welcome to garden of pleasures.
No angelic strings here.
These are reserved for first-class citizens who have earned passage to the highest heights by virtuous living.
Directly below, the strings create the most hellish cacophony, perfect for the accompaniment of the horns whose bells are stained with the arms of tortured souls.
How do we know what they sounded like?
A group of musicologists, craftsmen and scholars. Oxford University’s Beit Instrument CollectionI took on the challenge of actually assembling the musical instruments depicted in . Hieronymus BoschAn action-packed trilogy of —hell’s harpViolated Lute, terribly oversized hurdy gurdy…
…and they played it.
Let’s hope they stop being shy about sticking flutes up their butts. (Such an arrangement may produce sound, but no sound comes from the golden throat of the flute).
Bosch’s experiment adds 10 more instruments to the museum’s already impressive collection of more than 1,000 woodwind, percussion, and brass instruments. Many come from the studios of respected makers, some dating back to the Renaissance.
Unfortunately, the newly added sounds aren’t very good. “Terrible” and “painful” are among the adjectives Andrew Lamb, Bait Collection manager, uses to aurally describe the results of his team’s months of hard work.
Is it correct to think that Bosch also wanted it that way?
Brandon McWilliams, the man at the back Bosch’s highly enthusiastic and bombshell review thrash metal band slayers 1986 reign of blood albumI’m sure you’d say yes, and you would. Alden and Kari HackmanNorth American hurdy-gurdy makers note that Bosch’s pictorial desecration was not limited to their personal favorite instruments:
Bosch and his contemporaries considered music sinful and associated it with other sins of the flesh and spirit. A number of other instruments are also depicted, including a harp, drums, shawm, recorder, and a metal triangle played by a woman (possibly a nun) who appears to be imprisoned in the instrument’s key box. The hurdy-gurdy was also associated with beggars, who were often blind. The man turning the crank holds a begging bowl in his other hand. From the bowl hangs a metal seal on a ribbon called a “gaberlanzi”. This was a license granted by a nobleman to beg in a particular town on a particular day. Soldiers who were blinded or maimed while serving their lord were sometimes given gabelunzi as a reward.
As far as we know, no Gabellangie was given out in a bait collection ruse, and no sinner was ever cursed for eternity. Manager Lamb says expanding the scope of music education was reward enough and well worth the temporary insult to kind ears.
Note: An earlier version of this post appeared on the site in 2019.
Related content:
Hear the song written on the sinner’s butt in Hieronymus Bosch’s painting garden of pleasures
Meaning of Hieronymus Bosch garden of pleasures explained
Take a virtual tour of Hieronymus Bosch’s incredible masterpiece ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’
Hieronymus Bosch’s Devil Bird was spotted riding the New York City subway the other day…
Hieronymus Bosch figures: collect surreal characters from Bosch’s paintings and display them on your bookshelf
Ayun Halliday He is an author, illustrator, theater maker, and chief primatologist. east village inky gin.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
