I will describe a functional programming approach to the design of outlines of seventeenth-century string instruments. The approach is based on the research described in François Denis’s book, Traité de Lutherie. The programming vernacular for Denis’s instructions, which we call functional geometry, is meant to reiterate the historically justified language and techniques of this approach to musical instrument design. The programming metaphor is entirely Euclidean, involving straightedge and compass constructions.
A language-based, functional approach to lutherie can abstract over common patterns in instrument design, where straightedge and compass constructions are like the underlying machine code. I also want to talk about using this tool in a kind of computational art history, understanding the evolution of instrument design, in particular the historical role of proportional design, and a plausible reconstruction of Stradivari’s “forma B” violoncello.
Harry Mairson is a professor of computer science at Brandeis University. He received a BA in mathematics from Yale (1978), and a PhD in computer science from Stanford (1984). Most of his research has been in programming language theory and data types, including the study of the complexity of type inference, optimal evaluation, and static analysis for functional languages, motivated by ideas from linear logic. He also has a longstanding interest in building musical instruments, worked as an apprentice to harpsichord maker Mark Stevenson in Cambridge (England) in the late 1970s, built a clavichord during graduate school, and is more recently an amateur violoncello maker. His interest in seventeenth-century methods for designing string instruments as described in the lovely book by François Denis, Traité de Lutherie, and his development of software to complement this design and analysis, is a natural merging of his professional training and his violon d’Ingres.