Benjamin Ives Gilman

“ No music of chords appears to exist among them, nor even a music of different simultaneous melodies. Nevertheless, what information we possess about later Chinese musical theory gives reason to believe that the Chinese recognize either of two notes as the fundamental one in their diatonic scale; that these two are Do and La; and that in theory, therefore, music in China exhibits the same division into a major and a minor system which it appears to have reached in Europe only after a long course of development into an entirely different form from that of the Chinese art. ”

“ An impression of want of unity, doubtless in part due to this cause, seems in general to be produced by Chinese music. Barrow calls their melody "an aggregation of harsh sounds," and Ambros speaks of it as "well-nigh devoid of sense and connection." Yet a closer examination of our songs brings to light a tendency to the embodiment of a certain form of less pronounced tonic structure. In most of them the note of the scale on which the composition ends has also been somewhat more frequent than the others during its course. ”

“ By its aid the investigator can examine the sounds themselves of which a primitive musical performance has consisted, and in his study, at his leisure; he is no longer restricted to inferring the practice of the art more or less doubtfully from documentary evidence or from instrumental forms: he is no longer even dependent on his observations of such primitive performances as he may have been fortunate enough to hear, or on his memory of them. ”

“ Rightness — that is, reasonableness — of musical structure has for its law of formation unity with the negation of it and the resolution of this contradiction: an original unity which passes through a state of inner contrariety to become a unity restored. ”

“ The cases are rare in which they come to the hearing of trained musicians; we can infer for the most part only their scale structure from instrumental forms: and their record in notation is in general both imperfect and scanty. The invention of the phonograph bids fair to render the practice of music among non-European peoples as accessible to study as their ideas about the act have hitherto been. ”

“ We may therefore conclude that the dual system of major keys, or keys of Do (Koung, C) and minor keys, or keys of La (Kong, A) that is now exemplified in European music, is a fact also of present Chinese theory.
But further, the remainder of the heading of the Spring Hymn contributes evidence showing that beside using Do and La as alternative notes of comparison or keynotes, the Chinese make them the bases of alternative systems of modulation, in one of which the Koung of the scale of reference and in the other its Kong (or Yu) coincides in pitch with the primal Lu, Huang-chung. ”

“ It cannot be claimed that the performance of the phonograph in its existing state leaves nothing to be desired. A harsh, scraping noise, very perceptible, although not loud enough to obscure the inscribed sound, is, as far as my experience goes, the constant accompaniment of a phonographic reproduction; and noises of other kinds occasionally make themselves heard. ”

“ A further inquiry remains to be made regarding the Chinese system of modulation. In European music the keynote is also a Tonic: besides its position of primacy as note of comparison in the determination of keys, the Do or La of the scale is apt to appear in a melody at the first accented beat, and with special frequency thereafter: its upper fifth (or dominant) is apt to be used at points of rest in the music, and the note itself at the close. ”

“ In a word, cases of aberration in the practical scales from the perfection of the theoretical fourths and fifths are balanced by cases where the approximate thirds and sixths of theory have been improved upon in practice; the intervals in general showing a tendency to come closer to just intonation than do the thirds and sixths of the theoretical order. Apart from the abnormal intonation of pien-Koung the deviation of these scales from that of Chinese prescription may be regarded on the whole as an improvement upon it. ”

“ The two relations of fatherhood and sonship appear in considering the same two beings according as we regard one with reference to the other or the second with reference to the first. The embodiment of the scale from the point of view of which we consider another we shall here call the referred scale, the embodiment with regard to which we consider it the scale of reference. ”

“ Finally, our songs indicate that Chinese compositions may sometimes be conceived as written in the Tonic style, and that the same tonalities are recognized therein as obtained in European music of the middle ages.
Although the music we have been studying is that of a third of the population of the globe, it is still in great measure unknown to the rest of the world. The conclusions in regard to the Chinese system of keys which we have here based on the few data accessible to the Occidental student, are to be regarded not as established results, but as suggestions for further inquiry. ”

“ As the sixth and seventh numbers of the progression of fifths, the two pien are in the theoretical scale, each placed 90 cents below the next higher note. In these scales the interval between the upper pien-Tche (the lower is omitted in all the songs) and the note above is never less than 185 cents, while that separating it from the note below, which is theoretically 204 cents, is never greater than 125 cents. The intention of these performers is evidently to lower pien-Tche from its theoretical position through a semitone. According to Van Aalst this habitude is at present general in China ”

“ Although to notice in performance a musical habitude as delicate as this would demand an acute musical sense, in the detailed study it is possible to give a phonographic reproduction it would reveal itself at once even to an observer of ordinary powers. The only references we have found by previous students to the division of a semitone in Chinese music, so conspicuous in the intermediate pien-Koung of our songs, are the incidental remarks of Van Aalst already referred to. ”

“ All the notes of the scale have now been displaced.
In like manner, the displacement downward of one and only one note (B) of the diatonic order results in the same sequence of tones and hemitones. The B of this first derivative is the E of the original order, the displacement of which gives a second derivative; as before, the displacement downward of E is impossible without that of B. The third to the seventh derivatives are formed by the additional displacements downward of A, D, G, C, F, respectively, that of each demanding that of the previous note of the series. ”

“ In Prince Tsai-yu's time (1596) the scale once heptatonic had simplified itself to five notes. One of Amiot's learned Chinese friends said of ancient music, " All our books speak of it in terms of the loftiest praise, but they teach us at the same time that we have lost much of the excellent method which our ancestors employed to bring forth their marvellous effects." From the first to the sixth century music was generally neglected in China. ”

“ Had an association between the scale and the first seven Lu not been formed in the Chinese mind, had the various embodiments of the scale in sets of Lu been conceived each for itself, their music would have possessed what might be called a system of transposition, but not a system of keys. To the conception of Key the idea of the definite reference of one set of pitches embodying a scale to another is essential.
A relation emerges whenever we regard any two things from the point of view of either. ”

“ This Ling-lun made by one account to coincide with the murmur of the spring whose bamboos furnished the first Lu, and which proved to be the source of the Hoang-ho river. Under successive dynasties various prescriptions of the most elaborate and exact character as to the size and make of the Huang-chung pipe have been applied in the settlement by law of this corner-stone of the Chinese musical system. The pitch now recognized in China as the standard for Huang-chung is given by van Aalst (p. 13) as a close approximation to the present d' of the European scale. ”

“ The European ear has never found itself contented by any Chinese performances, and Van Aalst seems to attribute this as well to the Pythagorean scale of the music as to the want of technical precision among the musicians of China. [21] Yet in these Samien scales we are unexpectedly confronted with a deviation of practice from the theoretical intervals, similar in character to the "participatione" of the Italians. ”

“ The intermediate intonation of pien-Koung involves, as we have seen, a conspicuous violation of Chinese theoretical principles. Leaving now this note out of consideration, most of the intervals formed by the remainder still differ noticeably in these Samien songs from those of the prescribed Chinese scale. In the seven-step order, as given by theory, while fifths and fourths are perfectly embodied, no combinations of notes give more than an approximation to the other harmonic intervals, thirds and sixths. ”

“ Mr. Ellis has proposed to express difference of pitch in terms of the hundredth part of a tempered semitone; that is, the twelve-hundredth part of an octave. This unit, called by him the cent, we shall find it convenient to use in our discussion. The compass in cents of the intervals principally used in music, in their perfect form and as they are approximately given on tempered instruments, is as follows:
In the text we shall use the common symbolism of accented and unaccented letters for the sequence of notes on a keyed instrument. ”

“ Celtic music, which is often compared with that of China on account of its pentatonic basis, would have another striking characteristic in common with our melodies were it played upon the Highland bagpipe with equally divided minor thirds whose scale is given by Mr. Ellis. The same writer reports also a modern Arabian scale which is practically identical with this. A minor third divided into two approximately equal parts is also found in the tetrachord called the equal diatonic, and ascribed to the Alexandrian musician Ptolemy (200 B.C.) . ”

“ This makes it possible either to begin or to interrupt a phonographic reproduction at any instant of the flow of sound reproduced. Should we wish to grasp better what we have just heard, raising the lever while we move back the arm repeats it at once; should we wish to compare it with sound from another source, simply raising the lever silences the instrument. The phonograph used in this investigation was one of those run by electrical power, the rapidity of revolution of the cylinder being regulated by a screw increasing or decreasing the strength of the current entering the motor. ”

“ The Tsi-Ché of China and the diatonic scale of classical and mediæval Europe may be alike defined as an order of intervals in which a (Pythagorean) semitone alternates first with two and then with three major tones. [14] While in China music has been founded in the main upon the simpler scale of five steps, evidence of the antiquity of the "pien" is not wanting. ”

“ It is still to be recommended that in such examinations the note tuned to the harmonium should be revisited every few minutes, to be sure that no aberration has taken place. The phonograph being accurately tuned, the pitch of each successive note of the song which exhibited that quality distinctly was then determined by cutting off the sound from the instrument the instant that note had been struck, and immediately comparing it with notes of the harmonium. In most cases, divergencies from any harmonium semitone came to light ”

“ In the representative names of keys used with its individual nomenclature, the modern world has let fall the Greek usage and taken up that of the Chinese, making changes therein which are the expression of a fundamentally different attitude of the musical consciousness toward the scale. ”

“ I have long felt," he writes, [6] "that the practical music of many Asiatic peoples, ancient and modern, must have been and must be a totally different thing from the metaphysical or mathematical music of their philosophers, which as pure speculation must always have held itself apart from practice. We have erred in reasoning from the writings of theorists among these peoples to the nature of their art itself." ”