Monday, November 8, 2010

Earthly delights (not)


Musicologists and instrument-makers at Oxford University set out to replicate the instruments pictured in Hieronymus Bosch's early 16th-century triptych "The Garden of Earthly Delights," only to find that most were "either impossible to make or painful to hear," Sam Leith reports in The Guardian (UK):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/nov/07/sam-leith-shocking-news-oxford

The Bosch is in the online gallery of the Prado museum of Madrid; most of the musical action, you'll notice, is in the hell panel on the right:

http://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/galeria-on-line/galeria-on-line/zoom/2/obra/el-jardin-de-las-delicias-o-la-pintura-del-madrono/oimg/0/