"Children, do you like to sing?" - asked the teacher in the class. "Did you know that music and mathematics have something in common?"
“Music has 7 notes, and in every piece of music there is a rhythm and a length of sound,” answered the boy with glasses, whose name Apollinaria did not remember well.
“That’s right,” the teacher answered, “music is a kind of mathematics expressed in sounds. We can sing or play louder or quieter, and this shows the strength of sound. The strength of sound can be measured, for example, in working cars, because they can make more or less noise.
You can also measure the length of the sound, the notes in the melody can sound longer or shorter. The sounds can be abrupt, or they can be prolonged. And we know that not only in music, the length of the sound can differ. The human voice can make long sounds or short exclamations.
There is also rhythm in music. For example, three identical sounds, and then two different ones, and then again - three identical sounds and two different ones. Where else can we find rhythms? Waves in the sea have their own rhythm. The hours of the day and night do. The alternation of spring, summer, autumn and winter has its own rhythm. Flowers also bloom in their own rhythm. Some flowers like to bloom during the day, and other flowers like to bloom at night. And what rhythms exist in our behavior?"
“Well, we probably go to bed and wake up, then eat and go to school at our own pace,” thought Apollinaria.
"Did you know that we must eat and drink in a certain rhythm in order to be healthy? - asked the teacher. Maintaining a good rhythm makes us more alert, fun and organized.”
“That’s why children at school are so often taught to sing songs," thought Apollinaria. "Music teaches them to think and act in a certain cheerful rhythm. Maybe that’s why at all times people sang, danced, played instruments, in order to live cheerfully despite the complexity."
“If something is difficult for you,” the teacher said, “then sometimes it is useful to remember a funny song, and it will help you cope with the problem. And mathematical problems can also be solved with the help of music.”