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Hidden Music Claimed In Da Vinci Painting
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.'"
I'm sure if you look hard enough, you can find anything you want in that painting. Anyways, RMS wants this story to be called HIDDEN MUSIC CLAIMED IN GNU/LAST SUPPER.
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.
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.
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Da Vinci accidentally misplaced his car keys in the painting too, but died before he could find it.
True story.
The RIAA has launched a lawsuit against the Santa Maria delle Grazie for copyright infringement...
If you go around determined to see the virgin Mary's face, you'll start seeing something kind of like it in every tree bark, every mildew, every piece of burned toast, every birthmark.
If you're determined to find hidden messages and keep trying different numerical values, you can pull spooky phrases out of the bible... or indeed the script for Animal House.
People have long been "composing" music from random number generators and fractals. If a random number generator can be forced in to a musical composition, by definition, any series of values can be.
I personally enjoy the following algorhythm: Break the image up in to inch squares. For any given inch if the dominant color is red, note the word "this", if it's green, note the word "is", and if it's blue, note the word "stupid". Amazingly, Da Vinci left a message encoded that appears to describe his views on musical analysis of his work.
We know that modern creators often include Easter Eggs in their products, everything from hidden bits of programming to images etched into the silicone hardware. Why do so many of slashdot readers find it impossible to accept that Leonardo might have done the same in his work?
We know he had the skill for it, we know he did it in other works, we know he loved tricks.
Yes, human beings have got a talent for seeing patterns where there aren't any, and slashdot readers got a talent for being a bunch of smartasses who think they know better.
Personally I would first want to see a picture of the painting, the overlayed musical score (how lenient do you have to be to see the scores, is it ALWAYS the center of the hand or is the note sometimes put at the fingernails and othertimes at the wrist?) and the music itself.
I am slightly suspicious because it seems all the be explained in a book. MONEY GRABBER! If it was science it would be a in a peer reviewed paper, not in a commercial book. Then their is the claim that this shows Leonardo was a religious person. Eh why? I don't see the connection between hiding a piece of music in a painting and the painters world vision.
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You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
[sarcasm]xml can be semantic, that's like asking if there's "objects" in the painting [/sarcasm]. Personally, I would let the artist's peers judge him, this is after all a field of professionals and if the music is a good it may simply prove that there is a rhythm to the painting.
after searching google I found this:
"There's always a risk of seeing something that is not there," Pala admits, "but it's certain that the spaces are divided harmonically."http://www.newser.com/story/11396.html
Which apparently can be proven mathematically.
My theory: we can say that Leonardo Da Vinci was smart like Einstein with lots of wide ranging problems rather than a few concentrated ones, and his work will have both breadth AND depth by any typical genius' standards. We're talking people like Einstein, Beethoven, Shakespeare and few others. Now Da Vinci wasn't like any of them, he was a "typical" genius in several fields of study and is known "for" using math in his work http://www.google.com/search?&q=leonardo+da+vinci+math.
Heres an interesting quote:
Leonardo invented some of his own mathematical symbols and terms. Many scientists of his time did this because number notation was not standardized until after the invention of the printing press. This made it difficult for scientists and mathematicians to communicate their ideas to each other. The symbols used today for the numbers one through ten come down to us from ancient India by way of Greece, Rome, and the Moors in medieval Spain.http://www.hypatiamaze.org/leonardo/leo_vinci.html
Actually, if he was fond of creating his own symbolism you might find something quite "like" xml in his work somewhere... far smarter than you or I. I wrote a phonetic substitution cipher in fourth grade. It was unique in that you could "speak" encrypted English by most laws of the English language. "Peds oue" means "fuck you" that's all I remember, anyways I'm not far above average intelligence. Da Vinci and the others I mentioned are generally considered to be OFF the charts.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
A 40-seconds long musical score is a bit short for a "serious" piece of music. Perhaps it was an advertising jingle instead. I'm guessing the lyrics to go with the music were "Giovanni's pizza are tasty. The extra-large size is so big it's the last supper you will ever need to buy. Tell them Da Vinci sent you to qualify for the 'buy one, get one free' offer."
Mormons don't use ASCII. Or Pi for that matter. Mormons got Unicode on the continent before it was invented - they found it on buried golden plates, and they gave them back.
Poor Da Vinci. With modern technology, he could have hidden a whole symphony in a picture, not just a dozen simple tunes.
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Pala, a 45-year-old musician who lives near the southern Italian city of Lecce, began studying Leonardo's painting in 2003, after hearing...all the media hype surrounding that damned Da Vinci Code book. Eureka! I have found (a paycheck!)
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.
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.'