Hieronymus Bosch is one of my all-time favorite artists. I feature his painting ‘Death and the Miser‘ in a Memento Mori Monday post, here.
One of Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings is a triglyph, titled The Garden of Earthly Delights. He painted it around the year 1490. On the right-hand panel – which depicts hell – you can see the body of a sinner lying prostrate on the floor, naked, with sheet music painted across on their butt.
It seems that in all these hundreds of years, no one thought to actually see if this music could be played. Until Amelia…
…a music student named Amelia at Oklahoma Christian University decided to play the score affixed to the damned body in question…
“I decided to transcribe it into modern notation, assuming the second line of the staff is C, as is common for chants of this era…”
Listen to Hieronymus Bosch’s 500-Year-Old Butt Song From Hell
You can hear it today in a variety of styles in what has come to be known as, the butt song from hell.? ?
Here is a version of the tune: