The Natural Sun
Announcements about our sun and its natural conditions
- Chapter 63 -
Domestic codes, good social norms, music and musical instruments upon Miron
What is understood by minor domestic customs? Nothing other than those rules followed by every individual home, from a social aspect. To these belong obligatory, friendly relations and related etiquette, by which a house indicates its close relatedness.
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The first rule therefore is: respect for respect, love for love and friendship for friendship, followed by a second rule: eye upon eye, hand upon hand and heart for heart! A third one says: step for step, ear to ear, walk for walk. These precepts are followed by every occupant of a house.
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The parents are the head of the family, the father for the males and the mother for the females. Since over there, father and mother truly make up one body, these two uppermost rallying points unite to focus one action. Wherefore the mother wants whatever the father does, amounting to a convention among both males and females.
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Wherefore one rule says: respect upon respect, in the house in general. The housefather respects his wife and the wife respects the house-father, by which they become one because only from this respect can true love emerge. Wherefore the brothers respect their sisters and the sisters their brothers; and so do the children respect their parents, from the youngest up and the parents respect their children. And the younger brother respects the older and the older the younger, as with the sisters, and equally the older sister towards a younger brother and an older brother towards a younger sister.
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Wherefore, through the solid foundation of mutual respect, all are united through mutual love, which expresses itself in mutual affability. Wherewith all other rules are already fulfilled. Because "eye for an eye" under such amiable conditions surely signifies seeing together, being of one heart and practical supportiveness, gladly lending each other a hand, gladly listening to each other and going along with one another.
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Sometimes, not just one but three to five families reside together in one house making up five pairs of parents as it were, who are blessed with diverse numbers of children; yet all these families within one house are so united that there is hardly ever any talk of a quarrel; on the contrary, the more families that live together, the more sincere and blessed they are. These people truly love one another so much that they would rather suffer anything than fall short of respect towards any family member in the smallest degree; but rather, starting from the smallest children leaving their creche, the greatest respect and gentleness is adhered to.
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Which also is the reason why these people love music as it mostly corresponds to their inner character in all their talents and sciences; and music also counts among the main domestic activities.
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But to get an idea of the musicianship of these people, we shall first go through their musical instruments and thereafter lend our ears to a small musical production.
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Regarding their instruments, these bear no resemblance to yours, wherefore the sound of music is completely different. Neither wind nor string instruments are to be found here. But in place of stringed instruments there is a kind of bell instrument together with disk and ball instruments.
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Regarding the bell instrument, this is prepared from a very tuneful metal as follows: several bells are cast in the shape of half-spheres, which are then fastened unto a spindle, after prior polishing and precision tuning, in the manner of your chromatic scale. There are usually three octaves of bells upon a spindle, from your "D" in double base up. Double tones are enticed from each bell either by soft hammer or rubbing by the fingers, which are first put into a little salt water. This instrument is usually played by the men and is not a solo instrument, but for harmonic accompaniment to women singers.
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After this instrument there is the disk instrument, which is produced from the above mentioned glass. The disks likewise are fastened upon a spindle, which like the previous one is rotated, the tone being produced by the fingers rubbed in resin. This gives a most penetrating tone and the instrument is tuned an octave higher than the previous one and is used only to augment the previous bell instrument.
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The much preferred and also solo instrument is the aforementioned ball instrument. As this is of a rather involved mechanism, we shall detail it next time, together with the way the musicians skilfully handle it; and so we will leave it for today.