TITLE: Computer platforms for combinatorial search problems/mathematical music theory?
QUESTION [5 upvotes]: I'm finding programming various combinatorial searches
(connected to mathematical music theory) in a general purpose computer 
language tedious, so  I'd like pointers to computer platforms/environment purpose-built to enable such searches.  If the answer has the form "Maple can
do that" or "Mathematica can do that," then I'd appreciate pointers specific
enough to get me started.  
Within reason I would trade ease of specification against
any optimization of the search algorithm, but I'd feel grateful for speed if I could have that too.
Here's an example of a typical question; I'm really
hoping for an environment where I can specify such a search almost as succinctly
as I now explain it (I use terminology from mathematical music theory 
but define everything in purely mathematical terms):
Write $T$ for the set of complex $12$th roots of unity.
Tetrachord means a subset of $T$ of cardinality $4$. Row means a permutation of T.
Fix two distinct rotation classes of tetrachords, $a$ and $b$.  By definition row $R\in G_{a,b}$  if applying $R$ to the 24 tetrachords
in $a \cup b$ yields 24 tetrachords pairwise distinct up to isometry.
Find $\bigcup_{a,b} G_{a,b}$.  
Thanks in advance for any help!!

REPLY [3 votes]: A possible solution could be Strasheela, a library of music-related stuff built upon the Mozart programming system which is an interactive environment for the Oz programming language, a multi-paradigm programming language that supports constraint programming. The website states many uses, from Fuxian counterpoint to harmonic analysis but also realtime generation of rhythmic patterns. And due to the integration of many output formats (Lilypond for typeset music, MIDI for ugly beeps, Csound for less ugly beeps, Fomus for other compositional tools, ...) it will be easy to actually use your results.
The problem you describe sounds like it's doable in Strasheela (based on my own tiny bit of experience in it). It will also be able to find all solutions if you ask it to do so, but it might take some time (or be untractable) depending on the problem and the size of the solution space.
The idea of the language is different from your combinatorial approach, but it has great support of music theory and finding stuff, so you can use the terms for music theory without translating everything to a more mathematically oriented lingo. You'll have to phrase your actual problem in another way though: less combinatorial and more artificial intelligence-ish.

REPLY [2 votes]: A student of mine wrote a progam alg which enumerates models of first-order theories (although it works best for equational theories). Specification is easy, but the program can't beat specialized enumeration techniques. If you can write down your problem without referring to actual complex numbers, it just might do it.