In 990423 MMDigest Will Dahlgren wrote:

> Early orchestras were seated differently than today. I think the main
> difference was that one or more of the violin sections was seated to
> the audience's right. An experiment was done on this program where an
> orchestra piece fragment (that would have been composed for the
> earlier seating) was played. It was played with both seating
> arrangements. Most of the audience stated that the main melody line
> was different. In other words, the "tune" changed (to their
> perceptions) depending on the placement of the orchestra groups!
>
> So, suppose we record the two different performances and then try our
> WAV analysis.

When orchestras were fairly small, the first and second violins were
seated at opposite sides.  This allows some nice echo and answering
effects.  When orchestras got big (Wagner, R. Strauss) it began to be
difficult to keep the violins all in time when they were playing in
unison and were so far apart, so they were merged into a solid block.

The best example is the last movement of Beethoven's seventh symphony.
This was written for an orchestra with the violins split, and there are
many passages where the first violins play a phrase and the seconds then
answer.  In a recording such as Klemperer's where the orchestra is ar-
ranged in the old way, you can hear this clearly.  In recordings with
both on the same side the whole point of these passages is lost.

Sir Adrian Boult actually wrote to the "Gramophone" magazine to ask
record buyers which layout they would prefer him to use.

As for MIDI conversion, as far as I know no software has managed any-
thing more complex than one instrument playing simple chords.  But the
guys at the MIT Media Lab are working on this, as part of the MPEG-4
format for sending multimedia through the web.  Take a look at

    http://sound.media.mit.edu/~eds/

and follow through to "structured audio".  This is the same idea as
music rolls -- you don't store the actual sound waves as on a sound
recording, but the instructions for creating the sound.

Regards

Don Cox
doncox@enterprise.net