I’d like to know more about their methodology. If they really got at least three vocal lines and two instrumental lines off these carvings, and got them by testing frequencies on a medium to reverse engineer their way into the patterns, and there was a high correlation of the frequencies to the patterns, and these harmonies were produced, then I think it’s fascinating, and not so far beyond the ken of engineers who could design and build churches like this in the first place.
Maybe it’s not so great, but who knows who they got to write the music... it may be like the dancing bear, not so much whether he dances well or badly but that he dances at all.
I could also do without all the speculation behind the motives etc. Scientists oftenseem to do this - give you some facts and then attempt to inject a lot of sheer speculation and then try to pass it off as if written in stone. Maybe they just did it because they thought it was cool, as do we.
But I just don't see how it could work the other way around -- how you could get all that information from a (relatively) simple pattern on a chapel wall.
I think it's like the folks who find all sorts of prophecies in numerical analysis of Bible verses. If you know where you want to go, you start fudging things to get there (what they called the "Finagle Factor" when my husband was at Ga. Tech - "the number which, added to, subtracted from, multiplies by or divided into, the answer you got, gives the correct one.")
Oh - I forgot to mention - the quote about the bear was actually dear Dr. Johnson — ‘Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprized to find it done at all.’