“Music is math,” he said.

He was taking a break from serenading the shoppers at an upscale clothing venue when I happened by.

He was a professional pianist.

He told me he had to take two years of college math before he could even touch his beloved music.

He raved about the predictability of music, about its orderliness.

He said if a song is written correctly, and you know your music (or math) you can tell what’s coming next without seeing a copy of the music.

He asked if I had anything I wanted him to play.  I asked if he knew ‘The Old Rugged Cross,’ and he struck the chords off systematically, ending with a rousing crescendo that left me spinning.

Later in life I would come to know a small part of his knowledge.

I would learn that a song properly written will have the total number of measures divisible by four.

I would learn that if they weren’t divisible by four, that an inner rhythm in each one of us would stumble in the area that was written incorrectly.

I would learn that each chord could be broken, or rearranged, but never without the third tone. 

And I would learn that if I doubled the third tone, in a major chord that is, that I would drive any sensible singer slightly insane.

I also found out, later of course, that each chord has its own companion chord that is needed to resolve the tension remaining from any discord within itself. 

And at an even more basic level, each note has its own companion note that is needed to resolve the tension remaining.

And, I found out that just as my pianist friend said, music is very predictable in this way. 

That if tension is introduced, it must always be resolved before the end of the song, or the singer won’t enjoy the song enough to come back to it again.

Later I would learn the intricacies of major and minor chords, and how a half step, placed in exactly the right place, changed each of them into the other.

I would find that certain progressions make for dead spots in the music and other progressions made things sound off key.

I learned that discord, when used correctly, is actually a beautiful thing.

I learned that we humans are beings of need for predictability and harmony, and how with a prolonged brush stroke of the opposite of those two, whole nations have been swayed into different and dark moods; how personal respect and clothing styles have been changed because of the lack thereof.

And so, 20 some years later, I come to agree with my pianist friend.

Music is math.

But I’ve also come to learn that math, in and of itself, is sterile.

And I’ve come to realize, over and over again, that the song the angels sang to announce peace and goodwill, had predictability to it, without a doubt.

But it also had something else, I believe.

It must have had within its very fiber the echoes and feelings of the glory from whence it sprang.

Elsewise would we still sing it today?

There’s more to music than math.

There is glory within it, that springs straight from its eternal source.

Sing that glory, and you and those around you will be filled this Christmas season.

Blessed tidings to each of you.