Numbers it is. All music when you come to think. Two multiplied by two divided by half is twice one. Vibrations: chords those are. One plus two plus six is seven. Do anything you like with figures juggling. Always find out this equal to that, symmetry under a cemetary wall.... Musemathematics. And you think you're listening to the ethereal. But suppose you said it like Martha, seven times nine minus x is thirty-five thousand. Fall quite flat. It's on account of the sounds it is."
-Leopold Bloom, thinking about music in Ulysses by James Joyce