Chapter V

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.”

_After a print by Gakutei—about 1840._

_The Koto-Player._
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_After print by Kuniyasu—about 1830._

_The Wandering Samisen-Player._
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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:

CHINESE SACRIFICIAL HYMN TO THE IMPERIAL ANCESTORS
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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.)

_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._
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_Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City._

_A Burmese Musicale._
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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.