Renaissance Music in 15th Century Painting

I saw this on Notes To Myself..., and I just had to blog about it here as well. A very interesting article about an original musical score discovered in Filippino Lippi's 15th century painting Madonna and Child with Singing Angels.

Scholars had long thought that the angels were holding a scroll on which the notes were painted randomly, with no relation to any music. Yet, while scrutinizing the score, Timothy McGee, professor emeritus in music at the University of Toronto, Canada, discovered that the painted score indeed contains unknown music....

"Unfortunately what we have is only the first half of the piece. The remainder is rolled up in the scroll at the foot of the angels. I searched all known manuscripts from the period and could not find this piece anywhere - so this is the only copy," McGee said.

The composition has been given its first full modern performance at the Florentine art exhibition. There, visitors can admire the painting and listen to the music at the same time.

"It is undoubtedly the first time this music has been heard in 500 years. It is a moving experience and takes us back in time, when the same angelic music was played in front of the painting, in a sort of multimedia experience," art historian Jonathan Nelson, the author of a recent monography on Filippino, told Discovery News.

Be sure to listen to the music piece!