CHAPTER XIII.
In the Land of China.
THE OUTSPREAD PHŒNIX.
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.
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 _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.