The Orientals Make Their Music—Chinese, Japanese, Siamese, Burmese, and
Javanese
To hear two Chinamen exchanging greetings on a street corner, you would
think they were singing or rather chanting, not because their tones are
particularly pleasant for they are high and nasal and hard, but because
they are talking in their own peculiar way. The Chinese have what is
called an inflected language in which they use many tones. For example
the syllable “hi” in one tone will mean one thing and it will mean
something else entirely in each different inflection. Here again is a
case where it is hard to say where speech ends and song begins. Another
amusing thing about the Chinese is the way, according to our ideas, they
seem to twist every thing around, so that what we call high tones they
call low tones; they wear white for mourning and we wear black; their
guests of honor sit at the left of the host and ours sit at the right;
they consider taking off the hat very bad manners and of course we
consider it bad manners for a man to keep it on in the house or when
talking to a lady.
They never used their music as a way of expressing beauty as other
nations have done, but treated it as we would a problem in arithmetic or
a cross-word puzzle, and they loved to write articles on the subject
that would seem long and dull to us. However, as far back as 2255 B.C.
Ta Shao composed a piece of music which Confucius, 1600 years later,
said, “enchanted him to such an extent that he did not know the taste of
food for months.”
[Illustration:
_After a print by Gakutei—about 1840._
_The Koto-Player._
]
[Illustration:
_After print by Kuniyasu—about 1830._
_The Wandering Samisen-Player._
]
SCALES
Their scale was the pentatonic and they had the queerest names for their
degrees or steps.
F the first degree was called Emperor
G „ 2d „ „ „ Prime Minister
A „ 3d „ „ „ Loyal Subjects
C „ 4th „ „ „ Affairs of State
D „ 5th „ „ „ Mirror of the World
This shows that music must have been limited to a very few subjects.
When the scale of five steps was changed into a scale of seven steps
about 600 B.C., every one thought that the end of music had come.
However these two new notes B and E which formed half steps in the scale
were given very interesting names: Leader and Mediator. We, today, call
B the leading tone, and E the mediant, so in this case, the Chinese were
not quite so topsy-turvy as usual. But in true Chinese fashion they
thought that a mythical bird Fung-Woang and his mate had invented the
steps and the half steps. The whole steps to them stood for perfect and
independent things such as heaven, sun and man; the half steps stood for
dependent things such as earth, moon and woman.
They had 84 scales! Think of that and be happy! For we have only two
modes, major and minor, and twelve different sounding scales in each.
We get very little pleasure out of Chinese melodies for they seem to
wander about aimlessly and do not end comfortably, nor do they seem to
begin anywhere! The best melodies are found among the oldest sacred
music and among the songs of the sailors and mountaineers. The sacred
hymns and the songs of the people have come down unchanged from earliest
times. The music of their theatres we like least of all as it is
sing-sing, shrill and nerve racking.
Here is an example of an ancient hymn in the pentatonic scale:
[Illustration:
CHINESE SACRIFICIAL HYMN TO THE IMPERIAL ANCESTORS
]
INSTRUMENTS
How the Chinese like noise! Their orchestras are seventy-five percent
noise makers: drums of all kinds and sizes, bells, stones beaten with
mallets, cymbals, wooden clappers, a row of tuned stones and copper
plates strung up to be hammered, and wooden tubs beaten sometimes from
the inside and sometimes from the outside. They also have wind
instruments of clay and flutes of bamboo and metal. The _cheng_, their
most pleasing wind instrument, is made of a hollow gourd with bamboo
tubes of different lengths inserted. Their most popular stringed
instruments are the _kin_, a primitive guitar, and the _cha_, a sort of
large zither with twenty-five strings. These instruments date back to
barbaric times.
One of the most curious that we have come across is the _king_ which is
supposed to have been invented by _Quei_, a mythical youth like the
Greek Orpheus. It is a rack hung with two rows of sixteen different
sized stones, which are struck with a wooden mallet. This instrument
goes back to 2300 B.C. It seemed so important to the Chinese that they
have a special kind of _king_ called the _nio-king_ upon which only the
Emperor could play. Another little instrument almost as queer as the
_king_, made of slats of wood tied together and shaped like a fan, used
to beat time, was called the _tchoung-tou_. It was held in one hand and
struck against the palm of the other much as one would play with a fan.
In making their instruments, the Chinese used eight different sounds in
nature which they found musical—the sound of skin (drums), stone (_king_
and _nio-king_), metal (flutes, bells, gongs, cymbals and trumpets),
clay (instrument like an ocarina moulded into fantastic animal shapes),
wood (drums and boxes), bamboo (flutes and parts of the _cheng_), silk
(strings on the _che_ and _king_ and other stringed instruments), gourds
(sound boards which held the tubes of the _cheng_, one of the ancestors
of the modern organ).
As early as the 5th century B.C., one of the first books on music in the
world was written by a friend of Confucius, the great teacher and
philosopher. We know about the ancient Chinese music, not from
hieroglyphics and parchments, but from the music they use today, which
is the same as that of barbaric times. The law against new things
prevailed there as it did in Egypt, and where the government controls
art, there can be little progress.
However we might have known much more about music had not Emperor She
Huang-Ti “the book destroyer” ordered all musical instruments and books
to be destroyed (246 B.C.) except those about medicine, agriculture and
magic. For generations after, the people heard little music but the
noise of tumbling bells and dancers’ drums.
Their popular music has always been very poor with no particular form or
system.
JAPANESE MUSIC
From the many Japanese prints, and cups and bowls decorated with
fascinating pictures of the dainty little men and women playing the
_samisen_ and _koto_, we feel as if we had met these far away people
before.
The _koto_ and the _samisen_ have remained unchanged for hundreds of
years. It is said that the _koto_ was first made of several hunting bows
placed side by side and that later they were joined together as one long
sounding board across which the strings were drawn. In the prints we see
the long zither-like instruments lying flat on the floor and the dainty
little players in fancy kimonos beside them.
Perhaps in the same print a companion will be seen playing a _samisen_,
a long necked instrument whose strings are plucked with a pick or
plectrum, such as we use for the mandolin. Whether these prints are a
hundred years old or the work of an artist today, makes little
difference, for we find the instrument unchanged and the little player
in the same lovely kimono. These instruments have been in use in Japan
for hundreds of years.
The music and instruments of the Japanese are very like those of the
Chinese, not only because they are of like race, but because the
Japanese are great imitators and have borrowed from China not only music
but art. The Japanese love music for itself, not as the Chinese love it
as subject for debate, but they have not written any better music than
their neighbors on the mainland.
If you have listened to the music of _Madame Butterfly_, an opera by
Giacomo Puccini, you will have heard a number of Japanese melodies, some
of which are real. The composers of Europe and America love to imitate
the oriental music because it gives them a chance to make effects quite
different from those possible in our own music. Besides, the oriental
people seem very picturesque to us and stir our imagination. Henry
Eichheim of Boston has written Chinese and Japanese Impressions in which
he has used many of the native instruments,—bells, rattles and drums.
The Japanese have great love of beauty which shows itself in their
festivals, held in the spring when the cherry trees blossom and azaleas
bloom. Then, too, their Geisha dances are full of grace and have the
most winning names, such as, Leaf of Gold and the Butterfly dance. At
the time of the festivals bands of musicians and dancers rove from place
to place in gay costumes and add greatly to the fun. The Geisha girls
are trained to sing and dance to the accompaniment of the _koto_ and
_samisen_ to amuse the people.
The Japanese and Chinese are Buddhists, or worshippers of the prophet
Buddha. In their temples they chant the whole service on one note
accompanied by the sound of cymbals and the tolling of a deep rich gong.
We know these gongs for we have often been called to dinner by them in
America.
About 200 years ago a musician named Yatsubashi, the father of Japanese
national music, invented a way of writing down music for the _koto_.
Each string has a number and this number is set down and is read from
top to bottom instead of from left to right on the staff, as we read
music.
Of late years Japan has been interested in European customs and has
adopted so many of them that they are called the “Frenchmen of the
East.” Among other things that they imitate is our musical system. So
today they have symphony concerts and piano and song recitals in which
they hear European artists and they themselves perform music of our
composers. They send many of their young people to Europe and America to
study music. This may lead to discarding their own music in time even as
they are giving up the kimono, for our less picturesque costume.
SIAMESE, BURMESE AND JAVANESE
The yellow races seem to like the same kind of music and use almost the
same instruments. Nevertheless each nation has its own special
instruments. For example, the Burmese have a drum organ made of
twenty-one drums of different sizes, hung inside of a great hoop; they
also have a gong organ in which fifteen or more gongs of different sizes
and tones are strung inside a hoop. The player sits or stands inside the
hoop and plays the surrounding gongs. Sometimes it looks very funny to
see a procession in which this instrument is carried by two men while a
third walks along inside a hoop, striking the gongs not only at the side
and in front of him but also behind him. (Figure 14.)
This instrument is a very important part of the Javanese orchestra
called the _gamelon_ in Java. Their particular musical possession is the
_anklong_, a set of bamboo tubes sounded by striking them. We have heard
some Javanese songs sung by Eva Gauthier and we found great beauty in
them. Many of these songs are centuries old.
In these countries the people are very fond of making musical
instruments which look like animals and the things they see around them,
as for instance, the Burmese _soung_, a thirteen stringed harp, with a
boat shaped body and a prettily curved neck. Think, too, of playing as
they do in Burma and Siam on a harp or zither shaped like a crocodile!
(Figures 12 and 13.)
The Siamese use more wind instruments than the people of other Oriental
lands. When Edward MacDowell, our famous composer, heard the Siamese
Royal Orchestra in London, he decided that each musician made up his
part as he went along, the only rule being to keep up with each other
and to finish together. The fact that they thought they were doing a
really lovely thing made the concert seem very comical. But the
Orientals can return the compliment. A few years ago the Chinese
government sent some students to study in Berlin but after a month’s
time they asked to be called home because, “It would be folly,” they
said, “to remain in a barbarous country where even the most elementary
principles of music had not been grasped.” (From _Critical and
Historical Essays_ of Edward MacDowell.)
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City._
_Instruments of Burmah and Siam._
_Fig. 12.—Soung—boat-shaped harp._
_Fig. 13.—Megyoung—crocodile harp._
_Fig. 14.—Kyll Weing—gong organ._
]
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City._
_A Burmese Musicale._
]
INCAS AND AZTECS
Before leaving the Orientals, we want to cross the bridge with you
between the Orient (East) and the Occident (West). Sometimes we find the
same customs and ways of doing things in places very far apart.
Sometimes this likeness will appear in a religious ceremony, a dance or
song, a piece of pottery, or in a musical instrument. To find these
similarities makes one believe that at sometime in the world’s history,
these people so far away from each other, must have been closely
related. Such a likeness can be traced in the music of the ancient
Chinese and the Aztecs of Mexico, and the Incas of Peru, some of which
has been sung to us by Marguerite d’Alvarez, from Peru. The Peruvians
played pipes and had music in the same rhythm as the sacred chants of
the Chinese. The Mexicans had all kinds of drums, rattles, stones,
gongs, bells and cymbals which resemble the Chinese instruments. On the
other hand we read in Prescott’s _Conquest of Peru_ of a Sun Festival
which recalls the Sun Dance of our own American Indian. The Inca or the
ruler of Peru, his court and the entire population of the city met at
dawn in June and with the first rays of the sun, thousands of wind
instruments broke forth into “a majestic song of adoration” accompanied
by thousands of shouting voices.
From the kind of instruments that the Aztecs in Mexico used, we know
that their music was more barbaric than that of the Peruvians. A curious
combination of love for music and barbarism is shown in the custom they
had of appointing each year a youth to act as the God of music, whose
name _Tezcatlipoca_, he was given. He was presented with a beautiful
bride and for the one year he lived like a prince in the greatest
luxury. He learned to play the flute and whenever the people heard it,
they fell down and worshipped him! But this wonderful life was not all
it seemed, for at the end of the year the beautiful youth was offered as
a living sacrifice to the blood-thirsty God of Music whom he was
impersonating.