M.J. Rose

When Da Vinci’s sketches are brought to life, magic happens…The music is like a time machine, or a ghost…

Leonardo Da Vinci’s wacky piano is heard for the first time, after 500 years

 Take a bow: The viola organista’s strings are played in the same way as a cello. Photo: Tomasz Wiech/AFP

“A bizarre instrument combining a piano and cello has finally been played to an audience more than 500 years after it was dreamt up Leonardo da Vinci.

Da Vinci, the Italian Renaissance genius who painted the Mona Lisa, invented the ‘‘viola organista’’ – which looks like a baby grand piano – but never built it, experts say.

The viola organista has now come to life, thanks to a Polish concert pianist with a flair for instrument-making and the patience and passion to interpret da Vinci’s plans.

Full of steel strings and spinning wheels, Slawomir Zubrzycki’s creation is a musical and mechanical work of art.

‘‘This instrument has the characteristics of three we know: the harpsichord, the organ and the viola da gamba,’’ Zubrzycki said as he debuted the instrument at the Academy of Music in the southern Polish city of Krakow…”

Read full article here. Listen to the beautiful sounds, below…

True romance…

Pyramid Age love story comes to life in Egyptian tomb’s vivid color

by Owen Jarus LiveScience

Photo by Ms. Effy Alexakis, (c) Macquarie University Ancient Cultures Research Center

“Inside a tomb dating back to the age of the Pyramids in Egypt was this image, an embrace between a priestess and her husband, a singer in the pharaoh’s palace. The image has been recorded by researchers in full color.

She was a priestess named Meretites, and he was a singer named Kahai, who performed at the pharaoh’s palace. They lived about 4,400 years ago in an age when pyramids were being built in Egypt, and their love is reflected in a highly unusual scene in their tomb — an image that has now been published in all its surviving color.

The tomb at Saqqara — which held this couple, their children and possibly their grandchildren — has now been studied and described by researchers at Macquarie University’s Australian Center for Egyptology. Among the scenes depicted is a relief painting showing the couple gazing into each other’s eyes, with Meretites placing her right hand over Kahai’s right shoulder…”

Read the rest, here. See Photos of the Pyramid Age Tomb & Artwork here.

M. J.’s  novel THE MEMORIST centers around the hunt for an ancient flute made out of bone that looked just like these and were just about as old…

9,000 year-old-flutes found in China

(www.ancient-origins.net)

“Researchers in China have discovered six complete ancient flutes made of bone belonging to the Neolithic period carbon dated to about 9,000 years old. Fragments of many more flutes were found in the same area too. The flutes are complete playable flutes made of the bones of the red-crowned crane with five to eight holes. The area that they were discovered is Jiahu of the mid-Henan Province.

What is interesting is that the music played through the seven holes correspond to a tonal scale extremely similar to the eight note scale used today. Although this sounds like a minor detail it is a very important discovery that is also quite amazing. The seven musical notes that we use today and the tone scale used have harmony that is distinct and is based on complex acoustic properties. Is it coincidence that whoever made those 9,000 years old flutes and generally people from all over the world (Africa, Asia, and Europe) were able to come up with scales reflecting all these acoustic properties just by simple chance?…”

See more here.