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Hidden Music Claimed In Da Vinci Painting

Posted by kdawson on from the tinfoil-palletes dept.

snib sends us to CNN for coverage of an Italian musician and computer technician who claims to have uncovered a hidden musical score in Leonardo Da Vinci's "Last Supper." Giovanni Maria Pala published this and other findings about the 'Last Supper' painting in his book The Hidden Music, released in Italy Friday. "[This raises] the possibility that the Renaissance genius might have left behind a somber composition to accompany the scene depicted in the 15th-century wall painting. 'It sounds like a requiem,' Giovanni Maria Pala said. 'It's like a soundtrack that emphasizes the passion of Jesus.'"

12 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. In other news...minuet found in hamburglar's lunch by mveloso · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This has to be one of the most creative promotional stunts ever. It's difficult enough to get anyone to listen to new music, but tying your piece to the last supper is truly a work of genius.

  2. Re:Why are slashdotters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I'm not actually entirely sure that it was Dawkins who originally used the quote. Certainly I'm not the same as the AC who attributed the quote to him above, and I'm posting AC because I chose not to sign in, and I'll stand by that.

    The quote, however it was originally made, applies to everything. It is the general mindset of a skeptic, intended to make you question outlandish claims... you should be open to new ideas, but question them all the same.

  3. Sim Earth by Dwedit · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I remember that Sim Earth had the ability to play your planet's current statistics as a song, more like a series of notes based on the content of the Y axis. I bet it the hidden song in the painting would be just as nonsensical and unmusical as playing a scatter plot as if it were music.

  4. Re:Why are slashdotters by mrbluze · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So quick to dismiss this? I understand that most of you probably have no particular religious beliefs, or none at all, but what's to say that DaVinci wasn't the kind of man to try to disguise something inside one of his paintings? I still like to think it takes a truly open mind to discover the places technology can truly take us. Da Vinci may not have been religious himself, but he was no fool. He was known to hide riddles in his paintings and painted with his audience in mind - in this case monks. Why wouldn't he have placed something a bit more subtle than just an obviously female looking John and fairly obvious perspective lines and other features which stand out at a glance? The claimed discovery contained more than music - Giovanni Maria Pala also found some ancient Hebrew text.
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  5. This is ridiculous... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...and makes absolutely no sense. You can't just find notes and say you have a piece of music, because music is more than notes. Assuming this is anything like written music as we know it, which it looks like from the picture, he's missing an awful lot of information. What key is it? What's the time signature? There's no reference point anywhere on there from which to play, and that doesn't even touch on note durations or other playing instructions. "The tempo was almost painfully slow" - how the hell did he figure out how fast he's supposed to play it?

    I know people are kind of enamored with the idea of Da Vinci hiding a bunch of stuff in his works, but come on. At best this guy is completely deluded and is grasping at straws to piece together something he actually thinks is encoded in the painting, kind of like those nuts who rearrange letters in Bible passages to make predictions. At worst he's making it all up and wants to siphon off some attention from the Da Vinci Code.

    1. Re:This is ridiculous... by philicorda · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In the 15th century, key signatures had not been invented yet.
      Accidentals were sometimes written, sometimes not.
      So, without explicit accidentals, to tell what the notes were meant to be they either knew the likely mode, or just guessed them, which is known as 'musica ficta'.
      http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musica_ficta

      The good thing about modes is that any arrangement of notes from the mode will sound pretty much like music.

      In this case, of finding modal music in the 'last supper', it would be hard to make it anything but musical, especially if you finagle the accidentals, timing and direction it so you have more chances to make it work.

      However, in defense of this research, there were a lot of complicated harmonic rules that sacred music would be expected to adhere to, and by following these rules it may be possible to get more informed guesses.

  6. FFT by Wilson_6500 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I remember a Matlab demo we did in one of my ECE courses. We took the fourier transform of an image of Batman--I think it was an FFT--and after some other processing played it as a wav file. Pretty awesome song, actually.

    Although, to be fair, the image was made for the demo. Still, it was a fair likeness of Batman considering.

  7. Re:Sad story by Incadenza · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Da Vinci accidentally misplaced his car keys in the painting too, but died before he could find it.
    The Great Dutch Master forger Han van Meegeren once hid a tiny bicycle in one of his forgeries. This was only discovered after he confessed to be a forger and pointed it out on the painting.
  8. Re:Why are slashdotters by Bastard+of+Subhumani · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have an idea in my head, whenever I see birds on telegraph wires (it's on the Lotus Notes splash screen), that some composer saw the notes he wanted from the pattern they made, but I cannot find a reference for it. Google, of course, just brings up loads of Leonard Cohen hits. Anyone know the piece in question or am I just a crackpot?

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    Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
  9. Re: Found in Pi by TaoPhoenix · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Vote , aka 2215205 occurs at position 29,167,128.
    Obama, aka string 1521131 occurs at position 10,015,199.

    Romney, aka 18151314525, is not anywhere in the early parts of Pi.

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  10. Wrong key! by LineGrunt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I ran this by my wife who is a professional musician with perfect pitch and a degree in music.

    She says that the recording is in E-flat minor, but that organs at the time would have been in a different tuning standard, roughly one-half step different than the current standard.

    E-flat minor is a very rare key for that time-period (like it wasn't used until Bach) but if you move the snippet a half step, it would have been E minor, a very common key during that period.

    Furthermore, there are intervals in the snippet that weren't in common use in that time period. I couldn't keep my wife's interest long enough to determine if those intervals made more sense if the entire thing was 1/2 a step down.

    Anyhow, my wife's summary: "very pretty, but probably not from DaVinci's time."

    LineGrunt

    PS I may have the exact note names and directions wrong as I'm _not_ a professional musician with perfect pitch... Musicians have their own undecypherable 'geek-speak.'

  11. anachronisms in the story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I believe to have read that the five line notation system wasn't widely used until 16th century. Why would Leonardo Da Vinci use a system of notation that didn't exist?