The Musarithmetic Ark, composing machine atrributed to Athanasius Kircher. Arca Musurgica/ Athanasius Kircher (1650)
The “Arca Musurgica”, designed in 1650 is a unique device with which a musician or a non-musician can compose music in both contrapuntal and homophonic settings using prearranged musical fragments inscribed on inserts and arranged in columns inside the box. Each type of insert corresponds to a particular metrical unit and on each section there were examples of counterpoint on one side and more simple note settings on the other. There are a few of these devices still in existence.
The Arca Musurgica was described in a publication Musurgia Universalis by Jesuit Father Athanasius Kircher, published in two volumes in Rome in 1650. The book is one of the seminal works of musicology and was hugely influential in the development of Western music – in particular on J.S.Bach (1685-1750) and Beethoven (1770-1827).
(via mythologyofblue)
