(For a sample lecture on this weighty subject see the transcript of a talk delivered at UW in Winter 2004. The JANUS essay contains an overview of the Basic Problem.)

Role of Music in all this:

• Music (Bach's music, at least) is a beautiful example of "emergent complexity". Simple law of attraction between opposite charges leads, when applied to a large number of constituents, to chemistry and life itself, in all its complexity and beauty. Similarly, the 'vocabulary' of Music is simple - just 12 semitones per octave, and yet: many notes can be arranged in a mind-boggling variety of compositions, powerful or sophisticated, happy or sad, ....
• Music (and again: Bach's music, at least) is one of our most miraculous achievements, making the goal of preserving the Civilization all that more worth achieving.
  
• Music has been inspirational/motivational/metaphorical force for many scientists (cf. Pythagoras with his consonance/dissonance as ratios of small integers, Kepler's Harmony of the Spheres, LISA and the Gravitational Symphony of the Universe, 'Princeton String Quartet' composed of superstring theorists, … .  In general: Harmony of the Universe as a "design principle" ….)
• Music leads, naturally, to both Exuberance and Humility

Bach left us an immortal legacy of Art of Fugue, Well-Tempered Clavier, Goldberg Variations, Musical Offering, .... . He combined supreme 'mathematical' ability to weave many voices together, with an overwhelming beauty and aesthetic feeling. When a committee was considering what to send on the Voyager probe as example of human music, someone suggested to send nothing but Bach. This was turned down since 'that would be bragging' ...

The Art of Fugue is, in fact, a Triple Art of Fugue:
- art of writing a fugue       - art of playing a fugue       - art of listening to a fugue

See the Program Notes of an Art of Fugue organ recital, preceded by a series of three lectures delivered at UW in Spring 2004.
(see also Goedel Escher Bach by D. Hofstadter; and pipedreams.mpr.org/listings/shows00_07.htm  )

For a reasonably coherent article on Music and Physics see http://www.phys.washington.edu/~vladi/KenYoungFest.doc .
For a transcript of a somewhat lighthearted (after-dinner) lecture on the same subject see www.phys.washington.edu/~vladi/Honors2001/gebh.htm