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Page 20
The sound of bamboo is represented in the familiar form of
Pan's pipes, and various forms of flutes which hardly need
further description.
And finally the sound of the gourd. The gourd is a kind of
squash, hollowed out, in which from thirteen to twenty-four
pipes of bamboo or metal are inserted; each one of these
pipes contains a metal reed, the vibration of which causes
the sound. Below the reed are cut small holes in the pipes,
and there is a pipe with a mouthpiece to keep the gourd,
which is practically an air reservoir, full of air. The air
rushing out through the bamboo pipes will naturally escape
through the holes cut below the reeds, making no sound, but
if the finger stops one or more of these holes, the air is
forced up through the reeds, thus giving a musical sound,
the pitch of which will be dependent on the length of the
pipes and the force with which the air passes through the reed.
Other instruments of the Chinese are gongs of all sizes,
trumpets, and several stringed instruments somewhat akin to our
guitars and mandolins. Neither the Chinese nor the Japanese
have ever seemed to consider the voice as partaking of the
nature of music. This is strange, for the language of the
Chinese depends on flexibility of the voice to make it even
intelligible. As a matter of fact, singing, in our sense of
the word, is unknown to them.
V
THE MUSIC OF THE CHINESE (Continued)
Having described the musical instruments in use in China
we still have for consideration the music itself, and the
conditions which led up to it.
Among the Chinese instruments mentioned in the preceding
chapter, the preponderance of instruments of percussion, such
as drums, gongs, bells, etc., has probably been noticed. In
connection with the last named we meet with one of the two cases
in Chinese art in which we see the same undercurrent of feeling,
or rather superstition, as that found among western nations. We
read in the writings of Mencius, the Chinese philosopher (350
B.C.), the following bit of gossip about the king Senen of Tse.
"The king," said he, "was sitting aloft in the hall, when
a man appeared, leading an ox past the lower part of it.
The king saw him, and asked, 'Where is the ox going?'
"The man replied, 'We are going to consecrate a bell with
its blood.'
"The king said, 'Let it go. I cannot bear its frightened
appearance as if it were an innocent person going to the
place of death.'
"The man answered, 'Shall we then omit the consecration
of the bell?'
"The king said, 'How can that be omitted? Change the ox
for a sheep.'"
As stated before, this is one of the few cases in which Chinese
superstition coincides with that of the West; for our own church
bells were once consecrated in very much the same manner, a
survival of that ancient universal custom of sacrifice. With
the exception of this resemblance, which, however, has nothing
to do with actual music, everything in Chinese art is exactly
the opposite of our western ideas on the subject.
The Chinese orchestra is composed of about sixteen different
types of percussion instruments and four kinds of wind and
stringed instruments, whereas in our European orchestras the
ratio is exactly reversed. Their orchestras are placed at
the back of the stage, ours in front of it. The human voice
is not even mentioned in their list of musical sounds (sound
of metal, baked clay, wood, skin, bamboo, etc)., whereas we
consider it the most nearly perfect instrument existing. This
strange perversity once caused much discussion in days when
we knew less of China than we do at present, as to whether
the Chinese organs of hearing were not entirely different from
those of western nations. We now know that this contradiction
runs through all their habits of life. With them white is the
colour indicative of mourning; the place of honour is on the
left hand; the seat of intellect is in the stomach; to take off
one's hat is considered an insolent gesture; the magnetic needle
of the Chinese compass is reckoned as pointing south, instead of
north; even up to the middle of the nineteenth century the chief
weapon in war was the bow and arrow, although they were long
before acquainted with gunpowder--and so on, _ad infinitum_.
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