EXOTIC MUSIC[12]
Significance of exotic music--Classification; Aztecs and
Peruvians--The Orient: China and Hindustan, the Mohammedans--Exotic
instruments--Music as religious rite; music and dancing--Music and
customs; Orient and Occident.
No history of music can pretend to completeness that does not give
some account of the various musical systems that have developed before
or outside of the influence of European civilization, though in truth
music, in comparison with the other arts in Europe, has assimilated
astonishingly little from the peoples of the Orient or from ancient
civilization, for European music is based essentially upon harmony,
and harmony, taking the word in its accepted meaning, was unknown to
ancient nations, and is unknown to-day in countries of the Orient.
We must admit that tricks of rhythm and melody came from the Orient
into Spain at the time of the Moorish Conquest, were even brought back
to Europe by the Crusaders returning from their distant wanderings.
Furthermore the lute and perhaps the violin, both of which have held
an important place in the development of European music, came from
Arabia. But that the technique or structure of our music has been
considerably influenced by the music of other races is quite out
of the question. On the other hand, composers have, from time to
time, enlivened their music by touches of Oriental color. They have
experimented with Oriental melody and rhythm, they have sometimes
used strange instruments foreign to Europe. We may cite, for instance,
Goldmark’s _Sakuntala Overture_; Bizet’s _Les Pêcheurs de Perles_;
Félicien David’s symphonic ode, _Le Désert_; Rimsky-Korsakov’s glowing
Oriental _Scheherezade_; Balakirev’s _Islamey_, etc. These experiments
cannot but call our attention to those elaborate exotic systems of
music which were flourishing in India, in China, in Japan, in Siam
and Java, in Arabia and Persia centuries before the age of Bach and
Handel. While Europe was still slowly emerging from the barbarism of
the Middle Ages music had reached a high state of development in these
countries. Strange instruments of many kinds were in use; there was
an art of composition, frequently some form of notation; there was
a musical profession and 'much discussion of musical acoustics and
æsthetics.’ An authority[13] on musical ethnology says of the Arabs:
'At this day, when the decadence of the Arab civilization has been
entirely consummated it still retains enough traces of its former
splendor to enable us to claim without fear that at the time of its
greatest florescence it was certainly as rich, probably even richer,
than European art at the same epoch.’
I
As a foundation for all understanding and estimation of the so-called
exotic systems of music we must bear in mind that beneath the
differences from our own music in scale structure often as a matter
of practice more apparent than real, in lack of harmony and in
predominance of rhythm, lies the fundamental difference that music
has never been cultivated for itself alone in China, in Hindustan,
or among ancient nations to anything like the same extent as in the
Occident. Though in the Mohammedan Orient, at the height of the Saracen
civilization, it was highly esteemed as a social diversion, in general
it figures, not as an independent art, but rather as an auxiliary one.
This, of course, applies to art-music, not to popular or folk song, of
which, just as in other lands, there is a rich literature in the East.
On the rivers of China, in the bazaars of Hindoo cities, under the
Bedouin tent-roof, the people sing their songs. But the art of music
was developed by these peoples only in connection with dancing, sacred
or secular, with ceremonial functions, plays or pantomimes. If this
fact be borne in mind, it is perhaps easier to comprehend an art so
strikingly different from our own.
Exotic music, or, broadly speaking, the music of the semi-civilized
races, may be considered under four heads; that of the Aztecs and
Peruvians (nations whose civilizations, though they have been
destroyed, are of too recent date to be classed with those of the
ancients, yet the scant musical record of which should not be
overlooked); the music of India; the music of the Chinese, Japanese,
and Indo-Chinese peoples, including the Siamese, Javabese, Cambodians,
Annamites; and the music of the Mohammedan Orient.
There is but little known of the music of the Aztecs or Peruvians. The
fact that the Aztec language was sweet and harmonious to the ear and
had no sharp or nasal sounds justified the fondness with which both
lyric and dramatic poetry were cultivated in ancient Mexico. But the
music of the Aztecs seems to have been unworthy of so cultivated a
people. It was the only art that remained in its infancy among them.
Still, the mention of ballads sung by the people, court-odes and the
chants of temple choirs, show that they must have cultivated a form
of vocal music distinctly above that of drums and horns, pipes and
whistles. Moreover, music played an important part in connection with
religious and secular dancing, as it did also in India. It has been
conjectured that the Aztec tonal system resembled that of the Arabs.
Their songs generally began with deep sounds, rising in pitch and
accelerating with the increase of pleasurable emotion on the part of
the singer. De Solis speaks of the funeral processions in which the
bodies of the dead were brought to the temples to be received by the
priests swinging their censers of burning copal 'to the hoarse sound of
dissonant flutes and singing various hymns in a melancholy mode.’
Among the Peruvians the beautiful Quichua dialect, like the melodious
language of the Aztecs, encouraged the _haravecs_ or poets to compose
the verses which were sung at religious festivals and at the table
of the Inca. And, as in Mexico, music was intimately associated with
religious dancing and ceremony. It played its part in the elaborate
ritual of the Incas’ sun worship. However, little information is
available concerning the development of the Inca music or that of the
Aztecs before the Conquest. The Quichua and Aimara Indians of the
present day are still passionately fond of music, singing and dancing
to the accompaniment of the _quena_ (Peruvian flute) and guitar; and
phrases of the traditional minstrelsy of the Inca haravecs may 'have
been borne down the tide of rustic melody to these later generations.’
Their songs are in the ancient five-tone scale known as the pentatonic,
which they have probably inherited from their proud ancestors, together
with a fondness for triple rhythm, sole traces of the music of that
brilliant state which sank before the power of Spain.
Concerning the music of China, of Hindustan, and of the Mohammedan
Orient we have definite information. The people of these countries
have not been, like the Aztecs of Mexico or the Incas of Peru, either
swept from the face of the earth or thrown back into a drowsy
barbarism. Their own civilizations live on beneath a surface decay.
They have ideals of tradition, of permanence, of racial habit, quite
different from those accepted by our standards of progress and original
development, which have fenced in their music from all Occidental
influences. Only a few hardly noticeable variations in instrumentation
and choreography mark the touch of time. Notation, rhythm, and design
have remained for ages immutably the same.
It is supposed in China that Ling-Lenu, minister of the Emperor
Honang-Ty, chosen to fix the laws of musical sound, retired to a
bamboo-grove, near the source of the Yellow River, and there cut
twelve bamboo tubes whose varying lengths yielded the sounds of our
present-day chromatic scale. In reality, however, the pentatonic scale
[Illustration: score] is used. The tones b and e (omitted in this scale
as we have written it), the fourth and seventh tones in our scale,
which are not found in the normal pentatonic scale, are given a special
name, _pien_; and the union of the five tones and the two _pien_
constitute what the Chinese call the 'Seven Principles’ in music.
But the five-tone scale is the one commonly employed in practice and
constitutes the basis of all music in the Indo-Chinese countries.[14]
In Java, Siam, Burmah, and Cambodia, both five-tone and seven-tone
(heptatonic) scales are in use; but the musical system of Japan, which
was originally borrowed from China, is built up wholly on a five-tone
scale, with the important difference from the Chinese that it has a
minor third, and not a major: [Illustration: score]. This difference
gives Japanese music a certain individual character of its own.
The Hindoos have a system of seven-toned scales differentiated from
each other by variable quarter-tone steps. But the theory of music is
developed in India with an over-elaboration of subtleties, as it is
in China, and of almost a thousand varieties of scale theoretically
possible in the Hindoo system no more than twenty are in actual use.
Many of these resemble our own.
What may be called Mohammedan music is a complex type. It has resulted
from the spread of Mohammedanism along the Mediterranean coast and
Northern Africa, and in Central Africa and Southern Asia. It includes
features from many sources--Persian, Byzantine Greek, Mediæval
Christian, and purely local--and is historically a puzzle. Like the
Hindoo scales, the scales which are used in distinctly Mohammedan
countries are heptatonic; but the theoretical division of the octave is
into seventeen steps (each equal to about one-third of a whole step)
instead of the twenty-two _srutis_ of the Hindoos. There are some
eighteen of these seven-tone scales in use, varying from each other in
the location of their shorter steps.
The five and seven-tone scales on which these musical systems are
based are analogous to our own. It is the manner in which they
are employed and modified by other factors that makes their music
strikingly different from ours. The Chinese, in the first place, have
many melodies similar to old Scotch songs, but they are primarily
interested, not in the flow of the melody, but in _timbre_, in the
quality and character of sound. Whereas we, as soon as we have defined
a sound, pass to the consideration of intonation, duration, etc., the
Chinese theoreticians, with rare keenness of perception, have worked
out an elaborate division of the quality of sound, according to the
phenomena governing its production, classifying it according to eight
sound-producing materials provided by Nature--skin, tone, metal, baked
clay, silk, wood, bamboo, and gourd. Harmony means to the Chinese
what it meant to the ancient Greeks, a purely æsthetic combination of
sound and dance. Duple rhythm predominates. Both Chinese melodies and
the melodies of the Indo-Chinese are continuous, admitting neither
interruption nor repetition. The refrain is very rare, and occurs only
in popular songs. Noisy, shrill, and harsh effects abound, disagreeable
to our ears. Berlioz said: 'The Chinese sing like dogs howling, like
a cat screeching when it has swallowed a toad.’ But Berlioz could
not listen with an understanding ear. No more can we. Such wholesale
condemnation must be tempered with respect before the feeling of the
illustrious Chinese musician, Konai, who said, 'When I strike the
sonorous stones, either softly or with force, savage beasts leap up
with joy and concord reigns between high dignitaries.’
In ancient China music was a privileged amusement of the higher
classes, and it has always been under imperial supervision. With the
passing of the centuries it has been largely turned over to the vulgar,
in street and theatre; and the ancient rules governing its production
and performance (there are sixty volumes of classic works alone on the
subject) have fallen into disuse. A letter notation is still employed.
The music of Indo-China hardly differs in essentials from that of
China, and presents much the same peculiarity in comparison with
our own. On the other hand, the music of India is quite distinct,
and presents only a few surface similarities to the Mongolian.
Hindoo music, according to Captain Day,[15] has lost the primitive
purity of Aryan times. The theoretical division of the octave into
twenty-two quarter-tones, recorded in Sanscrit books, finds no
practical application in modern usage. As in Chinese music, harmony
is non-existent; for Hindoo music is purely melodic, and the _Vina_,
the seven-stringed lute used as an accompanying instrument, merely
doubles the voice part. But Hindoo music is built, as we have said,
upon a system of seven-tone or heptatonic scales which offers far
greater opportunity for effect than the pentatonic system of the
Chinese. It has, moreover, infinitely more rhythmic variety and its
rhythms are triple rather than duple, as is the case with the Chinese.
They are capricious and elastic (this due, in part no doubt, to
Mohammedan influences), and are usually strongly marked. One of the
most characteristic features in Hindoo music, which has no counterpart
in Chinese, is the _Raga_,[16] or traditional type-melody to which
texts of varying character are sung. Some of the _ragas_ are especially
consecrated to gods and heroes. In general Hindoo airs are marked
by long melodic passages, often of no definite design. There are
three general divisions: _gana_ (vocal music), _vadya_ (instrumental
music), and _nytria_ (dance music). The Hindoos divide all instruments
into four classes: quite unlike the Chinese classification: stringed
instruments; those with membranes sounded by percussion; those struck
in pairs; and those which sound when blown. A Sanscrit notation
(characters for notes and signs or words for other details) indicates
pitch and duration.
Music in Mohammedan countries has peculiarities which differentiate it
quite distinctly from music in China and in India. In India music has
always been largely associated with religion, especially in connection
with the dance. Mohammedanism has never encouraged religious music. It
is true that the chanting of the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer
from the minarets; but except this the music which accompanies the
dances of the whirling dervishes of Cairo, Bagdad, and Constantinople
offers practically the only example of Mohammedan religious music.[17]
Nevertheless in the brilliant days of the Abbaside caliphs and
the Moorish kings of Spain music was a passion with the Saracens.
Haroun-al-Raschid lavished rewards of gold and lands on his musicians
and the 'Thousand and One Nights’ proves in what esteem music was held
throughout the Mohammedan Orient at the time of the Caliphate. There
was a rich and elaborate musical literature, but the decadence of the
Arab civilization brought with it entire oblivion of the many treatises
and writings of these glorious days. The old science is forgotten,
just as in China the musical wisdom of ancient times has fallen into
neglect. Yet throughout the wide territories in which Mohammedanism
established itself, that peculiar and distinctive type which more than
any other represents Oriental music to us, a type resulting from a
mixture of Persian and Arabian styles, complicated with Christian and
other influences, has been traditionally handed down to the present
day. As in the other systems we have discussed, harmony is practically
non-existent. The scales are seven-toned and there are some eighteen
theoretical modes. Both duple and triple rhythms are employed with
greatest variety. In fact, one of the most striking characteristics
of Mohammedan musical art is the variety and complexity of its
sharp rhythms. The melodies are excessively adorned with every sort
of flourish and ornament, slides, turns, grace-notes, shakes, and
arabesques of every description not pleasing to our ears. Popular
songs and professional musicians are to be found throughout all the
Mohammedan Orient. The love song in particular is held in high esteem
in all Mohammedan countries, and the following example may illustrate
its charm:
[Illustration: Music]
Villoteau mentions his regret at not having been able to note down
'the accent of yielding abandonment with which the singers express the
voluptuous melancholy which fills the majority of these songs.’ Some
of the present-day Persian love-songs are said to be sung to poems
of Hafiz. The occupational popular song is also found everywhere. In
general, the standpoint taken by the Arab proverb, 'Who does not hunt,
does not love, is not moved by the sound of music nor raptured by the
fragrance of blossoms is no man,’ is that of the Mohammedan Orient as
regards the art of sound.
Though, strange to say, Arab music at the time of its greatest
florescence possessed no system of notation, an elementary alphabetical
notation has since been invented and is now in use.
In the main, the differences between Oriental music and our own may be
summed up in the words of Saint-Saëns: 'Oriental musical art is another
art. The musical art of antiquity is founded on the combination of
melody and rhythm. To these our art adds a third element--harmony.’
And, however much they differ from our own, it should always be borne
in mind that 'the subtly ingenious mathematical subdivisions of the
Persians and Arabs, the excessive modal elaboration of the Hindoos,
the narrow and constrained stiffness of the Chinese, the ambiguous
elasticity of the Japanese, and the truly marvellous artificiality of
the Javanese and Siamese systems are all the products of human artistic
ingenuity working instinctively for artistic ends.’
II
An account of the uses of such music and the rôle it plays in
customs far different from our own calls for some description of the
instruments employed. Every nation had its own peculiar instruments.
Those of percussion seem to us particularly characteristic. Such
Oriental coloration as has been applied to our modern music has been
usually in the way of rhythm emphasized by strange instruments of
percussion. Drums, tam-tams, gongs, etc., do not fail to suggest at
once the spirit of barbarous or outlandish peoples. The Peruvians and
Aztecs had a variety of drums. The Aztecs used the _huehuetl_ and the
_teponastle_; the one, a drum struck by the fingers, a wooden cylinder
three feet high, with a deer-skin head which could be loosened or
tightened at will; the other a hollow closed cylinder of wood, having
two longitudinal parallel slits close together, the strip of wood
between which was struck with two drumsticks whose ends were covered
with rubber. This instrument is still used by the Mexican Indians. It
sounds a melancholy note, and one audible at a great distance. The
Aztecs also used an enormous rattle, the _axacaxtli_, in place of
castanets. It was a gourd pierced with holes and filled with small
stones.
The most characteristic Chinese instrument of percussion is the _king_,
a set of graduated plates, stones, or bells, hung in a frame and
played with a mallet. The tone produced is smooth and sonorous. In
addition, the Chinese, Japanese, and Indo-Chinese have a quantity of
metal gongs and cymbals, bells, tambourines, castanets, and drums of
all kinds. In Siam and Burmah there is the _ranat_, a set of wooden or
metal bars played with a mallet, in reality a xylophone; and in Java
the _anklong_, of the same family, the bars of which are of bamboo.
The Hindoos and Mohammedan Orientals also have a great number of
drums, tam-tams, gongs, etc., which is not surprising in view of the
predominant part rhythm was given in their music.
The stringed instruments are not less numerous. They appear to have
been unknown to the Aztecs, and the Peruvians used only the _tinya_, a
guitar with six strings. But the Chinese had a great number of them,
among which the _kin_, a small lute with seven strings, held a peculiar
place. It was long an object of veneration. Sages alone might venture
to touch its strings; ordinary mortals should be content merely to
regard it in silence with the most profound respect. An elaborate
psaltery or zither called _che_, with twenty-five strings, was much in
use, and there were several bowed instruments in the viol family, of
uncertain ancient descent. The Cambodians, too, have instruments of
the viol family, notably the _tro-khmer_, a three-stringed viol held
like the 'cello when played. The Siamese, Coreans, and Annamites all
use instruments of the guitar and mandolin family with a varying number
of strings. In Burmah the favorite instrument is a queer harp with
thirteen strings called the _soung_. In Japan there are the _koto_,
which is a pleasing-toned zither with thirteen strings; the _samisen_,
a small guitar associated with the Geisha girls, the _buva_, a type
of lute, and the _kokin_, a primitive violin. One finds in India the
_sarindas_ or _sarungis_, viols with sympathetic wire strings; the
_vina_, most generally popular of Hindoo stringed instruments, a sort
of lute with two gourd resonators; and the _tambura_, a long slender
guitar with three or more strings. But of all the stringed instruments
of the Orient _el’ud_ of Arabia is most famous. It is no other in name
or fact than the lute, with broad, pear-shaped body, short neck bent
back at the head, and four or more strings. Introduced by the Moors
into Spain about 800 A. D., it became the favorite instrument of all
Europe, was developed and improved with every care, was beautified
with finest art and workmanship. From Arabia, too, may have come to
Europe the first primitive violins. The Arabian _rebab_ and the Persian
_kemangeh_ are almost identical in principle with our violin. The
Arabian _santirs_ and _kanoons_, zithers with many strings, played
with plectra adjusted like thimbles on the finger-tips, have remained
Oriental.
Wind instruments are common to all races. Flutes and fifes were known
both to the Aztecs and Peruvians, and flutes, flageolets, oboes, horns,
bagpipes, and trumpets are in constant use among the others. With the
Aztecs conch-shells took the place of trumpets of metal. Deserving of
special mention are the Chinese _cheng_, a set of small bamboo pipes
with free reeds, precursor of the modern organ; the Hindoo _tubri_, a
popular form of bagpipe used by the snake charmers of India; and the
Arab _zamr_, a particularly shrill variety of oboe.
Thus we find in use among ancient semi-civilized peoples and among the
Oriental races of the past and present the three great families of
musical instruments; instruments of percussion, string instruments,
and wind instruments, from which we have chosen and developed our
orchestra. We are recalled to the remark of Saint-Saëns, already
quoted, that all the musical systems of these peoples were products of
human artistic ingenuity, working instinctively for artistic ends. The
instinct for expression in music works so far in all races alike. But
whereas those races whose music we are discussing were content with the
harsh or dry sounds of the primitive instruments we have mentioned,
the races of Europe have been impelled by the desire for ever richer
and more flexible tone to develop and improve these instruments. Of
the clumsy, hoarse viol they have made the perfect violin; of the
hunting horn the mellow French horn of the orchestra; of the tremulous
clavichord and spinet the powerful pianoforte. Music has become an art
of sound. Those people whom, for the sake of convenience, we group
together in this chapter as exotic never dissociated music from the
dance or from elaborate ceremonies of one sort or another. The art of
music hardly attained independence. Therefore we are almost at a loss
to appreciate it outside the highly ceremonious societies in which it
played its part and a discussion of some of the uses to which it was
put is necessary in our chapter.
III
With the exception of the Mohammedans, the first and foremost use of
music among the exotic races has been in religious rites of one sort or
another. And in this connection it is in most cases an accompaniment
to religious dancing and pantomime. Music is rarely looked upon in
the Orient as a means of social diversion or artistic enjoyment in
itself alone, such as we consider music of the orchestra or the string
quartet. Only in the form of poetic song or of orchestral accompaniment
to the religious or secular ballet is it highly appreciated.
The hymns chanted in a sing-song manner, the monotonous tunes
accompanying the temple services and sacred dances of the ancient
Mexicans would, no doubt, prove intolerably wearisome to our ears, but
the Aztecs took such pleasure in them that they often sang during
entire days. And, quite in the eighteenth century manner, the wealthy
Aztec nobles maintained choirs of singers and bands of professional
musicians. At the great Sun-feast of the ancient Peruvians, 'the long
revelry of the day was closed at night by music and dancing.’ Some sort
of song flourished among this people. There was a class of minstrels.
Aside from the traditional melodies which have already been mentioned,
the music of some of the distinctively Inca (not Spanish) dances, the
_huaino_, the _cachua_, the _cachaspare_, has come down to our own day.
In China music is for the most part confined to sacred ceremonies
and dancing. Père Amiot, a French missionary who spent some time in
China in the second half of the eighteenth century, wrote down the
following celebrated chorus; a hymn in honor of the ancestors, sung in
the emperor’s presence to the accompaniment of sacred dances, and the
typical Chinese orchestra:
[Illustration: PART ONE.]
See hoang sıen Tsou
Yo lıng yu Tıen.
Yuen yen tsıng heou.
Yeou kao tay hıuen.
Hıuen sun cheou mıng.
Tchouı yuen kı sıen
Mıng yu ché tsoung.
Y-ouan see inen.
[Illustration: PART TWO.]
Touı yué tché tsıng.
Yen jan jou cheng.
Kı kı tchao ming.
Kan ko tsaı ting.
Jou kıen kı hıng.
Jou ouen kı cheng.
Ngaı eulb kıng tché.
Fa hou tchoung tsıng.
[Illustration: PART THREE.]
Duei tsıen jin koung.
Tê tchao yng Tıen.
Lu yuen kı yu.
Sıao-tsee.
Yuen cheou sang koue.
Yu pao kı tê,
Hao Tıen ouang kı.
Yu tsin san hıen.
Duo sin yué y.
At private and ceremonial banquets, also, dancing to orchestral
accompaniment is usual. _Solo_, in the province of Yunnan, the most
southwestern division of China, supplies the musicians and dancers for
the private orchestras and entertainments of mandarins throughout the
Celestial empire. Then, too, the Chinese orchestra finds a place in
theatrical representations. The songs to be heard in every Chinese city
at eventide to the crude accompaniment of mandolins and guitars may
attest a popular fondness for music, but the gongs continually sounding
in the temples and innumerable tinkling bells upon the towers and
pagodas can hardly be said to constitute music.
In Siam, Burmah, Cambodia, and Java the arts of music and dancing
have always been held in high esteem. In Java the native dances are
marked by gravity and harmony of movement. The average ambulant band in
that country consists of six players, while the _gamelags_ of native
sovereigns like the sultan of Djokka or the emperor of Solo usually
comprise a dozen. The Siamese have ballet performances of posturing
and slow, deliberate dancing, most of which are pantomime plays with
orchestral accompaniment, the story chanted by a kind of Greek chorus
behind the scenes. The king of Cambodia maintains a large troupe of
dancers, chosen among the most beautiful women in his realm, who
preserve the tradition of the ancient dances of the land. The following
air is a prelude to one of these Cambodian dances, sung by a female
chorus with orchestral accompaniment:
[Illustration: CAMBODIAN DANCE.]
In both these countries, as in Annam and Burmah, it is not the
orchestra that leads the dancers, but the dancers who are followed
by the orchestra. And in nearly all cases these pantomimes are of an
allegorical or mythological character. Similar performances, notably
'devil dances,’ are given in lamaseries of Tibet, Mongolia, and Siberia
in which the Buddhist monks, in costume and mask, represent gods,
devils, mythological kings, and other traditional characters.
The airs of the sampan-men of the Hue River in Annam are often
beautiful. In alternation with their wives they sing simple ballads
full of poetry and grace as they float down stream at night. Peculiar
are the orchestras of the blind, made up of poor families, some one
member of which is sightless, who sing love-songs before the village
tea-houses for a pittance.
[Illustration: THE BUTTERFLY DANCE MUSIC.]
In Japan the 'geishas’ perform their poetic dances, 'The Leaf of Gold,’
'The Butterfly Dance,’ to the sound of a vague, discreetly agreeable
accompaniment. The geishas’ music is that of the plucked string,
and is generally vague in form. The _koto_ and the _samisen_ are the
representative instruments, though sometimes the musicians sing a few
measures. Harmony in our sense of the word is entirely lacking. In the
Buddhist temples the entire service is intoned on one note, but the
priests sing successively at a different pitch, and the chanting is
punctuated by the occasional clang of cymbals and the deep, rich tones
of the great gong, a strange and impressive combination. At the time
of the various Japanese flower festivals, those of the azaleas, of the
flowering plum and cherry, when the country is glad with pink and white
blossoms, roving bands of musicians and dancers in grotesque costume
add to the gaiety of the occasion.
[Illustration: OLD JAPANESE PRINT: 'GIRL OF THE OLD KINGDOM PLAYING
THE HARP’.]
In Hindustan dance music (vocal and instrumental combined) plays an
important part in the religious ceremonies of the temples, both in the
voluptuous dances of the _devadhazis_, or bayadères,[18] and in the
chanting of the _montranis_, scriptural formulas set to a fixed musical
rhythm. The size of a Hindoo orchestra varies, and the dance-music
it plays is not always of a sensuous, erotic type, but often very
animated and vigorous in character, such as accompanies the dancing
at the courts of the rajahs. Music frequently accompanies dramatic
representations as well, and there is a great deal of popular song. The
Hindoos have _dhourpad_ and _kourka_, warlike hymns, _hoti_, canticles
in honor of Krishna, _stouti_, official odes, _bichnoupoud_, evening
songs, _kheal_, love songs, _sohla_, nuptial songs, _thoumries_,
patriotic songs, _palma_, cradle songs, and _darda_, love songs. In
many cases Hindoo music shows signs of Mohammedan influence, especially
in the variety and liveliness of its rhythm. It is curious to note that
the use of certain types accompanying instruments is restricted to
certain social classes, priests, mendicant holy men, dancing girls, and
so forth.
Mohammedan music is associated with a wide variety of voluptuous
secular dances, for the Mohammedan Orient possesses an art of dance
equal to the most delicate inspirations of our poets. There is the
dance of the _Ouled Nail_, the famous dancing girls of Biskra, the
Tunisian 'Dance of the Hair,’[19] the Algerian 'Dance of the Pitchers,’
the dances of the Egyptian Ghaouazi or 'Almees,’ exponents of what is
known to us as the _danse du ventre_, of which one of the dance airs
follows:
[Illustration: GHAOUAZI DANCE.]
There are the dances of Syrian, Soudanese and other dancing-girls.
Then there are the special dances, accompanied by choral singing and
instrumental music, that celebrate the nuptial ceremony throughout the
Orient.
IV
The variety of customs, of traditional observances and usages
interwoven with exotic music is endless. Many religious chants,
for instance, are fixed by tradition, and are undoubtedly of high
antiquity. Such is the chanting of the sacred books in the Temple
of the Sacred Tooth in Ceylon, where on each night of the full moon
the whole text of the 'Tripitakas,’ or 'Three Baskets’ of wisdom, is
recited by relays of yellow-robed priests, succeeding each other every
two hours between the dark and the dawn. They are said to chant in deep
resonant voices, as steady and continuous as the roar of the surf,
without break, quaver, or pause. When we consider that Buddhist priests
have repeated these sacred texts in this manner on every night of the
full moon for twenty-eight centuries, the traditional cantillation of
the Koran appears a thing of recent date. The following interesting
'call to prayer’ of the muezzin has been traditionally handed down, and
its chant is supposed to antedate the era of Mohammed:
[Illustration: Music]
Al-la-ho ak-bar,
Al-la - - - - ho ak-bar,
ach ha-dou en-nâ la i-lah ell Al-lah.
Ach ha-dou en-nâ. Mo-ham-med
ra-soul Al-lah - - - - - Al-la-ho ak-
bar - - - - la i-lah ell Al-lah.
And the Hindoo _ragas_ and _mantranis_ offer further proof of the
conserving examples of tradition.
A curious custom among the Chinese of immemorial antiquity is that of
attaching whistles weighing only a few grams to the tails of pigeons
soon after they emerge from the shell, by means of fine copper wire.
The whistles are of two kinds; bamboo, with from two to five tubes,
or gourds, with sometimes as many as twenty-five apertures. All the
whistles in a flock are tuned to a different pitch. As they fly about
Pekin and other cities they fill the air with a sort of wind-blown
music. It is interesting as a commentary on the Chinese national love
of sweet sounds.
A custom of the Mohammedan Orient is the use of the flute in services
for the dead. Modern Arab mortuary hymns are sung to the accompaniment
of the flute, and the employment of the instrument in this connection
dates back to ancient times. It is customary in almost every occupation
in the Orient to sing traditional songs while work is going on.
The Arab camel-drivers have a melody of strange intonations and
long-drawn-out sounds which may have come down from the days of Antar;
the boatmen on the Nile, the _fellahin_ toiling on its banks, the
ambulant peddlers of Oriental cities, all have their traditional airs
or cries. Some are very poetic; the water carriers of Mecca sing when
they dispense their wares: 'Paradise and forgiveness be the lot of him
who gave you this water!’ When, in June, Arab boys offer bunches of
fragrant pink jasmine buds, enclosed in fig-leaves, for sale in the
streets of Kairowan, those who buy return to their work chanting in a
quaint minor key: 'We render thanks to Allah for sending rain to make
the flowers bloom.’ The Burmese love to thresh rice to the sound of
music, and the Buddhist nuns in Japan solicit contributions by striking
small metal gongs attached to their belt with little wooden hammers
carried in their hands. The Hindoo palanquin-bearers, the Japanese
rickshaw-men, the Chinese coolies and sampan-men, all have their
characteristic songs, most of them traditional, for the East is slow to
change.
* * * * *
The art of music in the Orient and the art of music in Western Europe
have little in common. It may be that Christian music in the first
few centuries of its existence was vaguely similar to that music we
have been discussing, but after harmony found its place in our music
a comparison between the two arts is far to seek. In Oriental music
the dominant feature is rhythm, insistent and often unvaried. This may
be partly because rhythm is the most exciting element in music and
the most immediate in its appeal, partly because in the Orient music
was and is almost never dissociated from the dance or from some sort
of regular movement such as rowing or reaping. In our music rhythm is
constantly varied and subtly disguised. As for melody, the Orientals
are bound to short phrases repeated again and again, lacking contrast
and only primitively balanced; and most of their melodies are in scales
different from ours. Of harmony they have relatively no idea, whereas
the music of Western Europe has been subjected to the tremendously
powerful influence of harmony in one form or another for nearly a
thousand years. Hence, even though the rhythm and melody in both have
come from the same instinct in the race of man, the Western and the
Eastern arts of music seem almost radically different.
In general the difference between the two is only exaggerated by the
few cases in modern music when composers have made use of Oriental
themes or rhythms or instruments. Such cases by no means show a working
together or an approach of the two systems; for the mere fact that a
certain twist of melody, a certain insistence of rhythm, a beat of the
tam-tam or the gong can give a strong Oriental color to music proves
how foreign Oriental music still sounds to our ears. It may be said
that European music has been influenced by Asiatic music hardly at
all, unless, possibly, the prominent, almost barbaric rhythms of some
Russian music have sprung from a mixture of the Oriental with the Slav.
F. H. M.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Musical development of civilized races removed from European
influence.
[13] Julien Tiersot: _Notes d’ethnographie musicale_ (première séries),
Paris, 1905.
[14] What we may call modern Chinese music probably reached China
through Bactria, a Greek kingdom, founded by Diodotus 256 B. C. Jesuit
missionaries jumped to the conclusion that the Greeks borrowed the
Pythagorean scale from the Chinese, but the 'Chinese’ scale did not
exist in China until two centuries after its appearance in Greece.
Chinese literature on music goes back no farther than the ninth century
of the Christian era, to which date may be assigned the Chieh Ku Lu,
a treatise on the deer-skin drum, introduced into China from Central
Asia, and evidently of Scythian origin. There are several important
works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in which the history
and theory of music are fully discussed.
[15] C. R. Day: 'The Music and Musical Instruments of Southern India
and the Deccan,’ London, 1891.
[16] The music of a _raga_, which is very popular in Central India, is
given in Tiersot, _Notes d’ethnographie musicale_, Plate 10.
[17] This finds a curious parallel in the music of the dance of
the _seis_ in the Cathedral of Seville--almost the only example of
religious dancing in Christianity.
[18] In the 'dance of Krishna,’ a three-day religious saturnalia in
honor of the youthful god, and in the obscene rites of Kali, the black
goddess, the _devadhazis_ portray all the phases of physical passion.
[19] 'A number of young girls slowly and gracefully sway and twist
their lithe bodies in rhythm to the music of flageolets playing in
minor mode. Most of the time they dance on their knees, bending and
twisting, their hair sometimes standing out almost straight, then
falling about their heads.’