NB. I was sent this book as a review copy.

From Princeton University Press

Music by the numbers leads us on a journey, as stated in the title, from Pythagoras to Schoenberg. In many ways the endpoint is stated early on, giving us clues that a revolution in mathematical thinking about musical scales will be encountered in the early twentieth century. Indeed the journey through musical practice, mathematics, physics and the biology of hearing is woven rather beautifully together, giving the account of our step by step explorations of tonal systems and their links to the physics of vibration. The development of calculus and the triumph of Fourier take as from the somewhat numerological and empiric realms of musical experimentation to the age of a true understanding of timbre – the way different instruments express harmonics and their overtones in different admixtures. A lot of emphasis is placed on the development of scales based on subtly different frequency ratios, which were developed over the years (particularly within European music, non-European music being given only very brief comment) to balance the physical, mathematical and aesthetic qualities of the various possible tunings of instruments.…