CHAPTER XXIII.
The Music Heard in Far Cathay.
THE OLDEST WRITTEN MUSIC.
Wherever man is molested by dreams of the night, there, in every land, will be found some form of pacification of the spirits of the dead, that they may not cause harm to survivors in the land of the living. The earliest form is generally by conjuration, by magical aid, and then the mind grown bolder as the years advance, resorts to threats, and the invocation of curses upon the unfortunate dead should he not hear and heed; the stage that follows is the intercessory stage when some one is brought in to render service, one who knows all the powerful magic of ceremony to compel the spirits, and who making it a special work, is paid for undertaking the responsibility of pacifying the spirits at due times and seasons. The person thus called in to render service, whether known to the people of the tribe as witch, magician, medicine man, or priest or priest-king, became, in this order necessary and inevitable in the growth of a civilized life. As the centuries progressed the secret ceremonies were exalted into pageants, and later took the form recognised as “Ancestor Worship,” the shifting grades of which over the known world are innumerable. From various causes familiar to the student of history, Ancestor Worship, which had its origin as a private arrangement, was at length transformed into a public function of the highest importance, with elaborate ceremonials and ritual observances, wherein such music as was possessed by the people naturally held a predominant influence.
The Chinese worship “the Spirit of Heaven” and “the Spirit of Earth,” and in their earlier times having no priest, they delegated the heavenly part of the observances to their Emperor, and busied themselves only with the earthly cares, and made the “worship” of their own particular ancestors the chief of their investments; so onerously does this observance press upon them that their outlay often beggars them, the observance has a superstitious hold upon the race, seems to be strong as heredity, ineradicable. We may smile at the Chinese, but have we not rife in our own population, superstition equally strong regarding fortune-telling and charms and palmistry, and the deeply ingrained belief in the virtue of fine funerals.
The chief duty imposed upon the Emperor is that of rigidly observing the traditionally prescribed ceremonies of “The Worship of Ancestors” at which the greatest display of Chinese music, with full orchestra is made, everything connected therewith being minutely regulated; the number of musicians, of dancers, of instruments, of vases, and all kinds of music and genuflexions, and even words rigorously fixed. Dancing was also associated with the music as equally sacred; in ancient times it held a conspicuous place in worship, having been first introduced into the ceremonies by the Emperor Shun, 2255 B.C.
We read that in “the Chinese Classics” a great Duke of one of the Royal Dynasties, TAN FOO, who lived 1325 B.C., is written of, and in the ode it is related among other things that “he charged his Minister of Instruction with the building of the houses and the Ancestral Temples.” By this confirming the antiquity of Ancestor Worship at a date, far off as old Egyptian dates, when customs, so similar, existed.
The great age of the Chinese Classics is undoubted, and Mr. Simcox says even “the most recent document in the Shoo-King belongs to the seventh century B.C., and of the famous ‘Bamboo Books’ that ‘the annals of the Bamboo Books’ may rank with the Babylonian Chronicles in authority.” These books were found after they had been buried 600 years in the grave of King Seang of Wei, who died 295 B.C. His choicest treasures, entombed with him according to ancient custom, of which we were reminded by the recent find of the royal chariot of bronze and gilded ornaments in the Tomb of Thotmes IV.
Ancient Chinese texts were _printed_ as early as 593 B.C. In a report by Imperial order at the beginning of our era, the royal library held 165 collections of books on Music, from sixteen different editors.
My habit is to secure dates, knowing them to be of utmost value in an enquiry such as this. For a due estimate of the relation of Chinese music to that of other early nations it is well that you should compare these with the dates occurring in the previous chapters. Not a shred of knowledge exists of recorded music of Egypt or Babylonia, the earliest Greek example, the Delphic marble, dates from the third century B.C. In all countries no doubt certain folk-tunes exist by tradition of centuries, may be of ages, which ultimately are set down and put into modern notation.
In China the music of the past was looked after by “The Sect of the learned” and the responsibility for authenticity rested with the Emperor, who by dynastic right was chief of the Sect.
The Chinese attribute to an unknown antiquity the music performed at their great Confucian celebrations, and it may well be that this music is the oldest written music in the world.
Some musically-minded folk have besought me for specimens of Chinese music, wanting to see how it looks. This demand I cannot supply, for Chinese type would be necessary and Chinese compositors; moreover it would not enlighten, would to us look as columns of hieroglyphs.
This is a bit of Chinese ritual music. It is called the Guiding March, and is played by two _Sheng_, four other instruments also in pairs, two drums, and two pair of castanets. The music is played when the emperor, with the princes, dignitaries, and attendants, passes the second gate to enter the temple. The circles and dots at the side of several of the notes are signs that the drums and castanets are to sound. As you would not understand the march by the Chinese symbols, I have done it into English, and you have to read from the top of the right hand column, and then down each column beyond in succession—the gaps only indicate the holding on longer of the note preceding:—
|go.|Do |co.|A |C. |a |d | | | |a | |ao |co |d. | | | |co.|go | |d |a | M | |Co |d |f. |d |co |co | A | |ao.|co |D |co |a |d | R | |C |a. |Co.|a | | | C | |Do.| |ao |co.|go | | H | |C |go | |d |f |d. | | |ao.|f. |d. |co.|D |co |
The small letters are notes within the treble and the capitals for notes below it. Looks like a very early anticipation of tonic sol-fa. If you write this down on the treble stave you soon become proficient in Chinese scoring,—that is, provided you translate the Chinese characters correctly, and comprehend also the multitude of little signs used in addition, which to the native are easy of recognition.
I take up a little book that I have of Japanese songs and open it, beginning at the end, which with them is the commencement, and it looks, as I scan the page, very much the same in fashion as the English columns which I have set up before you. The characters are printed in black, and the signs in vermilion, on a beautiful silkworm paper that glistens with silvery sheen like a cocoon, and has impressed lines separating each column of characters; and each page is as a double page without inner margins, six columns to a page. Strange to say, the little book, although it measures only six inches by two inches and five eighths, is quite six feet long, for it folds backwards and forwards after the fashion of the child’s Jacob’s ladder. And this is the little book that a little Japanese maiden will take out of her sleeve and therewith caress her thoughts with music, opening it to and fro as her fancy leads her, and perhaps finding there her song of songs, where hiddenly folding there, too, may be felt some flower token that she cherishes for remembrance, even as we treasure crushed pansies and violets. Be sure, the nature that we call human nature is much the same all the world over; in one land it is but a variant of that which it is in another. The love songs as usual come first in interest, and occupy a large share in the national music, both of Japan and China; but sentiment expends itself in many ways. One song is entitled the “Haunts of Pleasure,” it is an early composition and a still popular work, the theme of which is ever new in London as in Kyoto and Peking. Then in due course sentiment displays itself in nuptial songs and in songs of domestic life,—life, its comedies, tragedies, and what not; and then in funeral odes and lamentations. I notice how old the custom is of giving one or two lines of song for the voice, followed by an interlude for orchestra.
The ritual music of the Chinese is held to rest upon tradition mainly for its due performance, as there are no distinguishing signs for time and movement, and little or no attempt at expression; indeed, all meaning is left to be shown by the attitude of the singers, and what we should call theatrical movement.
All their music is, in fact, subordinated to the vocal performer, singer, or reciter; for dancing is with them as much a religious function as it was to the tribes of Israel in the days of Miriam or David. The singing as always in unison, or attempted unison, relieved occasionally by a few fourths. For of harmony they have no idea; no feeling for it. These people have no conception of the purpose of an orchestra, as we understand it. The Chinese orchestra is merely a combination of instruments which for ceremonial use alternate with the vocal music, each instrument having its allotted place for sounding at the end of some strophe or line of the hymn, and comes in much as our snatches of instrumental melody or harmony in recitative. There is generally some mystic reference understood by the hearers, as well as the indication of the particular point reached in the ritual ceremony; such as is conveyed, for instance, in the Catholic service when bells are sounded a precise number of times, or when at certain places only is the organ allowed to be heard. So with the Chinese, only at a certain stage of the progress of the ceremony are the stringed instruments ordered to play, and at another only the wind instruments, and at others the instruments of percussion of which they have so many varieties,—drums and chimes, gongs and cymbals, castanets and tambours, and tigers. The music exists for the ceremony; not for itself.
The popular love of music is displayed everywhere in daily life, bands of musicians parade the streets, all the domestic festivals are celebrated with music, and children in their play are constantly singing. Girls are taught to play the moon-shaped guitar, and the balloon-shaped, and the three-stringed guitar, whilst they sing the ballads which the Chinese say are thousands of years old.
The singing is very peculiar, being a kind of singsong extremely nasal; so little have the lips to do with the enunciation that it can hardly be called vocalisation. This we find almost everywhere the characteristic of barbaric song; the savage and the semi-civilised seldom get beyond a high pitched nasal chant. Yet, when civilisation has progressed, the strong conservative instinct remains, and this same twang is a delicious indulgence, and a sign of long descent and high breeding. I am told by those who have had the experience, that the only opportunities of hearing the natural voice of the Chinese and Japanese in singing are when groups of workmen are starting off to work, or when soldiers are passing; and then some good musical effect is produced in unison, the singers joining in their quaintly sounding and well known melodies, which have been handed down for generations. No decent, self-respecting, or respectability-loving Chinese would condescend to the vulgarity of singing in the natural voice: they use invariably falsetto, emitted mostly through the nose, the mouth almost shut. Male and female alike cultivate this evidence of gentility.
The music of the hymn in honour of “The Most Holy Ancient Sage Confucius” is very interesting when we consider the time during which it has been preserved and handed down, and the national importance attached to it. It is performed twice a year with great pomp on the “lucky days” chosen for the worship of Confucius and the spirits of departed sages in the spring and autumn of each year. Superstition assigns to the music a particular keynote, in which the hymn is to be sung, according to the month of the moon; so that in the second month the _lu_ is _chia-chung_, and in the eighth month the keynote is _nan-lu_.
This is the first strophe of the hymn to Confucius which they play.
That is to say, it is as near as our notation can give it. See also page 151 ante for concluding strophe.
It is called the “Sacrificial Hymn to Confucius,” the altar being loaded with offerings of meats, grain, fruits, wine, silk, spices and incense. A characteristic of Chinese worship is the firm inculcated belief that the spirits in whose honour a ceremony is performed descend from heaven to receive the offerings prepared for them.
The hymn has six stanzas, divided to accompany the ceremonial stages, thus,—
1. Receiving the approaching Spirit. 2. First presentation of offerings. 3. Second presentation. 4. Third and last presentation. 5. Removal of the viands. 6. Escorting the Spirit back.
As in Old Chaldea, the people of that vast valley of Mesopotamia, and from far up in Assyria, crowded their dead to Erech, their primitive home, and the burial place of all their race; century after century all who could do so sent their dead down the great river ways to repose near the mouth of the Euphrates, to Erech the sacred city of the dead. The dying trusted their kinsfolk to do this last duty. Even to-day the Chinaman will take his coffin and perhaps a small handful of earth with him, when he leaves his country for Australia or California, and looks to some of his kin to send him home when he dies in a foreign land, and they perform the trust, labelling their countryman’s coffin “dry goods” to get him home at the cheapest rate.
This worship of ancestors is not only the chief feature of the Chinese religion; it pervades the daily life of millions, and is believed in with a strength of sentiment and in a way which we find it difficult to comprehend. Yet, as we know, ancestor worship is perpetuated with us to this day,—witness “Almanac de Gotha,” and “Debrett’s Peerage.” Oddly enough comes slipping into my memory a reminiscence of a day long past, hearing of an old dame I knew saying to her grandson: “Ah, Willie, my boy, if your father had only married Miss B—— instead of your mother; your life would have been very different; you might have been riding in a carriage.” And she, poor simple old soul, she wondered why the laugh went round. Yes, the “might have been” is a haunting idea from which few altogether escape in life. Would you know my thought? I was thinking that had I lived in antique times—and some would say, how know you that you did not so live?—then verily I should have been irresistibly impelled to the worship of one’s ancestors, and should have comprehended how it entered into the heart and the conscience, and with music and symbolism set up a real and binding obligation not to be gainsaid; instead of which I am drawn to worship the offspring of somebody else’s ancestors, and find that to be the greater mystery. Ah, me! what a queer topsyturveydom civilization brings about. Did you ever ever try to get behind a child’s mind, to see into the inner recesses of its realistic consciousness? Watch the little girl with her favourite inanimate doll, how she holds important serious conversations with her; how the doll has to be good, attentive to her lessons, dressed and undressed, with a most serious belief in its participations in eating and drinking and playing day after day. What if no words come in response; if the food prepared is not eaten? The belief suffers nothing; the little lady will supply the fitting speeches in reply, and will eat up the offerings of sweets herself. Yes, the bewitching creature will go on believing. She lives in a world of lunacy all her own, with which our bigger world has nothing to do; and unless we can become as little children, it passes our understanding. This is the stage of mind at which the Chinese stay—checked, undeveloped. The development of the mind of the child life that is growing around our feet we watch with never-failing interest, well knowing that childish things will be put away, and its illusionary world will fade and be as a world of dream. Yet the future of the Chinese we cannot so interpret by any signs of the present outlook, nor imagine how many centuries must pass before their minds can be fitted to work in parallel grades with European thought and culture.