Harmonicons of wood and of metal, such as the Ranat and Khong, are the foundation of music in Siam, Burma, Java, and the Indian Archipelago generally. They also extend into India, and even, in another direction, to South Africa. Tuned in Siam to a heptatonic scale, not founded upon an harmonic conception of chords, they present, at least ideally, a ladder of seven equal steps, with which the native ear is satisfied. The performances, some years ago, of the King of Siam's band in the Royal Albert Hall, South Kensington, allowed this scale to be heard, and afforded full scope to the remarkable technical skill of the Ranat players.
The instruments drawn are a Ranat Ek of twenty-one wooden bars, in a cradle-like stand beautifully ornamented with ivory; a Khong Yai of eighteen metal kettles, of a kind of bronze or bell metal known as "gongsa," in an ivory stand painted like tortoiseshell, with brass edgings; and the very peculiar Ta'khay, or crocodile, with three strings and twelve bridges, including the nut, to fret them. The last-mentioned instrument is played with a plectrum, and ornamented with a crocodile's head and ivory ornaments.
PLATE XLIV.
HU-CH’IN & BOW. SHÊNG.
SAN-HSIEN. P’I-P’A.
WE learn from Mr. J.A. Van Aalst's comprehensive treatise on Chinese Music, published, it may at first sight appear somewhat oddly, by the Imperial Maritime Customs (Shanghai, 1884), that the Hu-ch'in, the left-hand figure in the Plate, is one of the most popular musical instruments in Peking. The strings, four in number, are of silk, and are tuned in pairs a fifth apart. This instrument is in fact a double-strung Erh-hsien or Urh-hsien (Van Aalst and Dennys; Ur-heen, Engel), and has the same peculiar arrangement by which the bow is fixed between the strings for playing. It is of cane and horsehair, and the rosin for it is stuck upon the body, a hollow cylinder of bamboo, wood, or copper, through which the long neck of the instrument is thrust. The upper end of the body is covered with snakeskin, while the lower is left open. The Erh-hsien, which has a similar bamboo body but two strings only, is more generally popular than the Hu-ch'in, and is met with all over China. The Ti-ch'in, according to Dennys the favourite instrument with blind men, is also similarly bowed, and has half a cocoa-nut shell for the body, covered by a thin board. These bowed instruments, it is believed, found their way into China with the Buddhist religion.
The name for the next instrument, the reed mouth-organ, Shêng, sounds like "shung," rhyming with "sung." From this ancient instrument have come the modern popular developments of the "free-reed" organ, first applied about 1780, at the instance of Professor Kratzenstein, to organ reed-stops by a Copenhagen organ-builder named Kirsnick, who had settled at St. Petersburg, an invention soon afterwards carried to Germany by the celebrated Abbé Vogler. The French Harmonium and American Organ, the concertinas and accordion, are well-known examples of the "free-reed" principle, which differs from the Church organ beating-reed inasmuch as the reed or vibrator of metal does not overlap any part of its frame. The Shêng is a gourd with its top cut off and a flat cover cemented upon it. Twenty-one bamboo pipes are inserted round the cover, but four, being intended for convenience in holding the instrument, do not sound. Those intended to sound are provided with small brass reeds. By a peculiar arrangement, unique in reed instruments, the wind, attacking all the reeds simultaneously, at once escapes by ventages in the pipes, until stopped by the fingers for the pipes that are to sound. The lengths of the pipes are merely ornamental, the actual lengths required being determined by slot-like cuttings in the pipes, not seen in front. There are seventeen sounding pipes, as already said, but only eleven notes, as some notes are repeated in the unison or octave. The scale, which the à peu près musicians are satisfied with, may be thus noted—