Hidden Music Claimed In Da Vinci Painting 220
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.'"
Why are slashdotters (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why are slashdotters (Score:5, Insightful)
But as Richard Dawkins likes to say, not so open your brains fall out. I'm wondering how long it takes for people to find secret "music" in other paintings and photographs... parodists, start your engines...
Re:Why are slashdotters (Score:1, Insightful)
Although maybe not a dupe... (Score:3, Insightful)
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/01/2047212 [slashdot.org]
I have two comments:
1) I guess people can interpret music in anything and get some recognition from it.
2) If there really isn't music intentionally hidden in these works I bet the artists wouldn't be too happy having people alleging that there is, and changing the interpretation of the piece. Honestly, if the artist had some reason to hide a message in a painting, perhaps because of the potential consequences of his speech, wouldn't he do it in a form where the message was intelligible later? Music seems a poor choice, and there really isn't any motive I can easily think of why you'd have to hide a musical score from view. After all, it's not like the RIAA was filing lawsuits back then
Re:Why are slashdotters (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, with the number of times that it was painted over, there's no way to definitively know whether he's even viewing what Da Vinci painted.
Old News In Roman Catholicism (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Who'll be the first to find XML in there too? (Score:2, Insightful)
The guy loved tricks, can you say Easter Egg? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Hiding is the wrong word (Score:3, Insightful)
If there really isn't music intentionally hidden in these works I bet the artists wouldn't be too happy having people alleging that there is, and changing the interpretation of the piece. Honestly, if the artist had some reason to hide a message in a painting, perhaps because of the potential consequences of his speech, wouldn't he do it in a form where the message was intelligible later? Music seems a poor choice, and there really isn't any motive I can easily think of why you'd have to hide a musical score from view.
While I agree that it's way to easy to claim hidden messages that were never there in the first place, it's wrong to say that, in case there is a message, the artist was trying - and deeded - to conceal it. People, especially those with bright minds like Leonardo, have been and still are doing this kind of thing for fun and "just because they can" (I know I have done similar things a few times myself, and I'm not a Da Vinci). On top of that, in Leonardo's days there really was a lot more to art than throwing a few buckets of paint against a wall. Weaving in multiple symbolisms that only the initiated would read was "basic painting skill number two" (the actual painting techniques being number one).
So the message is not hidden as in "concealed because it needed to be", but hidden as in "non-obvious and thus likely forgotten/lost until rediscovered".
Re:Who'll be the first to find XML in there too? (Score:5, Insightful)
[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 [google.com] I found this:
http://www.newser.com/story/11396.html [newser.com]
Which apparently can be proven mathematically [google.com].
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 [google.com].
Heres an interesting quote:
http://www.hypatiamaze.org/leonardo/leo_vinci.html [hypatiamaze.org]
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 [wikipedia.org] 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.
Re:Not convincing (Score:3, Insightful)
Why golden ratio pleases (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Who'll be the first to find XML in there too? (Score:3, Insightful)
We (my friends and I, at least) gradually abandoned our schemes when we learned that there were already established symbols already used, or that our schemes were efficient but not necessarily good at communicating with others, because one has to explain the efficiencies in terms of the established schematas, and it's often just easier to fall back on the usual notation.
Perhaps Leonardo simply stuck with his notations because they really WERE better, or because there weren't enough people around to take advantage of other, established notational forms (or, indeed, what became established wasn't so "standard" then and there).
Natural beauty of music (Score:2, Insightful)