Alyssa Buffenstein
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Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (1503-04).
Photo: via The New York Times
Oklahoma Christian University student Amelia Hamrick has achieved online fame after transcribing and recording a short piece of music she found written on the derrière of a tortured soul crushed by an harp in Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights.
“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,” she explained in her Tumblr blog.
The butt music in question from Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights
Photo via: Wikimedia
Since posting the track online, Hamrick’s composition has gone viral, probably aided by the catchy title she gave it: The 500-Year-Old Butt Song from Hell.
“I feel like [it] is a pretty funny name, but it’s not the most academic,” Hamrick told the Oklahoman. “That’s literally what it is, but in retrospect, I probably should have chosen a little more dignified of a name,” she admitted.
Amelia Hamrick with the piano she used to play Bosch’s Butt song.
Photo: Brian Terry via the Oklahoman
But, far from being the only musical response to Bosch’s masterpiece—which is housed at Madrid’s Museo del Prado—another Tumblr user has recently composed a Gregorian choral arrangement of Hamrick’s piano piece.
Hamrick’s notation for Bosch’s Butt Song
Photo: Brian Terry via the Oklahoman
See Hamrick play The 500-Year-Old Butt Song from Hell here, or listen to an adapted version of the melody below:
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