While we were in Hamburg last month, I heard the story of how one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sons, C.P.E. Bach, was actually more famous during his lifetime than his father had been in his own lifetime. Interesting. Although I like classical music and took piano lessons for 10 years, I only remembered C.P.E. Bach (hereafter CPE) from a piece he wrote that most piano students learn at some point: Solfeggietto. Both Chris and I learned to play it on the piano when we were kids. It’s still popular today – you can find many unusual takes on it, too, such as this rock-and-roll guitar version. Perhaps the popularity of the rest of CPE’s works got eclipsed by his father’s eventual posthumous popularity.
Anyway, I mentioned this all to Chris, which let him to start reading more about CPE in general. Chris soon discovered the CPE had written a system to write 6 measures of counterpoint from a table of notes, following particular instructions. For each series of 12 digits, you get a different set of 6 measures (well, except the last measure of the bass is always the same).
In other words, CPE had written an algorithm, and algorithms are something Chris knows a little something about from a computer standpoint. 😉 So, Chris couldn’t resist the temptation to implement CPE’s algorithm as a computer program to make little musical selections.
But Chris didn’t stop there with just the numbers from CPE’s method, though. Chris then added a simple way to convert text to numbers to feed to CPE’s algorithm, which then allows Chris to create music from text. So clever!
So, Chris (aka CC) gave me a piece of music he made with his new program to share here on the blog today. Fittingly for the season, the 30-second song is called Merry Christmas. I offer it today as a holiday greeting from all of us here at 22tue: special guests Chris and CPE, and me. Below you’ll find a copy of the sheet music, and then 4 more images below that linking to 4 different versions of the song.
- Merry Christmas
music by
C.P.E. Bach 1757
Chris Culy 2013
Click an image to below to hear the song “performed” (by the computer) in specially arranged and electronically orchestrated variations prepared by Chris. Each piece should start playing automatically in a new window after you click on an image:
- Merry Christmas #1
(flute and violacello)
Merry Christmas #2 (soprano and bass)
Merry Christmas #3
(brass and pipe organ)
Merry Christmas #4 (vibraphone)
Happy Holidays!
*****
During the holidays, there will be a hiatus here on Two to Tübingen. Have a wonderful Christmas and a Guten Rutsch!, literally a “happy slide”, which is the German greeting for “Happy New Year”.
Regular blog posts will resume January 2, 2014.
What showstoppers these are! And let’s hazard a guess as to who created the sound file interfaces for this page and produced the sheet music.
It would be *you*, would it?
You both are so talented, and with CPE on your team now, you keep very talented company. Let’s just hope your advanced artistic wizardry will not put CPE out of a job.
Both of you have talents that know no bounds. Chris has created music from so many sources. Now Bach, and with your abilities we can hear it on our computers.
Thanks for all the lovely comments!
And yes, you’re right, Chris created the sound files with the program he wrote; the program also generated the sheet music. I then put it all together with a little fancy titling and background in my video-maker program. A great team effort. 🙂