500 years ago? If I remember correctly, King Henry VIII was writing the song we call "Greensleeves" 500 years ago, and Martin Luther was writing "A Mighty Fortress is Our God". I am not aware of anyone thinking that music was "bad" at that time. Certainly not so "bad" that it had to be hidden in a code.
Color me skeptical.
Exactly why would a Christian Church imply this? Didn't Paul say if Christ didn't rise then we are all (Christians) most pitiable?
1 Corinthians
15:1Now I make known unto you brethren, the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye received, wherein also ye stand,
15:2by which also ye are saved, if ye hold fast the word which I preached unto you, except ye believed in vain.
15:3For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
15:4and that he was buried; and that he hath been raised on the third day according to the scriptures;
15:5and that he appeared to Cephas; then to the twelve;
15:6then he appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now, but some are fallen asleep;
15:7then he appeared to James; then to all the apostles;
15:8and last of all, as to the child untimely born, he appeared to me also.
15:9For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
15:10But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not found vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.
15:11Whether then it be I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed.
15:12Now if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
15:13But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither hath Christ been raised:
15:14and if Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain.
15:15Yea, we are found false witnesses of God; because we witnessed of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead are not raised.
15:16For if the dead are not raised, neither hath Christ been raised:
15:17and if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. 15:18Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
15:19If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most pitiable.
Wow, this is very cool! Just by itself, the discovery or cracking of the code, and then for those of us who play musical instruments, doubly so. And the best part? (Ok, not the best part...) It bears repeating:
unlike The Da Vinci Code, it is absolutely factual
;-)
“...unlike The Da Vinci Code, it is absolutely factual.”
As DVC is a novel, this should not be a revelation.
It sounds almost like hes de-composing.
"We're Knights of the Round Table
We dance when e'er we're able
We do routines and chorus scenes
And footwork im-pec-cable
We dine well here in Camelot
We eat ham and jam and spam-a-lot..."
Rosslyn Chapel was designed in 1446 by the hereditary Prince of Orkney. He apparently drafted the decorations himself, according to the chapel website, but the work was not completed and there is not clear indication that it was performed according to his plan.
Moreover, the chapel fell into disrepair and the "carvings in the Lady Chapel" were restored in 1861. We all know what Victorian "restoration" could be like . . .
There are a limited number of notes in a scale -- there are 8 whole notes in an octave, and lots of decorative patterns are based on fours and multiples of four -- it would be far too easy to find coincidences and patterns that you could translate into something like a tune, when you are LOOKING for one. And a codebreaker should know that you can't detect a code when you only have eight letters to work with . . .
Finally, I have a large thick book of early Scottish music, and it doesn't sound like this -- it sounds a lot better. Guillaume Dufay, the Burgundian master generally considered the greatest composer of the 15th century, was getting started with his multiple voice masses and antiphons around this time -- his music is gorgeous and nothing like this. While dressed up with decent performers on contemporary instruments and (sort of) competent vocalists singing words from somewhere else, this alleged tune is still lousy. It starts no place in particular, wanders around, and arrives nowhere.
Dufay, by the way, wrote a motet in which the proportions of the phrases exactly matched the proportions of Solomon's Temple.
One other point -- instrumental accompaniment that didn't simply track the voice parts was still a couple of hundred years away.
fwiw, I just got through with a course on the history of Western church music, and this piece just doesn't SOUND right.
Just listened to it at the link..
I think they hid it ‘cause the song sucks.
placemark
Middle Ages (?) music ping. Followed the link and listened. Sounds about right for the era, but I have insufficient credulity for the totality of the story.
My sister came up with a way to produce musical notes from number strings. “Pi” sounds wierd, but listenable.
Anyway...thought you might be interested.
Musical ping.
A bunch of squares with slightly different sizes, arranged differently, you discover what you think is a pattern, create a code, some how relate it to music...
I probably would have come up with “Running with the Devil”, by Van Halen.
Nawww, the REAL music is “Freebird”.
“An ex-RAF codebreaker and his composer son say they have deciphered a musical score hidden for nearly 600 years in the elaborate carvings on the walls of Rosslyn Chapel.”
That’s a coincidence!! I just deciphered a hidden code written in the sidewalk patterns of New York City!!
I think the music is beautiful. Very stately.
A couple of years ago I read an article about a Grecian vessel, or urn, that was discovered that the musicologists claimed was carved with a musical score, or notation. They were going to be working on it to try to determine the tune that it represented. That set me to thinking about how old our music really is.
Our oldest writings mention music — the Bible, Torah, and Greek mythology. We have no reason to doubt that early people sang just as we do. But do we have any record of what those tunes really were?
Every time we sing a hymn at church I check the dates of the author. Seldom do I ever find anything older 1800. A few hymns date from the 1700s, with fewer still from the 1600s — mostly Christmas carols.
What did the earliest Christians sing? What did their predecessors, the Jews, sing? What did the Romans sing? Persians? Aztecs? Mayans?
I suppose we’ll never know.
GGG ping
Anyone know where the Motet can be heard sans video? It breaks up on my old box.