
Knuth: Fantasia Apocalyptica - taeric
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/fant.html
======
athenot
> 2) I also spell some things out by using Morse code. For instance, the
> rhythm "dash dot dash" in measures 12, 13, 16, 17, etc. of Chapter 1 is
> Morse code for "invitation to transmit".

As a software engineer who is Catholic and appreciates puns, I find this to be
pure gold.

This is a very complex piece and I expect many renditions and adaptations will
arise out of it, both in the classical/traditional circles as well as avant-
garde jazz ones.

~~~
kej
If you haven't read them, you would probably also like his _3:16 Bible Texts
Illuminated_ and _Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About_.

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Fede_V
On top of being a genius, reading Knuth is such a pleasant experience. Without
having ever interacted with him, he comes across as such a wonderful soul.

~~~
Koshkin
Yes, that's one advantage of being a genius - reading books that seem
difficult to others becomes a pleasant experience.

~~~
taeric
Not how I took that. There are large parts of his books that are difficult to
read. Yes. However, they are a lot more approachable than you would think.
Most of them are oddly written, but his humor is pleasant and I have found
thinking of algorithms similar to how he puts them helps. A lot.

It has helped humble me though, to know that pretty much everything he
presents requires study. I have had few things from his book that I just got.
Most required trying several times before they clicked.

And, if you ever read some of his afterwards, there are plenty of places where
he concedes mistakes he made. Is really nice to see.

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zellyn
"And of course a musical work on the Apocalypse should also contain calypso."

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inimino
Prof. Knuth's willingness to take on such ambitious projects and his
persistence in completing so many of them is an inspiration.

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kogus
I would dearly love to see this lost work, if only because it was written by
Dr. Knuth:

 _I spent a lot of time in high school reading books on orchestration, and I
wrote a fairly good-sized work for symphonic band entitled Milton and the
Rhinocerous. (It was a spoof of Peter and the Wolf, using a story by Roger
Price that I didn 't know was protected by copyright. I was blithely ignorant
about intellectual property.) I proudly presented that piece to the band
director, and he proceeded to lose it. As far as I know, no trace of that
piece remains; and everybody, including me, is probably better off as a
result._

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pault
The book of Revelation fascinated me from childhood into my teenage years. As
an adult I have some negative opinions about it since it has inspired so much
terrible behavior over the years. It has a very complicated and controversial
history[1], and the preacher at my mother's church completely refused to talk
about it. I sometimes wonder what the world would be like if it hadn't been
included in the cannon (it almost didn't make the cut and still isn't accepted
by some churches).

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Revelation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Revelation)

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adia
Interesting (but not surprising, really) that the typeset score was produced
with Sibelius and not LilyPond or something similar.

~~~
inimino
Can you elaborate?

~~~
ksenzee
Not the OP, but LilyPond is a TeX-like music editor. Sibelius is a WYSIWYG
editor. One might expect the author of TeX to prefer a similar approach to
typesetting music. Like the OP, though, I don't find it surprising. Writing in
your native language is relatively easy. Writing music is a lot harder,
especially for an amateur (like me). Using the most intuitive software
available is probably a good idea.

~~~
ktRolster
LilyPond is a pain to write in by hand. When looking at the text, it's
difficult to see the cleffs side-by-side. I think most people who use LilyPond
use one of the GUI editors.

LilyPond text format is best seen as an open file-format in ascii, primarily
for machine consumption, not human.

~~~
organsnyder
That's not my experience. I did quite a bit of engraving using LilyPond as
part of my music publishing company (a catalog of around 100 organ, choral,
and/or instrumental works, many of them quite complex). I always entered the
notation by hand, using the Frescobaldi editor to give easier previewing and
various shortcuts.

I'm an organist myself, and entering music that way became extremely fluid—to
the point that I felt like I was "playing" the music as I typed. For complex
three-stave music, I got up to a pace of a couple of pages per hour.
Polyphonic music with well-written voice-leading (i.e. independent voices,
rather than big chunks of notes) was especially pleasant to engrave in this
way.

~~~
ktRolster
Cool. Do you have a sample of some music you did, so I can figure out how to
work with it easily? Thanks.

~~~
jacobolus
I’m not remotely proficient in music engraving, but I found it pretty straight
forward to type a few pages of music into Lilypond format a few years ago,
just using a regular plain text editor.

Comparable to writing (La)TeX for mathematics I’d say.

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qdot76367
Here's a great talk Knuth did at CCRMA @ Stanford last year, on writing pipe
organ compositions using Constraint Based techniques.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_1a6bHGQGo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_1a6bHGQGo)

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tlb
I heard a performance of a couple chapters last month. I'm not musically or
scripturally sophisticated enough to appreciate the verse-by-verse mapping to
Revelation, but the music on its own was enjoyable.

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qwertyuiop924
Not my thing. But it is Knuth. And the one thing that guarantees is that it
_will_ be interesting.

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JoeDaDude
Before I attempt it, has anyone scanned the scores to MIDI to hear what they
sound like?

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michaelmcmillan
Did not know Knuth was a Lutheran Christian.

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avodonosov
the sortest link to listen to it?

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leandrod
Mindblowing.

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internaut
This is cool. The organ is infrequently used because it is so huge but if you
want high drama it's the right tool for the job.

Interstellar on church organ is intense. Feel inspired here:

[https://youtu.be/zg5QMysuSYg](https://youtu.be/zg5QMysuSYg)

~~~
david-given
I love organ music; but you have to listen to it live. The low notes don't
come across properly on recorded media (also you don't feel your chest
resonate).

Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, one of the most famous pieces of organ
music ever, played on an organ built in 1730 (and, if I read the history
right, it was actually _specified_ by Bach):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnuq9PXbywA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnuq9PXbywA)

You can hear the recording simply outright fail on the low notes. The organ
has a 32-foot pipe, which produces 16Hz notes. The reocrding simply doesn't do
it justice; if you ever get the chance, listen to it live; it's an almost
transcendent experience.

There are, however, apparently two organs in the world with 64-foot pipes
(8Hz!) and several more which can synthesise an 8Hz subharmonic using smaller
pipes, but I haven't found a recording I trust of it yet.

~~~
internaut
I'm sure you're right, bach it's pretty damn good! Sometimes you can just
sense history through the music.

I probably wouldn't pick up on loss, I expect it is like enjoying real bean
coffee vs the granulated matter that passes as a substitute. It takes a while
for your taste buds to discern the difference and I expect it is the same for
our ears.

Having said that I also have been listening to experimental ambient music so I
know I enjoy the deeper vibrations you get at that level.

