Treatise on Universal Harmony

more than the other, and that all the Singers pronounce the words well while making the accents, the long and the short: so that one can be assured that the concert is imperfect if one does not hear the words as well as if a single person were reciting them. Regarding the Modes musical scales characterized by specific interval patterns, we can use them as happily as the ancients, such that there is nothing that can prevent us from producing effects as excellent as they; for if the eminence of their knowledge had acquired them reputation and authority among their listeners, I want the Musician to be at least as learned as they, and to be able to produce such noble effects with sounds that one admits there is nothing in the world more excellent than Music: which will happen if he makes, for example, the artillery fire, or if he shoots the crossbow by the force of harmony, and if he makes all sorts of bodies dance to the cadence of his songs, which he will be able to execute when he perfectly understands the nature and properties of sounds, of consonances, and of movements.

NOW although there were several things in Music of which we could not