It has been speculated that Pepy's music teacher, John Birchensha was influenced by Kircher's combinatorial techniques, as his own "Rules of Composition" bear some similarities.
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The Arca was followed by, and closely related to another Kircher invention, the Organum Mathematicum, described by Kircher's pupil, Gaspar Schott.
This was at a time when other music theorists were codifying the rules of counterpoint, and writing about other rule-based and combinatorial systems to aid in the composition of music, such as the Arca Musarithmica of Athanasius Kircher.