Science AND Music with Nuno Maulide

Ilham Kadri: Hello everyone, today I am thrilled to be recording this podcast here in Brussels with Nuno Maulide!
Nuno is what we would call a renaissance man: he is a professor and head of the Institute for Organic Chemistry at the University of Vienna AND he is an award winning pianist. 
Nuno studied piano and chemistry in his hometown in Lisbon and then went on to earn his PhD at the University of Louvain here in Belgium. He has studied at universities in Louvain-la-Neuve, Paris and at Stanford University, and started his independent work as a Group leader at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Carbon Research. And it’s no surprise that he has received numerous prestigious awards in both chemistry and music throughout his career. 
I can’t wait to hear what he has to say about the fundamental connections between chemistry AND music. Nuno, thank you so much for being here today.

Nuno Maulide: Thank you so much for inviting me. 

Albert Einstein and Max Planck’s love for Bach and Mozart 

Ilham Kadri: I'm so delighted. I'd like to begin by saying how appropriate it is that we are recording this podcast here at the Maison Ernest Solvay, which in fact was the home of our founder. And as you may know, Nuno, and I think we have the picture of Ernest just behind you. Ernest invited the greatest scientific minds of his time, including Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, one of my role models, to his Solvay physics and chemistry conferences here in Brussels. One picture over there. It started in 1911, right? The first, you know, conference called the Conference of the Brilliant Minds. And the second one just next to it, in 1927, is the most intelligent picture in the history of humanity. 

Nuno Maulide: So many Nobel laureates. 

Ilham Kadri: Absolutely. So many Nobel laureates. 

Nuno Maulide: In a single photo. 

Ilham Kadri: Yeah. Including one to come as part of this gathering. And it looks like they invented quantum physics and so many other sciences. But of course, Einstein was also an accomplished violinist. And the story is that he brought his violin, which he named Lina with him everywhere he went and often performed in people's houses. 

Nuno Maulide: So he might have been here. 

Ilham Kadri:  Exactly, Nuno. With the violin. Exactly, with the violin. And probably he brought it in Belgium, he brought it in Brussels, he brought it in this house, in this very room because we know he dined in this room. But he was not the only musician who came to the conferences. I learned that Max Planck was also an accomplished pianist, and we know he and Einstein often played together. And by the way, we are proud that at the 1911 Solvay Conference, the very first discussion by international scientists on Planck's quantum theory was held. And of course, Mozart and Bach were favorite composers of both Einstein and Planck. And many say that's because these composers have a very clear and solid form to their music that has parallels with what Einstein wanted to achieve in his theories, for instance. So, I've heard, Nuno, you talk a bit before about how Bach could be considered the hidden scientist. Can you explain to our audience what you mean by that? And why do you think these brilliant scientists would have loved his music so much? 

Nuno Maulide: So, Bach, of course, is my favorite composer. I think he's a giant, the giant, in the history of music. And I find him to be a hidden scientist because his music is... It's incredibly structured when you look over under the surface, but then when you listen to the final product, it's just very touching and very emotional. And it's beautiful to notice how the structure is built because he sometimes builds his music in layers. For example, one of my favorite pieces, Jesus bleibet meine Freude is a construction, a beautiful structural construction made in layers. The first layer was something that he needed to use because he had to compose all the religious music for the religious service in Leipzig. So you have to imagine, every Sunday, Bach had to write between one and two hours of music, new music, to be performed during the religious service. And so some of those pieces he had to write so that people, a normal commoner that would go to church, could also stand up and sing. And so he took those melodies that were already popular, because of course every version of the Bible had some melodies. And one of those melodies, Jesus bleibet meine Freude, Jesus, joy of man's desiring, is like this….
……We have to put ourselves in this mindset, 1700 something, pretty much every second person in Germany could sing this by heart. Jesus bleibet meine Freude. And so he thought, I have to use this so that people can stand up and sing, and he would harmonize it, right? …..
Quite beautiful….
Would have been enough for most composers to say, okay, done, check mark, next, next piece. 

Ilham Kadri: I have a second layer, it's enough. 

Nuno Maulide: But he wanted to put a third layer to avoid that it sounds a little bit slow and dull. And the third layer he composed was what we now know…..
It's beautiful to think that this was just composed as a feeling for a very big melody. And now it's the one that we have on our mobile phones. That's what we know. And the other one that everybody knew, now it's almost unknown. And the two of them match beautifully….

Nuno plays Bach’s Jesus bleibet meine Freude

I find this not only highlights to us how Bach composed and this is a beautiful piece and you can listen to the piece and you can be impressed and your heart will feel something and you have an emotion and then you analyze it and you see this almost mathematical preparation of how things turn. And I think that's for sure what fascinated scientists like Einstein to see how something can be aesthetically pleasing and still mathematically and geometrically designed to perfection. 

Introduction to music in primary school

Ilham Kadri: So this is where music and science come together. And that's fantastic. And thank you. It talks to our soul, it's extremely touching our hearts while the minds and the ingenuity is there. So I'm curious to hear more about your own journey, you know, how, you know, you got to music and science. I think I know a bit of it, but our audience will be interested, because I know that music has been part of your life since you were very young and chemistry came a bit later, if I remember well, but first, can you tell us about how you were introduced to music and what's made you fall in love with that?

Nuno Maulide: So I had the fortune, the good fortune of being in primary school in one of the few schools in Lisbon where someone in the government decided to implement a pilot program where they would take teachers from a music school and detach them for two or three hours a week to teach us, kids in the primary school, music using the so called WARD method. It's a method where instead of writing five lines and little dots that symbolize the notes, you would use numbers. And of course, small children at that age have an easier grasp on numbers and letters. And the number one would be C, number two would be D, and number three, number four, number five. So you would use numbers from one to seven. I remember the teacher came for the very first class and she drew a bunch of numbers on the board. Of course, we didn't know what she was going to do with them. And I noticed that all the numbers... Um, seven, missed the little, you know, seven usually has a little, you don't have the bar in the middle. In the word method, you don't have it because Bars and dashes like this and like this are used to symbolize the sharps and the flats. Bars above and below are used to control the duration. Points after and before are used to control the pitch. So you can do a lot of very complicated music with this relatively simple depiction. And of course I arrived, we all didn't know what was coming. And she drew all these things and then she went for a pause and then she came back. And when she came back, all the sevens had been dashed. Because of course someone... With two thumbs, had very smart ass, had gone to the board and thought this must be all wrong, took the chalk and just dashed all the sevens and went to my seat very comfortable and very proud. And then she arrived and said, who did this? Who dashed all the sevens? Me. They were missing. Remove them all. And so I had to go in front of everyone and Because in our method you will learn that this has its own meaning. So we do not dash the seven. 

Ilham Kadri: So how do you write your seven? Mathematically now, do you put a dash or not? 

Nuno Maulide: I was traumatized. I was traumatized. Traumatized with this. No more dash. And it's very interesting because even in, for example, the Americans. Yeah. They don't. And the Asians also do not. But I never thought.  

Switch to focus on organic chemistry

Ilham Kadri: You know, I grew up also in Morocco and French education and we put this, but now coming from the United States of America and having done most of my career there, actually they don't put the dash. It's very interesting. It's a very interesting convention. So now tell us how does someone who has devoted his entire early life to music come to find chemistry? Was it another love of yours or was it just by default? What made you switch your focus?

Nuno Maulide:  It's a little bit of a less glamorous story than one might think. In Portugal, when you reach the end of secondary school, you have to actually apply to university. And so I am the son of two medical doctors, so it was kind of obvious, if I had the possibility, that I would try to get into medicine. But we have what we call numerus clausus. So, of course, you have to have a certain point grade average to be able to get into certain degrees and medicine always has the highest and so I had enough if it had been the year before mine So speculatively you would say I might get in again. So I put medicine in place number one. You have to write six options. So I put medicine in place number one medicine in a different University in a different place in Option number two and thinking that I would get into those easily because the year before it would have been enough. I just filled options three four five and six randomly I think. I was juggling between mathematics, computer science because I like computers, and chemistry because I found chemistry interesting. And I just really put them a little bit randomly because anyway, it was just, it was just to fill in a formality.
I would for sure get into one of the two first. Yeah. And so I filled in that form, I handed it over, and then I saw there's a newspaper that comes in Portugal. On the day where everything is decided, you get a newspaper with the average of the last person. To enter every single university degree in the whole country. It's like pages and pages and pages and when you get that you run. I mean actually the front page already tells you medicine this much. But you run and you go and you realize it was not enough in that year. The average went up And I missed it by 0. 15 points, 0. 15 out of 20. Wow, wow. So it's a very small margin.

Ilham Kadri: But this was your target, right? At the beginning. 

Nuno Maulide: It had been my target. Even though I knew I wanted to study music, I still wanted to at least get admitted to university into something normal. And when I failed the two medicines, I was then really weak because it takes a week until it actually gets published in a place where you can go and see your name and see which degree you entered. I was one week wondering. What did I put in place number three? Because I was not even sure whether it had been chemistry, or mathematics, or computer science. For the same price I could today be a computer scientist, maybe. Successful or unsuccessful. And so we had to go, I said many times to my father, I think it's mathematics, I'm not sure. We had to go to this place where the things are published, and then see Numomi the chemistry. Okay, it was chemistry that you put in third place. And then I went to the university, and I said, I want to register for chemistry, and I want to immediately cancel my registration, because what I'm going to do is I'm going to study music. Okay. So I went into the university for music, the concert pianist's degree. I did one year of that, I realized, oh my god, this is nothing for me. 

Ilham Kadri: Really? And why is that? 

Nuno Maulide: Because there is one thing about having a hobby, which you love, and which you do an hour a day. You wish you could do two hours or three hours, but you never can because it's just a hobby. And then suddenly there is nothing else and just the hobby. 

Ilham Kadri: Eight hours or ten hours, twelve hours a day, right? 

Nuno Maulide: And suddenly the pleasure and the passion. Americans always say be careful what you wish for, right? I think this was a good lesson for me, be careful what you wish for. I'm happy I did it because otherwise I might have lived all my life in regret. 

Ilham Kadri: That's it, so you tried it.

Nuno Maulide: I tried it, I jumped into it, I knew it was not what I wanted. I was bored to tears when I had to spend ten hours in front of a piano. I was like, no, I cannot do this for 40 years or 50 years. In a row. So I decided, okay, I will just be a depressed, normal person. I will just go to university, take whatever degree, get whatever job from nine to five. And that will be my life. 

Ilham Kadri: Beautiful story. We'll come back later to chemistry for me as well. Chemistry came very late. So I'd like to go back, Nuno, to Einstein and Planck for a minute and now turn to their deep love for Mozart's, right? What are the parallels you see with science and Mozart's works? that would have attracted these scientists. 

Nuno Maulide: I find that a very interesting thing to consider because Mozart, for his time, was really ahead of what we imagine people in the 70s, 80s. 

Ilham Kadri: He was a genius, right? 

Nuno Maulide: He was a genius, but he also had a life that is very much similar to the life of, I don't know, Beyoncé or Justin Bieber today. Because he traveled extensively, especially as a young prodigy child. His father, of course, took him and paraded him in every single country.

Ilham Kadri: That's true, including in Vienna, right? Including in Vienna. Where you live now. 

Nuno Maulide: Exactly. That was the shortest trip, right? From Salzburg to Vienna. He went to Paris, he went to London, he went to Berlin, he went everywhere. And he also spoke many, many languages fluently. He spoke Italian, he spoke French, he spoke English, apart from his native German. And so I think, and you have to say that nowadays that's probably not so impressive, but back then every travel was fraught with a lot of danger. If you think about it, traveling 200 kilometers, first of all took days, second of all was extremely dangerous because you could be attacked and ambushed on the way. They were, the Mozarts were very often sick. And people would have then deadly diseases just because you are somewhere else, you contract a virus and then you die. And for example, Johann Sebastian Bach returned once from a trip to find out that his wife had died. So, with all this danger, I think Mozart's life is really a miracle. With all these dangers of traveling all over Europe, going even across to the ponds, UK, speaking all these languages, this was really a unique, uh, personality. And I think it made him a very cosmopolitan person. And you can, you can see this in, in almost all of his music, which very much sounds like, like sonatas, like operas. 

Nuno plays excerpts from Mozart’s Sonata in G Major 1st Movement

It's, you have very calm moments….
And then suddenly someone shouts. And then someone runs. And then you have something very suspicious….
And then you have very romantic moments…
And then someone very nervous…
So it's, every single piece of Mozart has these constant changes in dramatic nature, in dramatic color, and also constant changes in mood, which I think reflect his absorption of what was the English style of music? What was the German style of music? What was the Italian style of music? And I think he incorporates all that. 

Ilham Kadri: Interesting. So he was a global citizen? 

Nuno Maulide: He was a global citizen in the 18th century.

Ilham Kadri: Amazing. Wow. Wow. It's like describing our emotions, huh? We can, as human being, we can go through from one second to the other. 

Nuno Maulide: We can jump, we can do all of this in an hour.

Connection between science and music

Ilham Kadri: So fabulous. So after all of this, I think there is no better person than you to ask about the strong connection between science and music and art. How do you see this connection in your own life as both a scientist and musician? I know you told us, you know, it started with music. I tried it one year. I knew that's a hobby, not a, you know, a business for me or day to day job. And then you move to chemistry almost by serendipity. But, how you can, today you are making concerts, you know, you are….

Nuno Maulide: And you have to think which area of chemistry did I choose?

Ilham Kadri: Yeah, exactly. Organic chemistry of course. 

Nuno Maulide: I am biased of course, but to be entirely honest, is there any area of chemistry which is more aesthetic and more artistic in its presentation of its tools than organic chemistry. We do not communicate with much in terms of words, we write and we draw structures. The way each person draws structure is very personal. You can almost, I mean, I could recognize each one of my PhD students if I just see how they write. Because everybody writes and draws structure. So it's very personal. It's very individualistic. At the same time. It is such an artistic dimension for some very complicated molecules that we try to make in our group. Make total synthesis of some complex natural products. For some of those, the way you draw it might make the molecule appear more complex or less complex. And whenever molecules have many rings fused to each other, There are really, you can see it from one perspective, from another perspective, from the top, from the bottom. We, I usually recommend to my students, draw your molecules from as many different perspectives as possible, because sometimes you draw it and suddenly it becomes obvious to you how you should make it in the lab. Whereas if you drew it the other way, it's like, this is very challenging, very difficult. So we incorporate a lot of artistic and aesthetic elements in what we do in the lab, in what I do in my activity. And I think whenever I play the piano at home, not only does it help me relax, because you know it better than me, our lives can be a little bit stressful, especially when you are in management positions. But it also helps me sometimes interpret and view things in a different way. Sometimes I'm thinking of a complicated molecule, and then there is a music piece that just fits what that molecule represents to me, and sometimes vice versa. Sometimes I'm playing a piece and I have a sudden thought of, hmm, what would happen if we mixed this with this? It has happened. 

Schubert and the connection to nature 

Ilham Kadri: So inspiration and insights comes both sides. Wow. So those are, I think you're going to attract more organic chemistry students to this podcast. At least our people, we're a chemical company, right? And that's our job since 160 years. So it's gonna resonate with a lot of people now as an expert in organic chemistry. You are probably very in tune with science in the natural world and this is very close to our hearts too as we've been launching recently the renewable material and biotech platform We're making bio shampoo using Guar plants coming from Rajasthan, etc. but I've also heard you talk before about the strong connection. Some composers have with nature and the ways in which nature or science emulates nature. Can you elaborate on that? 

Nuno Maulide: Yes, so I think certain composers, such as, for example, Schubert, really, Schubert, as we know, lived in Vienna, very close to where my faculty is located, where my office is at the Faculty of Chemistry at the Währinger Straße. And Schubert really was very fond of taking long walks through the woods. And he wrote a lot of pieces. which he called impromptus, or impromptu, improvisations, which I feel, and people know through history, through studies, that were connected to these long walks he would take in the Viennese woods. And one of those pieces he actually wrote in a very strange key signature, which is actually G flat. And G flat major, I would say, is well known among all of us pianists as being a pain in the neck. Because it's entirely on the black keys. It's very tricky. And when you, when you think about this, you will understand why the publisher of Schubert, when this piece was ready to be published, immediately went to Schubert and told Schubert, I'm going to publish this in G major. Because then it will be mostly on the white keys. And we want to sell this. We don't want this to be seen by the people and say, I'm not going to buy it because there's no way I can play it, it's all in the black keys. Wow. And Schubert told him, no, I wrote it in G flat major because I want it in G flat major.
And if you hear the two, Yeah. You don't need to have a degree in music. Listen to the beginning in G major….
I'm not going to change anything else. There is no trick here. There is no, no magic. I'm not, I'm not David Copperfield. I'm just going to play exactly the same thing in G flat major. Listen to the difference…..
You don't need a degree to see that this is naturally very luminous. It's very happy. And this just sounds. Mistic. Introverted. And this is why Schubert wrote it in this key, because he told his editor, I'm sorry, you cannot publish this in G Major. He did anyway. Yeah. But you cannot publish this in G Major because it won't sound the same. And I want a very mystic atmosphere. When he wants shining lights….
Here it's a completely different color.  And so I find that this piece, for example, is a beautiful example of how science and nature come together because of course, nowadays we can study and there was a published paper, a paper published in science which demonstrates that the vibration of each different note in the piano elicits a different pattern. No matter with which measuring object you do it. You could even just have a piece of metal round. Put some sand on it. And as you play different notes, the vibration will lead the grains of sand to spontaneously organize in completely different patterns, depending on whether you play this, or this, or this, or this. And that is science telling us, yeah, what you hear as a difference has a scientific basis. Absolutely. Would you like me to play the whole piece for you? 

Nuno plays Schubert’s Impromptu in G Flat Major

Ilham Kadri: Yeah, please. 

Nuno Maulide: Then let's go.

Chopin and the connection to water

Ilham Kadri: Thank you very much. So you talked about the woods and how walking through the woods can be inspiring. What's about the elements? I think one of my favorite chemicals is water. Yeah, I missed potable water when I was a kid in Morocco. So I was raised, you know, I grew up in Morocco. You know, just, with the scarcity of water at home. So I always wanted to work in the water industry, which I did in water purification. So water has been always, you know, by the way, the most scarce natural resource on earth. We talk a lot about climate, obviously. There is a sense of urgency, but there is a sense potable water.

Nuno Maulide: Some of the biggest geopolitical conflicts in the future will probably be about.... 

Ilham Kadri: Come from..the water, right? So what's about water in music? 

Nuno Maulide: Actually, that inspires me to think about another example, which is a Chopin etude. And Chopin, we all know, the master of  melodies, right?......
All his pieces have a very clear defined melody, and a very clear defining accompanying part. And then this etude he wrote, and the melody is just... It's boring……..
It's just full of repeated notes. Look at this. Two, three, four, five, six, seven. Terrible melody. And the accompanying part, which we just heard was something beautiful on that note tune, like full of emotion….
Here it's just…
And then you put everything together, with a little bit of these pedals here, down here, which help to muddle things a little bit, and it suddenly sounds as if water was coming out of the piano. So, I would like to inspire your inner child, that had no potable water, to listen to this and imagine that this piano suddenly becomes a fountain from which water springs. Let's try. Let's try. And all of you at home, try the same thing.

Nuno plays Chopin’s Etude Opus 25 No. 1

Ilham Kadri: Thank you, Nuno. You have given me back all the clean water I missed when I was a girl. So, thank you. This is beautiful. Indeed, I could, you know, be immersed in water. In the beauty of water. So, Chopin, you know, might be one of my favorite composers now. 

What can businesses learn from music? 

Ilham Kadri: As you know, this podcast is about the power of the AND the A-N-D. And this episode perfectly brings art and science together. And I always say that businesses can learn so much from art. And before you, we got an artist in painting, you know, we got even a cook, a chef cook, a PhD in cooking, which is also an art. And when you were playing just now, I was wondering what do you think scientists learn from music and what can musicians learn from science? And on a broader level, what can businesses in general learn from art and music? 

Nuno Maulide: That is a very interesting question. So I think... Scientists and artists both need innovation and creativity. This is clear, right? You need to go where nobody has gone before. And that's also what artists do all the time. But I feel there is a very interesting idea for businesses to learn from art and music. Because, for example, music and art is permanently focused on eliciting emotion. I think businesses could learn. I think the current world is the world of moments, right? People live in the moment and then forget and I think what businesses probably would be very well advised is to create emotional connections to the customer in the products that they make in the experiences that they elicit. So that there is a, because I think that also is in the business's advantage to do so. I feel that every artist that composes something has probably the desire of somehow becoming immortal, right? All these people wrote these pieces in the hope that They will die and the music will stay. Will last. I speak of Bach in the present, I speak of Chopin and Schubert in the present tense, because they died but the music is still there with us. And that means that they created something very individual and very theirs, very their own. And I think also in businesses is very much committed and focused on diversity, but also inclusiveness. And I feel that these messages are messages that very nicely resonate with art and with music. Because, yeah, once you empower people in a company, in a business to be unique, to celebrate their diversity, to celebrate what makes us different from one another, you are also somehow cultivating a little bit of an artistic vein. 

Ilham Kadri: I love it this way. And I think you do this when I always compare it to a cathedral, right? Each of us as a leader, we bring a little stone to the edifice, right? With the hope that there is a legacy and there is universality. And what you are saying is that those artists and those brilliant musicians, and they were all universal pieces of music, yet each musician, like you as a pianist, you bring your own soul to it, your own stamp, right? 

Nuno Maulide: And this is beautiful, the beautiful aspect of classical music is that every interpreter recreates what was written hundreds of years ago in his or her own way. 

Rachmaninoff and pattern recognition

Ilham Kadri: So Nuno, is there anything a scientist can grab from a piece of music?

Nuno Maulide: Hmm, now that you mention that, I do like to think that some pieces of music have very clear patterns. And I think the ability to do pattern recognition is probably what most characterizes, that's what we like to do. We hope we aren't going to be taken over by artificial intelligence and algorithms in doing so. But there is a piece by Rachmaninoff, a prelude in G sharp major, in which the right hand keeps playing this pattern, and this pattern appears over and over and over, and gets superposed or underposed by a beautiful, very, very long... And I feel there is a lot of pattern recognition that we scientists could take from this prelude. Let me play it for you, and let's see how many patterns you can recognize.

Nuno plays Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G Sharp Major

Ilham Kadri: So how many patterns, I stopped counting after four, five, whatever. How many? 

Nuno Maulide: There were quite a few. Yeah. A lot. 

Ilham Kadri: Because I, I kept looking at your right hand, you know, where it goes and the left, I'm not a musician, it's changing all the time. 

Nuno Maulide: And then the left, this beautiful melody that was changing all the time, it was almost like floating.

Emotion vs rationality? 

Ilham Kadri: It's beautiful. Thank you, Nuno. Thank you. So that's about, you know, the music's sheer emotional power, which is actually often seen as the opposite of the rational and the scientific. Is that true, Nuno? Is that in opposition, being emotional and rational? 

Nuno Maulide: So I would say there is a lot of emotionality in science as well. Yes, we have all seen many, many examples. I feel, after all, science is made by humans. And we are not robots, we are not machines. We, we do cultivate this, this sheer fountain of emotions, which we are. And nowhere does that appear to me more than in a piece by Debussy, Claire de Lune which is a pure, what the Americans would call a tearjerker, because it's just, it's a piece designed to make all of us cry. And to take us and transport us in a trip where you see a painting that is being painted with broad strokes. And the broad strokes are these, these notes that just fly and float, right? This just stays there. Even though I lifted my hands from the piano, the sound is still going and it's still changing. And the notes are going into your homes, into your hearts. And these are the broad strokes that he uses to paint a pink, a painting of. A dark night with a beautiful moon, which is probably as powerful as the lights we have here in the studio because it illuminates everything.

Nuno plays Debussey’s Clair de lune

Ilham Kadri: Nuno, I can't think of a more beautiful note to finish this brilliant and musical discussion. Although I don't want it to end, right? I can stay here and I'm going to fly and just get into one of your concerts. Thank you so much. No, no, you have, um, frankly, you are gifted. You have immense talent. You are not only a brilliant musician, but an accomplished scientist and the perfect example of the power of the AND. And thank you so much for this moving performance. I think it's going to inspire our 22, 000 employees around the world, their families, but also our podcasters to showcase again that the AND is the future. And it's OK to be a musician and a scientist and the bonds, the human bonds. Can be an organic chemistry, but can also come from beautiful music. Thank you for your insights, for sharing your talents with us. Andyeah, again, this home is shining today. I think the soul of our founder and his wife Adele are probably somewhere there saying you did a good job in bringing this talented musician in our house. Thank you, Nuno. 

Nuno Maulide: Thank you very much.