It had not occurred to me before to think of any distinct implication in the words; but now I question very much the pleasantness of a brass tube taken into the mouth, in length nearly two inches, with its vibrating tongue in action; not like a cup-piece outside the lips, as in the trumpet and trombone.
Fancy it: a brassy taste! Surely this was not the idea he would convey, of a player’s hot moist lips straining upon a slender tube of brass. We shall get his words more literally in prose:—
When it passes through the slender brass and through the reeds,—which grew near the city Charites, the city with beautiful places for the dance.
The flute itself could not be called slender, being interiorly three eighths of an inch; and, moreover, it was but the casing that was of brass, and that only with flutes after the invention of that sectional arrangement of sliding cylindrical pieces over each aperture, the tube itself being of ivory, or of elder, or of sycamore. Thus, then, the question arises. What slender brass had Pindar in mind?
Accepting the prose as the more literal translation, note the “and,” as if Pindar meant, and then through the reeds, and further it may be of importance that the plural is given “reeds.”
Although I have presented the picture of the two flutes that in style accord with the flute designed by the sculptor as if that upon such Midas played, I believe that a scrutiny of dates forbids the supposition; those flutes will prove to be of too late a date, Midas is certainly more likely to have used the double flutes pictured upon the vases,—the bulbed flutes, and not the single ones fingered by the two hands. In the plural case, the two flutes would be rightly described, being the style with the two reed-pipes, one for each hand.
Accepting Pindar’s words literally—“slender brass”—I think that we must believe that he meant to describe the reed as of brass: a reed of slender metal through which the breath passed on its way, urging the reed into vibration. Now, what I would suggest is that, if silk reached Greece from China in those days, why should not the free reed? Actually it is of slender brass.
I have made experiments with the free reed upon my copies of the Greek flutes in the British Museum, and see very clearly the possibility of the adaptation of the free reed to the hollow cocoon-like bulb pictured of the flutes in the paintings upon the Etruscan vases, and which, as you have read, I interpret as being designed to hold a reed within it; the first, second, or third bulb being selected for the purpose, according to “the mode” of the particular piece of music that was to be played. The bulbs are quite large enough for holding the free reed of the requisite size and flexibility.
In the Chinese organ “Sheng” the little brass free reed is fixed on a small quill-like reed stem and is passed through a hole into the bowl that holds the series of reeds. The position of the reed for sounding is exactly the same as that which I am supposing for it in the bulb.
Again, it has been supposed from a remark made by an ancient reporter that a certain flute player in a contest was unable to play because of an accident by which his flute reed had become bent; that therefore it may have been a metal reed such as the free reed.
The question has also an acoustic bearing; according to Weber’s law, the free reed is amenable to variations of pitch: by its nature it is able to accommodate itself, and may be taken down an octave in pitch under the influence of the tube with which it is associated; but upon that descent of pitch being reached, it starts back again to its own pitch. Joining such a reed to the flute, I find that its pitch is lowered as each hole is in succession closed, but that at the last hole it refuses to speak at all. This shows that a different reed should be selected that would be flexible enough to accommodate itself to altered conditions of tube; but to obtain the right reed will demand a course of arduous experiment upon new ground, the best teacher being experience. I said that the reed refuses to speak. Here comes a noticeable fact: by extreme high pressure I can induce it to speak, and that powerfully. Have we not in this fact some hint—or, may be, explanation—of that strange demand of the Greeks, as it seems to us, for a bandage, a phorbeion, like a halter over the head, to prevent the bursting of the cheeks of the player? This intensely produced note may be the kind of note they wanted,—that which they prized and acclaimed in Midas. The probability is that the whole series of notes was produced on this high pressure system, in open air, and intended to be heard by a vast concourse of people. When I played softly or with average strength of breath, I found that I could not take the reed beyond a fourth. Does not this appear to account for the limitation to four holes which so long prevailed? In our own course of evolution of instruments from early times progress has been slow; many centuries passed before the first little brass key was invented and applied to flutes. With the clarionet it was the same: the sudden burst into new life being due to one man,—Denner. From the first to the last period in the development of Greek flutes there were no doubt well marked transition stages of which we possess no record: new inventions equally momentous to them as to us, and upon which new players started into pre-eminence. Midas was credited with the invention of the particular flute upon which he won renown; and it may have been that Pindar intentionally specified it, and that it may have consisted in the application of a free reed of slender brass to obtain a greater range of notes.
The free reed in the way that I have suggested was equally applicable to the double and to the single flute; and therefore, whatever the kind of flute upon which glorious Midas played, and won his laurel wreaths and his immortal renown, the special epithet of Pindar would hold true:—
The little brass reeds are easily made, the metal is very thin, and three strokes of a tiny chisel cut the reed. To a people so skilled in the working of metal in jewellery as the Etruscan and Greek, the making of these fine reeds would present no difficulty. Unfortunately, the slenderness has been adverse to preservation. These perishable reeds,—what tomb enshrines the one which is to satisfy our longing to know! A learned professor tells me that the Pompeiians were of the Oscan tribe, being in their remotest line called the Sabellic race, that they belonged to the large ancient group of the “Aryans.” In late times, these people mixed with the Etruscans, Pelasgians, and Safines, and their writing was similar to the Greek; and, according to language, they were related to the Sanskrit and to the Iranian languages,—namely, the Jadian and Persian. So in all our wanderings we are brought back to the old home,—to Persia, where the pathways of music begin.
The latest discovered Delphian tablet can well claim to be the only authentic record yet brought to light of old Greek music, since it is the original and not a copy of a copy. Not only is it original and genuine beyond dispute, but it has also the inestimable value of being earlier in date by many centuries of any previous record of repute, and so in the style of its music more nearly representative of the simplicity of the best period of the tragic and lyric arts of the Greeks.
In his “History of Music,” Mr. W. Chappell gives examples of three Greek hymns with music, the three being in his day the only known trustworthy remains of Greek music. They were published by Vincenzo Galilei, the father of the great astronomer, at Florence in 1581, and had been copied from a Greek manuscript in the library of Cardinal St. Angelo at Rome.
A second Greek MS., which included these same hymns, was found in the library of Archbishop Usher, and from that the hymns were printed by the Oxford University in 1672. Then, in 1720, a third MS. was found in the library of the King of France at Paris, which also contained these three hymns, which supplied three or four missing notes. Although, as we have the music brought to our notice, it is barred and timed and otherwise dressed up in modern fashion, we have to remember that the Greeks knew nothing of such devices. Their notation was only by letters written above the words, which by their rhythm determined every musical feature: for the poet ruled the music. The letters had their significance as instructions according as they were placed—upright, inverted, jacent both on the back and on the face, turned right or left, and by broken parts of letters and there were accents in addition; and consequently were liable to much misconstruction or error on the part of the copyist. “The time of notes,” says Gaudentius, “is to be ruled by the rhythm of the poetry.”
So that the music was not strictly syllabic. “The length of irregular syllabic quantities has to subserve, and to be fitted into the arsis and thesis, or up and down beats, of a foot of verse in the measure that has been adopted.” This old custom is familiar to us in our Te Deum and other chants, and in oratorio recitative, and is in fact the most ancient as it has been the most universal feature in the evolution of song. Mr. Chappell quotes a Greek passage “On the Phrasing of a composition,” by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. “But rhythm and music diminish and augment the quantities of syllables, so as often to change them to their opposites. Time is not to be regulated by syllables, but syllables by time.” We know how our modern rhymesters, who write for the drawing-room or the streets, are given to ricketty irregularities of metre; but this is from slipshod guiltiness, and is quite of a different order from the poetic disposition of syllabic utterance. Read Coleridge’s “Christabel” for the most splendid example of such word music; or, in later days, Swinburne’s lines, which so often give marvellous evidence of the mastery of this rhythmic art.
With these remarks in precaution, we may look at the music to the first of those three relics, the “Hymn to Calliope” as modernly set forth:—
Many readers will be glad to have this example of Greek music, just to see what it is like. The words must be left to experts who can sing them, for it would be of little use to add them here; and whosoever is disposed for further enquiry will find the adapted harmony by G. A. Macfarren in Mr. W. Chappell’s book. The above is transposed a fourth lower than according to the mode assigned to it, and an octave higher than the pitch as for a man’s voice. The transposition is in accordance with the system of Claudius Ptolemy, who showed how much too high for use the Greek hymns were if taken at the pitch that had been assigned to them.
The second of the three hymns is a “Hymn to Apollo,” and is less tunable in style; the third is a “Hymn to Nemesis,” sung to the sound of the lyre. No one of the manuscripts is older than fourteen centuries. The authorship of the first two hymns is attributed to Dionysius; in any case the inferences lead to the placing of the date not earlier than from the second to the fourth century of our era. Considering all these indications of the state of our knowledge of Greek music, we cannot wonder at the great and exciting interest aroused by the veritable music on marble so fortunately recovered.
The Greek hymn that was found at Delphi inscribed in marble upon the inner wall of the ancient treasure house, has been sung at Athens. After two thousand years the music lives again. But with what a difference—revivified, yet only strangely alive! Those who incised the hymn, imperishably as they thought upon the marble surface—they had themselves given voice to it, had joined in the sacred service, and felt the thrill of the thousand surrounding voices of a people who believed in their gods. Who now believes? Apollo and the Muses are far off, and the great god Pan is dead. No, the music cannot be the same, for the ears that listen have lost that inheritance of nature which was the birthright of those early worshippers at the Temple of Delphi. Neither priest nor oracle speak; our privilege as quite a modern people, is to listen to The Times own correspondent. We are told that
The composition is in the Hypo-Dorian mode, and, like most ancient musical compositions, is in a minor key, and written in a peculiar time, with five crotchets to the bar. It was rendered by a quartet of male voices. Some passages are surprisingly modern in character, and the whole composition possesses much of the dignity of the finest German chorales.
And, further, we hear that the hymn was encored. Think of that! The first time, no doubt, of being honoured in such a fashion. What would they have said at Delphi? It is all pastime now, not prayer. And another correspondent gives assurance that
The performance, which lasted but half-an-hour, was a great success; it produced a profound impression on the audience. Everyone present indeed was ravished by the charm of the music, and its mingled originality, simplicity and grandeur.
Well, I suppose that it is all right; but it is terribly artificial in the reading. You cannot but note that the restorers have been at work; the harmonization by M. Reinach has no doubt been well done. But with that kind of certainty any simple melody of a few notes may be made impressive. A modern quartet! It sounds incongruous, and makes one think of a top hat on a marble statue; and you cannot help the suspicion that the musical composition made tasty was not Greek music. Although we are condemned by our advancement to see and hear according to modern ways, the interest in this Greek fragment remains; and we all of us curiously want to have the music brought within the range of our own perception, and are presented with the Greek Hymn to Apollo in modern notation, with an imagined suitable harmonization.
The adapted harmony must be taken for what it is worth in relation to music as we require it, and not as upon any evidence in a style likely to have been that used in the Greek singing of the hymn. Indeed, it is difficult to understand upon what principle such a concoction can be justified, for surely the original music has been so dished up to suit the modern palate that the ancient author would be unable to recognise his own hand in it. This harmonized version may rank as French confections in a drawing room entertainment, and help to pass away the time as the latest novelty; but as for any relation to Greek art, only as a travesty can it be taken seriously. The value of the find, as I view it, is that this rescued relic of an elder civilization should help to enable us to realize the actual nature of Greek art in music, and its place in Greek life—either that or nothing; the value is lost if simplicity is lost.
The melody as melody does not attract us; this, as will be seen, Mr. J. P. Mahaffy confirms in his critical remarks, and therefore that is all the more reason why I should plead for sincerity in treatment. Not a note should be altered, not a note should be added to make the flow more agreeable, not a sign or modification be permitted for the sake of smoothness or grace. How eagerly we read a child’s letter; how much such young effort interests us because it is the genuine presentment of a child’s thoughts; how utterly insignificant it would be to us if we knew that it had been vamped up by a teacher. So with this hymn; it came into existence, when music as an art was young, and we want to understand it purely and simply in its youthfulness; and for no other reason than that it was a participant in Greek life, when men believed in the gods they worshipped.
Mr. J. P. Mahaffy, in a paper entitled “Recent Archæology,” makes some interesting remarks upon the chronicled event. He states that
M. Reinach determined (from Alypius) the scale to be Phrygian and its component notes, which scale corresponds to our C minor in its melodic form, with some accidentals introduced in one passage. The pitch is a more difficult question. As printed by M. Reinach, the range is too high for any chest voice; but he believes that the ancient practical pitch was one third lower than that assigned to the scale by the late theorists.
Here authorities, as we have seen, differ; and some make the scale to be hypo-Dorian instead of Phrygian, and some say it is Dorian (e, f, g, a, b, c, d, e) with a as keynote. Mr. J. P. Mahaffy goes on to state that
The time is given by the metre, which is pæonic—a long syllable and three short (variously placed), or two long and a short between them, in every case 5-8 in a bar: a strange measure to us, and very difficult to observe. As regards the accompaniment or harmonizing of the air, their is none extant. We turn lastly to the melody, which is far the most important item in giving us an insight into an old Greek performance. I grieve to say that, although there is rhythm and even a recurrence of phrases to mark the close of the period nothing worthy of being called melody in any modern sense is to be found. The notation of Greek music is well established. It consists of alphabetic letters with or without slight modifications written over the text. Instrumental notes are said to have been written under the text, and with a distinct notation. The poet, tragic or lyric, was also the composer, and set tunes to his odes.
The inscription dates from the third century B.C., and this hymn to Apollo and the Muses consists of phrases equal to eighty bars in modern reckoning.
Here then are a few bars of the melody given apart from the French version harmonised by M.M. Fauré and Reinach, and these will sufficiently indicate the character of the remaining portion, which the student, if so inclined can easily obtain. My object in giving these is in order that you may at the same time compare them with a similarly brief example of the Chinese music to the Hymn of Confucius, which will follow.
OPENING OF THE HYMN TO APOLLO.
The time of the blank spaces in the bars is filled by notes sounded upon some instrument; a kithara, I believe.
Of course, we ought not to introduce bars; but in default of accentuation determined by the words, we have to avail ourselves of these indications, imperfect as they must be. Our notation also is, in some instances, only approximate, as both in the Greek and Chinese systems the intervals vary from ours to the extent at times of a quarter tone.
CONCLUDING STROPHES OF THE HYMN TO CONFUCIUS.
The rhythm of the hymn is constructed so as to have four syllables to a line, and at the end of each line in the verses (here occupying one bar), and one of the instruments is appointed to sound three or six times a sort of interlude as in our recitatives. The music is simple, as with the Greeks, merely indicated by letters or signs associated with the words. The time taken very slow, probably somewhat as our “Old Hundredth” is sung in village churches according to ancient custom.
Mr. Abdy Williams gives a fragment of a papyrus roll belonging to the Augustan age, containing the music to chorus from the Orestes of Euripides (about 408 B.C.), from which it appears that the player extemporized a short interlude at the end of the verses. This is very curious, and will not be without significance if we compare this with the ancient Chinese custom which is so similar. The fragment consists of many bars; but the whole amounts to little beyond repetitions of the following, with now and then a slight variation.
A second hymn (key of G, with C♯) travels very monotonously within these limits.
The compass of the Delphic Greek hymn is one octave and a fourth, and it is curious that this is exactly the compass of the Chinese Sheng organ. The pitch is an octave too high for men’s voices, even as we find is the case with the original pitch of the Greek music.
Professor Jebb, in his address to the Hellenic Society, speaking of this Delphian relic—this marble music, says:—
The fragments at Delphi were fourteen in number. The principal one contained eighteen lines, and the musical notes were fairly complete,—only nine being missing out of two hundred and seven. The signs for the notes were the ordinary letters of the Greek alphabet, sometimes turned upside down or tilted. A key to them had been given by a Greek writer, Olympios, of the time of the Emperor Julian. He had written an introduction to music, which was still extant, in which he gave a list of signs representing notes. There were two distinct systems of musical notation, for voices and for instruments. Nine of the fourteen fragments were arranged for voices, and five for instruments; these were the lyre and the flute, which were named in the text. The instrumental and vocal music was always in unison. There was never more than one note.
Many musical enthusiasts have a fancy for trying to prove that the Greeks must have used harmony, because they possessed in their scale the notes that would combine in chords; but all attempts in this direction have been fruitless, and according to Greek scholars are likely ever to be so. Grand effects can be obtained by unisonous chant: and the Greek ear was satisfied. Let us be content to learn what their music really was, and not import into it our supercivilized requirements, assured that the dressing up of the antique in modern clothes is alike repugnant to good taste and refined sentiment, and is rejected by those who care for the verity of art.
In remarks on Greek music, Dr. C. Maclean said, “the classical period of Greece has been called the adolescence of intellectual and modern man, and a very beautiful adolescence it was. Unfortunately it has departed,” and he quoted the saying of Goethe:—
a saying that comes home to the experience of all of us, but only do we learn its truth when the May flowers that brought joy into our lives have withered and fallen.
Hitherto the investigation in earliest music has proceeded upon evidences of man’s concern with and interest in pipes to make music with. Clearly at first such use of hollow reeds was the accident of the day to any passer-by,—as imagined by Lucretius,
Next came the constructive idea, purpose directed to an end in view, and the development in a very primitive manner of a series of sounds in some order or regularity of succession; for us this has been the chief consideration fixing our attention, to trace the evolution of system in the construction of instruments, therefrom deductively seeking to arrive at the system of the music. With instruments of all sorts collected with a view to antiquarian or archæological reference and study, I have nothing to do, museums may be filled with them, but unless they show us civilization effective nationally to advance some musical system, to notice them would but encumber with useless matter the enquiry such as I have proposed to myself.
Musical pipes we have traced through several phases of development, from the simplest and earliest pipe up to the ultimate stage in the many-ringed flute, as perfected in the hands of the Greek people. Beyond that it is not necessary to go, because our objective is the Greek system of music, as left to us to be the source of our own. The stringed instruments will show a similar course of development from the one-stringed to the many-stringed. The evidences of this progress are very numerous, existing still, and I have no doubt that the investigation will prove to be equally interesting, for it is with the Greek Lyre that we shall arrive at the method of the music.
Meantime ancient China claims attention, for the Chinese hold a parallel course in time with the Egyptians. What has China to tell of earliest music?
The Chinese have always been fond of seeking the similitudes and contrasts existing between everything in heaven and earth. So far as they had attained in astronomical knowledge, the number of the planets was five; consequently there could be only five colours, five points of the compass, five elements, five primitive sounds, etc. Music was made the subject of many allegorical comparisons, as twelve moons, twelve sounds, twelve hours, twelve strings. And this strange propensity has quite perverted many of their records of history upon art and science; for whatever remained unknown or doubtful, appears to have been supplied with the utmost confidence upon some imaginary basis of affinity or relation of numbers mystically inevitable. The poetry of the symbol was lost in the pedantry of its exposition.
Certain facts we may accept, but not the garnishing with which the Chinese philosophers and teachers have surrounded them. Each instrument, according to their logical demand, had an inventor, and the scholastic notion has been to attribute the honour of the invention to an Emperor, and forthwith to account for every detail in it upon some system conformable to the wisdom of the scholastic mind.
Learning has always been greatly honoured in China, and the colleges of the mandarins held with rigid formalism to the doctrines they had received from the past, although it may have been a near past compared with the nation’s history; and so the mystical teachings of similitudes and affinities, and the occult control of nature by numbers, became to the students fixed verities of science, not to be questioned. What concerns us is that these teachings, as regards Chinese music and musical instruments, confront us with a mass of statements incongruous and contradictory. Something like our heraldic descents; the centuries pass, and the links are manufactured to give a factitious coherence to satisfy the desire for truth.
The P’ai-hsiao, here illustrated, is one of the ancient instruments belonging to the Chinese, who hold it to be symbolic, and to represent the phœnix with outspread wings, even as the Sheng represents the sacred bird sitting upon her nest. In both, no other reason can be assigned for the particular forms assumed by the instruments, the mystical idea is evidently deeply rooted in the race, and is ineffaceable.
Except for the questions of origin and development, the music of the Chinese can have but little attraction for us. But what I would point out as of interest, is that there have been periods of history during which particular musical systems held sway, with certain instruments in vogue, and with special methods devised in relation to them. In one age the tetrachord, in another the pentatone, in another the fusion of these, and in another the filling in of semitones to complete a scale seemingly akin to our chromatic. In the earlier periods the wind instruments prevailed, and determined the musical systems; and in later times the instruments with strings gave rise to new and elaborate discriminations.
Fig. 26.
The Chinese P’ai-hsiao.
The stone chimes and the great bells should be adjudged to very ancient times, although in the rise and fall of dynasties the traditional tones have been changed, and perhaps newer traditions have usurped the old; until in the confusion, systems that in their origin were many centuries apart became mixed up together as of one growth. The abstruse theories with which the treatises of the learned are occupied, and the fantastic accretions of symbolism which seem to form the foundations of Chinese literature—all these make the way of the investigator difficult. The rational course is to leave them aside and go to the facts. The instruments themselves represent the past, and are valid evidence.
Père Amiot, of the French Jesuit mission, according to his works, published in 1780, appeared to be so well grounded in everything relating to Chinese history and customs that his statements upon their music passed without contradiction; and, indeed, so intimate a knowledge did he seem to possess that even confirmation of his views would have been considered needless. Such misplaced reliance has given a century’s permanence to misconceptions; and men of sagacity, in dealing with the matters in question, have blindly followed where Amiot led, each succeeding writer repeating the errors of former writers.
Western theorists prejudge questions of Asiatic music by being so wedded to one particular conception of what a scale ought to exhibit.
Ideas of octaves and fifths and of minor and major, and tone and semitone rule at every corner. The fortuitous nature of men’s devices in art is scarcely conceivable when rule and logic claim to divine how art developed. Europeans are ever prone to trouble in accounting for everything, and to desire—almost to design—that facts should fit theory, whether they will or not. The Asiatic mind is little understood by the European mind; and human nature being outwardly so much alike, we are puzzled at ways of thought and innate tendencies diverging greatly from our own. Whilst acknowledging a difference in organization, we yet deeming ours to be the proper standard; our likings to be natural, and foreigners’ likings to be queer, if not preposterous. John Chinaman’s ear is different to John Bull’s ear, somehow, if we could only find out how.
I find that mostly the scientific man is as bigoted as the superstitious man when he brings himself to talk of the beautiful fitness of nature’s designs, and of the unerring guidance for our behoof to be found in her operations, and so forth. Now, I know that it is customary to vaunt “nature’s teaching of harmony and the diatonic scale,” in the unconscious training she gives us in compounding quality of tone, and furnishing us with a chain of harmonics in a range so nearly out of discrimination of our hearing that, in our average daily life, we are blissfully unaware of the experiences to which we have been subjected. Backed though this doctrine is by the great name of Helmholtz, I confess that I find myself unable to admit its relevance.
First and foremost in the consideration of Chinese music is the fact that the Chinese have no care for our harmony: they will have none of it. Neither will they take to our diatonic scale: it offends their sense of art. Unisons and concords of two notes (as fourths and thirds, and their inversions) satisfy their sense of the harmonious. In this, certain other Eastern nations agree with them. The attempt to find an equal temperament scale as we understand it, of twelve semitones, fails as regards the old instruments.
The P’ai-hsiao is reported of as possessing a scale of twelve equally tempered semitones; the arrangement being of alternate notes right and left, the deepest notes being at each end, and the shortest pipes in the middle,—a plan adopted in organ building. Not having yet had an instrument of the kind in my hands, I cannot say anything by knowledge; but certainly the scale set out by Van Aalst is not semitonal. For he expressly selects five notes, three being a quarter tone lower and two a quarter tone higher than in a correct scale of the modern type. Even these named had better, I expect, have been named as only approximately a quarter tone wrong; there is no intentional quarter, but a fixed relation to some other notes which by coincidence seem to make agreement, but only more or less near. It is said that the pipes to the right hand are the male or yang-lüs, and to the left the yin-lüs or females; each class is in playing kept absolutely to itself, which is anything but chromatic in its system. There are sixteen pipes, all the odd numbers being yang, and all the even numbers yin. The pipes are arranged upon an ornamental frame; they correspond to the twelve lüs and the first four lüs of the grave series; and in notes said to correspond to those of the bell and stone chimes, the highest being treble b.
| The Te-ching, or One of the Chime. |
Fig. 27. The Te-ching, or One of the Chime. |
Fig. 27.
The Pien-ch’ing, or stone chime, consists of sixteen stones shaped somewhat as an L; all are of equal length and breadth, and differ only in thickness: the thicker the stone the deeper the sound. That the instrument is of very ancient origin cannot be doubted; but if we seek to place it in its relation to any period of civilisation, we are at fault for lack of data. Its style and weight indicate its design for permanency of abode, and it has been and still is devoted to ritual music. The number of the stones has varied under different dynasties from fourteen to twenty-four. The use of sonorous stone for chiming seems to be peculiar to China. The Te-ching or “single sonorous stone” is in shape similar to a carpenter’s square, and its relative dimensions are rigorously adhered to. No doubt it was the best shape for the production of musical sound, and was early discovered by the Chinese to be so. The pitch is determined by the thickness. The best stone for musical purposes is said to be jade, a material for which in the East there is high veneration, though why it should be so esteemed is not clear. The stone is suspended in a frame by a cord passed through a hole bored at the angle, and it is the longer side which is struck by the wooden hammer. The stone chime always takes part with the bell in the ceremonial. Its use is to give a single note at the end of each verse “to receive the sound.” It is one of the most ancient of Chinese musical instruments. When an instrument is composed of a number of these stones it is called Pien-ch’ing. Usually sixteen of these stones all the same size are placed upon a frame of fantastic ornamentation, set in two rows; the difference in pitch is secured a difference in thickness of each: otherwise all are alike throughout the scale.
The instrument is exclusively used in court and religious ceremonies, and it is said that beyond those in the Confucian temples and imperial palaces it is impossible now to find a complete specimen, though single stones are sometimes met with.
There is a tradition that about two thousand years ago a complete stone chime was found in a pool, and that this model was followed by imperial decree. But this, if correct, does not afford any accurate guidance or tell us what kind of stone chime was extant during the old Hsia, Shang, or Chou dynasties; for not an instrument or book of those periods escaped the great destruction ordered by the Emperor Che Huang-ti; at least, there is no certain evidence against this belief. So that, for the determination of the actual date of the introduction of the supposed equal tempered twelve semitone scale, we remain in the dark, without a clue. Moreover, when the existing stone chimes—or, rather, the Yün-lo, or gong chimes constructed to correspond in scale to the stone chimes upon the same twelve lüs principle—are submitted to examination of the necessary rigid enquiry by tests, they do not bear out the true semitonal character that has been asserted. Mr. Ellis tested two specimens in the South Kensington Museum, but both differed greatly, and he failed to find anything like the assumed scale; and such scale as he did find he was unable to give any theory for. Van Aalst says that
It has become exceedingly difficult to find a Yün-lo capable of giving a satisfactory gamut; besides, the pitch is not uniform, so that two Yün-los rarely agree.
And of the Pien-ching, or stone chimes, he states that
It is exclusively used in court and religious ceremonies, and it would be considered a profanation to use it elsewhere. It is impossible to find a complete instrument for sale, although separate stones may be found. It is not known to whom and to what dynasty the Pien-ching may be attributed, but there is no doubt that it is one of the most ancient instruments.
Where then shall we find this semitonal scale, this twelve notes series comprised within the octave?
Considering how very ancient the stone chime is, the question may well arise how the pitch was derived or ascertained, since in the material and dimensions no certain reliance could be placed. Both the stone chime and the Sheng are attributed to an era some five thousand years ago (about the time of Noah), and then in those days the Chinese had long been a musical people. It would be but natural to conclude that the Sheng conforms most to the lüs the ancient and the original determinant of pitch, and we may be quite sure that the pitch given by my pipe is the same to-day as in that remote age. Neither strings nor stones can pretend to the same absolute fixity.
But now listen. “Music in China,” says Van Aalst, “has been known since the remotest antiquity. The first invaders of China certainly brought with them certain notions of music. The aborigines themselves had also some kind of musical system, which their conquerors admired and probably mixed with their own. These invaders were a band of immigrants fighting their way among the aborigines, and supposed to have come from the south of the Caspian Sea; remnants of the original Li, the Kuei, and the Feng tribes are said to be still in existence in south China.” Is there not here the hint of a curious problem? By what track came the Phœnix and the Pan’s pipes both to Greece and to China? Dim, through sequestered years we should wander back, to some immemorial age, moss grown with primæval traditions, long ere these lands had their names, and in the deep recesses of forests untrodden by the foot of man, peradventure we should find that dwelling place of the great god Pan whence in the earliest of days he came bringing his river reeds and his wild music with him.
In considering questions of early origin and of direction of human intelligence, there is no point of more importance to bear in mind than the allowance of long periods for the operation of the process we are now accustomed to call evolution. When we have traced history to its utmost verge in the dim past, the civilization we come then in contact with, in those very ancient days gives evidence of many centuries—aye, even many tens of centuries—having been necessary for that growth of adaptations recognised as the outcome of human intelligence and industry in such communities. So, when I speak of origin, I am thinking of a time when systems were not; of conditions when devices were more the result of spontaneous impulse than deliberate invention.
China, certainly of all existing empires the most ancient, has records which extend almost unbroken back to a period of 2400 B.C., and then beyond that lies the haze of a remote past, where the light of tradition breaks through with no uncertain radiance, revealing points of distance far, far, away, telling of another 2000 years of the still immeasurable past of the “black-haired people” who settled along the banks of the Great Yellow River, and whose descendants in succeeding centuries spread over the valley of the still greater Yang-tse River, and pushing southward appropriated territory after territory, and who to-day outnumber every other nation on the face of the earth. A strange destiny! to increase, yet not to progress.
Many little digressions into the history and customs of the Chinese seem inevitable in attempting an enquiry into the origin and nature of the musical instruments and music of this singular people.
Of Chinese musical instruments none that are ancient exist, and yet the new are still the old, for so far as can be ascertained there has been no essential difference during the thousands of years of civilized life that they have been in national use, and in the authentic records which refer to them, they are described as already old, in periods that are mythical; the whole family of instruments seem to have been born at one date, without any order of precedence. The Chinese have no modern music. The music in use is only their earliest music reappearing from day to day in immemorial custom, and it is to them a completely satisfying survival.
Their system of music is the oldest system that has been placed on record, and for this reason alone it has a special interest.
In the chapters “At the Gates of the Past,” and “In the land of myth” I expressed very clearly the views at which I had arrived concerning the music of the Chinese and its affiliation to the music of the Greeks, stating my belief that in a far distant past both races were in contact with one source, and then came a day of disruption,—one race eastward, one race westward, each pursuing its own pathway. These two races to us have been known as Egyptians and Chinese. Greece deriving from Egypt, I traced the way therefrom across Arabia to the southern part of the great valley of the Euphrates, called Mesopotamia, Chaldæa, Elam, and further, to the Iranian mountains.
In justification of these views, some considerations should here be advanced as briefly as may be, and although details may have the aspect of being antiquarian, I anticipate that they will help the general readers to the better understanding of the place of music in Chinese history, and in the daily life of the people inhabiting the land modernly known as China.
When I started the enquiry I had no idea where the quest would lead me. It was only afterwards that, prompted by a wider interest in the subject, I found that independently, I had come to a conclusion identical with that of modern research in ethnology, philology, and archæology. My study of the matter is but a simple venture over an untrodden course, seeking the earliest sources of music, and the identity of view of learned authorities may, I think, fairly be taken as strengthening my own.
A few hints concerning these will answer our purpose.
In that southern valley of the Euphrates, the first people named in history were the Akkadians and Sumerians, they came down from the mountains and built cities; the unnamed settlers earlier than these had occupied the region and were without bond of union sufficient to give them a name in common, yet it should not be forgotten that they, too, had a past, remote in time, though unrecorded as history.
How then do we connect the Chinese with these? The Chinese constitute one of the numerous branches of the Mongolian race. Historians state that the ancient empire of Medea was founded by Mongols. When the first immigrants of this race entered China colonising the fertile valley of the Yellow River, they brought with them evidences of a civilization which it must have taken many, many centuries to have arrived at. Agriculture they were proficient in; astronomy they possess records of, that point to events thousands of years earlier; masonry, and canalization also, in well-developed systems immediately applicable to their new surroundings; and my argument is that they brought also a primitive system of music arising from or out of a simple pipe adoption, having a series of four or five sounds, such as we have found to be the original basis of Egyptian and Greek music. Ancestor worship they also brought with them. A formulated religion they had not, neither had they a priesthood.
Where can be found a common centre, where a population had existed in prehistoric times, at which these chief evidences of civilization had been grouped together in communal or in civic life?
Research can shew but one—and that, the southern valley of the Euphrates.
In his work, “Primitive Civilizations,” Mr. E. J. Simcox writes:—