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Jackson, Tenn. - 51ÉçÇø will host international scholar
Daniel Leeson when he presents a multi-media lecture titled "Mozart
and Mathematics," Tuesday, April 4 at 7:30 p.m.
Directed towards those with mathematical training as well as those with interest in the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Leeson's lecture will pose the question that Mozart had a very real but completely unknown and undeveloped mathematical intellect. "When you consider the fact that Mozart never had a day of schooling in his life," says Leeson, "except for what his father taught him, it's remarkable. There are sketches available in his own hand, which show him playing, for his own amusement, in one of the most abstract of all mathematical disciplines, number theory." According to Leeson, these facts bring up the very old question about a theoretical relationship between the thought processes of mathematics and those of music. Leeson, a retired IBM business executive, was the author of one of the earliest texts on computer programming and was a key speaker for the Association of Computing Machinery for many years. He also has performed as a professional symphonic musician with more than a dozen professional symphony orchestras and is considered one of the world's leading Mozart scholars, serving as editor of the 220 volume complete edition of the works of Mozart, the Neue Mozart Ausgabe. Author of more than 100 musicological articles, Leeson was awarded the 1992 Artist Fellowship for Writers of Creative Nonfiction by both the California Arts Council and the Arts Council of Santa Clara County. Part of an 8-city university lecture tour including Notre Dame and Harvard University, Leeson's lecture at Union is co-sponsored by the Departments of Music, Math and Computer Science. The lecture will be located in D-3 of the Penick Academic Complex. Admission is free; the public is invited to attend. For more information regarding Leeson's lecture, please contact the Department of Music at (901) 661-5345. |