modes, rhythms, etc. The
combinatorial structure of these blocks is used to create a
path through the musical material, linking blocks by their
34
Subsets
Fig. 3.7 Subsets of 123456 as triplets within quadruplets
common objects. Tom Johnson has explored many of these

properties in Block Design for piano built on the
4-12; 6; 10 design defined by 30 base blocks and one
automorphism of the permutation group over 12 elements.
In Kirkmans Ladies, he uses a Large 15; 3; 1 design with
13 35 blocks. In Vermont Rhythms, he uses 42 11
rhythms based on the 11; 6; 3 design, a system worked out
by Jeffrey Dinitz.
A block design v; k; k has b blocks and each block has
length k. These parameters v; b; r; k; k verify the relations
vr kb;
rk 1 kv 1
Tom Johnsons drawing at the top of Fig. 3.1, seen as a

(5,2,1) block design, is isomorphic to the other drawing
which could be defined as a (5,3,3) design. Two t-designs
X1 ; B1 and X2 ; B2 are isomorphic if there is a bijection
u : X1 ! X2 such that uB1 B2 : But the isomorphism
between the two drawings of Fig. 3.1 is not explicit. To see
it, redraw one figure by taking the complement of each
vertice XnB and compare the two figures. The complement

of the block design v; b; r; k; k is the design v; b; b
r; v k; b 2r k since
vb r bv k
and
b rv k 1 b 2r kv 1
In Fig. 3.1, our configuration (5,3,3) represented by blocks
1111112223
2223343344
3454554555
has as complement (5,2,1)

4332221111
5545435432
Combinatorial Designs
If you place the complement on the figure at the top, with

45 in the center, you will get the same graph. More generally, the drawing of Tom Johnson shows that you can
always build a block design starting with the 2-combination
v-choose-2. In fact, v-choose 2 is the configuration v; 2; 1.
Since v; 2; 1 has parameters,
v; vv 1=2; v 1; 2; 1
35
1111122233
2234534544
3456665656
complements of these 10, thus they mirror these 10 blocks

and themselves form a block design (6,3,2).
Taking the complement leads to the same design since
b r 10 5 5 r and b 2r k 10 2
5 2 k:
taking the complement, you get a new configuration

v; vv 1=2; v 1v 2=2; v 2; v 4v 1=2 1
For v 5, it is exactly 5; 3; 3.
Moreover, in Fig. 3.2, the upper drawing has elements
16 instead of 15 as Fig. 3.1 and is a true block design
with an incomplete set of subsets. Defined as (6,3,2), it has
these 10 blocks, where the complete set of 6-choose-3 has
20 blocks. Curiously, the remaining 10 blocks are the
References
Colbourn, C., and Dinitz, J. 2007. Handbook of combinatorial designs.
Boca Raton: CRC Press
Fano, G. 1892. Sui postulari fondamenti della geometria projettiva.
Giornale di Mathematiche 30: 106132.
Kaski, P., and stergrd, P. 2006. Classification algorithms for codes
and designs. Berlin: Springer
Reye, T. 1876. Geometrie der lage I. Hannover: Rmpler.
Kirkmans Ladies, A Combinatorial Design
I found a surprising number of new musical patterns in

formations as simple as the permutations, sums and subsets
already discussed, and in the case of my counting music,
even simpler ones, but I was always interested in finding
new directions in all this. One new direction presented itself
quite unexpectedly in 2003, when I heard a piece by a
young Dutch composer, Samuel Vriezen. Using a scale of
only 11 notes, Vriezen constructed 11 five-note chords in
such a way that each chord had exactly two notes in common with each other chord. I asked the composer how he
had ever found such a group of chords, and he told me it
was not too complicated. He thought I could construct such
a system myself, if I thought about it a bit. But back home
in Paris, after quite a few hours of finding no solution, I
called my friend Jean-Paul Allouche and asked for help. He
is well versed in all sorts of mathematics, but he couldnt
tell me how to do this. He could say, however, that I would
probably find the answer if I looked into the subject of
combinatorial designs or block designs. The next day I
went to the library at the Institute Henri Poincar and began
a research that has been extremely fruitful for my music
ever since.
To explain why these 11 five-note chords and other
mathematical models of this sort are of interest to me, and
how they can lead to lovely symmetrical musical structures,
let me show you a very simple example involving only six
chords on a six-note scale. This is not really even a combinatorial design, but an extremely reduced set of combinations
known as a Pasch configuration, grouping the six elements
into only four subsets of three elements, each subset having
one element in common with each other subset. A Pasch
configuration can be seen a bit later in Fig. 4.1.
Suppose that these lines of three represent four different
three-note chords on a six-note scale. Each chord has one
note in common with each other chord. Each pair of chords is
missing one of the six notes. The chords taken together
contain all the notes the same number of times. No matter

what order one chooses, the four chords will always have one
note in common with the chord before and another in common with the subsequent chord. These sub-groups of three
notes might also become little interconnecting melodies or
rhythms, and it is obvious that a tight formation of this sort
could be applied to musical composition in countless ways.
And of course, with a block design containing 33 sub-groups
instead of only four, one could go much further.
Symmetries of this sort are reminiscent of some of the
wonderful moments in the serial music of Anton Webern,
particularly the Variations for piano and the Symphony, and
Im sure that many of the mirror images and echoes that one
hears in Weberns music are also side effects rather than
consciously calculated phenomena. But the symmetrical
effects and side effects produced by the inversions and
retrogrades of Weberns serial music are limited, as Webern
didnt know about Pasch configurations and combinatorial
designs, and in fact, had very few mathematical tools to
work with. But lets go back to that day in the library of the
Institute Henri Poincar.
The crucial starting point I found in the library that day
had to do with Kirkmans Ladies, which is one of my
favorite stories in the whole history of mathematics. Its a
story that took place in 1847 and has to do with a problem
posed by Reverend Thomas Penyngton Kirkman, an English pastor who was also an amateur mathematician:
Fifteen young ladies in a school walk out three abreast for
seven days in succession; it is required to arrange them daily so
that no two shall walk twice abreast. (Ladies and Gentlemans
Diary, Query VI, p. 48)
His work can be considered the first combinatorial

design, a subject that was to become a serious study in
combinatorial mathematics for the next century, and continues today [1].
As you might imagine, the little problem of putting the
ladies in five lines every day interested quite a few readers
of the Ladies and Gentlemans Diary, who offered quite a
37
38
few additional solutions, and soon professional mathematicians were thinking about it as well. The discussion
quickly grew to include all sorts of investigations of similar
kinds of questions, and even the original 15-ladies problem
went on long after the death of Kirkman.
The basic Kirkman structure later became known as a
(15, 3, 1) combinatorial design, because it takes 15 elements
and divides them into subsets of three so that each pair of
elements comes together exactly once. Of course, many
solutions are just permutations and rearrangements of other
solutions, but some are completely different, or as mathematicians say, are non-isomorphic, and one of the first
questions that this little puzzle posed for serious mathematicians was: How many non-isomorphic solutions are possible?
One would think that such a question could not be
answered without running thousands of trials with a computer, but mathematicians are amazingly clever sometimes,
and a man named H.S. White solved this problem already in
1919 in a paper you can download among the files of the
Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences [2]. He
demonstrated that exactly 80 unique solutions are possible.
Among these 80 solutions, all fulfill the basic requirements
of 15 elements divided into 35 sets of three elements, each
pair of elements coming together once, but very few permit
all 15 ladies to walk in trios for seven days. Most solutions
give us trio arrangements that oblige one lady to stay at home
and another to walk in two different rows on the same day.
Quite a few solutions permit us to line up the ladies for all
seven days, provided we put the same three ladies together
on a couple of different days. Other solutions permit us to
line them up for one or two or four days without any
duplication, but not for the whole week. One solution permits us to line them up for six days if one permits four
different trios to be together on three days and two other trios
to be together on two days. Another solution permits us to
line the ladies up in 16 ways, provided three trios march
together four times and four trios march together twice. One
solution allows the ladies to take their walks in 56 different
ways for 56 days, but the same seven trios have to walk
together eight times each, which rather spoils the friendly
equality that was at the root of Kirkmans problem.
In 10 of the 80 15; 3; 1 solutions there is not a single
way in which one can put all 15 ladies into five rows for
their daily walk. I find it a little hard to believe that with 35
triplets there is not a single way to fit five of them together
and have all 15 elements, but this does happen. The 14th
solution, as given in the standard book on the subject, The
Handbook of Combinatorial Design, edited by Charles J.
Colbourne and Jeffrey H. Dinitz, [3], is one example. Can
you find combinations here that will put the 15 ladies all
together in five lines of three?
4 Kirkmans Ladies, a Combinatorial Design
ch[1] := f1; 2; 3g
ch[2] := f1; 4; 5g
ch[3] := f1; 6; 7g
ch[4] := f1; 8; 9g
ch[5] := f1; 10; 11g
ch[6] := f1; 12; 13g
ch[7] := f1; 14; 15g
ch[8] := f2; 4; 6g
ch[9] := f2; 5; 7g
ch[10] := f2; 8; 10g
ch[11] := f2; 9; 11g
ch[12] := f2; 12; 14g
ch[13] := f2; 13; 15g
ch[14] := f3; 4; 7g
ch[15] := f3; 5; 6g
ch[16] := f3; 8; 11g
ch[17] := f3; 9; 12g
ch[18] := f3; 10; 15g
ch[19] := f3; 13; 14g
ch[20] := f4; 8; 13g
ch[21] := f4; 9; 15g
ch[22] := f4; 10; 12g
ch[23] := f4; 11; 14g
ch[24] := f5; 8; 14g
ch[25] := f5; 9; 10g
ch[26] := f5; 11; 13g
ch[27] := f5; 12; 15g
ch[28] := f6; 8; 15g
ch[29] := f6; 9; 14g
ch[30] := f6; 10; 13g
ch[31] := f6; 11; 12g
ch[32] := f7; 8; 12g
ch[33] := f7; 9; 13g
ch[34] := f7; 10; 14g
ch[35] := f7; 11; 15g
As I kept looking at the correct 15-lady formations, which
mathematicians call parallel classes, I wanted to see how
they were fitting together, so I began to draw them, and the
result is the 22 drawings Figs. 4.24.23. Thats only a small
part of the complete list of 80 solutions, since the solutions
with only one or two or zero line-ups were not very interesting to draw or to look at, but in most of the other cases the
overlapping pentagons and circles and crossing lines
exhibited lovely formations, and finding the best way to
place them on a piece of paper was a nice challenge. Day
after day I looked at these patterns, admired their symmetries, and thought, yes, there is a logic here, and its not a
logic that I invented. Its something that came directly out of
the numbers generated by that seemingly banal problem
posed by Reverand Kirkmans little 1847 article.
Kirkmans Ladies, a Combinatorial Design
Fig. 4.1 Pasch Configuration
A thornier problem presented itself when mathematicians began to ask: Would it be possible for Kirkmans
ladies to continue their daily walks for a complete semester
of 13 weeks, so as to include all 455 possible three-lady
combinations once each? A few courageous souls thought
about this already early in the century, but here electronic
computation really was necessary, and it was not until 1974
that computers were sufficiently advanced that R. H. F.
Denniston of the University of Leicester could publish a
solution to this larger problem. His solution is probably the
only one, and thanks to it, I had enough information to write
a piece of music 13 pages long instead of only one, one
solution per page.
Incidentally, Dennistons 13-week solution was not calculated with one of the rich solutions permitting 16 formations or 56, but Jeff Dinitz confirmed for me that it came
out of the 61st solution, which you see in Fig. 4.1. What
you see there suffices for only one week, but the formation
can be permuted 12 more times in order to calculate all 13
weeks and the complete set of 455 three-lady formations.
In my score, entitled Kirkmans Ladies, the 15 ladies
become a scale of 15 notes, and the daily walks of five rows,
three ladies in each row, become phrases of five chords with
three notes in each chord. Each lady/note occurs once in each
sequence of five chords, each pair of ladies walks together
once a week, and by the end of the 13 weeks/sections, all 455
possible trios of women, all 455 possible combinations of
three notes, have passed by. The music may be played by
other combinations, though I suggest in the score that the
most appropriate instruments for these attractive well dressed
English ladies will probably be three flutes or a harp.
Steiner and Kirkman Systems

A t-design t-v; k; k is a pair X; B where X is a set of v
elements and B is a set of k-subsets of X called blocks such
that every t-subset of X is contained in exactly k blocks. If
39
the index k 1; t-designs are called Steiner Systems [8, 9]

regardless of the value of k. For k 3, t-v; 3; 1 are Triple
Systems (TS), 2-v; 3; 1 are Steiner Triple Systems (STS)
and 2-v; 4; 1 are Steiner Quadruple System (SQS). A
symmetric design is a BIBD v; k; k such that the number of
blocks is equal to the cardinality of the set (b v). There are
no known examples of non-trivial t-designs with t 6 and
k 1. But it is known that 5-24; 8; 1 is a Steiner System.
A parallel class is a set of blocks such that no two blocks
in the set share an element. A Steiner Triple System is
resolvable if there exists a partition of the set of blocks B
such that b blocks form bk=v parallel classes. Any such
partition is called a resolution. A Steiner Triple System
together with a resolution is called a Kirkman Triple System
KTS (v).
Mulder [4] and Cole [5] established that four of the 80
non-isomorphic Steiner Triple Systems STS15 are
resolvable. But there are seven non-isomorphic Kirkman
Triple Systems KTS(15) that solve the basic problem of the
15 ladies. One of the seven is shown in Fig. 4.2, where each
pentagon represents the configuration for one day. Pentagons are linked to the Fano plane drawn in the center of the
figure. A presentation with letters shows the isomorphic
solutions. For a 1, b 2, until o 15 we recover the
solution drawn on Fig. 4.2. Each day is a parallel class.
Monday
afg
bhj
cio
dmn
ekl
Tuesday
abc
dik
ejn
flo
ghm
Wednesday
ade
bil
cjm
fhn
gko
Thursday
ano
bdf
chk
eim
gjl
Friday
ahi
beg
cln
djo
fkm
Saturday
alm
bkn
cdg
eho
fij
Sunday
ajk
bmo
cef
dhl
gin
Ray-Chauduri and Wilson [6] showed that there exists a

KTS(v) if and only if v 3 mod 6: Later, Rees and Stinson
[7] were interested in subsystems of a given Kirkman Triple
System. They showed that a Kirkman triple KTS(v) having
a subsystem KTS(w) with w\v exists if and only if v; w
3 mod 6 and 3w v.
Conversely, instead of looking at subsystems, one can

look at large sets. Let Xk be the set of all kv k-subsets of a
v-set X. Tom Johnsons composition Kirkmans Ladies
which continues the problem for 13 weeks, contains all 455
v
k subsets, so it is a Large 15; 3; 1. A large set of tdesigns v; k; k is a partition of Xk in t-designs v; k; k:
vt
There exists N 1k kt
designs of b blocks, with
40
bk
v! k t!
v t! k!
The following table with u and v defined by mapping x !

x 1 mod 13 1 produces 13 disjoint KTS(15)s which
form a large set of KTS(15)s. Each row is a parallel class.
1; 2; 10
3; 5; 13
6; 11; 12
8; 9; u
4; 7; v
1; 3; 8
4; 5; 9
6; 7; 13
10; 12; u
2; 11; v
1; 4; 12
2; 8; 13
7; 9; 11
3; 6; u
5; 10; v
1; 5; 7
2; 9; 12
3; 10; 11
4; 13; u
6; 8; v
1; 6; 9
2; 3; 4
7; 8; 10
5; 11; u
12; 13; v
1; 11; 13
4; 6; 10
5; 8; 12
2; 7; u
3; 9; v
2; 5; 6
3; 7; 12
4; 8; 11
9; 10; 13
1; u; v
A Pasch configuration, as we have already seen, is a

4-cycle arising from a set of four triples on six points,
awx;
ayz;
bwz;
bxy
Fig. 4.2 The (15,3,1) solution used in Kirkmans Ladies
and it is worth looking at that now, as this pattern becomes

interesting later on as well. If you choose any diagonal line
in Fig. 4.3, take the two triplets at the end of this line and
then combines them with the two triplets that form the
orthogonal line, you will find a Pasch configuration. The
circle whose center is (1,2,3) has diagonal elements:
(6,11,13), (4,11,15), (6,9,15) and (4,9,13) that form a Pasch
configuration. Moreover, each portion of each circle forms a
parallel class. The following solution drawn in Fig. 4.3
(blocks are written vertically)
11111112222223333334444555566667777
2468ace4589cd4589cd89ab89ab89ab89ab
3579bdf67abef76bafecdefdcfeefcdfedc
with a 10, b 11,..., f 15, has 56 parallel classes

and 105 Pasch configuration. But it is not always the case
for all non-isomorphic designs. The 80th solution
11111112222223333334444555566677789
2468ace457abd45689c789b69bc89a8adab
3579bdf689cefa7bfdecdefeadfcfdbfeec
Fig. 4.3 Parallel classes appearing in other solutions of (15, 3, 1)
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
has no Pasch configuration and only eleven parallel classes.

Ten of the 80 non-isomorphic solutions have no parallel
classes at all.
References
1. Kirkman, T.P. 1847. On a problem in combinatorics. Cambridge
and Dublin Mathematical Journal 2: 191204.
2. White, H.S., F.N. Cole, and L.D. Cummings. 1919. Complete
classification of the triad systems on fifteen elements. Memoirs of
the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
14: 189.
3. Colbourn, C. and J. Dinitz. 2007. Handbook of combinatorial
designs. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
55
4. Mulder, P. 1917. Kirkman Systemen. Groningen Dissertation.
Leiden, Netherlands.
5. Cole, F.N. 1922. Kirkman parades. Bulletin of the American
Mathematical Society 28: 435437.
6. Ray-Chauduri, D.K., and R.M. Wilson. 1971. Solution of
Kirkmanschool girl problem. Proceedings of Symposia in Pure
Mathematics American Mathematical Society 19: 187204.
7. Rees, R.S., and D.R. Stinson. 1989. On combinatorial designs with
subdesigns. Discrete Mathematics 77: 259279.
8. Colbourn, C., and A. Rosa. 1999. Triple systems. Oxford: Oxford
University Press
9. Steiner, J. 1853. Combinatorische aufgabe. Journal of Reine
Angewandte Mathematik 45: 181182.
10. Denniston, R.H.F. 1974. Sylvesters problem of the fifteen
schoolgirls. Discrete Mathematics 9: 229233.
Twelve
The number 12 has a special significance for musicians,

since that is the number of notes in the chromatic scale, and
since 12-tone music, after Schoenberg, became an international style, with hundreds of theoretical essays and thousands of compositions (e.g. [3]). So when I found out that
(12,4,3) is a much studied combinatorial design, I wanted to
see what I could do with it musically.
Looking at a 12; 4; 3 design in musical terms we can
say that it is a construction of 12 notes (12 elements or
numbers), divided into four-note chords (four-element
subsets, in mathematical terms), each pair of notes coming
together three times in three different chords. The standard
book on the subject, The Handbook of Combinatorial
Design [1], informs us that there are at least 17,172,470
unique ways of choosing 33 chords or blocks that fulfill the
conditions. Only a few of those have ever been published,
and mathematicians are generally not concerned about the
specific numbers anyway, as they are busy studying the
more profound aspects of hundreds of possible designs, of
which 12; 4; 3 is only one. Since it is almost impossible
for non-mathematicians to calculate such things, I simply
worked with the few sources I could find: the fruitful
designtheory.org web site of the University of London,
some suggestions of Reinhard Laue (University of Beyreuth), a 2001 article of L. B. Morales and C. Velarde
(University of Mexico) [4], and some correspondence with
Paul Denny (University of Auckland). It seemed obvious to
me that much music could be written with even a few of
these lists of 33 chords, and that working with these formations could be a stimulating way to return to some of the
principles of the 12-tone music composers were writing 50
years earlier.
Since a 12; 4; 3 design has 12 notes and 66 pairs of
notes, and each pair of notes must occur three times, we have
3 66 pairs of notes, and each four-note block contains six
pairs, so that makes 3 66=6 33 different blocks of four
notes to form a 12; 4; 3 design. I found it most revealing to
draw the 33 blocks connecting the pairs when they had no

notes in common. That way, on those rare occasions when

three blocks contained all 12 notes, my drawing would show
a little triangle that I darkened. With each drawing the blocks
could be spaced in a multitude of ways, and it took a long
time to find satisfying formations, so that one could best see
the symmetries. After a while the 12; 4; 3 solutions I had to
work with were all coming out in similar 3 11 shapes, so I
stopped when I had 12 drawings that pleased me, the
drawings which you will find as Figs. 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5,
5.6, 5.7, 5.8, 5.9, 5.10, 5.11, and 5.12.
The music coming out of a 12; 4; 3 combinatorial
design is bound to be very different from that coming
directly from the 12 white and black keys on the piano.
Looking at the numbers in some particular solution to
12; 4; 3, one sees a mathematical structure of numbers
rather than a musical structure of intervals and chords. In
fact, the intervals and chords can only be determined later,
when a composer decides which note to assign as #7 and
which to assign as #8. In the 12; 4; 3 solutions one is also
struck by the equality of everything. Not only does every
note/number occur with equal frequency, but each pair of
notes/numbers is equally frequent as well. The equality of
all notes was a basic claim in the theory of serial music, but
in block designs it is the point of departure.
The drawings had to be done visually, without thinking
much about music, but little by little, as the formations
became clear, I began translating the numbers and connections into music, and decided to write a series of 12 little
piano pieces that could be called Twelve. I worked on the
music rather obsessively for a long time, and I couldnt
always remember exactly how I was following the particular drawings to make it, though I did enough proofreading
to be sure that each piece contained all 33 chords and that
the notes did follow the numbers. Inevitably the musical
logic finally took precedence over the mathematical logic,
but at the same time, I was never really composing this
music. None of the sequences represent a truly musical
calculation. They simply follow the logical connections in
57
58
Twelve
Fig. 5.1 Solutions of (12, 4, 3) connecting blocks when they have no common elements
these lists of 33 chords. Everything results from the organization found in 12; 4; 3 block designs. I often say that I
want to find the music rather than to compose it, and that is
exactly what I was doing here.
When the 12 short piano pieces were finally finished, I
had pretty much forgotten about the drawings. The
sequences of chords I worked from had all come rigorously
from the drawings, but I hadnt looked directly at the
drawings for some time and wasnt quite sure which piano
piece came from which drawing. In fact, a year or so after
composing this piece, the musicologist Gilbert Delor gave a
lecture at IRCAM about it, in which he determined that I
had used the same drawing three times and some of the
other drawings not at all. Of course, you cant tell by listening to the pieces that three of them have the same origin,
because a composer can follow the lines of a drawing in
quite a few different ways. And sometimes, instead of following the lines, which connected chords when they had no
notes in common, I found other routes where each chord
had two notes in common with the next, and wrote another
kind of music. But all that is not terribly important here,
because now we are primarily just looking at numbers.
(12,4,3)
Block designs with twelve objects play an important role in
music since there are twelve notes on a keyboard. However,
for many composers, twelve is not only a reference to pitch
classes, but also to rhythms and more abstract musical
objects. The following example of a 12; 4; 3-design, like
all 12; 4; 3 designs, has 33 blocks:
111111111112222222233333344445567
222334455683345667944567a55686978
345787b67a9458878ba56998b67a97a89
69c9cac8bba7aab9ccb8bbcac9ccbacbc
(12,4,3)
59
This is different from any of the solutions used in

Johnsons compositions or in his drawings, but it is constructed in a similar way. Here the automorphism group is
generated by two permutations
a 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7; 8; 9; 10; 11; 0
b 0; 1; 8; 9; 4; 52; 3; 10; 11; 6; 7
from which we can derive the circularity of the design. There
are three orbits (see Fig. 5.13). Two small orbits: one of
three elements and another with six elements produced by
permutation a. Another orbit of 24 elements produced by
permutation b. Permutation a acts as the musical transposition a degree higher. Elements of the outer circle are connected by transpositions of one degree T1 : x !
x 1 mod 12, and elements of the inner circle are connected
by transpositions at the fifth (seven degree up) :
T7 : x ! x 7 mod 12. Figure 5.13 shows the relation

T1 b T7 b, where T1 and T7 are permutations associated to
the previous mappings.
If the pitches are numbered according to their positions
in the chromatic scale (0 C, 1 C sharp, etc.), the
permutations are treated as chords. In Fortes classification
[2], this particular (12,4,3) design uses only four types of
chords: Forte 4-4 on the inner circle, 4-14 on the outer
circle, 4-25 on the small circle and 4-28 on the triangle.
Some other non-isomorphic solutions such as the one in
Fig. 5.1 show a greater variety of pitch class sets.
A word should be added about automorphism groups.
We saw already how these groups can permit the mathematician to analyze permutations as geometric structures,
and now we have seen how the cyclic organization in
automorphism groups can clarify the structure of combinatorial designs, but automorphisms do not always reveal
60
Twelve
(12,4,3)
61
62
Twelve
(12,4,3)
63
64
Twelve
(12,4,3)
65
66
Fig. 5.13 Orbits of some 12; 4; 3 design
Twelve
(12,4,3)
the order and symmetry we are looking for. Defining such a

group gives us a sort of map and enables us to find paths to
follow, but these maps are sometimes as square as the
streets of Manhattan, and sometimes they wind around like
the streets of Paris. Sometimes they lead directly to what we
are looking for, and sometimes they seem to lead nowhere.
Knowing an automorporhism group always simplifies a
system, but it isnt always useful for defining general
problems. Of course, a non-mathematician like Tom Johnson, who is not able himself to construct the automorphism
group of a particular system, can sometimes find simplifications and reveal order in other ways. In examining networks and systems we want to put order in puzzling
situations, to analyze properties, to crystallize the organization however we can. But just because the map is clear
does not mean we will find the answers we are looking for.
67
References
1. Colbourn, C., and J. Dinitz. 2007. Handbook of combinatorial
designs. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
2. Forte, A. 1973. The structure of atonal music. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
3. Ilomki, T. 2005. Group structures and equivalence classes in
extended twelve-tone operations. In: Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference, Barcelona, 487490.
4. Morales, L.B., and C. Velarde. 2001. A Complete Classification of
(12,4,3)-RBIBDs. Journal of Combinatorial Designs 9: 385400.
Further Reading
stergrd, P.R.J. 2000. Enumeration of 2-(12, 3, 2) designs. Australasian Journal of Combinatorics 22: 227231.
(9,4,3)
One combinatorial design that has particularly interested

me is (9,4,3). With only nine numbers, and only 36 pairs of
numbers, the system is small enough that one should be
able to see how it works, and since by definition each pair
occurs three times in three different blocks of four, all that
is necessary is to write out the 36 pairs and connect each
pair with the three other pairs that form one of the 18
blocks of the system. I could imagine all these three-armed
pairs holding hands with one another in lovely triangular
lattices, and since the Handbook of Combinatorial Design
gives 11 completely different solutions to work with, I was
sure that clearly spaced drawings would allow us to look
inside each system and see how it all connects. I could
imagine 11 drawings, all different, and all containing
lovely symmetries.
Unfortunately, as I began to draw the (9,4,3) systems,
connecting each pair to three other pairs, I found on the
contrary that my series of connections were becoming
mostly incomprehensible piles of spaghetti. Where was the
logic? Wasnt there necessarily a logic in a structure that fits
strict rules in this way?
Yes, there must be, but finding it visually and understanding it is not so easy. As I peered into the tangles of
connections, day after day, wondering how to undo the
knots, I sometimes managed after quite a few hours to
untangle things a little, at least in one part of one of the
solutions, but other parts would still remain so twisted that I
couldnt get a complete picture. When my only results were
so tangled as to be incomprehensible, it was merely a
demonstration of the fact that I had not deciphered anything. After quite a few days of work I did manage to find
some logic in five of the 11 solutions, and it was quite a
different logic in each case.
In the first drawing (solution 11, Fig. 6.1) the 36 pairs
divide up into two discreet structures of 18 pairs each, but
that is the only one of the 11 solutions that reveals such a
simple network of connections.

In the second (solution 2, Fig. 6.2) the 36 pairs divide up

into two systems containing 14 pairs each, and two connected triangles in between account for the remaining eight
pairs.
The third (solution 1, Fig. 6.3) also has two systems of 14
pairs, but in quite a different formation, and the remaining
eight pairs form two separate triangles in between.
The fourth (solution 10, Fig. 6.4) begins very neatly with a
triangle in the center (36-17-28) that branches out, each new
pair generating two new connections. But by the fourth
generation, this little family is interbreeding and generating
pairs that have already gone into the system, so I just put these
repetitions in parentheses and stopped there. Later, after
Franck Jedrzejewski worked on the problem, I was embarrassed that I had given up so easily. But composers are not
supposed to understand such things as well as mathematicians do, and I still like looking at the way my central triangle
spills out into chaos, so Ill just leave my drawing as it is and
let Franck Jedrzejewski explain what it could have been.
The last drawing (solution 7, Fig. 6.5) contains six
clearly connected triangles at the top and two others at the
bottom, but the 12 pairs in between really dont seem to
have any idea where they belong. I find this drawing far
from satisfying, but I decided to include it anyway. Maybe
others, looking at the best map I could draw of this system,
will enjoy looking for ways to improve it. In any case, the
situation should give you some idea of the chaos to be found
in the other six solutions that I didnt manage to draw at all,
and of the piles of wastepaper they stimulated. It is probably
also an indication of why I was not able to write music with
any of these (9,4,3) systems.
I should add that for a musician the idea of counting 08
instead of 19 is pretty strange. For us the first note of a scale
is always note number one, and the idea of calling a note
zero makes no sense at all, but in this case I wasnt really
thinking about a musical realization. I was just looking at
numbers. Mathematicians like to count 08, and thats the
69
70
(9,4,3)
Fig. 6.1 Solutions to (9,4,3) showing blocks as connected pairs of

elements

elements

elements
way I found the block formations in the Handbook of

Combinatorial Design [1], so I just left them that way.
Decomposition of Block Designs

In this chapter, Tom Johnson decomposes (9,4,3) block
designs of 18 blocks into (9,2,3) designs of 36 blocks. In
Fig. 6.1, each connected pair forms one of the 18 blocks and

elements
Decomposition of Block Designs
71
000000001111122234
111223351133533446
246454674745656557
357867886887887768
has five orbits (see Fig. 6.1). One with two elements (0123,
4678) and four orbits with four elements each.
Any block of four elements in the top drawing of Fig. 6.1
is related to a block of four having the same position on the
bottom drawing on one of these orbits.
In Fig. 6.2, the block design
000000001111122223
111233562334433444
225544777556666555
346678888787878786

elements
each single pair is connected to three other pairs. Each pair,

combined with its three neighbors, contains eight of the nine
elements. For a mathematician, this is a near parallel class.
The action of the permutation

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
a
7 4 8 6 2 5 0 3 1
has an automorphism group

permutations

0 1 2 3 4 5
a
0 2 1 3 4 6

0 1 2 3 4 5
b
0 1 2 4 3 6

0 1 2 3 4 5
c
0 1 2 3 4 5
of order 8, generated by three

6
5
6
5
6
8
7
8
7
1;25;67;8
7

8
3;45;67;8
7

8
7;8
7
There are seven orbits. Two orbits with only one block each
(1278) and (3456). Four orbits of two blocks and one orbit
of eight blocks.
In Fig. 6.4, the block design
0;7;3;61;4;2;8
on the top drawing leads to the bottom drawing. The design
of Fig. 6.1
Fig. 6.6 Orbits of some 9;4;3

design
000000001111122223
111233452334533444
225546677467656565
346787888578888677
72
(9,4,3)
Fig. 6.7 Two orbits generated by permutation a
has an automorphism group of order 9 generated by one

permutation

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
0;7;6;4;8;1;5;3;2
a
7 5 0 2 8 3 4 6 1
Two orbits of 9 blocks form two circles generated by the
action of permutation a (see Fig. 6.7).
Between the blocks are shown the common pair of
numbers. In short this block design is not really as chaotic
as Johnson thought. He just did not know how to find the
automorphism group. All the same I have to admit that his
drawing (Fig. 6.4) is more interesting than mine (see
Fig. 6.8).
I think that Tom Johnson was a little jealous of my
solution; he had found the three central triangles, but he did
not realize that they all belong in the center and thus ended
up with a chaotic form. His experience is instructive in
several senses. He noticed that there were five links between
the triangles, and made the mistake of assuming that the
three triangles probably marked the periphery of the system.
But block designs dont always behave the way we expect
them to. We can also see from this example how a computer
would have made many more erroneous assumptions. In a
more profound sense, the problem here lies at the heart of
Tom Johnsons musical approach. In order to compose in
his way, he must first define the rules of construction. Then
if these rules produce a rational organization, he considers
that the mathematics have spoken. The solution has come
from nature herself, and this is what justifies the procedures
and gives the interest. But then comes the translation of the
mathematical structure into music. For him, this generally
has to do with pitches or rhythms, but we can also imagine
that it has to do with frequencies, timbres and other
parameters, though dealing with many secondary parameters goes against the nature of his minimalist position. The
interest of the music necessarily emerges from the mathematical structure.
References
1. Colbourn, C., and J. Dinitz. 2007. Handbook of Combinatorial
Designs. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Further Reading
Breach, D.R. 1979. The 2-(9,4,3) and 3-(10,5,3) designs. Journal of
Combinatorial Theory Series A 27:5063.
Butler, G. 1991. Fundamental Algorithms for Permutations Groups.
Berlin: Springer.
Hoffmann, C.M. 1982. Group-Theoretic Algorithms and Graph
Isomorphism. Berlin: Springer.
Seress, A. 2003. Permutation Group Algorithms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stanton, R.G., R.C. Mullin, and J.A. Bate. 1976. Isomorphism classes
of a set of prime BIBD parameters. Ars Combinatoria 2:251264.
55 Chords
Kirkmans Ladies was a (15,3,1) combinatorial design

with 15 elements divided into subgroups of three, each pair
occurring once. Another series of chords that I worked with
later on, and which finally became an organ solo called 55
Chords, was based on the combinatorial design (11,4,6). As
one can determine from the numbers, it involves 11 elements (11 notes in the scale), four elements (four notes in
each chord), and each pair comes together six times.
How many chords are required to form such a group? Well,
begin with the observation that with 11 elements you can make
55 different unordered pairs. If you dont know how to figure
that out, you can ask your calculator, or look it up somewhere,
or better, just count them, which you can do in a couple of
minutes, but to save time, I just told you the answer: 55. If each
pair occurs 6 times, we need to have 6 55 pairs contained in
the four-note chords, and since each four-note chord contains
six different pairs, the number of chords will be 6 55=
6 55. Its not necessary that you understand that just for
looking at numbers, but like the following paragraph, its
pretty low level mathematics if you want to get into it.
One can form a (11,4,6) combinatorial design in over
300 unique ways, but as you will see, a remarkable number
of different kinds of symmetry emerge from this particular
solution, which is constructed quite methodically. The 55
chords are computed simply by taking five basic chords, and
transposing each one 11 times around a circle 0 to 10.
Figure 7.1: The first drawing I did of this (15,4,6) system, long before I had any idea of how I was going to make
music with it, is what I call the cosmological view,
because you can see the whole system, like planets revolving in different orbits. The rule here is simply that each
chord must be connected to each other chord that has no
notes in common with it. Every single chord has no notes in
common with exactly four other chords, which is not too
surprising since, as I said, this solution for (11,4,6) is
amazingly symmetrical. Anyway, if you connect the chords
according to this rule, and if you work at it long enough,
you can put each chord exactly in the place where it
belongs, which is all I did to make this drawing. To make
our cosmos easier to see I just used the numbers of the 55

chords, rather than spelling out all the notes.
Figure 7.2: In this case two chords come together to
form what I call pairs of pairs. At the top, for example,
the chord (2,6,8,11) is combined with the chord (1,3,7,9) in
such a way that their pairs, read vertically, produce two
other chords, (1,8,9,11) and (2,3,6,7), which for some
amazing reason that I cant explain are also contained in
this group of 55 chords. If youre skeptical like I am, you
wont believe that can be possible, but if you check out a
few of the other boxes youll find out that it is.
Figure 7.3: Here we see a pentagonal view with five
four-note chords in each of 11 pentagons. Each chord has
one pair of notes in common with one chord, the other pair
in common with one other chord, and no notes in common
with the adjacent chords. At the points where the pentagons
connect, the chords also have no notes in common. Following the connections gives us a chain of all 55 chords, all
four notes changing with each move.
Figure 7.4: Linking the chords when they have three
notes in common produces concentric circles that I like to
think of as the spider-web view. In order for everything
to be connected, some arms of the web must stretch out a
little longer than other arms, which is not terribly neat
mathematically, but is similar to the irregularities found in
actual spider webs.
Figure 7.5: A starfish view of the system, with common
chords connected around the center and tentacles branching
out as connected pairs of elements. Figure 7.6: Embededded
in this starfish view of the five 11-chord families are
individual starfish cells in triangular form. Each chord, each
group of four notes, shares two notes with the chord on one
side and two with the chord on the other side. Thus each
molecule consists of three pairs of notes, represented by the
large numbers in this diagram, that combine to form three
chords, represented by the small numbers in this diagram.
So I could just follow the tentacles and have a nice
smooth sequence, where two notes change and two notes
continue with each move.
73
74
7 55 Chords
Fig. 7.1 Cosmological view
Figure 7.7: This is the wheel of minimal differences

because the 55 chords are arranged so that only one note
changes with each move. You can move either clockwise or
counterclockwise and have a music that moves very gradually, one new note at a time. Notice, however, that there is
a break in the system, which you can see on the left side of
the drawing. Here two new notes appear, and note no. 10
has to slip from one voice to the other. This could be
considered a flaw in the system, though frankly, it is already
a small miracle that the slow wheel could turn so smoothly
this far, considering all the other symmetries one can find
within this extraordinary group of 55 chords.
Figures 7.8, 7.9, 7.10, 7.11, 7.12, 7.13, 7.14, 7.15, 7.16, 7.17
and 7.18: The next 11 drawings come out of the same (11,4,6)
structure, the same 55 chords, but each drawing involves only
one part of the system. I realized I could write another kind of
music if I grouped together all the chords containing a certain
note. The common tone could simply be sustained while
the remaining notes passed by as three-note chords. Lets look,
for instance, at the 20 blocks/chords that contain note no. 4:
55 Chords
Fig. 7.2 Pairs of pairs
75
76
Fig. 7.3 Pentagon view
7 55 Chords
55 Chords
Fig. 7.4 Spider-web view
77
78
Fig. 7.5 Starfish view
7 55 Chords
55 Chords
Fig. 7.6 Wheel of minimal differences
Fig. 7.7 Wheel of minimal differences
79
80
7 55 Chords
Fig. 7.11 Neighborhood maps
55 Chords
81
82
7 55 Chords
2f1; 3; 4; 11g
3f1; 2; 4; 5g
5f3; 4; 6; 7g
6f4; 5; 7; 8g
12f2; 4; 7; 9g
14f4; 6; 9; 11g
18f2; 4; 8; 10g
20f1; 4; 6; 10g
24f3; 4; 7; 8g
25f4; 5; 8; 9g
31f3; 4; 10; 11g
32f1; 4; 5; 11g
34f2; 4; 5; 7g
36f4; 6; 7; 9g
42f1; 2; 4; 10g
44f1; 3; 4; 6g
47f2; 4; 8; 9g
49f4; 6; 10; 11g
53f3; 4; 8; 10g
54f4; 5; 9; 11g
If we look at block/chord no. 36 from this list, the numbers
(4,6,7,9), we can observe that six others have only the
number 4 in common with it:
2f1; 3; 4; 11g
3f1; 2; 4; 5g
31f3; 4; 10; 11g
18f2; 4; 8; 10g
32f1; 4; 5; 11g
53f3; 4; 8; 10g
But if we look at block/chord no. 2, the numbers (1,3,4,11),
we can observe that only two other blocks have only the
number 4 in common with it.
18f2; 4; 8; 10g
36f4; 6; 7; 9g
Among these 20 blocks/chords, each containing note 4, 10
have six connections and 10 have only two connections, and
the same situation arises if we take the blocks containing the
note 1 or the note 2, or whatever. I liked this situation, and
the music that came out of it, so I set about drawing all 11
configurations, each time finding a new way to tie together
the 10 blocks having six connections and the 10 blocks
having only two connections.
I dont remember which mathematician friend pointed
out to me that, of course, any graph containing 20 elements,
10 with two connections and 10 with six connections, is
necessarily the same graph. I looked back at my drawings
and saw that this is true. Each drawing could be somehow
pushed and pulled and twisted into one of the other
55 Chords
83
drawings. Mathematically they are all equal, which is to say

that they are all morphisms of one another. If this were a
mathematics book, I would have to eliminate 10 of these 11
drawings, but since we are just looking at numbers, Ill
leave them all in. Its not only the truth that matters.
Variations of the truth are fascinating as well.
Chords and Designs
under the action of a 2; 63; 84; 7 becomes

000011142352
123434266573
687587587684
which includes all of Fortes trichords except 3-7 and 3-12.

Under the action of b 2; 7; 8; 6; 5; 4; 3; the design
000011123425
123423475636
756868587748
Among the more than 300 (11,4,6) block designs, the

solution chosen and studied by Tom Johnson is the simplest
one, as it is completely generated by the permutation
a x 1 mod 11.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
a
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1
contains all trichords except 3-8 and 3-11. In this way, one
can have the whole set of trichords using two sets of blocks
of the same design.
The automorphism group is the cyclic group

G a j a11 1
References
In Fig. 7.3, one moves from one pentagon to the next by a

translation of i digits. The integer i is exactly the difference
between the two circled integers lying in the center of the
pentagons. This means that the 55 chords are eleven
transformations of five chords. Figures 7.87.18 display
more chords. The 20 blocks/chords that contain note 4 are
extremely varied in comparison with the chords of the
pentagons.
The link between chord classification and block design
has been studied in [1]. Is there a t-design t v; k; k with
v 12 such that the collection of k-chords includes all the kchords of the Forte classification? The conjecture is that you
need to use at least two block designs to get all pitch class
sets. For example, the 9; 3; 1-design
000011122236
134534534547
268787676858
1. Andreatta, M., F. Jedrzejewski, Johnson, T. 2009. Musical experiences with block designs. In ed. E. Chew, A. Childs, C.-H. Chuan,
154165. MCM 2009, CCIS 38, Springer.
2. Colbourn, C., J. Dinitz. 2007. Handbook of combinatorial designs.
Boca Raton: CRC Press.
3. Colbourn, C., A. Rosa. 1999. Triple systems. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
4. Mathon, R., A. Rosa. 1985. Tables of parameters of BIBDs with
r 41 including existence, enumeration, and resolvability results.
Annals of Discrete Mathematics 26: 275307.
5. Mathon, R., A. Rosa. 1990. Tables of parameters of BIBDs with
r 41 including existence, enumeration, and resolvability results:
ANnupdate. Ars Combinatoria 30: 6596.
6. A. Seress. 2003. Permutation group Algorithms. Cambridge:
Clarinet Trio
The Clarinet Trio (2012) is a special case, because here

everything in the music is a reflection of one of seven
drawings, and everything in the seven drawings corresponds
to something in the music. At the same time, both the
drawings and the music are derived rigorously from a
(12,3,2) design: 12 notes in the scale, 3 notes in each chord,
each pair of notes appearing together twice. In order to
construct a system like that one must find 44 chords, or
blocks, and one can do this in a number of ways. In fact, the
Handbook of Combinatorial Designs [1] informs us that
P. R. J. Ostergard has counted exactly 242,995,846 completely different ways to do this. If you dont believe me, or
if you want to know how this was calculated (and if you are
not a specialist, you probably dont), you can consult his
article in the Australasian Journal of Combinatorics, No. 22
(2000) [5].
I only needed one of these quarter of a billion solutions
to write my piece, and the particular 44 chords included in
the solution I used can perhaps be most easily seen in the
drawing of Fig. 8.1. Eleven of the 44 blocks or triplets
contain the number 12, and these are placed around the
outside of the circle, because these form a special category.
By definition, each pair occurs twice in the system, so if you
look at (7,11,12) at the top of the drawing, you know there
has to be another triplet containing the pair 7 and 11, and
there it is just below, (6,7,11). The triplets containing 7 with
12 and 11 with 12 are the adjacent blocks on the outer ring.
The system is Hamiltonian, because there is a way that one
can trace a single line that loops around, passing through
each chord exactly once).
I made seven drawings to compose the Clarinet Trio, and
since I tended to mix them up, I gave them all names. This
one I call minimal because every connection represents a
minimal change, only one note moving, and it enabled me
to compose a section of the music where the chords go by
quite discreetly, with only tiny changes. A single line
connects all 44 chords, and it ends where it starts.
We saw that 11 blocks contained the number 12, and
following the essential and lovely symmetries of this

system, there must also be 11 blocks that contain the

number 1, another 11 that contain the number 2, and so
forth, and this is the basic logic behind the next drawing,
Fig. 8.2, which I call flowers. The 11 smaller flowers
around the outside each contain a number at the center,
which is the note they all have in common, and four petals
fan out, each completing two of the triplets belonging to this
group. The fifth petal contains the remaining three triplets,
one of which is shown as an inner triangle. The first time
you hear this music the note no. 1 is sustained and we hear
the 11 duplets that go with it. The second time it is note no.
2 that sustains, then note no. 3 and so on. Note no. 12 is
larger because, for some reason I dont completely understand, it is found in 22 triplets rather than only 11.
Figure 8.3 is called pairs, because the 44 triplets come
together in pairs. In the configuration at the top, for
instance, one can read the blocks horizontally with (1,4,6)
and (1,9,10) above and (3,9,10) and (3,5,11) below, but one
can also read (1,9,10), (3,4,6), (1,5,11), (3,9,10) vertically,
and all these triplets are part of the 44-block system. Each
single number goes with two pairs, and each pair goes with
two other single numbers.
Figure 8.4 is called parallel, referring to what mathematicians call parallel classes, which means simply a
formation that contains each element once. This (12,3,2)
design permits 22 different parallel classes, that is, formations where four triplets contain all 12 elements. One can
see parallel classes in the 11 U-shapes in the center, but one
can also follow one side of a U, continue to the outer
circle, and follow the arrows to another triplet that completes another parallel class.
From time to time we hear fragments of music coming
from Fig. 8.5, which I call triangles, referring to the 11
triangles running around the edges of the drawing. Each
triangle contains three chords constructed with only four
notes. Or is it all one four-note chord? The music cycles
around a triangle and then continues to the center to make a
cadence with two high notes. The next time around the
same thing happens with another triangle.
85
86
Clarinet Trio
Fig. 8.1 Minimal
Figure 8.6 is called Pasch because it involves formations studied by a mathematician named Pasch. Following a
Pasch configuration, which we explained in Fig. 4.1, one
can form four chords with six notes in such a way that each
chord has one common note with each other chord, and
each note falls into two different chords. Pairs of pairs are
formed when two of the chords are followed by the other
two chords, all derived from the same six notes. The difference between the first pair and the second is quite subtle,
though the ear can hear that something has changed. Are we
really hearing four three-note chords, or a single six-note
chord?
I counted 99 different Pasch configurations that can be
constructed in this design, but the Clarinet Trio was falling
into 11 sections, so I selected only the 11 configurations that
had the best balance between high notes and low notes.
With each configuration we hear the four chords very
quickly, like a flash out of nowhere, and then in a more
audible tempo. One is not quite sure if one is hearing four
three-note chords or one six-note chord, but therein lies the
interest.
Figure 8.7 is called rectangles because the drawing

consists of 11 rectangles, representing 11 ways of forming
three-note chords with eight notes with common notes on
the four corners and four different notes on the sides. The
music consists of melodies 12 notes long, four phrases of
three notes, moving around all 11 rectangles. I could no
doubt have joined the 44 triplets into 11 different triangles
in many different ways, but I liked the shape I found here,
and it is nice to see the 11 rectangles all connected into one
formation.
Long after completing this composition, I looked back at
some of the sequences, stimulated by a remark of Franck
Jedrzejewski, who had noticed that some of the things
happening in block designs can also be regarded as onedimensional fractals, because they use sequences that can be
calculated by recursive functions. Perhaps the clearest
example can be seen in Fig. 8.1, the one I call minimal. If
you follow the outer circle, the one that contains all the
blocks with 12, and observe the new notes as they arise,
beginning with the new 1 in (1,8,12) and the new 5 in (1, 5,
12), you will see the sequence 1,5,9,2,6,10,3,7,11,4,8 which
Clarinet Trio
87
Fig. 8.2 Flowers
the On-line Enclyclopedia of Integer Sequences recognizes

as a triangular array and fractal sequence. The same
sequence can be found in reverse order in the drawing I call
parallel. Or look at the inner circle in the big flower,
where you can read 1,4,7,10,2,5,8,11,3,6,9. Its another
cycle that spins out of the same sort of mathematics.
I will leave it to Franck Jedrzejewski to explain how he
noticed this rather surprising connection between my music
and block designs and other kinds of mathematics. He has
no doubt seen examples of such things in other drawings
and other domains as well, and of course, he can explain all
this much better than I. From my musicians point of view, I
just want to add that I find it reassuring to know that
something as innocent as a Clarinet Trio can directly reflect
phenomena observed in crystal formations and fractal
sequences and other things about which I hardly know
anything. Everywhere we look, numbers turn around in
symmetrical ways, somehow holding everything together.
Strange Fractal Sequences

There is a strange relationship between some block designs
and fractal sequences. In Fig. 11.8, the sequence of the
outer connections is the set of the missing note in three
consecutive blocks
an 13; 4; 8; 12; 3; 7; 11; 2; 6; 10; 1; 5; 9
This sequence comes for n 23 to 35 from the smallest
number of iterations of
f n n floorlogn
such that the perfect square is obtained, and 0 if no such
square exists. It is refered to as sequence A212410 in the
On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequence (OEIS). Denote
f k n f k1 f n the iteration of f ; k times, and recall that
floorn is the largest integer not greater than n. We are now
88
Fig. 8.3
Pairs
Fig. 8.4 Parallel
Clarinet Trio
Strange Fractal SequencesFractal
89
Fig. 8.5 Triangles
ready to compute an for different values of n. Starting

with n 1, we find a1 1, since f 1 1 floor0
1. The next value is a2 0, because f m 2 2, for all
m. And so on. The computation of a24 gives 4, since a
perfect square is obtained after 4 steps:
leads to the ordering 4123 since 0:92 is the smallest value.

The sequence an is obtained for n 11.
The sequence A194871
f 24 27; f 27 30; f 30 33; f 33 36 62 :
which appears in triangles of Fig. 8.5 is also obtained in the

p
same way, but with r 6: It also appears as the common
element on the spokes of the wheel, on the left and on the
right side of each spoke in this manner: starting with
the triple (1,8,12), we can define a left radius formed by the
triples (1,8,12), (1,7,8) and (1,7,10) and a right radius
formed by the triples (1,8,12), (1,7,8) and (7,8,10). The
common value of the triples on the left side of the radius is
1, and the common value of the triples on the right side of
the radius is 8. The sequence defined by the common values
on the left sides of the spokes is the same as the sequence of
the common values on the right sides, and the same as the
previous one depicted in the triangles.
In Fig. 8.1, the 44 blocks of (12,3,2) are connected if they

have two common elements. The set of the common notes
in each triangle forms the sequence A194841
an 4; 8; 1; 5; 9; 2; 6; 10; 3; 7; 11
for n 56 to 66. Row n of the sequence is the permutation
of 1; 2; :::; n obtained from the increasing ordering of
p
fractional parts frg, f2rg, ..., fnrg, where r 3. For
example, for n 4, the values
frg 0:73; f2rg 0:46; f3rg 0:19; f4rg 0:92
9; 7; 5; 3; 1; 10; 8; 6; 4; 2; 11
90
Fig. 8.6 Pasch
Fig. 8.7 Rectangles
Clarinet Trio
Strange Fractal SequencesFractal
References
Benson, D. 2005. Mathematics and music. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press
Fauvel, J., Flood, R., Wilson, R. 2006. Music and mathematics: From
pythagoras to fractals. New York: Oxford University Press
91
Grnbaum, B., and Shephard, G.C 1986. Tilings and patterns. New
York: Freeman
Zvonkin, A., and Lando, S.K 2004. Graphs on surfaces and their
applications. Berlin: Springer
Loops
Frequently minimal music, particularly the sub-species

referred to as repetitive music, turns around in loops. I
never really wrote repetitive music, but Ive written an
awful lot of musical loops, and there are a great many ways
of doing this. Most of the loops well be discussing here
might better be called rhythmic canons, a term introduced in Perspectives of New Music in 19911992 in an
article by the Rumanian mathematician and music theorist
Dan Tudor Vuza. Basically this article has to do with
rhythms that repeat canonically in such a way that every
point in time is touched exactly once by one of the voices.
The idea is simple, but Vuza wrote about 100 pages on the
subject, and his observations have led to a rich body of
research by quite a few other mathematicians and music
theorists. I should especially mention Emmanuel Amiot,
who was, like me and Franck Jedrzejewski, active in the
MaMuX seminars at IRCAM that began in 2001 under the
direction of Moreno Andreatta. Amiots article on Autosimilar Melodies in the Journal of Mathematics and Music
is particularly rich in musical/mathematical insights. Vuzas
basic findings and the subsequent research are nicely summarized in a Perspectives of New Music Vol. 49 No. 2,
2012, a volume that celebrates the 20th anniversary of the
original article and contains articles by me, Andreatta,
Amiot and others.
Figures 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4, 9.5, 9.6, 9.7, 9.8, 9.9, 9.10, 9.11
and 9.12 are all typical examples of rhythmic canons, but
instead of looking at them as musical lines going from left
to right, we are looking at them as rhythms going around in
loops. In Fig. 9.1 the rhythms each contribute four notes,
and six voices together fill up 24 beats. In Fig. 9.2 the
rhythms each contribute four notes, and five voices together
fill up the cycle of 20 beats. Figure 9.4 looks very different,
but it is actually the same phenomenon. Whereas in
Fig. 9.2, a rhythm that can be defined as 0; 14; 15; 17
Rational Melody No. 15 from Tom Johnson: Rational Melodies.
New World Records #80705-2 (P) 2008 2008 Anthology of
Recorded Music. Inc. Used by permission

begins in five voices at points (0,4,8,12,16), in Fig. 9.4 a

pentagonal rhythm that can be defined as (0,4,8,12,16)
begins in four voices at points (0,14,15,17). This demonstrates the principle of supplementary sets, showing that
in a rhythmic canon the rhythm and the onset points are
mutually dependent and can always be exchanged. This is
one of the basic principles of Vuzas research, and one that
gradually led him to many other fascinating observations.
Figures 9.3 and 9.5 are included simply to show a few
more variations of how this can work, and the kinds of
drawings that result if you want to look at them, but Fig. 9.6
is a little special. The onset points here are not 0; 6; 12; 18,
as one would normally expect in a four-voice canon that
tiles a 24-point loop, but can be most easily seen as
20; 23; 8; 11. For a mathematician these points are still
periodic, however, and in fact they have to be, because
Vuza showed that with any supplementary sets one of the
two has to be periodic. This observation has turned out to be
one of the most interesting aspects of Vuzas theories,
because Vuza himself theorized that there might be some
exceptions to this rule in the case of certain loops having 72
points or more, and in fact, mathematicians more recently,
equipped with computers that Vuza never seems to have
used, have been defining more and more of these exceptions. These canons, in which both of the supplementary
sets are aperiodic, are now referred to as Vuza canons,
and there are quite a few of them. Some composers have
employed these, but I prefer to remain within the limits of
things I can hear, and loops of 72 notes are very hard to
identify and to remember.
The drawings we have been looking at here were done
mostly just as a means of understanding and explaining
rhythmic canons and wanting to look at them, and I dont
believe I ever used any of these specific patterns in my
music, but the images of Figs. 9.7 and 9.8 all correspond to
variations of Tilework for Double Bass (2003), which
consists of a set of 7-note canons that tile lines of 14 points.
I often like to try to do all the possibilities of something, so
that there is a reason to stop the music somewhere, and I
93
94
Fig. 9.1 Rhythms that tile a loop in canon
9 Loops
can be formed with rhythms of 7 notes cycling in the time

of 14 beats. I used some of these also in retrograde and
ended up with 14 variations. Looking back at the score now,
almost 10 years later, I realize that I inadvertently left out
one of Fripertingers rhythms and used two others twice,
simply starting at different points. Once we get into the
music, we composers dont always do what we intended to
do. Six of the rhythms I used can be seen in Figs. 9.7 and
9.8, five of which are palindromes.
Figure 9.9 looks like some of the earlier images, but the
important difference is that there are holes. Points 4, 10 and
16 in the upper drawing, and points 5, 12, and 19 in the lower
drawing are empty. Vuza discussed special tiles of this sort,
and other cases where, for example, all the points divisible by
3 are occupied by two tiles instead of only one. Many variations of this sort can also be fascinating to see, or to hear.
With Figs. 9.10, 9.11, and 9.12 we leave the subject of
rhythmic canons and look at what I call self-replicating
loops. Now instead of tiling a line by repeating a single
rhythm at different intervals, we compose a rhythm or
melody in such a way that it can be played in a normal
tempo, or twice as fast, or twice as slow, or in some other
rationally related tempo, and be constantly in unison with
the original version. Figure 9.10 is a visual representation
of Rational Melody No. 15 (1982). This simple 15-note loop
marks the first time that I, or anyone else, wrote a melody
that could be played in several tempos at once, all being in
unison with one another. If you follow the melody around
the periphery of the drawing, you get
122324352345355
and if you follow the curving interior line that takes every
other note, you get
122324352345355
always feel more sure of myself if some mathematician

confirms that I have done all the possibilities. So to compose this piece I referred to a list I received some years ago
from Harald Fripertinger, a mathematician at the University
of Graz, who calculated all the possible rhythmic canons up
to loops 30 beats long. Already on the second page of
Fripertingers list I found that exactly nine different canons
the same thing. And of course, others could play four times
slower or eight times slower or two times faster, and they
would be in unison as well.
Figure 9.11 represents the loop used in Kientzy Loops
(2000). Here the melody self-replicates at a ratio of 3 to 1, as
you can see in the upper drawing. The slow version follows a
star shape in the middle, and if you begin at the points marked
by the arrows, you can see how both melodies have the same
numbers: 4,3,2,1,2,3,4,1. Curiously, if you follow the arrows in
the lower drawing, you can see how another player can follow
the same circle counter-clockwise and be playing the same
melody seven times slower than the original, and a fourth
player can follow the star in the reverse direction and play the
same melody five times slower. Someone could even play three
times slower than the person playing three times slower, or five
times slower than the person playing three times slower, and
Loops
95

they would be in unison too, since they are all in correct proportions. Someone might even play 9 times faster than the
person playing five times slower, and that would come out in
unison too, but the problem would be that this person would
have to play 9 notes in the time of 5 notes played in the original

tempo, and that would be impossible for the listener to comprehend, even if the player could do it correctly. So I didnt go
96
9 Loops
nearly that far in this composition, written for the saxophonist,

Daniel Kientzy, who played in different tempos against a
recorded loop that repeated the basic loop.
Figure 9.12 is a visual representation of a system used in
Loops for Orchestra (1999). This is a loop that self-replicates at 2 to 1, but instead of filling all the beats of the 21note loop, I left a beat of silence once every 7 beats. Both
the outer line and the inner curved line, moving twice as
slowly, make pauses every seven beats, but if you follow
the two lines, beginning with the two arrows, you will be
playing the same melody, with 18 notes and three rests in
every cycle of 21. The empty beats are not wasted time, as
this is an orchestra piece, and plenty of other things cycle
around filling up the holes.
Self-Replicating Melodies
A self-replicating melody is a self-similar periodic set of
musical events. Taking one object every a beats yields the
same melody at another tempo. The parameter a is called
the ratio of the self-replicating melody. We assume that this
ratio a is coprime with the period n of the melody. As we
have seen, any affine map x ! ax b mod n of Zn Z=nZ
is associated with a permutation. The cyclic decomposition
of this permutation forms the orbits of the melody. In
Fig. 9.10, the mapping
f x 2x mod 15
Self-Replicating Melodies
97
is associated with
10
11
12
13
14
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 1 3 5
1; 2; 4; 83; 6; 12; 95; 107; 14; 13; 11
11
13
0 1
Each cycle determines an orbit and a correspondence

between time and musical objects a; b; c; d; e
0
10
11
12
13
14
15
For e 1, a 2, b 3, c 4 and d 5, we cover the

loops of Fig. 9.10. In general, for a self-replicating melody
of period n, the maximum number of different notes in the
melody is 3n=4. Following [1], it is reached for a 4k,
a 2k 1 and b 0 or n=2.
In Fig. 9.11, the two orbits are delayed by six units. The
mapping
f x 3x 6 mod 8
is associated with the permutation
r 0; 62; 43; 7
Fig. 9.10 Rational Melody No. 15
98
9 Loops
Fig. 9.12 Loops for orchestra

Fig. 9.11 Kientzy Loops
whose cycles determine the correspondence with musical

objects in the following way:
0
Choosing a 4; d 3; b 2 and c 1 leads to the

loops of Fig. 9.11. In Fig. 9.12, the mapping f x
2x mod 21, is used, and we can read it as musical notes on a
scale of 1 to 4.
Rhythmic Canons
Figures 9.1, 9.2, 9.4, 9.3, 9.5, 9.6, 9.7, 9.8, and 9.9 are
rhythmic canons. From the mathematical point of view, a
(finite) rhythmic canon is a tiling of the cyclic group Zn by
translations. In other words, the generic cyclic group is
decomposed into two subsets.
A B Zn
n is the period of the canon, A is called the inner voice and
the set of offsets B is the outer voice. Factor A is periodic if
9k; 0\k\n, such that A A k: In the middle of the 20th
century, Hajs thought that one of the factors had to be
periodic. In fact, the two factors can be non-periodic. In a
series of papers, Dan Tudor Vuza studied what he called
Regular Complementary Canons of Maximal Category, now

known as Vuza canons [2]. Vuza canons are rhythmic
canons where both supplementary sets are non-periodic.
The first Vuza canon appears for n 72.
To give a simple example of a rhythmic canon, consider
the decomposition
f0; 1; 4; 7; 8g f0; 5g Z10
The inner voice 0; 1; 4; 7; 8 is shifted by 5 on the second
row. Remark that each element of Z10 ; each point in time, is
0
A0
A5
filled by a unique event, denoted 1.

In Fig. 9.1, the canon is decomposed in two subsets
f0; 3; 4; 7g f0; 2; 8; 10; 16; 18g Z24
Note that a non-periodic set could be decomposable. For
example, the set f0; 1; 3; 4; 5; 8g is non-periodic, but can be
decomposed
f0; 1; 3; 4; 5; 8g f0; 1; 3g f0; 1; 5g
Another decomposition of Z24 is seen in Fig. 9.6
f0; 1; 6; 17; 19; 23g f0; 9; 12; 21g Z24
Rhythmic CanonsRhythmic canon
99
Each subset A of Zn has a polynomial representation

X
xk
Ax
canon is built with augmentations. It can be written in a

compact form, keeping only the multiplicative coefficients
of affine transformations,
k2A
In polynomial algebra, A; B is a canon A B Zn if and

only if
7; 5; 1; 1; 1; 4; 5; 7; 2; 4; 2; 5; 2; 4; 7
This canon was used by Tom Johnson in Tileworks for

piano and consists of five arithmetic sequences (2,3,4),
xn 1
2
n1
n
mod x 1 (8,10,12), (5,9,13), (1,6,11) and (0,7,14) with respective
AxBx 1 x x x
x1
ratios 1, 2, 4, 5 and 7. For n 21, the following perfect
rhythmic tiling has index 7.
In the 1950s, de Bruijn, Redei, Sands [3], Hajs [4] and
others were working on the Hajs conjecture: in the
9; 5; 6; 1; 1; 1; 5; 3; 6; 9; 3; 5; 4; 3; 6; 2; 4; 2; 9; 2; 4
decomposition of the cyclic group Zn in two factors, one of
these factors is necessarily periodic. They found counter- In a special issue of Perspectives of new music (2011),
examples and classified the groups into good groups or Davalan [6] gave the following definition. A perfect
Hajs groups for which the conjecture is true and bad rhythmic tiling with order n and index k is a collection of n
groups. Zn is a non-Hajs group if and only if n can be arithmetic sequences with different ratios whose union is
expressed in the form p1 p2 n1 n2 n3 where p1 , p2 are primes, the set Zkn (n and k are non-negative integers[ 3). Davalan
pi ni 2 for i 1, 2, 3 and gcdn1 p1 ; n2 p2 1: The showed that the shortest non-trivial perfect rhythmic tiling
smallest values of n for which Zn is a non-Hajs group are: with index 4 has order 15 and length 60.
72, 108, 120, 144, 168, etc. A Vuza canon is a counterexample to Hajss conjecture.
In 2004, I gave a simple way to compute a Vuza canon. References
Let p1 , p2 be prime numbers and ni , i 1; 2; 3 as above.
Then denoting a; b fa; a 1; . . .; b 1g, we construct
1. Amiot, E. 2009. Autosimilar melodies. Journal of Mathematics
and Music 3(1): 126.
for n p1 p2 n1 n2 n3 a Vuza canon S R Zn with
A n2 n3 0; p2 p2 n1 n2 n3 0; p1
B n1 n3 0; p1 p1 n1 n2 n3 0; p2
S p2 n2 n3 0; n1 p1 n1 n3 0; n2
R 1; n3 B [ A
Since the exchange of inner and outer voices does not
change the table of the canon, if A; B is a canon of Zn ,
then B; A is also a canon of Zn : Moreover if a is coprime
with n, aA b; B is also a canon of Zn . Replacing the
motif by itself several times,
2. Vuza, D.T. 19911993. Supplementary sets and regular

complementary unending canons. Perspectives of New Music
Part 1, 29(2), Part 2, 30(1), Part 3, 30(2), Part 4, 31(1) .
3. Sands, A.D. 1962. On the Factorisation of Abelian Groups II. Acta
Math. Acad. Sci. Hungar. 13: 153159.
4. Hajs, G. 1950. Sur le problme de la factorisation des groupes
cycliques. Acta Math. Acad. Sci. Hungar. 1: 189195.
5. Amiot, E. 2011. Algorithms and algebraic tools for rhythmic
canons structures. Perspectives of New Music 40(2): 93142.
6. Davalan, J.P. 2011. Perfect rhythmic tilings. Perspectives of New
Music 40(2): 144197.
Further Reading
A0 A f0; n; 2n; . . .; k 1ng

leads to a new canonA0 ; B of Zkn : This transformation is
called concatenation (see e.g. [5]). Another way to build
canons using affine transformations is to consider augmented voices. For example, starting with A f0; 1; 2g; the
0
10
11
12
13
14
A2
2A 4
4A 5
5A 1
7A
Coven, E., and A. Meyerowitz. 1999. Tiling the integers with translate
of one finite set. Journal of Algebra 212: 161174.
Feldman, D. 1996. Review of self-similar melodies by Tom Johnson.
Leonardo Music Journal 8: 8084.
F. Jedrzejewski. 2006. Mathematical theory of music. Paris: Ircam
Delatour.
Szab, S. 1985. A type of factorization of finite abelian groups.
Discrete Mathematics 54: 121124.
Juggling
The art of juggling is the art of cycling several balls through

the air in different ways, and for quite a few centuries
jugglers were happy to do this in the most obvious ways.
After learning to throw three balls, keeping each one in the
air for three beats, jugglers went on to four balls, keeping
each one in the air for four beats, and then on to higher and
higher throws with more and more balls or plates or
bowling pins or whatever. The result was spectacular, and
very few people could ever learn to do it, but the arithmetic
was pretty simple. This all changed in 1985, however, when
a few smart guys in the Cambridge University amateur
juggling club sat down and decided to analyze how many
ways this could really be done if one looked at the problem
mathematically. They devised a sort of flow chart known as
site-swap and it became immediately obvious that balls
could fly around in lots of new ways. For example, instead
of throwing three balls always to the same height in continuous cycles of 333, as jugglers had been doing for centuries, they could throw them in a cycle of 441. This was
quite a different rhythm, quite a different look, and not
really harder than just doing 333 all the time. Soon hundreds of other new patterns became obvious, the new
information circulated to all the continents, and people like
the Australian, Konrad Polthier, even wrote books on the
mathematics of juggling. Since I had been composing so
many loops, and since many of my loops were quite juggleable, it seemed inevitable that I began to meet jugglers
and wanted to collaborate with them.
Lets look at the numbers of this rather new, but now
universally practiced three-ball pattern 441. As you can see
in Fig. 10.1, 441 tiles the loop very much like the other
tiles weve been looking at. In the upper image each ball
follows one of the triangles in a rhythm of 441, and the
jugglers hands just follow the clock throwing the balls as
they arrive. In the central image you see the 441 pattern in a
linear manner that looks more like music. The lower
drawing represents four jugglers, one at each side of the
square, passing the balls around the square. Now we are
watching from above, four balls are following the same
10
orbit clockwise, and each one is making a complete cycle in

4 4 1 4 4 1 4 4 1 4 4 1 36
beats. Of course, you have to imagine that 4 represents a
ball that goes rather high and stays in the air for four beats,
while 1 represents a ball that moves directly and reaches
the next juggler in only one beat. The jugglers just have to
stand there, catching the balls coming from their right,
passing them on to the juggler at their left, and throwing to
the heights of four, four and one over and over again.
Figure 10.2 represents the orbits possible for structuring
my Five Ball Canons, written for Sean Gandini and his
fellow jugglers and premiered in 2011. The numbers represent the number of beats the ball must stay in the air, and
the looping line represents the orbit that the five balls pass
as they fly through the air between the upper juggler and the
lower juggler. The jugglers each count a simple cycle of
four beats, the complete cycle takes 20 beats, and another of
the five balls begins the cycle every four beats.
The drawing in Fig. 10.3 represents a juggling pattern
that came directly from an observation of Franck Jedrzejewski. Our MaMuX meeting for January 2012 was devoted
to juggling, mathematics, and music, and we invited two
guest jugglers, Luke Wilson and Jonathan Lardillier. Two
professors from Rouen who understand mathematics and
juggling, Jean-Christopne Novelli and Florent Hivert, also
intervened, and we spent a long afternoon watching the
jugglers and analyzing the sometimes quite intricate orbits
the balls took as they passed from one hand to another.
Toward the end of the afternoon, Jedrzejewski casually
observed that juggling patterns are always equivalent to
braiding patterns, which have been investigated by mathematicians for a century or more. This is a rather simple fact,
if one thinks about it for a while, but it was a shock for me
that day, because I had never thought about this. I had only
a vague memory of a couple of lectures I had heard about
braiding patterns, and it took me a long time to see that
strands of yarn can twist around one another a little the way
balls can pass through the hands of jugglers. After quite a
few attempts to draw juggling patterns as braids, I came up
101
102
10 Juggling
Fig. 10.3 A sequence of five-ball juggling solos used in Dropping

Balls
Fig. 10.1 Three ways of representing the 441 juggling pattern
Fig. 10.2 Five balls orbiting in canon between two jugglers
with this drawing, which actually represents a pattern juggled by a single juggler in my Three Notes for Three Jugglers, a piece that uses electronic balls developed by Steim,
a research center in Amsterdam, the balls producing particular notes whenever they are caught.
This drawing has the form of a wheel, and each spoke of

the wheel represents five beats of a 30-beat cycle. The inner
circle represents the first beat of each cycle, the outer circle
represents the fifth and last beat, and we move from one
cycle to the next in a clockwise manner. The solo juggler
has only four balls, and all he has to remember is the basic
numbers, which represent the number of beats that each ball
must stay in the air. He just throws 53444 for a while, as
shown in the top spoke and the second spoke, then 63344,
as shown in the next two spokes, and then 63353, as shown
in the last two spokes, and then starts over if he wants to.
Done with no repetition, one of the four balls follows the
circled numbers, moving clockwise from the top, which
means that it stays in the air for 4 beats, then for 3, then 4,
then 4 again, then 3, 6, 3, and 3 again, returning to its
starting point 30 beats after it began. The other balls play a
three-voice canon, following a completely different cycle 90
beats long.
If the juggler decides to just repeat 53444 for a while,
however, the cycles are completely different. One ball just
moves up and down every five beats, going slightly higher
than the others, while the other three balls make cycles 15
beats long. They go up for three beats on the second beat of
the cycle, falling on the fifth beat of the cycle, where they
go up for four beats, falling on the fourth beat of the cycle,
where they go up for four beats, falling on the third beat of
the cycle, where they go up for four beats, falling on the
second beat of the cycle, where they began. So the other
three balls make cycles of 15 beats, beginning at different
points, during which time that five ball has gone up and
down three times. It is probably obvious that this is not the
kind of juggling one does for children in the circuses, but
the jugglers who do it are not interested in circuses
anymore.
10
Juggling
Looking at all this as a braiding pattern is full of details

that no composer or juggler would be able to compute in
their heads, especially not at a usual juggling speed. For us
it is enough to know that 53344 is one way to juggle four
((to juggle four balls)) balls four in a five beat cycle, 63344
is another, and 63353 is another. Of course, if youre a
beginner and still have trouble with 333 and 441 and 234,
you need a few more years of practice before you take on
patterns like this, but for people like the Gandini troop,
four-ball patterns are daily routine, and the differences
between the three of them are details.
If you imagine this wheel as a bracelet or necklace, you
can probably see how it was conceived as a braiding pattern, but its kind of a messy one, because whenever a 3
comes up, a strand is supposed to be in two places at once.
After a bit more consultation with Franck Jedrzejewski, I
realized that juggling patterns could also make neat braids if
I looked for patterns with four balls in a period of four beats,
or five balls in a period of five beats. This is not hard to do,
thanks to Christophe Prechac, a French mathematician and
amateur juggler, who studied all of this some 10 years ago.
So I went to www.PrechacThis.org and asked for the patterns with five balls in a period of five, and out popped two
very pretty ones, shown in Fig. 10.4. Again each spoke of
the wheel represents five throws and the heights are always
66661. The ball that goes up for one beat at the end of one
cycle goes back up immediately on the first beat of the next
cycle, which is to say that the strand on one side of the braid
crosses through to the other side of the braid. The strands
hold together in one braid, and like the balls they follow in
intervals of five, making a canon of length 25.
The lower drawing would need some additional variations
in order to hold together as a braid, because here the two outer
strands just twist around one another in a rhythm of 6-4-6-4,
and the three inner ones are forming another strand in a rhythm
of 3-6-6-3-6-6. In braiding it is better if the strands are all
doing the same thing in canon. That assures that they all
remain part of one braid. With juggling, however, it is
sometimes nice if the balls behave in different ways. Some
mathematical studies of these patterns, which Franck Jedrzejewski calls perfect juggles, have begun, and I have played
with this a bit myself. It is very satisfying to watch juggling
when the blue ball is just going up and down, the red ball is
cycling back and forth, and the yellow ball is doing something
so fast that you hardly know where it is. Maybe it would be
fascinating to listen to music that did something similar.
It is difficult to research perfect juggles in a systematic
way, because the situation changes completely depending
on the number of balls, the number of jugglers, the maximum height of the throws allowed, and the length of the
cycle, but I took one limited problem and looked into it. In
how many ways can one juggler juggle three balls, each
moving in a different orbit, in a period of 7 beats, with a
103
Fig. 10.4 Juggling as braids
maximum height of 6? Figure 10.5 shows the patterns I

found. Did I make mistakes? Did I draw the same pattern
twice? Did I miss some possibilities?
Of course, this does not solve the problem of finding a
worthwhile new kind of music, but it is a direction to follow. Ive been singing around these circles for a while,
making melodies by assigning a different note to each ball,
and the results are not too promising. There is something
special about sequences of this sort though, and perhaps I
will eventually find some lovely unique melodies if I try it
with more balls and longer periods, that is, with more notes
in the scale and longer phrases of melodies. But for the
moment Im too busy just looking at numbers.
Juggling, Groups, and Braids

The modelisation of juggling refers to some basic rules in
order to constitute a valid juggling pattern with b balls. We
suppose that the juggler is throwing objects at certain
equally spaced moments of time. A particular juggling
pattern has no start and no end and is periodic. When the
balls are caught, they are instantly thrown again. Under
104
10 Juggling

1 X n
b 1d bd
l
n djn d
where l is the Mbius function
8
1 if n is a square-free integer with an even number of prime factors.
>
>
<
ln 1 if n is a square-free integer with an odd number of prime factors.
>
>
:
0 if n is not square free
n is a square free positive integer if there does not exist a

square of a smaller integer that divides n.
A nice criterion to determine if a sequence of numbers is
a valid juggling sequence has been found by Buhler, Eisenbud, Graham and Wright [1]. A sequence a0 ; a1 ; . . .;
an1 of non-negative integers is a valid juggling sequence
if and only if (1) the average of the collection
a0 ; a1 ; . . .; an1 is some integer b, number of balls
1
b a0 a1 an1
n
Fig. 10.5 Perfect three-ball juggles, each ball different
these assumptions, any juggling pattern can be described by

the function f : Z ! Z, where f t s if the ball thrown at
time t is next thrown at time s, and f t t if no ball is
thrown at time t . The height function
h : Z ! Z0
is defined by
and (2) the set fai i mod ng is a permutation of

f0; 1; . . .; n 1g.
For example, the sequence 6424 is a valid four-ball
juggling sequence since
6 0; 4 1; 2 2; 4 3 mod 4 2; 1; 0; 3
But the sequence 6514 is not a valid juggling sequence
since
6 0; 5 1; 1 2; 4 3 mod 4 2; 2; 3; 3
ht f t t
ht is the number of beats between two thrown. We suppose that the height function is periodic ht n ht for
some n. A juggling pattern is thus a bijection f : Z ! Z;
t ! t ht where ht is n-periodic ht n ht 0. A
juggling sequence or a site swap is the sequence
h0; h1; . . .; hn 1
The most basic patterns are the cascade f t t 3; where
three balls go back and forth from hand to hand, the fountain f t t 4, with two balls in one hand and two in the
other, and the shower
t1
if t is odd
f t
t5
if t is even
where the fives are always in one hand and the ones in the
other and the balls make circles. The number of distinct
height functions of all juggling patterns of length n with less
than b balls is bn and the number of juggling patterns of
period n with exactly b balls is, up to equivalence
Some site swaps are canons, but often the objects have
different trajectories. A juggle is perfect if all trajectories of
the balls are pairwise distinct. A very simple perfect juggling sequence is 312 (period 3 and 2 balls). Each perfect
juggling sequence of period p with n balls is decomposable
into subsequences A1 ; A2 ; . . .; An such that each Aj is a
partition of p. With 2 balls, and period 4, there is a unique
perfect sequence
4112 4 112
For n 5, there are three perfect sequences
51112 5 1112
14113 14 113
22312 23 212
With 3 balls, there is a unique perfect juggling sequence of
period 5:
53142 5 14 32
10
Juggling
For n 7, with three balls, there are 9 perfect juggles:

seven juggles are drawn on Fig. 10.5, two others juggles
must be added (1612245 and 1631244), but there would be
more if we permitted holes in the loop, and many more if
we allowed a height of 7. This answers the question of Tom
Johnson.
The mathematics of juggling have deep relationship with
braids and links theory. S. Devadoss and J. Mugno have
shown [2] that all topological links can be juggled.
105
References
1. Buhler, J., D. Eisenbud, R. Graham, and C. Wright. 1994. Juggling
drops and descents. American Mathematical Monthly 101(6):
507519.
2. Devadoss, S., and J. Mugno. 2007. Juggling braids and links.
Mathematical Intelligencer 29: 1522.
3. Duijvestijn, A. 1978. A simple perfect square of lowest order.
Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series B 25: 240243.
4. Polster, B. 2003. The Mathematics of Juggling. London: Springer.
11
Unclassified
As this text and these illustrations came together, I realized

I had lots of good drawings that were sort of left over. With
some drawings I couldnt really remember myself how I did
them, though I liked them and was sure that they were
correct. Some drawings represented very small combinatorial designs like 6; 3; 2 and 7; 4; 2 that were not very
interesting to study, but too perfectly simple to leave out.
Some involved techniques that had already been treated in
earlier chapters, but produced unique images that I wanted
to share. Some were too complicated to explain easily, but
were fascinating to look at all the same. Some were moving
in new directions that I never managed to understand or to
develop.
Together this last group of drawings can also be considered a summary of what looking at numbers is really
about. These images may look very different, and represent
a great many sorts of logic, but they are all logical in some
way or another. The patterns are never improvised, the
numbers are never arbitrary, and their placement is never
the exception to some rule. No numbers have been added
just because Tom Johnson thought they would look good, or
because they seemed to be pleasing to the eye. Nor do they
represent pieces of music composed by some inspired
composer.
We can look at these drawings from many angles, from
far away or close up, as people who understand mathematics or as people who dont, as musicians, as jugglers, as
architects, as brick layers, as people who like to solve
puzzles, or in some other way. We can look for simple
systems or for complex ones, we can look carefully or
casually, we can do all this as work or as recreation, and in
all cases we will see numbers that make some sort of sense,
numbers that have particular places in particular systems,
numbers that know where they belong, numbers that have
emerged from the logic of the world itself.
Of course, these unclassified drawings also illustrate the
fact that looking at numbers is an activity that will
always remain open-ended, unfinished. New variations and
completely new forms will continue to emerge, just as there
will always be Chinese window lattices that Daniel Sheets

Dye never found in the times and places where he went,

basic forms that Karl Blossfeldt couldnt photograph
because he never found the corresponding plant forms, and
rhythmic lines that Waclaw Szpakowski never got around to
drawing. Such things, like nature herself, are clearly
inexhaustible.
Some Other Designs

Most of the unclassified drawings of Figs. 11.1, 11.2, 11.3,
11.4, 11.5, 11.6, 11.7, 11.8, 11.9, 11.10, 11.11, 11.12 and
11.13 refer to block designs. The number of non-isomorphict-designs is not always known. Sometimes, this number
is very big, such as the number of 12; 3; 2 designs:
242,995,846, but it can be greater even for relatively small
parameters. For example, the number of non-isomorphic
designs of 19; 3; 1 is 11,085,874,829. In the following
table, r is the number of blocks incident with any point
r kv 1=k 1 in some of these unclassified
drawings.
Designs
# Blocks
Figure
(6,3,2)
10
11.1
(7,3,2)
14
11.2
(12,3,2)
44
11
11.3, 11.4, 11.7
(11,4,5)
55
20
11.5
(10,3,2)
30
11.6
(13,5,5)
39
15
11.8
(15,5,4)
42
14
11.11
(12,4,3)
33
11
11.13
In some cases, blocks are constructed from generators

under the action of some group. If q pa is a prime power
and the group is the cyclic group acting under the translation
T : x ! x 1;
Steiner
Triple
Sys2
tems2 q q 1; q 1; 1 are examples of projective
geometries PG2; q and generators are well-known.
107
108
11
Designs
# Blocks
Generators
7; 3; 1
13; 4; 1
13
0; 1; 3; 9
21; 5; 1
21
0; 1; 4; 14; 16
31; 6; 1
31
0; 1; 3; 8; 12; 18
0; 1; 3
57; 8; 1
57
0; 1; 3; 13; 32; 36; 43; 52
73; 9; 1
73
0; 1; 3; 7; 15; 31; 36; 54; 63
Fig. 11.2
Fig. 11.1
Fig. 11.3
Unclassified
Some Other Designs
Fig. 11.4
109
110
Fig. 11.5
11
Unclassified
Some Other Designs
Fig. 11.6
111
112
Fig. 11.7
11
Unclassified
Some Other Designs
Fig. 11.8
113
114
Fig. 11.9
11
Unclassified
Some Other Designs
Fig. 11.10
115
116
Fig. 11.11
11
Unclassified
Some Other Designs
Fig. 11.12
117
118
11
Unclassified
Fig. 11.13
For n 1, the design (7,3,1) is generated by block B

f0; 1; 3g and the translation Tx x 1 mod 7. The
unique block design is a set of blocks B, T 1 B, T 2 B etc.
But all block designs cannot be generated in this way. As
we saw in the (9,4,3) chapter and in the Clarinet Trio
chapter, generation can be very complicated.
References
1. Blossfeldt, K. 1928. Urformen der Kunst, Photographische Pflanzenbilder, Berlin: Wasmuth.
2. Didi-Huberman, G. 2000. Connaissance par le kaleidoscope.

Morale du joujou et dialectique de limage selon Walter Benjamin,
tudes photographiques, Par les yeux de la science, Surralisme et
photographie 7:427.
3. Dye, D.S. 1937. A grammar of chinese lattice. Cambridge: Havard
University Press.
4. Girard, B. 2011. Conversations avec Tom Johnson. Aedam
Musicae.
Index
A
Alhambra, 31
Amiot, Emmanuel, 93
Andreatta, Moreno, 93
B
Block design, 3335, 37, 70, 72, 83, 118
Blossfeldt, Karl, x, 9
Braids, 15, 16, 101, 103, 105
Bruhat order, 7
C
Canon, 98, 99, 103
Cayley graph, 10, 13
Combinatorial, 33, 37, 38, 57, 69, 70, 73, 107
Coxeter Groups, 14
Coxeter, Harold Scott MacDonald
Cycle, 5, 6, 24, 25, 40, 85, 97, 98, 101, 102
D
Delor, Gilbert, 58
Dinitz, Jeffrey, 34
Dye, Daniel sheets, 10
E
Euler, 7
F
Fano plane, 33, 39
Fractal, 87
Fripertinger, Harald, 93
G
Gandini, 101
Girard, Bernard
H
Hajs, Gyrgy, 98, 99
Hamiltonian, 2, 24, 25, 85
Hivert, Florent, 101
Homometric, 16, 17, 19, 20

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-0348-0554-4, Springer Basel 2014
I
IRCAM, 58
Isomorphic, 14, 34, 39
J
Juggling, 101, 103105
K
Kirkman, 34, 3739
L
Lardillier, Jonathan, 101
Links, 9, 105
Logic, 1, 15, 22, 31, 38, 57, 69, 107
Lombardi, Mark, 13
Loops, 85, 9698, 101
M
MaMuX, 93, 101
Melody, 2, 94, 96
N
Nature, 710, 72
Network, 1, 3, 4, 21, 69
Non-isomorphic, 3840, 55, 59, 107
Novelli, Jean-Christophe, 101
O
Octagon, 7
Order, 6, 7, 1114, 19, 20, 71, 72, 99
P
Pasch configuration, 37, 40, 55, 86
Patterson, Lindo, 16, 17
Permutation, 17, 1216, 19, 38, 59, 72, 96, 97, 104
Permutohedron, 13, 14
Pitch class set, 16, 59, 83
Planar graph, 10, 14
Platonists, 10
Polytope, 14
Prechac, Christophe, 103
119
120
R
Resolvable, 39
Rhythmic canon, 93, 94, 98
Rhythms, 22, 33, 58, 72, 101
S
Schlaeffli symbol, 14
Self-replicating melody, 96
Steiner, 39, 107
Supplementary set, 93
Symmetry group, 7, 10, 14, 15, 24
Szpakowski, Waclaw, 10, 107
T
Tiles, 101
Tiling, 98, 99
Topological invariant, 7
Index
U
Undirected graph, 14, 24
V
Vriezen, Samuel, 37
Vuza, Dan Tudor, 93, 98, 99
W
Webern, Anton, 37
Wilson, Luke, 101
Z
Z-relation, 17, 19

Mirando Numero

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originaltitel

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Mirando Numero

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Tom Johnson

Tom Johnson Franck Jedrzejewski

Additional material to this book can be downloaded from http://extras.springer.com/

Springer Basel Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London

While I am describing to you how Nature works, you

Fig. 1 Window lattices found by Daniel Sheets Dye

Fig. 2 Rhythmic lines by Waclaw Szpakowski

Kirkmans Ladies, A Combinatorial Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Instructions for the Reader

Despite the fact that I am a musician and composer, this is

difference is the exchange of an adjacent pair. Thus 1234

Fig. 1.1 Permutations of 1234 connected by transposition of adjacent

form appeared. The subsequent eight drawings, Figs. 1.4,

Fig. 1.2 Permutations of 1234 connected by transposition of adjacent

formation, shown in Fig. 1.13, as it could take 20 minutes

liked the way these long lines wound around, I made an

It was my mathematician friend Franck Jedrzejewski who

to another, two or three notes are usually changing, the two

Most of the time, permutations are denoted by the second

The multiplication of permutations is associative abc

There are exactly n! nn 1n 2 3 2 1 different

The decomposition is not unique. However, for a given

The relation a!a0 describes the move from permutation

For example, the permutation 132 in S3 under the

for j 1; 2; . . .; n. Let a; b 2 Sn . Then the following holds:

for all i; j 2 f1; 2; . . .; ng

In Figs. 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3, Johnsons graphs are subgraphs of

This element u has nice properties such as u2 e, u

For the symmetric group, the top element u is the retrograde

The top element is 4321 and the mapping a 7! uau leaves

Fig. 1.12 Connecting duplets with minimal differences

Fig. 1.13 More duplets with minimal differences

hexagons). Dont forget to count the exterior hexagon

In the Fig. 1.16, we have 6 squares of degree 4 and 8

Fig. 1.14 Permutations of 112233

The Sylow theorems imply that for a prime number p; if

Fig. 1.15 Permutations of homometric chords

Fig. 1.16 Another drawing of Fig. 1.4

Since 24 23 3, the group G has two Sylow subgroups,

To understand better, try to describe the structure of the

Permutohedra and Cayley Graphs

Fig. 1.17 Cayley graph of S4

pairs of vertices g; sg with g 2 G and s 2 S. For example,

permutohedron are isomorphic, as an undirected graph, to

Some graphs are projections of polyhedra. A polyhedron is

Fig. 1.18 Permutohedron of

Fig. 1.19 Braid relations

side of any polygon is simultaneously the side of exactly

Fig. 1.20 Another drawing of Fig. 1.14

is a subgroup of the braid group. The graph lies on a torus.

counts how many times k of A has its n-transpose in B. For a

This function is related to the characteristic polynomial of

Two chords A and B are homometric if they have the same

We have Tx1 Tx and

This is true because T1 A1 A1 2n n n 0:

Z-related, then the sets Mm A and Mm B are also Z-related,

but the classification of Z-related pairs remains an open

For example, in the usual well-tempered scale, since the two

are also Z-related (ic = 233241).

where the translations are related to Znm ; Tk x

For example, from the relation 0; 1; 3; 4 Z8 0; 1; 2; 5;

and some relations can be established. For example, for

a 2; 103; 114; 85; 9