Let us be clear and brief: because they are our two preferred disciplines. Full stop.
When we compete in tournaments, music makes us shine. When we interpret or compose music, we think of the epic genre of chess. Chess and music… pure magic.
Imagine that you launch a vertiginous attack against the opposite king while witnessing a Viking ritual accompanied by the music of Wardruna (Helvegen, for example).
Imagine that you prepare the Partita No. 2 for the violin of a certain Johann Sebastian Bach while the Immortal of Anderssen crosses his thoughts.
Can you imagine? Because that is the way we are at MusiChess.
Mozart vs. Carlsen; Beethoven vs. Kasparov… Euterpe and Caissa creating art, sport, science and much more.

Do you still want academic justifications? Okay, we will explain it a little better.
If our research is correct, music, chess and mathematics are the disciplines that most prodigious children produce. Coincidence? Maybe.
Historically speaking it has been said that they all have many aspects in common. Truth or myth? We have our opinion on this, which is largely related to the essential capacity of abstraction that all of them require, but in the absence of conclusive scientific studies, we prefer not to use it as an argument. On the other hand what we can do is mention the interesting dignitaries in history whom have shared at least two of these three disciplines. Let’s look at some examples.

In our first contest (published in Spanish) we investigated the relationships between music and chess. Philidor (François-André Danican), Prokofiev, Alfonso X the Wise (King of Castile), M. Taimanov, V. Smyslov, Jacqueline Piatigorsky, Ziryab, A. Schoenberg were emblematic characters whom came up etcetera. In this link you can see the section we have recently opened including historical characters related to both disciplines. And the ones we have left!
* The scores that appear collect the votes of our users. If you want to help us improve this classification, you can contribute by adding new historical figures by emailing us at info@musichess.com.

Eduardo Rodríguez (Ozakuya Creations)

Eduardo Rodríguez (Ozakuya Creations)

 

In the book Chess and science, mixed passions (Leontxo García) interesting data was provided which relate chess and mathematics. Chess players Emmanuel Lasker (Lasker-Noether’s theorem), Max Euwe and Mikhail Botvinnik were mathematicians, as well as world chess champions. Adolf Anderssen, the romantic genius of chess, was also a professor of mathematics. John Nunn is a chess player (top 10 in the past) and a mathematician. Like them, we could cite numerous cases. From the other side, important mathematicians in history, such as Carl Friedrich Gauss or Leonhard Euler, dealt with famous chess problems related to geometry.

To speak with some rigor of the connections between music and mathematics would require hours, days and even weeks of research, which has not been our goal for this story. So we will leave it as an interesting topic for some of our articles. However, in the next entry we will explain the origin of our logos, which are closely related to the Pythagorean theory of harmony of the spheres.

To know more eccentric relationships, we invite you to continue traveling with us. Because this is just the beginning of a new era. This is the rebirth of a new galaxy: the MC Galaxy. Enjoy it! With time and knowing how to behave, you will get answers to your questions.

Greetings from all the MC team.
PS: Do not stop listening to Highlights from Chess by Johan de Meij.