[Figure 01]

Now this is exactly as if a Chinaman, wishing to give his countrymen an idea of a Beethoven sonata, were to eliminate all the harmony and leave only the bare melody accompanied by indiscriminate beats on the gong and a steady banging on two or three drums of different sizes.  This is certainly the manner in which the little melody just quoted would be accompanied, and not by European chords and rhythms.

If we could eliminate from our minds all thoughts of music and bring ourselves to listen only to the texture of sounds, we could better understand the Chinese ideal of musical art.  For instance, if in listening to the deep, slow vibrations of a large gong we ignore completely all thought of pitch, fixing our attention only upon the roundness and fullness of the sound and the way it gradually diminishes in volume without losing any of its pulsating colour, we should then realize what the Chinese call music.  Confucius said, “When the music master Che first entered on his office, the finish with the Kwan-Ts’eu (Pan’s-pipes) was magnificent—­how it filled the ears!” And that is just what Chinese music aims to do, it “fills the ears” and therefore is “magnificent."[03]

With their views as to what constitutes the beautiful in music it is not strange that the Chinese find our music detestable.  It goes too fast for them.  They ask, “Why play another entirely different kind of sound until one has already enjoyed to the full what has gone before?” As they told Pere Amiot many years ago:  “Our music penetrates through the ear to the heart, and from the heart to the soul; that your music cannot do.”  Amiot had played on a harpsichord some pieces by Rameau ("Les Cyclopes,” “Les Charmes,” etc.) and much flute music, but they could make nothing of it.

According to their conception of music, sounds must follow one another slowly, in order to pass through the ears to the heart and thence to the soul; therefore they went back with renewed satisfaction to their long, monotonous chant accompanied by a pulsating fog of clangour.

Some years ago, at the time of that sudden desire of China, or more particularly of Li Hung Chang, to know more of occidental civilization, some Chinese students were sent by their government to Berlin to study music.  After about a month’s residence in Berlin these students wrote to the Chinese government asking to be recalled, as they said it would be folly to remain in a barbarous country where even the most elementary principles of music had not yet been grasped.

To go deeply into the more technical side of Chinese music would be a thankless task, for in the Chinese character the practical is entirely overshadowed by the speculative.  All kinds of fanciful names are given to the different tones, and many strange ideas associated with them.  Although our modern chromatic scale (all but the last half-tone) is familiar to them, they have never risen to a practical use of it even to this day.  The Chinese scale is now, as it always has been, one of five notes to the octave, that is to say, our modern major scale with the fourth and seventh omitted.