Critical and Historical Essays, Edward MacDowell [fun to read .txt] 📗

have never risen to a practical use of it even to this day. The Chinese scale is now, as it always has been, one of five notes to the octave, that is to say, our modern major scale with the fourth and seventh omitted.

From a technical point of view, the instruments of bamboo attain an importance above all other Chinese instruments. According to the legend, the Pan's-pipes of bamboo regulated the tuning of all other instruments, and as a matter of fact the pipe giving the note F, the universal tonic, is the origin of all measures also. For this pipe, which in China is called the "musical foot," is at the same time a standard measure, holding exactly twelve hundred millet seeds, and long enough for one hundred millet seeds to stand end on end within it.

In concluding this consideration of the music of the Chinese, I would draw attention to the unceasing repetition which constitutes a prominent feature in all barbarous or semi-barbarous music. In the "Hymn of the Ancestors" this endless play on three or four notes is very marked.

[Figure 02]

In other songs it is equally apparent.

[Figure 03] etc.

[Figure 04]

[Figure 05] etc.

This characteristic is met with in the music of the American Indians, also in American street songs, in fact in all music of a primitive nature, just as our school children draw caricatures similar to those made by great chiefs and medicine men in the heart of Africa, and, similarly, the celebrated "graffiti" of the Roman soldiers were precisely of the same nature as the beginnings of Egyptian art. In art, the child is always a barbarian more or less, and all strong emotion acting on a naturally weak organism or a primitive nature brings the same result, namely, that of stubborn repetition of one idea. An example of this is Macbeth, who, in the very height of his passion, stops to juggle with the word "sleep," and in spite of the efforts of his wife, who is by far the more civilized of the two, again and again recurs to it, even though he is in mortal danger. When Lady Macbeth at last breaks down, she also shows the same trait in regard to her bloodstained hands. It is not so far from Scotland to the Polar regions, and there we find that when Kane captured a young Eskimo and kept him on his ship, the only sign of life the prisoner gave was to sing over and over to himself the following:

[Figure 06]

Coming back again to civilization, we find Tennyson's Elaine, in her grief, repeating, incessantly the words, "Must I then die."

The music of the Siamese, Burmese, Javanese, and Japanese has much in common with that of the Chinese, the difference between the first two and the last named being mainly in the absence of the king, or musical stones, or rather the substitution of sets of drums in place of it. For instance, the Burmese drum-organ, as it is called, consists of twenty-one drums of various sizes hung inside a great hoop. Their gong-organ consists of fifteen or more gongs of different sizes strung inside a hoop in the same manner. The player takes his place in the middle of the hoop and strikes the drums or gongs with a kind of stick. These instruments are largely used in processions, being carried by two men, just as a sedan chair is borne; the player, in order to strike all the gongs and bells, must often walk backwards, or strike them behind his back.

In Javanese and Burmese music these sets of gongs and drums are used incessantly, and form a kind of high-pitched, sustained tone beneath which the music is played or sung.

In Siamese music the wind instruments have a prominent place. After having heard the Siamese Royal Orchestra a number of times in London, I came to the conclusion that the players on the different instruments improvise their parts, the only rule being the general character of the melodies to be played, and the finishing together. The effect of the music was that of a contrapuntal nightmare, hideous to a degree which one who has not heard it cannot conceive. Berlioz, in his "Soirées de l'orchestre," well described its effect when he said:

"After the first sensation of horror which one cannot
repress, one feels impelled to laugh, and this hilarity
can only be controlled by leaving the hall. So long
as these impossible sounds continue, the fact of their
being gravely produced, and in all sincerity admired
by the players, makes the 'concert' appear inexpressibly
'comic.'"

The Japanese had the same Buddhistic disregard for euphony, but they have adopted European ideas in music and are rapidly becoming occidentalized from a musical point of view. Their principal instruments are the koto and the samisen. The former is similar to the Chinese che, and is a kind of large zither with thirteen strings, each having a movable bridge by means of which the pitch of the string may be raised or lowered. The samisen is a kind of small banjo, and probably originated in the Chinese kin.

From Buddhism to sun worship, from China to Peru and Mexico, is a marked change, but we find strange resemblances in the music of these peoples, seeming almost to corroborate the theory that the southern American races may be traced back to the extreme Orient. We remember that in the Chinese sacred chants-"official" music as one may call it-all the notes were of exactly the same length. Now Garcilaso de la Vega (1550), in his "Commentarios Reales," tells us that unequal time was unknown in Peru, that all the notes in a song were of exactly the same length. He further tells us that in his time the voice was but seldom heard in singing, and that all the songs were played on the flute, the words being so well known that the melody of the flute immediately suggested them. The Peruvians were essentially a pipe race, while, on the other hand, the instruments of the Mexicans were of the other extreme, all kinds of drums, copper gongs, rattles, musical stones, cymbals, bells, etc., thus completing the resemblance to Chinese art. In Prescott's "Conquest of Peru" we may read of the beautiful festival of Raymi, or adoration of the sun, held at the period of the summer solstice. It describes how the Inca and his court, followed by the whole population of the city, assembled at early dawn in the great square of Cuzco, and how, at the appearance of the first rays of the sun, a great shout would go up, and thousands of wind instruments would break forth into a majestic song of adoration. That the Peruvians were a gentler nation than the Mexicans can be seen from their principal instrument, the pipe.

While it has been strenuously denied that on such occasions human sacrifices were offered in Peru, the Mexicans, that race whose principal instruments were drums and brass trumpets, not only held such sacrifices, but, strange to say, held them in honour of a kind of god of music, Tezcatlipoca. This festival was the most important in Mexico, and took place at the temple or "teocalli," a gigantic, pyramid-like mass of stone, rising in terraces to a height of eighty-six feet above the city, and culminating in a small summit platform upon which the long procession of priests and victims could be seen from all parts of the city. Once a year the sacrifice was given additional importance, for then the most beautiful youth in Mexico was chosen to represent the god himself. For a year before the sacrifice he was dressed as Tezcatlipoca, in royal robes and white linen, with a helmet-like crown of sea shells with white cocks' plumes, and with an anklet hung with twenty gold bells as a symbol of his power, and he was married to the most beautiful maiden in Mexico. The priests taught him to play the flute, and whenever the people heard the sound of it they fell down and worshipped him.

The account may be found in Bancroft's great work on the "Native Races of the Pacific," also Sahagun's "Nueva España and Bernal Diaz," but perhaps the most dramatic description is that by Rowbotham:

And when the morning of the day of sacrifice arrived,
he was taken by water to the Pyramid Temple where he
was to be sacrificed, and crowds lined the banks of the
river to see him in the barge, sitting in the midst of
his beautiful companions. When the barge touched the
shore, he was taken away from those companions of his
forever, and was delivered over to a band of priests,
exchanging the company of beautiful women for men
clothed in black mantles, with long hair matted with
blood-their ears also were mangled. These conducted
him to the steps of the pyramid, and he was driven
up amidst a crowd of priests, with drums beating and
trumpets blowing. As he went up he broke an earthen
flute on every step to show that his love, and his
delights were over. And when he reached the top, he was
sacrificed on an altar of jasper, and the signal that
the sacrifice was completed was given to the multitudes
below by the rolling of the great sacrificial drum.[04]


[02] Kong. His disciples called him Fu Tsee, or "the
master"; Jesuit missionaries Latinized this to Confucius.

[03] The Chinese theatre has been called an unconscious
parody of our old-fashioned Italian opera, and there
are certainly many resemblances. In a Chinese play,
when the situation becomes tragic, or when one of the
characters is seized with some strong emotion, it finds
vent in a kind of aria. The dialogue is generally given
in the most monotonous manner possible-using only
high throat and head tones, occasionally lowering or
raising the voice on a word, to express emotion. This
monotonous, and to European ears, strangely nonchalant,
nasal recitative, is being continually interrupted by
gong pounding and the shrill, high sound of discordant
reed instruments. When one or more of the characters
commits suicide (which as we know is an honoured custom
in China) he sings-or rather whines-a long chant before
he dies, just as his western operatic colleagues do, as,
for instance, Edgar in "Lucia di Lammermoor" and even,
to come nearer home, Siegfried in "Götterdämmerung."

[04] This drum was made of serpents' skins, and the sound of
it was so loud that it