Victor I. Stoichita was writing a paper where he investigated the multi-sensoriality in Carpaccio's painting. His paper was published in German and English as "Über einige telepathische Dispositive. Vittore Carpaccios Gemäldezyklus in der Scuola degli Schiavoni in Venedig / On Several Telepathic Dispositifs. Vittore Carpaccios Cycle of Paintings in the Scuola degli Schiavoni in Venice", Berlin/München: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2016.

The painting shows St Augustine in his study (1507). In the bottom right corner of the painting are two musical notations. These had been deciphered by Molmenti & Ludwig at the begining of the 20th century in their book The life and works of Vittorio Carpaccio. Fifty years later, Lowinsky had proposed a musicological analysis of the two pieces in an article published by the Art Bulletin. I did the following experiment to try and help Victor I. and his audience hear what the music could have sounded like.

Rendering the music

I copied in a sequencer the two notations given by Lowinsky after Molmenti & Ludwig. To this effect I used Muse, which is opensource and has a nice score editor. The sequencer played back the notations with a (rather dull) "choir" sound from the Fluid soundfont. I set the tempo arbitrarily at 100 BPM.You can hear the results below.

First notation, large sheet bottom right, hereafter Ex 1.

Second notation, slightly behind in the small book in quarto, hereafter Ex. 2

Of course, all this is very basic and has some obvious limits:

• In the 10th bar of the first example there is a sign for an unmeasured  pause which computer is unable to reproduce.
• Generally speaking, this kind of notation was intended to be interpreted with a significant degree of freedom, especially in respect to the rhythm of the performance. The computer is more "mechanic" and some turns sound really weird.
• The sharps and the notes in brackets were added by Molmenti & Ludwig, or more probably by "Signor Cristofoli, chorister at the Basilica of S. Mark", who helped them decipher the notation (see p. 130 in their book). These notes and accidentals are not in Carpaccio's painting. The hypothesis is that they were needed, and probably added on the spot by the performers. I tested the rendering with and without : they do make the song sound better, at least to my ears. However the end of ex. 2 is a bit weird. The corresponding notes are barely legible in Carpaccio's painting, necessitating more speculation from the exegete.

However, despite these limits, the sound renderings proved useful to give listeners a glimpse of the musical apparatus of the painting and its potential uses.

Analysis

What are these two pieces? This is what Lowinsky tries to find out in his paper. It is an interesting analysis, although some of his arguments turn out to be quite problematic to a close reading. He explains for example that ex. 1 is a secular tune, and ex. 2 a religious hymn. On the other hand, the aforementioned Signor Cristofoli felt that ex. 1 was "of an austere character, solemn and in perfectcounterpoint" while ex. 2 was in "worldly style and gracefully suave" (see Molmenti & Ludwig p. 130). The discrepancy may be explainable if Lowinsky adopted an "analytical" point of view, while Cristofoli commented on the score more like a musician.

Listening to the two renderings, in the order foreground (1) -  background (2), one may note their harmonic continuity.

• Ex. 1 alternates mostly between F major and D minor, but ends on something like G minor. The last chord is actually G-D-G, which in itself is neither major nor minor. But B flat results quite clearly from the former harmonic context.
• Ex. 2 on the other hand begins with a clearly major G chord. And it ends there too. More precisely it ends on the same emotionally neutral chord as Ex. 1 (G-D-G), but here in "major" context, with a nice conclusive cadenza which tells us that we reached "the end".

The fact that the whole painting is about life after death may have influenced the way Carpaccio chose and arranged the two tunes. At the surface, virtually in spectators' space, is the rather agitated and emotionally ambiguous one. Beyond, in the space where St Jerome visits St Augustine and tells him not to fear death, is the calm and clearly major one. The latter starts where the first seems to end.

It is most likely that the spectators were supposed to try to sing the two scores in group. Indeed, reading them was not enough. Carpaccio presented them in choirbook style: each voice-part has its own field on the page. It is nearly impossible for one reader to coordinate the different voices mentally, as the notes of each part do not overlap visually. There is a kind of mystery (what does it sound like? is it really music?) which can only be raised through performance (or rewriting like Cristofoli did for Molmenti & Ludwig).