If we were to poll people on the street, they would probably associate math with numbers and calculators- things that really are arithmetic. Most of us I think have more of an idea of what music is than we know what math is. There is an essential element of communication in music that I think is what made me choose that life. You can only really share mathematical beauty with other mathematics people, yet you can share the equivalent music beauty with anyone, and they can enjoy it on some level. When you are really doing music, you can be just as deeply involved in the mathematical beauty of the music and the theory, yet you can be at the party. When you are really doing mathematics, the people, places and events in the world are distractions from your work. I think I chose music because I can participate in the world. The two have many similarities, in that they have strong intellectual, spiritual and creative foundations. I had an aptitude for mathematics, and I must confess that something made me choose the life of the musician instead. I graduated from the University of Maryland with a Magna Cum Laude Phi Beta Kappa degree in mathematics in 1974. The important thing to realize is that numbers and math are not cold and lifeless, and that music, which is a tangible incarnation of numbers, reflects in its beauty and emotion some of the beauty and emotion in the world of mathematics. The more you know of both, the more you will know of the relationship, and attempts to peer into the shadows from the outside will not yield much more than some wonderment. I think that the degree that you can understand the relationship between music and mathematics is proportional to your understanding of both music and mathematics. Yet there isn't much said by those on the inside, and as a former student of mathematics and a lifetime musician, I will attempt to shed some light on the subject. There is much talk about the relationship between mathematics and music, which mostly consists of speculation by those on the outside, concerning some of the obvious things they have in common. I have never given any other suchtalks, and it has been 22 years since I have studied anything mathematical. This was written for a talk I gave at the Choate-Rosemary Hall school aspart of the mathematics lecture series. Music + Mathematics On Mathematics and Music