You're going to be. That little ditty was written by a 16th century Italian loot player named Vincenzo.

He's arguably the most important musician you've never heard of.

Someone who influenced composers as different is Johann Sebastian Bach and Ricardo

But part of Enchienzo's importance derives from the fact that frankly he was kind of an

asshole. Loud, stubborn, opinionated, and he loved picking fights, especially about one important aspect of music,

something that's often overlooked in standard histories.

Mm, tuning. You see back in the 1500s people held different theories about how to tune instruments.

Most people used a scheme pioneered by Pythagoras, the ancient Greek

philosopher. Vincenzo though thought the Pythagorean tuning system was

garbage and he wasn't shy about saying so.

But the reason Vincenza was special was that he didn't just complain about Pythagoras.

He proved Pythagoras was wrong.

And he did so through an almost unheard of innovation.

He ran an experiment.

And in one of those little pinball moments in history,

when someone set something in motion with no idea of how far the consequences will extend.

Vincenzo's experiment ended up on doing a lot more than Pythagoras' theories about

music.

In fact, it's no exaggeration to say the Vincenzo's work helped revolutionize our entire

understanding of the Cosmos. Hi, I'm Sam Keene, and you're listening to the disappearing spoon, a topsy-turvy

sciencey history podcast, where footnotes become the real story. To be blunt, Patagoras and his disciples were weirdos. They lived apart from society

in a religious cult, and one of their major beliefs was that it was wicked to eat beans.

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