CHAPTER XVI.
By the Yellow River.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SHENG.
The _Sheng_ as the parent of organs, the original exemplar of free reeds, always greatly interested me, and I was desirous of obtaining a knowledge of its scale and methods; but I found such contradictory statements, such confusion of different systems of succeeding times, that the unravelling seemed hopeless. No doubt, as time went on, certain accommodations were made to conform to new orders and imperial decrees, and the pedants of the schools seem to have been chiefly concerned in the demonstration of doctrines of similitude, and contrasts, and affinities, and mystical comparisons with all things in heaven and earth, and abstruse relations with numbers; sometimes one set of teachings gaining prominence, only to be overturned in favour of the next set that forced its way into law or custom.
The curious principle of inspiring in order to obtain the action of the reed, and the still more peculiar characteristic of closing the aperture at the side before the sound could form itself in the tube, raised a multitude of questions of origin and purpose, and therefore I set about the investigation with the idea of working out the evolution of the _Sheng_ from the evidence, so to speak, of its own skeleton that to-day is living.
I want to take you back in imagination ages beyond these dates, to find the man who made this little organ, this little _Sheng_ that to-day can arrest our attention with absorbing interest. There was some first dreamer, inventor, originator; some one who played and toyed with the bamboos that grew beside his path, and thought out this little thing that was to descend from generation to generation, and become a household name in huts and palaces and temples. In the far east the bamboo is everywhere the resource of man for the supply of his daily needs. With it he hunts and fishes, and builds his house and ploughs his land; he is as much beholden to it now as in most primitive days of nomadic life.
There are whole forests of bamboo in China and immense quantities are floated down the great rivers to the towns and cities; the province of Shantung is celebrated for the small hard sort, which for certain uses has a preference. Just as in Greece we alluded to a kind specially sought for musical purposes. It would, we can understand, be natural for the early tribes to settle down beside the river; and, when a plot of land was selected, the house was built with bamboo, and furnished with domestic articles of bamboo, and the implements of husbandry and fishing were all made of this wonderful plant. With the river to give him fish, and the land to yield him crops of millet and rice, the man was happy. The custom obtains to the present day to devote some portion of land round the house on which to cultivate the bamboo. This portion is surrounded by a ditch filled with water supplied from the river by a tiny canal, and here these luxuriant grasses grow; for the bamboo is but a gigantic grass, and the domestic wants find this grove a perpetual storehouse of supply. Conceive such a picture: the man after his day’s toil sitting beside this grove, not in lazy ease, but intently engaged upon a heap of little bamboo sticks, measuring, cutting, comparing, and pondering over some problem, some scheme upon which his mind is fixed; only now and then looking upward and catching sight of the grey turtle doves and their little rose coloured feet clinging to the branch stems above him. No sound disturbing the great silence of the plain, only the doves mildly cooing as if in answer to the sounds that come from his lips in intervals of meditative musing; and the sounds of the bees in the flowers; and the softer sounds of the flowing of the broad river in the distance. As the sunshine lights up his good humoured face, what is the thought that makes it brighten with his smile, and tells of satisfied attainment? Well may he feel content. He has perfected an idea; he has laid the foundation of the _Sheng_. And a very simple process it is, as I shall show you; for although it occasioned him serious pondering, once the idea had risen in his mind, the working out of the scheme was assured.
Some tribes in remote places in the east still have a rude prototype of the instrument, consisting of a hollow lump of clay with four or five pipes irregularly stuck in, and beyond that they have not proceeded; and such may have been the stage at which our ideal man with an order loving brain set about thinking. Now, truth to tell, I imagined myself to be this Chinaman, and wondered how, in such a position as his, and with only his means and his purposes, I should evolve such an instrument. Curiously enough, as it turned out, I hit upon the right idea, or as near proof of rightness as imagination need come to. Until I had worked out the scheme on this primitive basis, the instrument had been a puzzle to me, and it did not seem to me that any writer rightly understood it; and even the descriptions by musical experts were obviously erroneous when examined without prepossessions of the scholastic kind. The first instrument that came into my hands was perfect in structure, but incomplete in reeds, not more than four or five metal tongues remaining. The pitch of these I ascertained, and the relations happened to be useful for comparative deductions. It had long been a creed with me that disease and death are our best teachers; they cause us to question natural mechanism, injury and disorder, and make us desire to know relation and purpose in artificial mechanism also. Thus my poor _Sheng_ incited me to wish to know its structural meaning, to ask how it came to be what it is.
Music was a pastime ages before it became an art. Religion is earlier than priesthood. I go therefore to the man who first made this form of instrument; question why he made it, how he took his first step, how he came to take his second, how he by process of thinking formed an instrument for himself and for others to play. His ancestors, I consider, came from the south, and in the early period would have used reeds with tongues cut in them after the fashion of the _Arghool_; but this man is an artificer, has more civilised ways in communities of industry, and is influenced by the beginnings of commerce. China is rich in mines of iron and copper and zinc, and her people were a deft fingered race, expert in delicate working of metals, and, at this stage of advance in simple arts the tongues of reed would be superseded by tongues of metal, thin and elastic, and free from the disadvantages of swelling by moisture and of the need of frequent renewals. Hence, in cutting such substitutes by the minute chisels they are so clever in using, the tongue or reed would naturally, and without design, turn out to be a _free reed_. A discovery having far reaching consequences, albeit long limited to the land of this peculiar people, due to the special deftness they have in the fine working of copper; for these reed plates are of little more than paper thickness. Just three cuts of a thin chisel, and the tongue is formed in the little brass plate; and the plate is fixed in its place with beeswax.
Let us imagine our worker to live at this particular period of growth of a civilised community, when music was scarcely more than a chirping of birds, or the aimless sounds which arose as rhythmical ebullition in dancing; when musical art was personal, unformed and any system of musical sounds as yet unthought of. Such a time there must have been in the history of every early race. Always, as I imagine, that the instrument coming, before the system, originates that liking in the human sentiency which heredity and custom confirm. The peculiarity of Chinese music corroborates this notion of mine; for although, so far as we can tell, the structure of musical ears is the same—yet likings of the ear vary widely with the difference in race.
One of the first needs of men in relation to one another in communities is a standard of measure of length, such as a cubit, a foot, etc. The oldest standard with the Chinese is the thumb’s breadth, and ten thumbs’ breadths make one Chinese foot; and they had a measure of millet seed, as we have our three barley corns making one inch. Our worker then had his measure of the foot, for that is the standard he sets out with for his longest pipe, from which all the rest originate. It is 9-7/8in. of our measure; and by the same custom the longest pipe of the twelve _lüs_ which are mythically attributed to the Yellow Emperor, is of like length. So the Chinese foot predetermined the standard both for the reed pipe of bamboo with a tongue of metal, and for the reed pipe blown across as the pandean pipe is blown across: which pipe from immemorial days has remained in the imperial archives, as the unalterable standard of pitch—unalterable because nature does not alter.
I had a metal organ-pipe made to the precise length and diameter of this imperial standard, and it proved to be what we call _e_ flat; which, as I found out, has a significant relation, for our free reed pipe of this length gives a sound one fourth lower exactly—namely B flat. And this relation of the fourth dominates everything in the evolution of music. Our worker found this out; though knowing nothing of the interval of the fourth, he fixed it by natural evolution,—by measure, not by music: yet the measure afterwards made the music and the law of the music. I see him cut reeds as our country boys do from our grasses and spiers, and split a tongue on the side of one, as his ancestors had done centuries before, and make a piping-bird sound from it. He has some knowledge of the working of metals; is an adept at it; has by socialisation and its wants become an artificer in brass. The split reed becomes spoilt after frequent use, so he conceived the thought of making a substitute in metal.
Let us picture him first as taking a bamboo reed, cutting it a foot long in Chinese length (9-7/8in.), and from this obtaining a note; then cutting other reeds promiscuously, until at last he is attracted by one exactly half its length, giving a baby note exactly the same in seeming as the other, and blending into it. This is what we call the octave,—a civilized perceptivity not yet dawning on his mind; to him it is the man’s voice and then the woman’s voice. The higher repetition of the same sound. He has halved the length and obtained unwittingly the octave; why not halve the other half between? This he does, and from the three quarter length of pipe obtains a new sound, which, sounded with his prime gives a pleasing concord; thus, he begins to recognise the new fact,—the family relationship.
After this fashion of halving and quartering I imagined that the _Sheng_ grew and became an instrument; and, placing myself in this mood of representative thought, I also try and work the thing as he would have worked it out, and see if I can get coinciding results. The half and the half again seem to me so natural; the repetition is so akin to the Chinese tendency. A two thirds is a more artificial notion, and comes of later discernment. How natural too, it is on finding more that two pipes inconvenient within the mouth, to seek the first substitute similar to the mouth in size, such as a little bowl, a half gourd, or perhaps the same calabash that served him for a drinking cup. Except the four or five reeds that spoke in my specimen, I did not know what the notes should be as the scale of the instrument; I only knew that the scheme as told me by the writers with authority was wrong, and was also misleading; for the comparative speaking length of the pipes was at variance with the assumed musical system, and I could not make head or tail of the instrument until I resorted to the question of primitive design. Then everything fell into proper place with unlooked-for significance. So I took a number of slips of wood (easier to cut than bamboo), and proceeded to transmigrate myself into a dweller in “far Cathay.”
Adopting the measure of the Chinese foot to start with, I cut a slip to that length, and then cut one to half of that, and then cut one between these at the half of the half, and so on by progressive steps halving and half halving and doubling, and obtained a connected series of thirteen slips to represent the speaking pipes of my most mysterious little _Sheng_. I argued with myself that in some such simple way our worker would have evolved the instrument; that it was by no means the outcome of a system of music, but was built up on a visible relation of proportions; that the eye made it and that the ear accepted it. Steadied by faith, I drew my bow at a venture, and, lo and behold!—my arrow went home true, and I was astonished as one who sees his prophecy fulfilled and wonders how it came to pass. For when I came to compare and to measure the actual pipe lengths, they corresponded length for length with the series I had evolved by my archaic process. I confess that the situation was bewildering as I gazed upon the evidence before me, for it seemed too good to be true, and one had a fleeting suspicion of magic or hallucination of some kind. But no; reason and time only increased the strength of my conviction that in this process the _Sheng_ was constructively worked out; indeed, I do not see how by any other way the peculiar scale of the instrument could have originated.
Remember that at the time of my investigation—now thirty years ago—I had no means of knowing what the scale should be, and I had to calculate from the relative lengths of the thirteen slips what the notes of the speaking pipes would be; and when in after years I came to possess other specimens of the instrument, I found that all my conclusions had been correct.
A very impressive result is the discovery that the old Chinese musical basis was that of the Greeks,—the tetrachord; and the complete scale of this, one of the most ancient of Chinese instruments, consists of two conjunct tetrachords and one disjunct tetrachord; which scale, as I have said, being founded upon a natural law of progression from or through a connected series of proportional lengths, exhibits unchanged its record of evolution. For pipes of certain length give now the same tones and the same actual pitches as they gave thousands of years ago. They do not change, though modes and customs, peoples and empires change. How remarkably suggestive is this taken with the presence of the Pan’s pipes and the Phœnix, to which your attention was given in a previous chapter, as pointing to a common origin in some ancient era ere history began. Helmholtz notes that Olympos (_circa_ B.C. 660-620), who introduced Asiatic flute music into Greece and adapted it into Greek tastes, transformed the Greek Doric scale into one of five tones, the old enharmonic scale,
_b_‿_c_— —_e_‿_f_— —_a_
This, he says, seems to indicate that he brought a scale of five tones with him from Asia. And this same scale you will find in the scale of the _Sheng_. I gave all this evidence respecting the scale of the _Sheng_ more than twenty-five years ago, to Mr. Ellis; but it was a long time before he could bring himself to believe that Amiot and other leading writers had given altogether misleading statements. He went and pored over the big folio volumes of Amiot’s “Mémoires des Chinois” (1780), utterly confused; and only in later times, when investigating for his work of marvellous patience, “On the Musical Scales of Various Nations,” did he see that truly the tetrachord was the basis of Asiatic music as it was of Greek music.
How was it that Amiot, living with the Chinese, gave a wrong drawing of the free reed used in the _Sheng_? How came he to say with authority that its thirteen pipes were a succession of semitones? How came he to select _f_ as the tonic of the scale? Engel falls into the same notion of thirteen pipes giving the same octave of semitones as ours, but says that the _e_ and _b_ were exceptional notes, only used occasionally.
The scale really comprises one octave and a fourth and the _master pipe_ is the _e_♭, it being so marked on every instrument I have handled, as shown in the illustration at pipe 14. This is the pipe giving the note corresponding in pitch to the imperial standard pipe, yet it is one fourth less than that in length, because, though both are cylindrical, the one is whistle or flute blown and the other reed blown—such is the law of these reed pipes—whilst the real standard length standing beside it, No. 15, gives a sound a fourth lower, and is the lowest in sound in the scale.
Yet _b_♭ is not the tonic; the Chinese have not in their music our kind of reckoning; but their _e_♭, at the junction of the two tetrachords, corresponds to the _mese_ or middle note of the Greek scale. And in passing let me say that in the middle tetrachord you leave out in descending the notes 10 and 4, and in ascending leave out 12 and 13, according as the conjunct tetrachords are formed in the upper or in the lower part of the scale; and thus the conditions required by the tetrachord are maintained. Although, to make exposition easy, the notes are here presented in our modern notation, you should still bear in mind that the relations of note to note are not the same, are not exact in ratios; most of the notes are flatter or sharper than indicated, for the simple reason that there is no other ratio of interval than the fourth taken in relation to intervening upper or lower octaves; and since two fourths will not comprise an octave, each successive step in fourths that are perfect takes us away from diatonic accuracy. Thus the _g_ given as a fourth above _d_♭ looks odd; yet it is from that actual pitch _length_, as one may say, that the _c_ above is derived. The _c_ is a flat note not expressed by our notation, but we have to signify the notes in the nearest terms we can for convenience, none being quite accurate. A very curious puzzle, you will answer; but very clear I can assure you when you have once found your way through the labyrinth.
Writers upon the _Sheng_ all say that the pipes in the range numbered 2 and 6 are mere duplicates, and also 4 and 8. But they are altogether mistaken; they give not any intimation whatever why they exist. If it had been so then speaking lengths would have been in duplicate, which they are not. But I can demonstrate why they are there; and that they are not duplicates either as regards length or in pitch, but are necessary in the evolution. There is nothing fantastic in the arrangement; all the notes come naturally from one to the other; they are necessary; not one too many to complete the idea, not one left out; and, in truth, that _last_ one in the sequence given of evolution—which I have marked ♭^v_{a}, to indicate an extra flatness—has every suggestion of being an afterthought. For the pipe No. 2 in the order exists for no other reason than to make an A♭ that shall be a true fourth to the high D♭; a sounding pipe, for which a place is found where otherwise a second mute pipe would have been, corresponding with that on the opposite side. Why are there two pipes with the ventage hole turned inwards to be closed by a finger of the right hand? Because the thumb ranges over several pipes, but could not properly close more than one at a time; and to meet the difficulty, pipes 3 and 4 have the closure operating behind. So that when required for making fourths or thirds with 2 or 5 or 6 or 7, in the order that comes under the thumb of the right hand, then the finger comes to aid in producing the simple concords desired. Certainly the contrivance in its directness and efficiency is very clever.
The scale therefore is, after casting out the alternatives not required in ascending, as follows. See how very Greek it is.
♭ ♭ ♭ ♭ ♭ ♭ ♭ ♭ _b_—_c_‿_d_—_e_—_f_‿_g_—_a_ _b_—_c_‿_d_—_e_
\——————v—————/\—————v————/ \——————v—————/
And in the alternative:—
♭ ♭ ♭ x ♭v ♭ ♭ ♭ _b_—_c_‿_d_—_e_ _f_—_g_‿_a_—_b_—_c_‿_d_—_e_
\——————v——————/ \—————v————/\—————v————-/
Here the _f_x makes a perfect fourth to ♭_b_, but would not to _c_ below; and ♭_a_^v makes a perfect fourth to ♭_d_ above, but would not to ♭_e_ below. Each _c_ is to be taken as much nearer the _b_♭ than in our notation. The pentatonic is obtained by skipping over the half tones. These mysteries you can unravel if you care to take the trouble to cut strips of paper as I did of wood. Number them all at the bottom, and from the 9-7/8in. length you will get its fourth,—that is to say, three quarters of its original. Write on each the name of the note. And so on, getting octaves and fourths above or below, in the sequence I have given. As you go on, cut the strips to the lengths found and fold each strip in length into four; and then when you lay them out these curious tonal relations are made manifest. Thus you see why the sounds are what they are. The true lengths would prove in sounds perfect fourths if the diameters of the pipes had carried the geometrical law.
Strangest of all remains the fact that my blind sticks proved true prophets, and led me in the way of evolution, the pitches of the pipes corroborating at every step.
Reverting now to the details of the _Sheng_, there is one little hint too important to be omitted if any reader should happen to have the opportunity of measuring the actual pipes. He will find that the pipe that is longest in the speaking length—that is to say reckoning from the lower end of the slot—will be 10-1/8in. in length, instead of 9-7/8in. This excess of a quarter of an inch is common to all the pipes, and is that portion extended beyond the hollowed part of the foot which only reaches to the base of the metal tongue, and is therefore the real limit of the column of air. Consequently, this quarter should be allowed _off each pipe_ when measured, because if computed in the speaking length it would affect the accuracy of the half lengths. In my first analysis, I found difficulties arose when comparisons were instituted between the pipes themselves and the slips of wood of the lengths evolved as a problem; because, as I soon became aware, upon halving the total lengths as taken actually from the pipes, the half of this quarter inch was entering into every calculation, and was of course misrepresenting by an eighth of an inch the real speaking length to be credited to the half length and the three fourths length; and with the shortest of the pipes the discrepancy became serious.
Time also, I found, had occasioned a little variation, as the bamboos in drying lengthen a little; but it is a mere trifle.
One or two points I must not forget to direct attention to. Notice that the reeds in the _Sheng_ have their faces turned to the wall of the bowl, and in this way a reflecting surface acts to the advantage of the reed; the air also acts less wildly than might be the case if the reeds were turned toward the centre of the bowl. The reed tongues are very thin, and are not lifted from the level of the plates; consequently they may be caused to sound both by drawing with the breath and by blowing, although the latter is prohibited in practice, as the moisture from blowing condensing on the reed alters the pitch, and corrodes the metal. Any excessive forcing of the tone the reeds are not liable to, because the air is passing at the same time through all the pipes, those that are sounding and those that are not.
Fairly, then, I think that I may claim to have transformed myself into an early Chinaman, and to have shown that I possess a sympathetic, inquisitive, barbarian sort of a mind, and ought to have lived years ago. The plan that I hit upon in a wild, instinctive way appears to be identical with the plan upon which the _Sheng_ was evolved; for no other seems so easy and natural as this, alike in regard to the origin of the instrument and to the development of the music.