Knuth: Fantasia Apocalyptica (2017)

https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/fant.html

by jdnier • 7 years ago

93 26 7 years ago

www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu

h2odragon• 7 years ago

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

Absolutely.

dang• 7 years ago

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13138349

aasasd5• 7 years ago

I keep meaning to get through the Bible just to gather the classical citation material and finally read the Book of Revelation. (But the brutally reader-unfriendly style in the early parts stops me so far. What's the deal with the identical gifts of the twelve kings repeated twelve times?)

Hunter Thompson considered the author of Revelation to be one of the greatest writers. The text is apparently full of references to contemporary non-biblical happenings, and that became one of the defining mythical works of the western culture!

umanwizard2• 7 years ago

There’s no very good reason to read the books of the Bible in order. The order (and even the selection of which books are canonical) is an artificial construct devised long after the individual books were written.

Amezarak2• 7 years ago

The books are arranged in roughly chronological order and constantly allude to and quote prior passages. I don’t think this approach makes a lot of sense.

Most of the Old Testament consists of Jewish history, beginning with creation. There are a few that could probably stand on their own: Job, Jonah, the Song of Solomon, Proverbs, and maybe Psalms. (You would miss a lot in Psalms doing this.)

The New Testament is full of allusions to the old and cannot be understood correctly without reading it first. It probably doesn’t matter the order you read the first four books, or even if you read all four - Matthew, Mark, and Luke are very similar in tome and they describe the same events, but you wouldn’t want to skip John.

Acts is simply what happens after the four gospels, and the remainder of the Bible consists of epistles from the apostles which refer to events in Acts and in the gospels, and it wraps up with Revelations.

I don’t really see how you could read it in any substantially different order and get as much out of it.

yalok2• 7 years ago

One of the ways to read in chronological order is to use a chronological reading plan - f.e. like these - https://www.bible.com/search/plans?q=chronological

aasasd5• 7 years ago

My aim of gathering about the same reading as classical authors likely did, excludes any order other than the most obvious one.

Moreover, the idea of reading New Testament without having read the Old one sounds rather ridiculous if you aim for anything more than assorted crumblings of the holy words. People at the time of Jesus were living under the law of the old books—it defined their thinking. How can you have an understanding any similar to the intended one if you circumvent this inherent order and go for walls before the foundation? It's like watching Spaceballs without having a glimpse of Star Wars.

dane-pgp2• 7 years ago

What's the deal with the identical gifts of the twelve kings repeated twelve times?

Could you mention which twelve kings you're referring to? Where does this twelvefold repetition occur?

The text is apparently full of references to contemporary non-biblical happenings

The letters to the seven churches at the start of the book do seem to be very pastoral and dealing with events that those churches were facing at the time, but the more "visionary" passages were at least intended "to show to [God's] servants the things that must soon take place." (Revelation chapter 1, verse 1).

aasasd5• 7 years ago

Could you mention which twelve kings you're referring to?

Well, I'm obviously not much of a Bible scholar. It might also be that the text differs between the Orthodox bible and English ones.

IIRC Moses put up a camp near Sinai, or maybe it was at one of the many other camps. Kings of the twelve Israelite clans, or whatever they're called in English, brought their gifts to Moses: cattle, gold and silver dinnerware and such. My edition of the Bible gave an elaborate listing of the gifts of the first king, running for a full page at least. And then repeated it eleven more times, with each king having brought the exact same inventory. I've read through all the lists just to see if there's a surprise somewhere—nope!

The letters to the seven churches at the start of the book

That's not all. The entire thing is considered to be an allusion to contemporary events, deliberately written in a more-or-less opaque style to ensure that the author's life doesn't end abruptly after dissemination. It would indeed show the things that would hopefully soon take place to those able to decipher the number of the beast—but afaik you didn't have to be a Judaist or a Christian to understand the message.

Apparently the genre of apocalyptic revelations was popular at the time, and this book was masqueraded as one of those.

ohiovr• 7 years ago

Revelation is a hard book to follow but it might help to listen to it. Recently I recited the book and posted it on youtube as a playlist (one video per chapter).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKwzy7idSrE&list=PLT0albfWY9...

anoncake• 7 years ago

What's the deal with the identical gifts of the twelve kings repeated twelve times?

Refactoring wasn't invented yet.

laretluval• 7 years ago

There’s a great recording by James Earl Jones.

https://youtu.be/51rYn4bDdaY

yalok2• 7 years ago

The very first time I tried to read the Bible (actually just the New Testament as I didn’t have the whole Bible and it was pre-internet era), I went straight to the book of Revelations (just because I like to read books from the end :) ), and it was pretty shocking, given that I didn’t have any religious knowledge or even history knowledge whatsoever (thanks to communists trying to suppress any information on those)...

The 2nd time I read it a few years later, it was after I actually believed in God and with the help of His Spirit was able to read the whole New Testament and understand it to much greater degree as compared to all of my previous attempts before I believed. And I understood much more of the Revelations than the first time.

That was 25 years ago. Later on, rereading it, it’s amazing to find new meanings and understanding almost every time I read it.

But, out of all of the books of the Bible, this book has the most of mysteries that haven’t been solved or haven’t happened yet... and no amount of commentaries that I read give a satisfying explanation sometimes... and yet the main message is clear ...

Shorel• 7 years ago

What's the deal with the identical gifts of the twelve kings repeated twelve times?

The number twelve is prevalent in the religions of Mesopotamia. As examples: the horoscope, the twelve houses of Israel, the twelve apostles. Probably all of them are different retellings of the same ancient tale.

neilv• 7 years ago

I can't hear of the book of Revelations without being reminded of Alvin Ailey's famous modern dance piece of the same name.

If you haven't been to a touring AAADT performance (IME, each one includes Revelations, among changing other pieces), it's worth it at least once, even if you don't go to performing arts shows, and you're in the nosebleed seats. The videos don't give even 1/10th the live experience, IMHO. (If you're a student, your school might offer discounted tickets.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelations_(Alvin_Ailey)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNqaixKbrjs

aasasd5• 7 years ago

Only after reading your comment I remembered that there's also an album by Vangelis' band Aphrodite's Child, bluntly named ‘666’. It's good at the apocalyptic atmosphere, though I dunno how faithful it is to the text.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xcAnMTHuNNk

legopelle• 7 years ago

I had the privilege to hear the piece at the premiere in Piteå, Sweden. Honestly I didn't know what to expect, but I've never heard music rendered from text so faithfully before.

ncmncm• 7 years ago

Knuth is constantly full of surprises, but this one surprises me more than the rest.

mastazi• 7 years ago

He's been an organist for many years and he has a rather large pipe organ installed in his house, he even travelled to Europe to visit some organ makers before setting on an American organ maker. If you search "Knuth organ" on Youtube, you can find various interviews where he talks about it. You can see the specs of the organ here: https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/organ.html

senozhatsky• 7 years ago

Slightly off topic. Can't help it, but the motif for pain (introduced @ 9:37) sounds to me like, I don't know, Windows (?) error/warning sound. Is it just me?

Knuth: Fantasia Apocalyptica (2017)

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