Music

Of course the internet transcribed sheet music on a butt in a classic painting

by Jeremy Mersereau

Dutch master painter Hieronymus Bosch’s best-known work, The Garden of Earthly Delights, simultaneously depicts the preformed earth, the Garden of Eden, humanity’s temptations in a world of absolute freedom, and a vision of a cold and surreal hellscape after the fall of man. Pfft, whatever. This morning I made coffee FROM SCRATCH. Us millennials accomplish great things too you know!

The triptych’s right-hand panel is widely thought to be Bosch’s warning to us all to avoid a life of sinful pleasures. “I don’t wanna end up being eaten by a strange bird creature while a huge tree man looks on bashfully!” – something we’ve all thought at one point or another. Oklahoma Christian University student and devoted Tumblrite (her first fandom was Bionicle) Amelia Hamrick was no doubt thinking the same thing as she was poring over the image of Hell, then she noticed it. It had been staring us all in the face for nearly 600 years, but it took a Pathfinder nerd to unearth it: The Butt Tune.

Hamrick spotted sheet music written upon a sinner’s posterior, just beside the pink Nelson Muntz demon, and did what any self-respecting nerd would do: transcribed it to a piano using her knowledge of medieval notation.

Not content to be out-nerded, a fellow Tumblr denizen recorded and uploaded a full choral arrangement (let’s just uh, agree to ignore all the furry red flags if you click that link). Cool, reminds me of Enigma. Was Bosch transcribing the music of his favourite band, Enigma? My exhaustive research shows that, yes. That’s exactly right.