Physics and Music.
Common Denominator?

photo from Wikipedia

• Victor Weisskopf was one of the most influential physicists in the 20th Century. He was Eugene Wigner's first doctoral student, and he did his postdoc with Heisenberg, Schroedinger, Pauli, and Bohr. His talks were very easy to understand because he knew what he was talking about.

  He was born and raised in Vienna, and learned how to play piano during his childhood. He continued playing piano with his ten fingers. He used to say Physics is a Symphony. Here again he knew what he was talking about.

• Andre Previn is one of the most successful symphony conductors of our time. People say this and that about his conducting style, but he talks like a genius when he give TV interviews. I learned many things about music from him.

  Whenever he talks about music, he has "harmony" in mind. He was of course interested in generating beautiful sounds by combining those from different instruments.

  In one of his latest TV interviews, he was asked what music he wants to be played at his funeral. He said "Beethoven's String Quartet No. 4." I became excited. Indeed, this quartet has been "my music" since my undergraduate years. Whenever, I had a setback in my life, I recreated myself by listing to this piece of music.

  Death is a setback to everybody, but Andres Previn wants to rise again from Beethoven's String Quartet No. 4. You are invited to my Beethoven page to hear what I am talking about. You can really see what the harmony variable is in music.

• The Harmony appears to be the common denominator for both physicists and musicians.

  photo from the public domain

  1. James Clerk Maxwell constructed a symphony of electricity and magnetism.

  2. Albert Einstein composed a harmony of mechanics and electromagnetism using the mathematics developed by Lorentz and Poincare. He also constructed the harmony of energy-momentum relations for massive and massless particles.

  3. Richard Feynman said the adventure of our science of physics is a perpetual attempt to recognize that the different aspects of nature are really different aspects of the same thing.
     He was singing a harmony.

• We can all agree that the harmony is an extra-dimension leading to new physics. The question then is whether this extra-dimension belongs only to the privileged class of those great physicists. Click here to see whether you can do or you are aleady doing the physics of harmony.

• Beethoven's Statue, at the Beethoven Plaza near the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn (Germany, August 1996).
  1. Another View of the Statue. Photo taken in November of 2010.
  2. This plate says that, at the dedication ceremony held in 1845, Queen Victoria of England, Aleander von Humboltd, were King Wilhelm Frederick IV were present.
  3. Entrance to the Beethoven-Haus. Ludwig van Beethoven was born in 1770 at a house located inside this museum complex.
  4. It is one of the row houses in Bonn.
  5. String Instruments once owned by Ludwig van Beethoven. They are displayed in the Beethovenhaus.

• Mozart Dress at the Chanbronne Palace Concert Hall in Vienna (December 2006). The statue of Mozart in Salzburg (1997).

• Chopin. After he died, his body was buried in Paris, but his heart was extracted from his body and transported to Warsaw to be entombed into the wall of the Church of Holy Cross near the main campus of Warsaw University and the stature of Copernicus. Click here for the church and the statue.

• Edith Piaf: Her grave at the Pere LaChaise Cemetry in Paris (2000).

• Zoltan Kodaly, at the Margarita Island in Budapest (2003). He was the most Hungarian Hungarian composer. With me was a Hungarian student who enjoyed talking about music with me. Hungary is a great music country.

• Franz Liszt at the Franz Liszt Square in Budapest (2008). Another Liszt at the Margarita Island in Budapest (2003).

• Johann Sebastian Bach in the lobby of Musikverein (Vienna 2007).

• Rimma Sushanskaya was David Oistrach's youngest student and is of course an established violinist. I met her at one of London's Chinese restaurants in 1999. We became close enough to produce this photo after we found out we both like an Armenian composer named Aram Khachaturyan. This lady looks like (looks better than) than Tatyana Samoilova who was a Russian actress who acted as Veronica in the classic film "Cranes are flying" produced by Mikhail Kalatazov in 1957. Many Russians believe she is the real Tatayana. Click here for her home page.
  1. Irina Bachkova is a professor at Moscow Conservatory located near Moscow's Bolshoi theater. She was born in Kazan (Russia) and was in Kazan during the summer of 2001 to be with her mother. At Kazan State University, while attending the 2001 Volga meeting of theoretical physics, I heard her playing Beethoven's violin sonata No. 5 "Spring." I heard this Sonata when I was a high-school boy, and decided to live like the Spring Sonata. She was therefore playing my life. I was so happy that I gave her a postcard carrying a photo of Beethoven's four string instruments from my portable photo album. By giving this card, I was able to convince her that I was a Beethoven lover. She also told me she becomes very happy whenever she plays Beethoven's sonatas. Beethoven wrote ten violin sonatas, and his fifth and ninth sonatas, known as Spring and Kreutzer respectively, are very popular among Koreans.

  2. Russian Ballerinas. Russians produce great ballets, and those ballerinas look like dolls or angeles on the stage. How would they look when they are passengers on an airplane. I met these ladies on a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Kazan (June 2001). This photo was taken when we were waiting on line for passport inspection at Kazan's international airport. They are holding their Russian passports (2001).
  3. Praha Quartet. Music students in Prague (2001).
  4. Music Students at the Conservatory of Music in Vilnius (Lithuania). They seem to believe in music.
  5. London Philharmonic. with members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the loby of Radisson-SAS hotel in Krakow (Poland 2009). They were arriving from London.

  6. Washington Opera. The city of Washington, DC is fortunate enough to have an excellent opera company with Placid Domingo as the music director. Its singers are often invited to various social events in the Greater Washington area. Five of those young singers came to a meeting of Koreans in August 15, 2010, and sang the songs the songs popular among Koreans, such as Il Bacio by Luigi Arditi. Koreans are song-loving people. I was able to put up to put up high-level talks with these young artists. I had a lengthy music talk with this singer. I asked her whether she came from Italy. She said No, but her parents came from Italy. I then asked her whether she was born as a singer. She was very happy to say Yes. She became impressed when I told her I have been Milan's LaScala Opera Theater.
  7. Alice Conway (CSEP) plays harp on the reception floor of the Ritz-Carton Hotel at Tyson's Galleria not far from Washington, DC (February 2005). In addition to luxurious amenities, this hotel offers live music performed by high-class musicians.
  8. Heather McAuliffe plays piano also at the Ritz-Carlton. I was very happy to hear that she studied music at the University of Maryland. This photo was taken in April of 2005.

• Einstein liked music. He used to play violin.
  1. Christmas Morning at Einstein's house.

     Some of my physics colleagues are more fortunate than I am. They married world-class musicians.

  2. Francesca. Renato Fedele of Naples married this soprano singer. In June of 1994, we were making a tour of Sicily while attending one of the Erice conferences. She started singing when we went to this Greek-style amphitheater with excellent acoustic condition. I am listening. Sicily was a Greek colony some years ago, and there are also Greek temples in this island. Here is one of them. Her husband is an Italian physicist, Renato Fedele. Here is my photo with him taken at the gladiator's quarter where Spartacus used to live, in Caserta near Naples.
  3. Agnes is another world-class soprano singer, and her husband is John Klauder. Here gave a concert during the 25th Colloquium on Group Theoretical Methods in Physics held in Cocoyoc, Mexico (August 2004). Here, she is making preparations for her next song.
     Two years earlier, in 2004, she gave a concert during the Wigner Centennial Conference held in Pecs, Hungary. Hungary is her native country. After the concert, she is with a young Hungarian lady who assisted her on the backstage. She looks better in a photo with her husband . How about the young lady with her? She also has a photo with a famous physicist. Speaking of John Klauder, he was several years ahead of me when we were students at Princeton. He has always been helpful to me whenever I needed help from someone. Here is my photo with him taken during the Cocoyoc conference (August 2004).

• Hibiya Public Hall in Tokyo. Before coming to the United States in 1954, I used to pick up Japanese music programs using my shortwave radio (Hallicrafters S-38). At that time, the Hibiya Hall was Japan's most prestigious performing art center. I used to hear and tape-record live broadcasts from there. The Hibiya Hall is located at the south-west corner of Tokyo's Hibiya Park south of the Imperial Palace. These days, Tokyo's music center is the Santori Hall located in the Shibuya District, and the Hibiya Hall is used for rock concerts. This photo was taken in 1996.

• Syria Mosque was the home of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra when I was an undergraduate student (1954-58) at Carnegie Tech (now called Carnegie Mellon University). This music hall was within a walking distance from my dormitory. I went there very often. William Steinberg was the director of the Pittsburgh Symphony when I was there. He was succeeded by Andre Previn in 1972.

  During the decade (1938-48), Fritz Reiner was the music director, From 1948-52, Leonard Bernstein and Leopold Stokowski were among the guest conductors. Laurin Maazel was born in Pittsburgh and maintained his life-long association with hometown orchestra. I had an excellent music education while attending Carnegie Tech. Indeed, while in Pittsburgh (1954-58), I picked up enough musical background to construct this webpage.

• Frankfurt Opera House. After a performance of I Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo (June 2001). As usual, this opera was preceded by Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascani.
  1. Intermission. It is always a pleasure to meet interesting people during the coffee break.

• Grand Festival Hall, in Salzburg (Austria). At the conclusion of a performance of Modest Musorgsky's "Boris Godunov" (August 1997).

• Bolshoi Theater in Moscow (1990), north of the Red Square.
  1. Bolshoi Theater being refurbished (2010).
  2. Inside the Theater during the performance of a North Korean musical entitled "A girl who sells flowers" (1990).
  3. Czar's Box. Those seats these days for Russian president, prime minister, and dignitaries from foreign countries.
  4. Theater's Control Rooom of 1990.
  5. Karl Marx overlooking the Theater (2010). Marx is still an important person in Moscow. He is also an important person to me, and I have a webpage dedicated to him.

• Tchaikovsky Concert Hall about 1.2 km northwest from the Bolshoi Theater.
  1. Close-up view of the Hall.
  2. Tchaikovsky's Bust in the main lobby. I am with another music lover, more precisely Tcaikovsky lover.
  3. Exhibition Boxes in the Lobby.

• Kremlin Theater in Moscow, after the performance of Mikhail Glinka's Ruslan and Ludmila (1992).
  1. Music lovers are coming to the Theater. They are well-dressed. Russians have a great respect for Glinka as the father of Russian music.
  2. I was there with Paolo Tombesi, Margarita Man'ko, Roy Glauber, and Daesoo Han.

• Moscow's International House of Music. Panoramic view from the opposite side of the Moscow River.
  1. Close-up View. This new music hall has the state-of-the-art electronic environment, but people say its acoustic environment is not as good as those of Moscow's traditional music halls.

• Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, home of the Kirov Ballet. With me was a young Russian lady named Daria Lomagina (2003). When we went there, there were no performances. I went there again in 2010, and saw Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet.
  1. Front View of the Theater.
  2. viewed from its front-right.
  3. Upper Tiers.
  4. Stage Curtain down.
  5. with J. S. Bach, and music lovers from Switzerland. The gentleman is a physicist.
  6. Mother and Daughter from Novasibiersk, the science city in Siberia. I thought they are sisters.
  7. Mikhail Glinka's Statue near the Theatre. How do I look with Glinka?
  8. Mariinsky Administrator. I met this lady at the SPB airport while waiting for an AirBirlin flight to Dusseldorf. She works on exhibitions for the Mariinsky company. According to her, Moscow's Bolshoi is not the worst ballet in the world, but it is basically wrong to compare the Mariinsky with Bolshoi.

• J. F. Kennedy Center in Washington viewed from the Georgetown waterfront. This photo includes also the Watergate residential complex, the Arlington-Memorial Bridge, a floating restaurant "Odyssey", and a helicopter carrying an important person are also seen (July 2004).
  1. Kennedy Center viewed from the Potomac River.
  2. Kennedy's Bust, in the main lobby of Washington's Kennedy Center for Performing Arts (February 2002).
  3. Chandeliers in the Opera House contributed by the Austrian government.

  4. The Mariinskty Ballet of St. Petersburg comes to the Kennedy Center frequently. I do not have to travel to St. Petersburg to enjoy Mariinsky ballets.
  5. La Bayadere. after the performance of La Bayadere at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, DC (USA 2008). La Bayadere was premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre in 1877.
  6. Don Quixote. The Mariinsky Ballet came to Washington in 2009. I took this photo when everybody was excited after their performance of the Don Quixote, consisting of Spanish dances with Viennese music.
  7. Gisselle by the Mariinsky (February 2011). The No. 1 ballet performed by the No. 1 ballet team.

• Kiev Opera House. Front view. I was there while attending the 10th Int'l Conference on Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (2010).
  1. Side View of the Opera House
  2. Inside, upper tiers.
  3. Ceiling of the theater.
  4. Orchestra Bay during the intermission.
  5. After Aleko. After the performance of Rachmaninoff's one-act opera entitled Aleko (gypsy).
  6. After Bolero. It is rather boring to hear this dance music by Maurice Ravel. Repetition of the same tune! However, this music becomes complete if accompanied by different dances. I do not know whether it was the composer's original design.

• Minsk Opera House. I have been there many times since 1994.
  1. Entrnace to the Minsk Opera House. People are dressed nicely (1994).
  2. Spanish Dance in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. This photo was taken while the dancers were acknowledging the applause after the performance of the Spanish dance in Minsk's opera house (May 2002).
  3. Two singers for the Minsk Opera. I met them at the Minsk National Museum in 2011.

• Semper Opera House in Dresden (June 2004).
  1. Intermission between the first and second acts of Carl Maria von Weber's "Der Freischuts," held outside the opera building. It is customary to drink champaign during the opera intermissions.

  photo by David Illif

• Sydney's Opera House, linked from Wikipedia.
  1. La Traviata in Sydney. With a Korean student at one of the bay-side restaurants in Sydney (Australia). In the background (across the bay, not seen in the evening) is the Sydney opera house (one of the most famous buildings in the world). One hour earlier, we were in the opera house enjoying Verdi's La Traviata (July 1998).

• New York Pops Orchestra performing at New York's Central Park (July 2004).
  1. Close-up View of the stage.

• Opera House in Riga (2010).
  1. Good Life. Opera means Good Life in every country.
  2. Sculpture of Three Women at the city park in front of the opera house.

• Hungarian State Opera House in Budapest (2008).
• Smetana Hall in Prague before a performance of Mozart's requiem (2001).

• Teatro Massimo Vittorio Emanuele in Palermo, Sicily (2010). This is Europe's third largest opera house (after the Paris Opera House and the Vienna Opera House). Many international musical events take place in thie Theater.
  1. Front View of the Theater. This building is located at the Verdi Plaza in Palermo.
  2. Traditional Transportation to the Theater.
  3. Palermo Concert Hall is one block away from this Theater.

• La Scala in Milan is regarded as the most famous opera house in the world.
  1. Stage scene after a performance of Bela Bortok's "Blue Beard's Castle" (May 2008).
  2. In 2000, this opera house went through a major renovation in recent years. It looked like this in 2000.
  3. The interior is now very neat and elegant (2008).
  4. The entrace of blocked by a trolley car (2008).
  5. Leornado da Vinci overlooking the opera house, from the da Vinci square cross the I was there in 2000.

• The Opera Theatre of Rome is within a walking distance from the Termini.
  1. Another View of the Theatre.
  2. The main lobby before the performance.
  3. Pietro Macani's plaque was on the wall of the main lobby.
  4. Prokofiev's Romeo was on the program. I did not buy the ticket, because I saw this ballet twice before in Russia. Once in Kazan (1999) and once at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg (2010).
  5. Members of the Opera orchestra wer having a relaxing moment before the performance, and I was talking to them. I told them I saw the same ballet at St. Petersburg's Mariinsky theatre in 2010. They told me not to brag too much. They were going to St. Petersburg after their perfomance in Rome. It is always a pleasure for me to talk to musicians.

• Lincoln Center in New York. The Opera House is in the center between the New York State Theater (left) and the Avery Fisher Philharmonic Hall (right). This photo was taken in 2004.
  1. Christmas Tree at the Lincoln Center. In the background is the Avery Fisher Hall (2007).
     
  2. Avery Fisher Hall for Symphonies. Daytime view.
  3. Metropolitan Opera House.
  4. Juliard School of Music.
  5. Cafe Fiorello. Many people come to this Italian restaurant after their events at the Lincoln Center. You can meet some interesting people here, often from your own hometown. Here is the restaurants webpage.

• Paris Opera House is a historic landmark.
  1. Inside the Opera House, during the performance of Adolfe Adam's Giselle (July 2000).
  2. Verdi's Bust in the upper lobby.
  3. Another View of the Opera House.

• Royal Opera House in London at the Covent Garden (1993).
  1. Inside the Opera House before the performance of Franz Liszt's ballet "Myerling" (2004).
  2. Japanese Ballet Student. I had a pleasure of sitting next to this student from Tokyo during the performance of Myerling.

• Vienna Opera House has a very rich history. On December 31 of every year, the Opera House presents Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus. You have to reserve your ticket one year in advance. Of course you can negotiate tickets at black market for about $300, but I do not trust those black marketers. I was there on December 31 (2006) but could not get in.
  1. Another View of the Opera House.
  2. I was inside in 2007. After the performance of Coppelia by Leo Delibes (2007).
  3. Higher Rings seen from an orchestra seat.

• Johann Strauss Theater in Vienna (2007).
  I was inside for a Mozart Festival (1997).
  1. Musikverein (2007). The New year's waltz concert is held at this music hall every year and is broadcast throughout the world. I was inside in October of 2007 for a Mozart festival.
  2. Vienna Volk Art Theater near the Parlianment Building.
  3. Schonbron Plaza is a great place for summer music festivals.

• Vienna Stadtpark is a great music place. Birds sing during the summer.
  1. Vienna Hilton is one block away from the Park. I stay here often because the airport connection is very convient.
  2. Kursalon is at the southern end of the park. It is one of the mid-sized music halls in Vienna. Entrance to to this music hall.
  3. Johann Strauss at the Park. Strauss is the eternal mayor of Vienna.
  4. Side View of the Johann Strauss statue.
  5. Franz Schubert in the Park.
  6. Franz Lehar is also there.
  7. There are many more, and they are all around the Park's reflection pond.

• Yerevan Opera House in Yereven (Armenia 1998).
  1. Opera Plaza in front of the Opera House. Many things go on at this opera plaza.
  2. Armenian Reporters. When I was there in 1998, there was a demonstration against the government plan to sell their wine factory to France. I met these reporters. They wanted to hear about Bill Clinton's personal life when I told them I came from the United States.

• Concert Hall in Kazan. Kazan is a Volga city between Moscow and Ural Mountains. It takes one hour to fly from Moscow to Kazan. Both Vladimir Lenin and Leo Tolstoy spent their times at Kazan State University. Lenin could was expelled from the University because he was only interested in a Marxist revolution. Tolstoy was interested only in girls and dancing. He was also expelled.
  1. Another View of the Concert Hall.
  2. In November of 2010, I was inside the Concert Hall, and took this photo before the performance of the Kazan Symphony Orchestra.
  3. World War II Veteran. In addition to music, I enjoy meeting interesting people. This elderly man fought at the battle of Kursk during the war, where the bitterest tank battle took place. I asked him whether he was in a T-34 tank. He said No. He was shooting his Shpargin (short) machine gun while running around between the tanks. He is so proud of the medals he earned that he is carrying the medal certificates, and showed them to me.

  4. The Government Building of Tatarstan. Kazan is the capital city of Tatarstan, and the concert all is in the same area.
  5. The Opera House is also in the same area. I was inside this opera house in 1999 for Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet.

• Daughters of the American Revolution. This is an organization of women who are descendents of those Americans who made direct contributions to the Independence of America from the British rule. It is of course patriotic and conservative organization, but it is quite capable of adjusting itself to changing times. This building has a large music hall called "Constitution Hall."
  1. The Alexandrov music group is a very important component of Russia's Red Army. This group came to this hall and presented a brilliant performance.
  2. I was there and took many photos.
  3. Applause. Those Russian performers are accepting an enthusiastic applause/
  4. American Uniforms. Three of those performers were wearing American uniforms. They were reproducing the meeting of the U.S. and U.S.S.R army units on the Elbe River in 1945 during the final days of Hitler's rule in Germany.

• Musicians in London. I met them while walking from Covent Garden to Piccadilly Circus. I was walking with Vladimir Man'ko whom I met unexpectedly in front of the Covent Garden Opera House (1993).
  
  1. Musicians in Cocoyoc (Mexico, 1994). Accordion and Guitar!
  2. Vienna 1997. Accordion music.
  3. Hungarian Band. I like band music. I was indeed happy to march with high-school students (Pecs 2002).

  4. Troubadour musicians at the Cabaret du Roy in Old Montreal (Canada 2004).
  5. Hofbrau-Haus musicians in Munich (June 2004).
  6. Ukrainian Folk Musisians in Kiev (October 2006).
     Traditional Ukrainian Instrument.

  7. Musicians on the Charles Bridge in Prague (2007).
  8. Musicians in Athens consisting of Russians, Ukrainians, and Moldavians (October 2010).
  9. Singing Priests in Kazan (November 2010).
• Proschanie Slavianki. Russian military march I used to hear from my high-school band.

• Flamenco Dancers in Madrid, at one of the flamenco night clubs (1992). Here is another photo.
  1. Hungarian Dancers. Hungarians love to dance. Dance scenes like this prompted Johannes Brahms to compose his Hungarian dances (Pecs, July 2002).
  2. Russian Dance during the reception for the participants of the first Sakharov Conference in Moscow (1991).
  3. Folk Dancers in Guadalajara, while attending the 4th Wigner Symposium in Mexico (1995).
  4. Fire Dancers at Krakow's Market Square (Poland 2007).
  5. Stalin Organ. I also have a photo with her in front of an unusual instrument. With me was a young Russian lady whose father was a tank commander during the "Great Patriotic War" (World War II).

• Cranes are dancing. If I like music somewhat excessively, it is due to my Korean background. Indeed, Koreans are music crazy people. During the 6th century, a Korean musician developed a guitar and played it. The music was so attractive to cranes in the sky that they came down to the ground to dance to the tunes of this musical instrument. Click here for my photo with a Korean lady who can play this instrument. Her instrument was made in North Korea. Korea used to be one country until 1945, and both Koreas share the same cultural background.

  Waves of the Danube. I grew up in a music-loving environment in Korea. When I was 12 years old, my female classmates danced to the waltz "Waves of the Danube" composed by Josef Ivanovich. They looked like dancing cranes in the Korean legend. This is how I developed my interest in music. At that time, I did not know the title of this waltz, but continued my research on this subject.

  How many of you know the composer was a Romanian? Not many Romanians know this because his name is quite different from the usual Romanian name, such as Chiachecu, Enescu, Dumitru, all ending with "u". On December 1 (2002), I was on a Lufthansa flight from Warsaw to Frankfurt. Next to my seat was a very intelligent Romanian lady. She confirmed to me that Ivanovich was a Romanian.

  These young girls used to dance also to the "Over the Waves" by Juventano Rosas (Mexican composer). This is still my favorite music. While I was dining at Vienna's Augustinerkeller restaurant in December (2006), I asked this accordionist to play the Over the Waves. I was there six years earlier and met some interesting people.

• Let us hear the "Over the Waves."