Klarinet Archive - Posting 000472.txt from 1999/02

From: "Edwin V. Lacy" <el2@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] Musical/mathematical interview
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 17:22:03 -0500

On Thu, 11 Feb 1999, Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu wrote:

> Lelia Loban told me something about Bach that I did not know.
> (That's not a hard thing to do. I know very little about J.S. Bach.)
> But this was a special thing. She suggested that Bach was interested
> in Gemytria or the use of the number values obtained by taking the
> numeric values of the letters of a word (in Hebrew mostly, but also
> possible in Greek, Persian, Arabic, and a few other alphabets) and
> calculatings the word's numeric value.
> [snip]
> I wonder if Bach knew that.

I forgot to mention in my original message that there is evidence that
Bach thought the numbers 14 and 5 were very important to him. (Fourteen
because that is the total number of letters in his first, middle and last
names, and five because the digits of "14" add to make 5) There are
examples of fugue themes in 14 notes, etc. One of the problems with this
line of inquiry is that, as far as I know, Bach didn't leave any writings
which address his beliefs about this. So, all of the investigation must
be done through secondary sources.

Ed Lacy
el2@-----.edu

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