THE Chinese have full as great a variety of musical instruments as most
other nations, but they are all of them indifferent, and the music, if
it may be so called, produced out of them, execrable. The merit of our
travelling musician consists in beating a sort of tambourine, or rather
a shallow kettle-drum, with a mallet held between the toes of one foot,
while he strikes a pair of cymbals with the other, and, at the same time
plays upon a sort of guitar accompanied by his voice. It would seem also
that he is equally skilled in wind instruments, of which a flute and
trumpet make their appearance out of the mouth of his bag; a pair of
rattles connected by a piece of riband lie on the ground, and near them
a hollow piece of wood, nearly heart-shaped, which, when struck with a
mallet, emits a dull disagreeable sound, like the hollow bamboo carried
by the watchman, for which this is sometimes substituted. A Chinese band
always play in unison, and never in parts: this indeed is an art they
have not yet reached, and those few who have heard European harmony
pretend to dislike it. A Chinese ear is best gratified with the sounds
of noisy instruments, as gongs, kettle-drums, shrill trumpets, jingling
bells and cymbals, or with the faint and reedy tones, scarcely audible,
of a little bamboo organ, which swell and die away not unlike those of
an Eolian harp.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 20
]
Plate XX.