Opera is a form of entertainment which, though very popular in America
and England, does not appeal to me. I know that those who are fond of
music love to attend it, and that the boxes in an opera house are
generally engaged by the fashionable set for the whole season
beforehand. I have seen members of the "four hundred" in their boxes
in a New York opera house; they have been distinguished by their
magnificent toilettes and brilliant jewelry; but I have been thinking
of the Chinese drama, which, like the old Greek play, is also based on
music, and Chinese music with its soft and plaintive airs is a very
different thing from the music of grand opera. Chinese music could not
be represented on Western instruments, the intervals between the notes
being different. Chinese singing is generally "recitative" accompanied
by long notes, broken, or sudden chords from the orchestra. It differs
widely from Western music, but its effects are wonderful. One of our
writers has thus described music he once heard: "Softly, as the murmur
of whispered words; now loud and soft together, like the patter of
pearls and pearlets dropping upon a marble dish. Or liquid, like the
warbling of the mango-bird in the bush; trickling like the streamlet on
its downward course. And then like the torrent, stilled by the grip of
frost, so for a moment was the music lulled, in a passion too deep for
words." That this famous description of the effects of music which I
have borrowed from Mr. Dyer Ball's "Things Chinese" is not exaggerated,
anyone who knows China may confirm by personal observation of the keen
enjoyment an unlearned, common day laborer will find in playing a
single lute all by himself for hours beneath the moon on a warm summer
evening, with no one listening but the trees and the flitting insects;
but it requires a practised ear to appreciate singing and a good voice.
On one occasion I went to an opera house in London to hear the
world-renowned Madame Patti. The place was so crowded, and the
atmosphere so close, that I felt very uncomfortable and I am ashamed to
acknowledge that I had to leave before she had finished. If I had been
educated to appreciate that sort of music no doubt I would have
comprehended her singing better, and, however uncomfortable, I should
no doubt have remained to the end of the entertainment.
While writing this chapter it happened that the following news from New
York was published in the local papers in Shanghai. It should be
interesting to my readers, especially to those who are lovers of music.
"'Yellow music' will be the next novelty to startle and lure this blase
town; amusement forecasters already see in the offing a Fall invasion
of the mysterious Chinese airs which are now having such a vogue in
London under the general term of 'yellow music'.
"The time was when Americans and occidentals in general laughed at
Chinese music, but this was due to their own ignorance of its full
import and to the fact that they heard only the dirges of a Chinese
funeral procession or the brassy noises that feature a celestial
festival. They did not have opportunity to be enthralled by the
throaty, vibrant melodies--at once so lovingly seductive and harshly
compelling--by which Chinese poets and lovers have revealed their
thoughts and won their quest for centuries. The stirring tom-tom, if
not the ragtime which sets the occidental capering to-day, was common
to the Chinese three or four hundred years ago. They heard it from the
wild Tartars and Mongols--heard it and rejected it, because it was
primitive, untamed, and not to be compared with their own carefully
controlled melodies. Mr. Emerson Whithorne, the famous British
composer, who is an authority on oriental music, made this statement to
the London music lovers last week:
"'The popularity of Chinese music is still in its childhood. From now
on it will grow rapidly. Chinese music has no literature, as we
understand that term, but none can say that it has not most captivating
melodies. To the artistic temperament, in particular, it appeals
enormously, and well-known artists--musicians, painters, and so on--say
that it affects them in quite an extraordinary way.'"
Chinese music from an occidental standpoint has been unjustly described
as "clashing cymbals, twanging guitars, harsh flageolets, and shrill
flutes, ear-splitting and headache-producing to the foreigner." Such
general condemnation shows deplorable ignorance.[2] The writer had
apparently never attended an official service in honor of Confucius,
held biennially during the whole of the Ching dynasty at 3 A.M. The
"stone chimes", consisting of sonorous stones varying in tone and
hanging in frames, which were played on those solemn occasions, have a
haunting melody such as can be heard nowhere else. China, I believe,
is the only country that has produced music from stones. It is
naturally gratifying to me to hear that Chinese airs are now having a
vogue in London, and that they will soon be heard in New York. It will
take some little time for Westerners to learn to listen intelligently
to our melodies which, being always in unison, in one key and in one
movement, are apt at first to sound as wearisome and monotonous as
Madame Patti's complicated notes did to me, but when they understand
them they will have found a new delight in life.
Although we Chinese do not divide our plays into comedies and tragedies
there is frequently a good deal of humor on the Chinese stage; yet we
have nothing in China corresponding to the popular musical comedy of
the West. A musical comedy is really a series of vaudeville
performances strung together by the feeblest of plots. The essence
seems to be catchy songs, pretty dances, and comic dialogue. The plot
is apparently immaterial, its only excuse for existence being to give a
certain order of sequence to the aforesaid songs, dances, and
dialogues. That, indeed, is the only object for the playwright's
introducing any plot at all, hence he does not much care whether it is
logical or even within the bounds of probability. The play-goers, I
think, care even less. They go to hear the songs, see the dances,
laugh at the dialogues, and indulge in frivolous frivolities; what do
they want with a plot, much less a moral? Chinese vaudeville takes the
form of clever tumbling tricks which I think are much preferable to the
sensuous, curious, and self-revealing dances one sees in the West.
Although musical comedy, or, more properly speaking, musical farce, is
becoming more and more popular in both Europe and America it is also
becoming proportionately more farcical; although in many theaters it is
staged as often as the more serious drama, in some having exclusive
dominion; and although theater managers find that these plays draw
bigger crowds and fill their houses better than any other, in the large
cities running for over a year, I cannot help regarding this feature of
theatrical life as so much theatrical chaos. It lacks culture, and is
sometimes both bizarre and neurotic. I do not object to patter, smart
give and take, in which the comical angles of life are exposed, if it
is brilliant; neither have I anything to say against light comedy in
which the ridiculous side of things is portrayed. This sort of
entertainment may help men who have spent a busy day, crowded with
anxious moments, and weighted with serious responsibilities, but
exhibitions which make men on their way home talk not of art, or of
music, or of wit, but of "the little girl who wore a little black net"
are distinctly to be condemned. Even the class who think it waste of
time to think, and who go to the theater only to "laugh awfully", are
not helped by this sort of entertainment. Such songs as the following,
which I have culled from the 'Play Pictorial', a monthly published in
London, must in time pall the taste of even the shallow-minded.
"Can't you spare a glance?
Have we got a chance?
You've got a knowing pair of eyes;
When it's 2 to 1
It isn't much fun,"
This is what she soon replies:
"Oh, won't you buy a race-card,
And take a tip from me?
If you want to find a winner,
It's easy as can be
When the Cupid stakes are starting,
Your heads are all awhirl,
And my tip to-day
Is a bit each way
On the race-card girl."
Yet this, apparently, is the sort of thing which appeals to the modern
American who wants amusement of the lightest kind, amusement which
appeals to the eye and ear with the lightest possible tax on his
already over-burdened brain. He certainly cannot complain that his
wishes have not been faithfully fulfilled. It may be due to my
ignorance of English, but the song I have just quoted seems to me
silly, and I do not think any "ragtime music" could make it worth
singing. Of course many songs and plays in the music halls are such as
afford innocent mirth, but it has to be confessed that there are other
things of a different type which it is not wise for respectable
families to take the young to see. I would not like to say all I think
of this feature of Western civilization, but I may quote an Englishman
without giving offense. Writing in the 'Metropolitan Magazine', Louis
Sherwin says: "There is not a doubt that the so-called 'high-brow
dancer' has had a lot to do with the bare-legged epidemic that rages
upon the comic-opera stage to-day. Nothing could be further removed
from musical comedy than the art of such women as Isadora Duncan and
Maude Allen. To inform Miss Duncan that she has been the means of
making nudity popular in musical farce would beyond question incur the
lady's very reasonable wrath. But it is none the less true. When the
bare-legged classic dancer made her appearance in opera houses, and on
concert platforms with symphony orchestras, it was the cue for every
chorus girl with an ambition to undress in public. First of all we had
a plague of Salomes. Then the musical comedy producers, following
their usual custom of religiously avoiding anything original, began to
send the pony ballets and soubrettes on the stages without their
hosiery and with their knees clad in nothing but a coat of whitewash
(sometimes they even forgot to put on the whitewash, and then the sight
was horrible). The human form divine, with few exceptions, is a
devilish spectacle unless it is properly made up. Some twenty years
from now managers will discover what audiences found out months ago,
that a chorus girl's bare leg is infinitely less beautiful than the
same leg when duly disguised by petticoats and things."
[1] In his discussion of actors, Wu Tingfang does not seem to be aware
that the idealization of actors in the West is comparatively recent,
and that historically, and even now in some parts of society, actors
and the acting profession have been looked down upon in the West for
many of the same reasons he gives for the same phenomenon in China.--A.
R. L., 1996.
[2] Wu Tingfang is quite correct to deplore this statement as a
description of Chinese music. However, in all fairness, it is an
accurate description of how a Western ear first hears CERTAIN types of
Chinese music. After successive hearings this impression will fly
away, but until then CERTAIN types are reminiscent of two alley-cats
fighting in a garbage can. This is not meant as a degrading comment,
any more so than Wu Tingfang's comments on opera. Some music is an
acquired taste, and after acquirement, its beauty becomes not only
recognizable but inescapable. Certain other types of Chinese music can
easily be appreciated on the first hearing.--A. R. L., 1996.