 I've just listened to
BWV 655 (one of the Leipzig
Chorales entitled Herr Jesu Christ, Dich zu uns wend
[Lord Jesus Christ, Turn Unto Us]). (BWV stands for Bachwerkverzeichnis [Bach
Works Catalog], not a catalog of Johann's many children,
as you may plausibly think, but a chronological listing
of his equally prolific musical output.) I can't judge
the claim that #655 contains fragments of melody
recently found chiseled into the stone facade of the church of Gesù Nuovo
in Naples, originally constructed as the Palazzo
Sanseverino in the 15th century. That notation is
currently being transcribed and prepared for
presentation, but it may take a while to actually hear
the results. Forget the Enigma machine and Navajo Code
Talkers! These Neapolitan stone masons were using
esoteric Aramaic musical notation. National Security
Agency, eat your hearts out! The
Palazzo Sanseverino is now the church of Gesù
Nuovo (photo, right). It has an ashlar facade; that is,
the surface is not flat but is built of hewn stone
blocks that protrude. The surfaces are smooth and
suggest thousands of small pyramids sticking out over
the entire facade. Careful examination reveals markings
on many of the stones (such as the one in the photo, top
right). They were put there by the original masons in
the late 1400s when the building was put up as a private
dwelling for the powerful Sanseverino family. The
markings have been the subject of countless
interpretations over the centuries. Did they identify
the quarry where a particular block was cut? Or perhaps
identify a particular mason? Was there—and this one is
very popular—an occult meaning to them, something that
has since been lost to us? No, none of that, although the
last one comes attractively close. Local musicologists
and art historians have decided over the last five
years that the symbols are letters in the Aramaic
language (the language spoken by Jesus and once the lingua franca of
the Middle East). There are seven symbols, each symbol
representing a musical note. When viewed in the proper
sequence, they produce a particular Gregorian chant.
That is not as weird as it might sound, since the
Sanseverino family, indeed, had similar "facade music"
chiseled into some of their other residences in
southern Italy. The music sleuths who did the work are
working on a transcription of the piece for organ with
the idea of presenting it in the church, itself. Chief sleuth in all this is Vincenzo de Pasquale, a local art historian and music buff. He went on a rampage of research to track down the origins of the symbols inscribed on the facade. His digging led him from the archives of the Bank of Naples to a 1742 edition of Vite dei Pittori, Scultori, ed Architetti Napoletani [Lives of Neapolitan Painters, Sculptors and Architects] by Bernardo De Dominici and then all the way to Eger in Hungary where he came across a volume from the late 1800s called Sanseverino Palota [the Sanseverino Building] by one Laszlo Molnar. [Don't bother to look. There are many Laszlo Molnars in Hungary. One was a middleweight boxer in the early 1900s; another was a prominent Hungarian fighter pilot, flying for the Axis in WWII when he was shot down. This Laslo Molnar is probably another one.] The architect of the original
Palazzo Sanseverino is identified as Novello da San
Lucano, who might have remained unknown if not for
this research. He is also mentioned as having to do
with the restoration of the church of San Domenico Maggiore.
Sources say that he was also a musician; indeed, the
Hungarian book contains a number of Gregorian chants,
some of which are by the architect, da San Lucano,
including the one on the facade of our Neapolitan
church. The book also mentions the peculiar fact of
the musical notation, itself, being engraved into the
stone—not unique, perhaps, but it was unusual. If we
ever get a chance to hear this thing, and if the Bach
connection holds, then the mechanism for such transfer
of music from one place to another in Europe in
centuries past would presumably have been the great
amount of music manuscript exchange that went on from
church to church and monastery to monastery throughout
Europe. Incidentally the Naples/Hungary
connection is not far fetched. During Angevin rule in the 1300s
and early 1400s) male monarchs were often titular
kings of Hungary. It is plausible that Neapolitan and
Hungarian churches were swapping their versions of the
Top Ten. And what of the rumor that Johann Sebastian Bach, himself, showed up in Naples in the 1740s cleverly disguised as a construction worker and was seen sitting on high wooden scaffolding in front of the facade of the church of Gesù Nuovo frantically taking notes?! (That one may be just a rumor.) Finally, we note with investigative zeal that the first four notes of 'O sole mio bear an uncanny resemblance to Grieg's Piano Concerto no. 1. main index |
