Pinceladas matemáticas en "Major-General's Song".

The Pirates of Penzance   es una ópera cómica en dos actos con música de Arthur Sullivan y libreto de W.S. Gilbert, estrenada en 1879 en Nueva York. De ella extraemos la “Major- General’s Song”,   una canción llena de referencias culturales e históricas.

      

Comienza así:

I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;
I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’ news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.
I’m very good at integral and differential calculus;
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous:
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,

…/…

La letra completa en: letras.net 

Tom Lehrer, cantautor y matemático americano de Harvard, jubilado ya, con la música de esta canción - de A. Sullivan- creó Los elementos químicos:

   

 There’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium, 

And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium 
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium, 
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium, 
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium 
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium 
And gold, protactinium and indium and gallium
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.

There’s yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium 
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium 
And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium, 
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium and barium

.../...

Ha sido versionada e interpretada en multitud de ocasiones. Alegre y divertida. AMJ