Friday, 2 October 2026

Jesuit Athanasius Kircher notated birdsong in the seventeenth century

Engraved page of an old book with musical staves and images of a rooster, a hen with chicks, a cuckoo, a quail and a parrot, with notation of their calls.

The seventeenth-century German polymath and Jesuit monk Athanasius Kircher is known for his description of China, his microscopic researches and his unsuccessful attempt to decipher Egyptian writing. But we understand that this man was a genuine genius when we see his musical notation of birdsong

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