Music provides a good example to use when considering the study of chaos and fractals in art. Much of J. S. Bach's music when deconstructed is found to have fractal forms throughout it. The music establishes certain phrases or forms, and then chronologically reverses them, or inverts them, or changes their time signature or key. Likewise, the bass line and the treble line are playful with each other, with a kind of complexity that relates to what we call fractals in today's science. Some historians have expounded on observations that in Baroque times the decoration of the architecture has a quality to it which is similar to that of the music.

Some would say that the attractiveness of "jazz" music is for similar reasons. There is a playfulness and spontaneity in the taking of a figure improvising on it that results in complexity which is astoundingly beautiful, if not quite understandable or repeatable. There are composers today who are exploring the creation of modern music using mathematical fractal generators. Samples of this music can be found at one internet site www-ks.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/people/schulz/fmusic/index.html. They do capture some of the baroque quality of Bach.

In 1973 I visited Frank Lloyd Wright's Zimmerman House in Manchester, New Hampshire, one of the best know of his Usonian Houses. The owners had invited our string quartet to come to their house and play some music. They said that many people had commented on how Frank Lloyd Wright's best houses (their own included) were like a piece of Bach music. It is this sense of initiating a simple form and repeating it and varying it in scale, texture, and size, which Frank Lloyd Wright's work is such a genius at accomplishing. For the owners who lived in the house, our playing of music just carried their love affair with the house to an even higher level, where the form and music interpenetrated each other.

Music has always been a more fluid and alive form of the arts than architecture. In both Baroque and modern times there has always been room for improvisation, and it has been an important central element. In Baroque times the bass line played by the cello, gamba, and continuo (harpsichord) was only loosely written out so that the performers invented the part as they went along. In addition, the solo parts (violin, flute, cello, and harpsichord depending on the piece or movement) could embellish the basic notes that were written down and in the case of cadenzas were expected to create a whole new "piece" or that of a whole new section. Thus each performance was intended to have newness and spontaneity.

Recent studies have indicated that the brains of children who learn to play music have a different basic structure than those who do not learn music. Thus, this complexity may be more than enjoyable, it may be essential to the human condition. The complexity is somehow absorbed into the musician. Perhaps, we have even a fractal relationship between the music and the human brain.