Don Knuth - Constraint Based Composition
Why Hacker News recommends it
Shared as a great talk showing Knuth's musical side and how he applies constraint techniques to composition.
What it is
Donald Knuth explains at Stanford's CCRMA the constraint-based methods he is using to compose a major work for pipe organ.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2016 to 2020.
What Hacker News said
Recommends qdot76367 · 2016-12 · on “Knuth: Fantasia Apocalyptica”
Here's a great talk Knuth did at CCRMA @ Stanford last year, on writing pipe organ compositions using Constraint Based techniques. [this video]
Cites krmboya · 2016-01 · on “Knuth: Computer Programming as an Art (1974)”
> I agree, but I'll go further than you - I don't think this essay is confusing at all. It's simply nonsense - the kind of thing someone clever writes when they're discussing a subject completely outside their area of competence. I'm not sure what you're implying here, but Knuth does know what art is, as he almost majored in Music. See this for some recent work: [this video]
Cites svat · 2020-12 · on “Interview Transcript – Donald Knuth [pdf]”
Ha! On that composition: I have no ear for Western classical music, and familiarity with neither the organ as a musical instrument nor the Bible's Book of Revelation, but even so, I can guess this project is… unique. He calls it ( [LINK] ) a "somewhat literal translation" of the book into music. So for example he goes over each verse of the book, and (almost) each time it mentions "angel" he plays an 8-note arpeggio, every time it mentions "blood" he has "coagulated" (clustered) notes, and so on, setting up "dictionary" of 100+ motifs ( [LINK] ). He explains it in these videos ( [LINK] , [LINK] , [this video] ). Looking through his list of musical allusions ( [LINK] ) I see things like Bruce Spri