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Symmetry: Culture and Science
Volume 33, Number 2, pages 137-154 (2022)
https://doi.org/10.26830/symmetry_2022_2_137

FIBONACCI SEQUENCE AND GOLDEN SECTION IN MUSICAL SPACES

S.P. Lee¹, C.H. Raymond Ooi^2* and I.T. Wang³

¹ Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Malaya. Kuala Lumpur, 59100 Malaysia
Email: 17018625@siswa.um.edu.my
ORCID:0000-0001-9556-5159

² Department of Physics, University of Malaya, Quantum & Laser Science (HIR Building) 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Email: rooi@um.edu.my
ORCID:0000-0003-1084-5501

³ Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Malaya. Kuala Lumpur, 59100 Malaysia
Email: wangita@um.edu.my
ORCID:0000-0001-7144-2779

^* corresponding author

Abstract: The abstraction of the Fibonacci sequence through chord progressions can be applied in music analysis. The concept of inferring semitone spaces as vertical pitch heights (y) to music flowing at a horizontal time (x) as a form of 2-dimensional abstraction are ways of charting scientific influences in music. The article illustrates an excerpt (bar 113-120) from Bach’s Violin Chaconne (BWV 1004) with the Fibonacci sequence that identifies the vision in symmetry, whereas from Gubaidulina’s piano Chaconne (bar 117-204), creative chaos in asymmetry has been found at the Golden Section that presents a sequence in Fibonacci. These excerpts posit mathematical creativity manifested as the value of symmetry or chaos in composition through the lens of Fibonacci.

Keywords: Beauty in music, Creative Chaos in Asymmetry, Fibonacci Sequence (FS), Golden Section (GS), Symmetry

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