To: r.hubbard@uel.ac.uk

From: r.lindsay@uel.ac.uk

Subject: the music of mire biodiversity

Date sent: Fri, 5 Mar 1999 15:38:01 GMT0BST

Richard,

Here's a good one for you.....

Can you tell me how many notes (very approximately) of the musical scale would appear in an average orchestral piece? My reason for wanting to know is that I am fairly sure that the number of notes used is less than the number of species "typical" of mires — and mires are considered to have extremely low biodiversity yet we have this incredibly rich tapestry of musical heritage. In other words, we should not look simply at how many individual components we have, but rather at the way in which they can be assembled......

Relevant facts:

1. Number of "plant species recorded from bogs" for UK peat bogs = approx. 130

   Wheeler, B.D. & Shaw, S.C. 19995. Restoration of Damaged Peatlands — With Particular Reference to Lowland Raised Bogs Affected by Peat Extraction. HMSO, London.

2. Number of "typical mire species" in Philippe Julve’s Holarctic Mire Species List = approx. 1400

Many thanks,

Richard Lindsay

Dear Richard,

If one excludes oriental microtones and is crassly Eurocentric, the answer is surely the `eight white notes and the five black ones' to create the basic pattern. The lowest notes that we can hear that an organ produces are about 20-30Hz, and most people can't hear much above 16KHz (stereo radio switching is at 18KHz, if I remember correctly, with an associated `brick wall filter' at 16KHz), while nearly all hi-fi audio (gramophone, cd) cuts out at 20kHz. That gives about ten octaves. So say (8 + 5)x10 = 130 notes, for Dunstable to Schnittke. Perhaps you'd like to add (multiply by) seven for a fairly standard range of note values, from breve to hemidemisemiquaver. Say 1000. Then, there's the range of time signatures: that gives quite a range of combinations. Even so, the raw components are fairly limited. Like biological systems, the REAL variability arises from the elementary fact that there is absolutely no limit (other than the listening span of a conscious audience) to how these elements are combined, which is why European musical invention seems to have dried up long before the possibilities were exhausted!