Hieronymus Bosch, detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights tryptich , circa 1503-1504, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Amelia, an undergraduate studying music and informations systems at Oklahoma Christian U., a few days back, served up an interesting little bit piece of musicology.

Luke and I were looking at Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights and discovered, much to our amusement, music written upon the posterior of one of the many tortured denizens of the rightmost panel of the painting which is intended to represent Hell. 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.

so yes this is LITERALLY the 600-years-old butt song from hell

EDIT: I still can’t believe this took off like it did this is crazy??? Just wanted to let people know that there are indeed errors in the transcription and this is indeed not a very good recording (I threw this together in like 30 minutes at 1 in the morning,) but I’m working with the music department at my college to get the transcription more accurate!

(If Soundcloud embed does not appear, use link)

Hat tips to io9 and Ratak Monodosico.