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Knuth: Fantasia Apocalyptica

www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu

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Re: Knuth: Fantasia Apocalyptica

#31

Post by saretired »

internaut wrote: post #8

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

There's plenty of 20th century organ music, a lot of it is religious (my father was an organist). It's hard to record pipe organs, particularly the low bass, and without excellent playback equipment the presence is lost. You might be interested in Messiaen's organ works or in the music of his predecessors Franck and Dupré.

Re: Knuth: Fantasia Apocalyptica

#32

Post by ktRolster »

ksenzee wrote: post #19
inimino wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate?

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.

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.

Re: Knuth: Fantasia Apocalyptica

#34

Post by organsnyder »

ktRolster wrote: post #32
ksenzee wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Knuth: Fantasia Apocalyptica

#35

Post by greglindahl »

esaym wrote: post #23
45h34jh53k4j wrote: post #5

Sir Isaac Newton wasted much of his life trying to inject religion into his science. Ultimately it was for nil, as the concept of God has no place in science. Cute, but trying to draw meaning in numbers derived from millennia aged books is this same madness.

In my early days of learning to program, I spent a lot of time writing console and web apps to better organize bible notes and linking verses together as I read through the bible. Then for extra "fun", I made a spam bot that would post my random notes and verses on various forums (and yes I know as my colleagues told me "that's unethical as hell"). But nonetheless, I was interested in it. I wrote most of the console…

The Yandex search engine got its start as a desktop program to search the bible... the founders figured that religious people were more likely to pay for software.

Re: Knuth: Fantasia Apocalyptica

#37

Post by ktRolster »

organsnyder wrote: post #34
ktRolster wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 f…

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

Re: Knuth: Fantasia Apocalyptica

#38

Post by 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

Re: Knuth: Fantasia Apocalyptica

#39

Post by internaut »

david-given wrote: post #29
internaut wrote: post #8

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

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 You can hear the recording…

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.

Re: Knuth: Fantasia Apocalyptica

#40

Post by internaut »

saretired wrote: post #31
internaut wrote: post #8

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

There's plenty of 20th century organ music, a lot of it is religious (my father was an organist). It's hard to record pipe organs, particularly the low bass, and without excellent playback equipment the presence is lost. You might be interested in Messiaen's organ works or in the music of his predecessors Franck and Dupré.

I'll check it out.
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