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Delving into a 400-year-old puzzle book, through song

Voices soared in haunting melody, echoes from a candlelit age when the line between science and alchemy blurred. The music is from Atalanta Fugiens, a nearly 400-year-old book of alchemy that hid its meaning in pages of illustration, verse, and music. The singers, Les Canards Chantants, are a Philadelphia group that performs as a form of research, said Graham Bier, who directs the group with his wife, Robin, and who is a lecturer at Bryn Athyn College.

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