NODUS SALOMONIS (Solomon's knot). A celebrated Canon, composed by Pietro Valentini, and described by Fr. Kircher, in his Musurgia. It was originally intended to be sung by ninety-six Voices, disposed in twenty-four Choirs: but Kircher afterward ascertained, that, provided the distribution into four-part Choirs was properly carried out, the number of Voices might be increased to five hundred and twelve, or even to twelve millions two hundred thousand. The Guida—in which four notes only are used—stands as follows:—
The First Choir leads; the Bass and Tenor entering together; the former, with the
Guida, and the latter, with its Inversion, beginning on the Twelfth above. After a Semibreve Rest, the Alto sings the
Guida, and the Treble its Inversion in the Twelfth above, both beginning together, as before. All the other Choirs enter in the same way, each pair of voices beginning one Semibreve later than the preceding pair. But, when the
number of Voices exceeds thirty-two, the notes must be sung of different lengths, some Choirs taking each one as a Large, others as a Long, and so on. It is easy to see that a Canon of this kind is no work of Art at all. Arithmetically considered, it reduces itself to a very simple calculation; while, musically, it is nothing more than an intolerable drawl on the Chord of G. But no Canon, written for so great a number of Voices, could possibly be founded on more than one single Chord.
