How to Put People to Sleep with Music, 1661

Choose your sedative!
Gerard van Honthorst, Merry Violinist With a Wine Glass (1623)

"Fiddle strings must be made of Adders and Serpents, but of their guts, or membrane that joynes to the backbone, which you must take forth of a running River... fit these strings to a Fiddle or Cythern, and playing on it with your fingers, it will make a pleasing soft, gentle, sound, and will make those that hear it sleep soundly, that they will shut their eyes whether they will or no, and sleep will be propounded."  

Johann Jacob Wecker, Eighteen Books of the Secrets of Art & Nature (1661)

Musicians, just think how much fun this could be in a rehearsal: put these special serpent strings on your instrument and watch as the whole orchestra drifts off to sleep.

How to Sing, 1650

Jan van Eyck, detail from Ghent Altarpiece, 1432

"A singer should not sing through his nose. He must not stammer, lest he be incomprehensible. He must not push with his tongue or lisp, else one will hardly understand half of what he says. He also should not close his teeth together, nor open his mouth too wide, nor stretch his tongue out over his lips, nor thrust his lips upward, nor distort his mouth, nor disfigure his cheeks and nose like the long-tailed monkey, nor crumple his eyebrows together, nor wrinkle his forehead, nor roll his head or the eyes therein round and round, nor wink with the same, nor tremble with his lips, etc." 

Christoph Bernhard, Von der Singkunst oder Manier (1650)

Don't let your singing career be ruined by the age-old problem of Bitchy Singing Face.