Hieronymous Bosch was a European Renaissance painter who lived from 1450-1516. His most well known painting is a tryptich called The Garden of Earthly Delights. This painting is thought to have been created between 1490 and 1510. It's an absolute masterpiece of surrealism and artistic skill, but today I want to tell you about just one part, the butt music.
The left side of the painting is thought to represent the garden of eden, the middle is a smorgasboard of nude characters, surreal animals and structures and the right side is a hellish depiction. Within that depiction there is a man squashed under a lute and he has some music transcribed on his bum:
A closeup:
A musician and blogger transcribed the notes and did a small rendition, the post can be found here:
http://chaoscontrolled123.tumblr.com/post/76305632587/luke-and-i-were-looking-at-hieronymus-boschs
What followed was a number of musicians doing interpretations of the notes and some of them are absolutely delightful! The song has become known as Bosch's Butt Music and Ass Music From Hell to name a few. Here are some of my favorite interpretations!
This is one is lovely, played on lute and harp:
Here is a megamix with 9 versions:
If you're a musician and want the tabs here they are, if you do an interpretation you must let me know :)
For the art nerds who want to know more about the painting I've included a documentary:
There is something beautiful about hearing old music come to life like this! If you've never seen the painting there is a high res version on the wiki page that you can zoom into to see the details. It is such a stunning piece of art that I once spent hours scrolling around.
I hope you enjoyed the ass music from hell :)