SYNOPSIS

OF UNIVERSAL MUSIC-MAKING

DIVIDED INTO TEN BOOKS.

Book I. Physiological Kircher uses this term to refer to the physical and natural laws of the world., demonstrates the origin, nature, properties, and effects of natural sound.
Book II. Philological The study of history, language, and cultural origins., inquires into the first institution and spreading of artificial sound, or Music.
Book III. Arithmetical, teaches the science of harmonic movements through numbers, and a new Algebraic Music.
Book IV. Geometrical, shows the origin of consonant and dissonant intervals through the division of the monochord A single-stringed instrument used by ancient and Renaissance theorists to measure mathematical musical intervals. by Geometrical, Algebraic, and Mechanical means, in manifold variety.
Book V. Organic Relating to musical instruments (from the Greek "organon" meaning tool or instrument)., reveals the structure of musical instruments of every kind through new experiments.
Book VI. Melothetic From the Greek words for "melody" and "placing"; the art of composing melodies., presents a new and demonstrative method for composing songs of every kind; and contains whatever curious, rare, and secret thing can be desired regarding this business.
Book VII. Diacritic Critical or comparative analysis., establishes a comparison of ancient music with modern, detects abuses, commends the dignity of Ecclesiastical chant, and reveals the method by which one may finally reach the perfection of pathetic music Music designed to evoke deep "pathos" or emotion in the listener..
Book VIII. Wondrous, exhibits the new Musarithmetic Kircher's invented system for composing music through mathematical combinations, intended to allow non-musicians to write music. art, by which even one unskilled in music can reach a perfect knowledge of composing in a short time; it contains Combinatorial, Poetic, and Rhetorical Music, and adapts Musarithmetic Planglossia Literally "many-tongued music"; a system for setting any language to music. to all languages by a new artifice.
Book IX. Magical, presents the more hidden secrets of all Music; it contains the physiology of the consonant and dissonant, and furthermore, Musico-medical Magic, Phonocaptics The "capture of sound," specifically the science of echoes and acoustics. (or the perfect doctrine of the Echo, how it is to be measured and established), and the construction of new hearing trumpets or ear-tubes; likewise, it teaches the structure of Statues and other Autophonic Self-sounding or automated instruments, like clockwork music boxes. musical instruments (sounding by themselves), as well as Sympathetic instruments, through curious and new experiments. To these is joined Musical Cryptology The art of hiding secret messages within musical notes., by which the hidden concepts of the mind are manifested at a distance through sounds.
Book X. Analogical Based on proportions and comparisons between different levels of reality., exhibits the decachordon Literally a "ten-stringed instrument," here used as a metaphor for the ten levels of universal harmony. of nature, by which it is demonstrated through 10 steps—as if through the 10 "Registers" of Nature—that God looked to musical proportions in the making of the 3 Worlds: the Elemental, the Celestial, and the Archetypal.

Register 1. The symphonies of the Elements, or Elemental Music.
Register 2. The wondrous symphony of the Heavens in their motions, influences, and effects.
Register 3. [The symphony] of Stones, Plants, and Animals, in physical, medical, and chemical matters.
Register 4. The music of the Microcosm The "small world" of the human being. with the Megacosm The "great world" of the universe.; that is, of the lesser world with the greater.
Register 5. Sphygmic Pertaining to the pulse. music, or the music of the pulse manifesting itself in the veins and arteries.
Register 6. Ethical music, shining forth in the sensitive and rational appetite The human drive for emotion and reason..
Register 7. Political music: Monarchical, Aristocratic, Democratic, and Domestic.
Register 8. Metaphysical music, or the music of the interior powers compared to the Angels and God.
Register 9. Hierarchical music, or that of the Angels distributed into 9 choirs.
Register 10. Archetypal The original "blueprint" or divine model. music, or the harmony of God with all of nature.

A large vertical curly bracket spans from Register 1 to Register 10, pointing to the word "exhibits" original: "exhibet" positioned in the right margin.