XXVI. To see whether the music of these times suffers the same shipwreck, which the before-named sciences underwent; let us examine, in what the music, which is now practised, differs from that of the antecedent age. The first and most remarkable distinction which occurs, is the diminution of the figures. The shortest points which were formerly known, were demi-semi quavers; and with them, it was imagined, they had given to the execution of the chant, and the instruments, as great a degree of velocity, as without doing violence to both, they were capable of attaining. This did not seem sufficient, and a little while afterwards, they invented dividing the demi-semi quavers into thirds, by which means, the movement became one part in three quicker than it was before. The extravagance of composers did not stop here, for they doubled the demi-semi quavers, and made a movement, that, for its rapidity, seems to have gone beyond the reach of imagination, which can scarce conceive, how it is possible, in the compass of a bar, to articulate or express sixty-four points. I don’t know whether before this age, any double demi-semi quavers ever appeared figured in any composition; except it was in the song of the Risuenor, which father Kircher, in the middle of the last century, caused to be printed, in the first book of his _Musurgia Universalis_; and I am even inclined to think, that solfa savours of the hyperbolic; for it is not easy to persuade me, that that bird, with all his agility and flexibility of throat, could articulate sixty-four points, in the space of raising and falling the hand, within the compass of regular time.