Composing Your Thoughts

Music that upsets expectations is what makes your gray matter sing

Illustration: Gérard DuBois

By Jonathan Berger

1. Unshaven and one bit short

To death and taxes, Benjamin Franklin’s binary list of life’s certainties, add the expectation that this six-note sequence:

Six notes

Will continue with this:

Although we ponder ways to avoid or evade Franklin’s list of unavoidable events, we generally accept this more benign certainty as immutable. To demonstrate, consider this: