DaVinci's Hidden Music

[grayman]

Here's an article I found about music (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071110/ap_on_re_eu/da_vinci_code_11;_ylt=AheAAdoQa5eb20V.Qj8BJO3lWMcF ) discovered in a Da Vinci painting. I didn't notice if this was posted already.

[Michael C]

This looks like wishful pattern-seeking to me. The idea is that you draw 5 lines of a musical staff across the painting and the loaves of bread and the hands of the people represent musical notes. I don't know how Mr Pala decided where to put the five lines, but the fact is that you can put five lines on almost any image and produce a series of notes. And any composer who knows his craft can produce a piece of music from any random series of notes. Villa-Lobos once used the New York skyline in this way.

Add to this the fact that at the time at which Da Vinci painted the "Last Supper", a musical staff did not necessarily have 5 lines: it could just as well be 4, 6 or even more lines.

[grayman]

I thought of wishful pattern-seeking as well. I decided to post the link just to see what others thought.

[Pyrts]

Paraidolia at its finest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

Expect the woos to find more music in all kinds of art. I'm predicting Egyptian wall paintings and the Book of the Dead next along with the Mayan Calendar.

[HL7442]

I thought the painting had the opening notes to Kiss's "Rock and Roll All Nite".

[Bell]

I started a thread about this in conspiracy theories (yes, I know, but Da Vinci code and stuff). My comment there was:

"Oh dear oh dear... Who needs JPEG artifacts when you can 'connect the dots' in a real painting?"

What Michael C said, you can find (musical) patterns almost everywhere. It depends on what the 'researcher' WANTS to see.

[latent aaaack]

This is another stunning discovery that sheds light on yet another remarkable way to milk gullible people out of their money by selling a book about a fake code in Da Vinci's art work. After the Davinci Code book, movie, and a range of other related opportunistic products it was thought there was no stone left unturned in the search to exploit Da Vinci's art by manipulative marketing and cheesy plots, but then this author and a woo-friendly CNN and mainstream press boldly go even further.

[rsaavedra]

This reminds me of the "Bible code." The millisecond I finished reading the headline on Yahoo news about "Da Vinci's Hidden Music," the idea of made up/wishful pattern seeking immediately popped into my mind.

But in fact, even if there was some music encoded in some painter's painting, I think that wouldn't be a big deal. Way more important would be the discovery of previously unknown music composed by actual masterful musicians.

[Big Les]

Same poop, different month. The same concept has been tried by several people at the infamously "secret" Rosslyn Chapel over the last ten years. I got so disproportionately irate that I started a thread here and then a blog with a series of posts about the subject, finishing up with this one (http://bshistorian.wordpress.com/2007/09/02/rosslyn-chapels-musical-cubes-silenced/). You'll see a lot of parallels - wishful thinking rules the day.

Thanks grayman; more grist for my little mill.

[Michael C]

That's an excellent series of articles on the Rosslyn "music of the cubes", Big Les.

The most detailed article I have found on the supposed music hidden in Da Vinci's "Last Supper" is on Discovery News: "Leonardo's 'Last Supper' Hides True Da Vinci Code" (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/11/09/last-supper-da-vinci.html). This picture shows the "notes" (without the staff lines):

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/16612473713001dc7d.jpg

In the article that Grayman linked to, you can see the staff lines on a somewhat blurry image that seems to be a photo of a laptop screen:

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/166124737130035705.jpg

The blobs on the right half of the picture apparently form something like ancient cuneiform script when you join them up in a certain way.

I was wondering how Pala decided where to put the staff lines. Apparently he used a pentagram:

"I marked the pieces of bread on the table and the Apostle's hands as music notes. Then I drew a pentagram over the scene between the tablecloth and Jesus' face. I couldn't believe my ears when I played the music. It sounded really solemn, almost like a requiem," Pala said.

I'll let you decide for yourself if the music sounds almost like a requiem: you may listen to it here (http://www.buffalonews.com/webextras/story/203271.html?imw=Y). I can't work out an exact correspondence between the notes in the music clip and the notes on the images above. Pala does seem to be using a treble clef (very unusual in the 15th century), since the lowest note of the piece is E, repeated several times, which corresponds to all those loaves of bread on the bottom staff line.

Pala doesn't stop at music. Having found that some of the hands and loaves apparently form an ancient Hebrew phrase if you play "join the dots" with them, he went on:

"At this point I was totally into this puzzle," Pala said. "I placed the nine letters of the ancient Hebrew text one on top of the other, following an ascending path, which is the direction of the hands of the first six Apostles. The result was a strange image."
He noticed that on the table, to the right, Leonardo painted a piece of bread split in half.
"I thought of this as a hint to duplicate that image," Pala said. The resulting image -- nine letters stacked on top of each other and duplicated -- was the chalice.

:bearlaugh:

[Big Les]

Nice work Michael, and thanks for the kind words. I wrote something (http://bshistorian.wordpress.com/2007/11/11/lawks-a-lordy-its-more-da-vinci-cobblers/) up on this today, which I hope some people will find amongst the credulous reporting of this "discovery". I'm sure other bloggers are commenting sceptically (or at least cynically) on it too.

I hope you don't mind, but I added in the bits you found on Discovery News.

[Myriad]

So would this piece be called "The DaVinci Ode?"

Respectfully,
Myriad

[rsaavedra]

Show that guy this image (http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2004/07/) and let him kick off his wishful pattern seeking. You never know, he might eventually come up with some good sounding tunes. For the sake of creativity and the arts, let him go wild. There might be some creative potential there... :p:D

[Big Les]

Well, you joke, but as ever the woos are nigh on impossible to parody. The same guy that claimed he'd found music in the Rosslyn carvings is now also saying that there is music embedded not only in the surface of Saturn (so the stars can't be far off), as well as in T-Rex DNA.

I think the press might have been a little less eager to accord him the honour of his "discovery" if he'd made that known beforehand.

[dudalb]

Da VInci is turning over in his grave at the amount of nonsense being attributed to him.

[Alice Shortcake]

Da VInci is turning over in his grave at the amount of nonsense being attributed to him.

And at being referred to by his place of birth rather than his name. :mad:

[JoeTheJuggler]

I'd like to see someone do the same thing with other arbitrarily chosen points (say all the eyes). I'd also like to see someone do this to another suitable painting.

Since the rules are arbitrary, you should be able to come up with something that sounds like music.

Our local PBS station has a clever little filler where a composer is at his piano--stuck. He looks out the window to see birds sitting scattered about on 5 wires and tries to "play them". It's just the inspiration he needed.

[MINISTERofTRUTH]

http://www.outersecrets.com/real/image/forum/davinci3.gif http://www.outersecrets.com/real/image/forum/face2.gif

Wait for the complete download such that both pics become active.

On the right side, we have both versions of ' Madonna of the Rocks '
that have been adjusted to a matching scale and then laid one on
top of the other in an alternating manner.

On the left side, we have a Da Vinci giving the impression that the Devil
( or someone else ) is implying that Mary is HOT, or at least has a hot bod.
Check ' The Last Supper ' painting and you can't miss seeing what is shown here.

[Vic Vega]

On the left side, we have a Da Vinci giving the impression that the Devil ( or someone else ) is implying that Mary is HOT, or at least has a hot bod. Check ' The Last Supper ' painting and you can't miss seeing what is shown here.

Was this discovered by the same person who sold the Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich on eBay?

[MINISTERofTRUTH]

Was this discovered by the same person who sold the Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich on eBay?
http://www.outersecrets.com/real/image/felix.gif
How did I create these type of people.
Where did I go wrong.
Let me think.

[T-Diddy]

Uh, Minister of Truth, I hate to tell you this, but the "Devil on Mary" is a phenomenon called "paint degradation," where over several centuries, paint chips flake off. This is especially prominent in, say, Italian painters who experimented with new paints. :D

And why is it remarkable that there are two paintings with the same title from the same character sketch? You know, this guy probably had to pay models to sit there while he sketched them. Heaven forbid he use it again.

Nice try on left and right through, better luck next time...

[tracer]

Add to this the fact that at the time at which Da Vinci painted the "Last Supper", a musical staff did not necessarily have 5 lines: it could just as well be 4, 6 or even more lines.


DaVinci started painting The Last Supper in 1495. This would have been the early Renaissance period in Western Music. By that time, the 5-line staff was pretty much the standard.

Clef selection and rhythmic notation, however, were another matter.

[bruto]

I played it backwards. It said Paul is dead.

[porch]

I heard that John Cage composed a piece by superimposing staff lines over a photo of a mountain range and drawing in notes at the peaks. Of course, his whole thing was to introduce elements of randomness into his compositions, not to show musical intention within mountains.

[MINISTERofTRUTH]

Uh, Minister of Truth, I hate to tell you this, but the "Devil on Mary" is a phenomenon called "paint degradation," where over several centuries, paint chips flake off. This is especially prominent in, say, Italian painters who experimented with new paints. :D

And why is it remarkable that there are two paintings with the same title from the same character sketch? You know, this guy probably had to pay models to sit there while he sketched them. Heaven forbid he use it again.

Nice try on left and right through, better luck next time...

Of course it is "paint degradation". What you don't have the mental capacity to understand, is how this specific degradation came about, and who made it happen. Also, Da Vinci had no idea that his paintings would create this somewhat 3D 2 frame movie when adjusted to equal scale and alternately overlapped. So it is pretty impressive that the two painting were of a different scale, yet when adjusted to an equal scale everything lines up perfectly to create this somewhat 3D 2 frame movie. It's kind of funny that many people still think these codes and messages are made by and left by those here in the is world.

You got the left right error right though. It looked better with the Madonna of the Rocks on the left side, and so I switched it but forgot correct the text.
http://www.outersecrets.com/real/image/felix.gif
How did I create these type of people.
Where did I go wrong.
Let me think.