Musurgia Universalis

[4]: 36 The work complements two of Kircher's other books: Magnes sive de Arte Magnetica had set out the secret underlying coherence of the universe and Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae had explored the ways of knowledge and enlightenment.

[3]: 10–11  Three hundred copies of the first edition were distributed to Jesuit missionaries who gathered in Rome in 1650 for the election of the new Superior General and carried back to many different lands.

[2]: xxxiii The concepts presented in Musurgia Universalis overlap with Kircher's other works - they include musical cryptography (Polygraphia Nova)[7]: 305  and tarantism (Magnes sive de Arte Magnetica).

[5]: 164–5  His account of speaking tubes and amplification was developed in his later work Historia Eustachio Mariana, concerning his installation of trumpets that broadcast a call to prayer at the shrine of Mentorella.

[5]: 170  Accompanying this method was a description of the arca musurgia, a kind of calculating machine that allowed users to apply Kircher's rules on composition and actually create music.

At the bottom left of the image Pythagoras sits, with one arm resting on this theorem and the other pointing towards a group of smiths, the sound of whose Pythagorean hammers striking metal is said to have first given him the notion of the mathematical basis of harmony.

On the right there is an illustration of an echo, a topic discussed in the work, with a shepherd reciting a line from Virgil ("pascite, ut ante, boves") and a listener mishearing only the last part of the final word.

The echo rebounds from the side of Mount Helicon, where Pegasus strikes the rock with his hoof, bringing forth the stream of Hippocrene that flows down to the figure of Muses surrounded by musical instruments.

The motto around his pedestal reads 'Apollo's right hand holds the lyre of the world, his left fits high to low; thus good things are mingled with ill.'[5]: 28