If
any particular melody was disliked by those affected, they
indicated their displeasure by violent gestures expressive of
aversion. They could not endure false notes, and it is remarkable
that uneducated boors, who had never in their lives manifested any
perception of the enchanting power of harmony, acquired, in this
respect, an extremely refined sense of hearing, as if they had
been initiated into the profoundest secrets of the musical art.
It was a matter of every day's experience, that patients showed a
predilection for certain tarantellas, in preference to others,
which gave rise to the composition of a great variety of these
dances. They were likewise very capricious in their partialities
for particular instruments; so that some longed for the shrill
notes of the trumpet, others for the softest music produced by the
vibration of strings.
Tarantism was at its greatest height in Italy in the seventeenth
century, long after the St. Vitus's Dance of Germany had
disappeared. It was not the natives of the country only who were
attacked by this complaint. Foreigners of every colour and of
every race, negroes, gipsies, Spaniards, Albanians, were in like
manner affected by it.
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