Interesting facts about music

There are a lot of interesting things connected with music. These are not only amazingly beautiful works, a variety of musical instruments, playing techniques, but also interesting facts about music. You will learn about some of them in this article.

Fact No. 1 “Cat harpsichord.”

In the Middle Ages, it turns out that not only people recognized by the pope as heretics, but even cats were subjected to the Inquisition! There is information according to which King Philip II of Spain had an unusual musical instrument called the “Cat Harpsichord.”

Its structure was simple – a long box with partitions creating fourteen compartments. In each compartment there was a cat, previously selected by a “specialist”. Each cat passed an “audition” and if its voice satisfied the “phoniator”, then it was placed in a certain compartment, according to the pitch of its voice. “Rejected” cats were immediately burned.

The selected cat’s head protruded through the hole, and its tails were firmly secured under the keyboard. Every time a key was pressed, a sharp needle sharply dug into the cat’s tail, and the animal naturally screamed. The entertainment of the courtiers consisted in “playing” such melodies or playing chords. What caused such cruelty? The fact is that the church declared the furry beauties messengers of Satan and doomed them to destruction.

The cruel musical instrument quickly spread throughout Europe. Even Peter I ordered a “cat harpsichord” for the Kunstkamera in Hamburg.

Fact #2 “Is water a source of inspiration?”

Interesting facts about music are also associated with the classics. Beethoven, for example, began composing music only after he lowered his head into a large basin, which was filled with… ice water. This strange habit became so firmly attached to the composer that, no matter how much he wanted, he could not leave it for the rest of his life.

Fact No. 3 “Music both heals and cripples”

Interesting facts about music are also connected with the not fully understood phenomenon of the impact of music on the human body and health. Everyone knows and has been scientifically proven that classical music develops the intellect and calms. Even some diseases were cured after listening to music.

In contrast to the healing effect of classical music is the destructive property of country music. Statisticians have calculated that in America, the largest percentage of personal disasters, suicides and divorces occur among those who are fans of country music.

Fact No. 4 “A note is a linguistic unit”

For the last three hundred years, innovative philologists have been tormented by the idea of ​​​​creating an artificial language. About two hundred projects are known, but almost all of them are currently forgotten due to their incorrectness, complexity, etc. Interesting facts about music, however, included one project – the musical language “Sol-re-sol”.

This language system was developed by Jean Francois Sudre, a Frenchman by birth. The rules of musical language were promulgated in 1817; in total, it took Jean’s followers forty years to design the grammar, vocabulary and theory.

The roots of the words, of course, were the seven notes known to all of us. New words were formed from them, for example:

• you=yes;
• before=no;
• re=i(union);
• we=or;
• fa=on;
• re+do=my;

Of course, such a speech could be performed by a musician, but the language itself turned out to be more difficult than the most complex languages ​​in the world. Nevertheless, it is known that in 1868, the first (and, accordingly, the last) works in which musical language was used, were even published in Paris.

Fact #5 “Do spiders listen to music?”

If you play a violin in a room where spiders live, the insects immediately crawl out of their shelters. But don’t think that they are connoisseurs of great music. The fact is that the sound causes the threads of the web to vibrate, and for spiders this is a signal about prey, for which they immediately crawl out.

Fact No. 6 “Identity card”

One day it happened that Caruso came to the bank without an identification document. Since the matter was urgent, the famous bank client had to sing an aria from Tosca to the cashier. After listening to the famous singer, the cashier agreed that his performance verified the identity of the recipient and gave out the money. Afterwards, Caruso, telling this story, admitted that he had never tried so hard to sing.