{"id":305,"date":"2007-05-01T18:34:26","date_gmt":"2007-05-02T02:34:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/05\/01\/music-is-useful\/"},"modified":"2013-02-07T18:09:37","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T02:09:37","slug":"music-is-useful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/05\/01\/music-is-useful\/","title":{"rendered":"music *is* useful"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Scottish father and son team of musicians (and the father was also a former codebreaker for the British government) have seemingly unlocked a mysterious musical code carved in the ceiling of Rosslyn Chapel, which was featured prominently in the blockbuster book and movie “The DaVinci Code”.<\/p>\n

The carvings on rectangular blocks on the ceiling of the chapel turn out to represent the patterns produced by different sounds and resonances.<\/p>\n

Rosslyn Chapel holds a musical mystery in its architecture and design. At one end of the chapel, on the ceiling are 4 cross-sections of arches containing elaborate symbolic designs on each array of cubes (in actual fact they are rectangles mostly). The ‘cubes’ are attached to the arches in a musically sequential way. And to confirm this, at the ends of each arch there is an angel playing a musical instrument of a different kind.<\/p>\n

After 27 years of study and research by Stuart’s father Thomas J. Mitchell, we believe he has found the pitches and tonality that match the symbols on each cube, revealing its melodic and harmonic progressions.<\/p>\n

It is what we could call ‘frozen music’, a little like cryogenics. The music has been frozen in time by symbolism, it was only a matter of time before the symbolism began to ‘thaw out’ and begin to make sense to scientific and musical perception.<\/p>\n

Tommy Mitchell (Stuart’s father) unravelled the music from the symbolism and Stuart has produced the music using authentic instrumentation in the 1400’s.<\/p>\n

Tommy began work on this amazing project over 25 years ago and the Rosslyn Motet is the culmination of a wonderful collaboration with his son Stuart who is the production manager of the project.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can read the Reuters story here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The website put up by the musicians can be found here<\/a>, complete with a video demonstration of the resonance patterns and an excerpt of the realized work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Scottish father and son team of musicians (and the father was also a former codebreaker for the British government) have seemingly unlocked a mysterious musical code carved in the ceiling of Rosslyn Chapel, which was featured prominently in the blockbuster book and movie “The DaVinci Code”. The carvings on rectangular blocks on the ceiling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[3655],"class_list":["post-305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-orchestra-world","tag-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-4V","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7384,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2012\/03\/09\/saturday-is-viola-night\/","url_meta":{"origin":305,"position":0},"title":"saturday is viola night","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"It's a duel between two violists this saturday night: teacher vs. student in a cross park blocks skirmish. At Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall is the student: violist Lauren Siess plays the great Viola Concerto of William Walton with the Portland Youth Philharmonic under music director David Hattner. Across the park\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "soloists & recitals"","block_context":{"text":"soloists & recitals","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/soloists-recitals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1020,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/06\/30\/teachingperforming\/","url_meta":{"origin":305,"position":1},"title":"teaching\/performing","author":"Charles Noble","date":"June 30, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This week I'm up in Kenmore, Washington teaching and performing at the Max Aronoff Viola Institute, which I helped to found 18 years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 The facility that we use is Bastyr University, which has all the classrooms and the lovely Chapel which is acoustically renowned (and used for a lot\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "chamber music"","block_context":{"text":"chamber music","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/chamber-music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6736,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2011\/08\/01\/oregon-cultural-trust-funds-1-54-million-in-grants\/","url_meta":{"origin":305,"position":2},"title":"oregon cultural trust funds $1.54 million in grants","author":"Charles Noble","date":"August 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"David Stabler had a recent piece about the new round of grants that have been funded by the Oregon Cultural Trust for the 2011-2012 season, and so I went digging through the PDF press release from the OCT website to see what interesting projects would catch my eye. What did\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "fundraising"","block_context":{"text":"fundraising","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/fundraising\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/01\/octlogo.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8122,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2013\/01\/05\/is-there-a-glass-ceiling-for-orchestral-musicians\/","url_meta":{"origin":305,"position":3},"title":"Is there a glass ceiling for orchestral musicians?","author":"Charles Noble","date":"January 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Just a couple days ago, local classical music critic Brett Campbell wrote an omnibus review of classical music events from the latter months of 2012. Among the concerts reviewed was the opening concert of 45th Parallel's 2012-2013 concert season, entitled \"Octetlandia\". It paired two little-heard works for the string octet\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4849,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2010\/06\/21\/portland-summer-ensembles\/","url_meta":{"origin":305,"position":4},"title":"portland summer ensembles","author":"Charles Noble","date":"June 21, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Portland Summer Ensembles, now in partnership with Metroarts, Inc has relocated to Marylhurst College, where they'll be in residence from June 28 to July 16, 2010.\u00a0 There are now two distinct programs: first, the Portland Summer Chamber Ensembles, which runs from June 28 to July 2.\u00a0 Founded by Program Director\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "chamber music"","block_context":{"text":"chamber music","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/chamber-music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/2010-PSE-Program-Sleeve-small-317x400.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4944,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2010\/07\/01\/mavi-penultimate-day-report\/","url_meta":{"origin":305,"position":5},"title":"mavi – day four report","author":"Charles Noble","date":"July 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Today was the last full day of MAVI.\u00a0 Instead of the day beginning with a lesson at 8:30, I was assigned to run through the piece (my dress rehearsal) by Daniel Ott that I was to perform that night in the chapel.\u00a0 I dragged my caffeine-fueled carcass to the chapel\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "soloists & recitals"","block_context":{"text":"soloists & recitals","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/soloists-recitals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/4749371399_b6e303466b.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}