story 004 · art · hieronymus bosch, the garden of earthly delights
there’s a song painted on this man’s backside, in hell.
the short, written out
this is sheet music. painted on a man’s backside… in hell.
it’s from bosch’s garden of earthly delights: a hell where instruments torture the damned, and a choir sings from this man’s behind.
in 2014, a student, amelia hamrick, transcribed it, and read the second line as c.
it went viral as the butt song from hell.
but nobody knows how it goes. there’s no clef. move the c, and you get a different tune.
notes are piled on top of each other. one staff has only three lines. and there are no words to sing.
since then, it’s been sung by choirs and played as heavy metal. every version is a guess.
the print that goes with it
swan porter
man carrying giant swan, absurdist editorial illustration, mustard and plum
no. 394 · 8″×10″ or 16″×20″ · from $20.00 · see the print
sources
- museo del prado, the garden of earthly delights (p002823)
- wikipedia, the garden of earthly delights
- slate (2014)
- medievalists.net (2014)
- ian pittaway, “jheronimus bosch and the music of hell”, early music muse
pictures
- the painting, from the prado’s gigapixel photograph (public domain, wikimedia commons)
every sentence of the short was checked against its sources before it went out.
