Sound

The object of Music is Sound.

Its effect is to:

• please us
• move various emotions in us

But songs can be diverse, at once sad and delightful.

This is why the elegiac poets and tragedians are more pleasing the more they stir grief in us.

[Resonance]

There are 2 affections of sound:

1. Differences in duration of time

2. The intensity of sound—whether high or low

The physicists say that sound is judged more pleasing to the body and spirit from the very quality of sound.

The human voice is particularly pleasing to us because it most closely resembles our own breath (or spirit).

Thus, the voice of a friend is more agreeable than that of an enemy due to the sympathy and sharing of feelings.

In the same way that:

• the stretched skin of a drum vibrates when another drum is struck
• a drum covered by sheeps skin produces no sounds when struck if another drum covered with wolf’s skin is beaten in the same room