About a year ago I wrote about Jupiter’s magic square. Then yesterday I was listening to the New Sounds podcast that mentioned a magic square associated with Mars. I hadn’t heard of this, so I looked into it and found there were magic squares associated with each of solar system bodies known to antiquity (i.e. Sun, Mercury, Venus, Moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn).
Here is the magic square of Mars:
The podcast featured Secret Pulse by Zack Browning. From the liner notes:
Magic squares provide structure to the music. Structure provides direction to the composer. Direction provides restrictions for the focused inspiration and interpretation of musical materials. The effect of this process? Freedom to compose.
The compositions on this CD use the 5×5 Magic Square of Mars (Secret Pulse), the 9×9 Magic Square of the Moon (Moon Thrust), and the ancient Chinese 3×3 Lo Shu Square found in the Flying Star System of Feng Shui (Hakka Fusion, String Quartet, Flying Tones, and Moon Thrust) as compositional models. The musical structure created from these magic squares is dramatically articulated by the collision of different musical worlds …
I don’t know how the composer used these magic squares, but you can listen to the title track (Secret Pulse) on the podcast.
Years ago,I was amazed by this!