Use an approach similar to the one used by the authors of The Bible Code to find music scores within artbitrary texts.

The Old Testament is actually sung in temples, so a direct mapping could be made between written word and sound. But more comlex mappings between alphabets and musical notes can also be made.
-- theircompetitor, Jan 17 2009

A famous pitch > letter mapping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BACH_motif
B A C H [csea, Jan 17 2009]

BBC News: Hidden clue to composer's passion http://news.bbc.co....ainment/7968024.stm
Ravel may have hidden references to Misia Sert in his music. [Spacecoyote, Mar 28 2009]

Baked. The psalms were not only meant as poetry, they were also to be played on a special harp whose strings correspond to the letters in the Hebrew alphabet. The mapping is forgotten, however.

For instance, Psalm 4 starts with "For the Chief Musician; on stringed instruments. A Psalm by David."
-- Spacecoyote, Jan 17 2009


right, that was the example I gave too. But the task is to find Bethoven's 5th in a cook book.
-- theircompetitor, Jan 17 2009


Why?
-- Spacecoyote, Jan 17 2009


Literally Beethoven's fifth? Or just something with some resemblance to music?

One can theoretically make an encoding to derive anything from anything else. I could extract Mein Kampf from Harry Potter for instance.
-- Spacecoyote, Jan 17 2009


//find Bethoven's 5th in a cook book// I don't think that's where he left it.
-- pertinax, Jan 17 2009


//the task is to find Bethoven's 5th in a cook book.// Hmm... Seems more interesting to find the hidden recipes contained in Beethoven's 5th!
-- csea, Jan 17 2009


Spacecoyote,

// they were also to be played on a special harp whose strings correspond to the letters in the Hebrew alphabet.

Even today, we're naming strings with letters - but that doesn't mean that the lyrics of songs encode their tunes. What made you think that that's what was happening with the Psalm songs?

(-) Sorry, the idea is fun on the surface, but to my untrained ears, music you generate from math or DNA or written text or ..., far from revealing hidden anything, just sounds bad.
-- jutta, Jan 17 2009


An historical relevancy [link]. Any mathematical lexicographers out there care to determine how many English (or German) words can be formed from letters A-H?
-- csea, Jan 17 2009


$ grep -i '^[a-h]*$' /usr/share/dict/words | wc -l
269

Of those, the words I'd easily recognize as such if I met them on the street (leaving off -ed forms of verbs):
a Abba Abe accede ace ache ad Ada adage add age ah ahead
babe Bach bad badge bag Bagdad baggage bagged be beach beached beachhead bead bed bedded bee beech beef beefhead behead
cab cabbage cabbagehead cache cadge cage cede chaff Che chef
dab dad Dada daff dead deadhead deaf Deb debadge decade deed deface
each Ed Edda edge egad egg egghead eh
gab Gabe gaff gaffe gag gee ghee
ha had hag head headache hedge he

There is a German children's song about the evils of drinking too much coffee that spells out C-A-F-F-E-E as the corresponding notes are sung. But that and B-A-C-H are single words, and they already sound a bit forced.
-- jutta, Jan 17 2009


Well, I don't put any stock in it, [jutta], it's just something I read about. I should have put some weasel words in, I guess, but I thought this subject too silly to bother. Anyway, I've listened to the disharmonious chaos they called "music" in the 12th century, if those were the standards at that time, it stands to reason that the Hebrews might have found the music generated thusly acceptable. Many believe the "Chief Musician" references in the Psalms refer to a lost musical worship tradition, this is one of the theories held by some of them. There's a group who has attempted to recreate the music, they call it "Music From God" which I think is silly as if there is, in fact, music there, David made it, not God per se. Their decoding method (basically they tried random mappings until they found one that "sounded good") is also very questionable.
-- Spacecoyote, Jan 17 2009


'A dad had a bad headache' would make a tune somewhat apropos of the message...
-- csea, Jan 17 2009



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