In Van Aalst’s book the scheme is fully set out in diagram, the twelve lüs figured, and all the curious details inserted of the moons and the hours to which each pipe belongs by some mystical relation which the Chinese mind perceives; the pipes are arranged in the order in which they bear to the longest one, which is the prime genitor. Also there is another diagram, elaborately designed to display the affinities in a circle, having twelve compartments springing from a common centre; the kung or fundamental sound being placed as the hub of a wheel with the other sounds rayed round, each sound being named. The diagram of pipes shows how the lüs generate one another, whereas the circle or wheel diagram gives the notes as they follow in a series. I think that I remember seeing these diagrams in Amiot’s sixth volume. Very likely Van Aalst has taken them from the same source. Again, he says, “The lüs are a series of bamboo tubes, the longest of which measures nine inches, and which are supposed to render the twelve chromatic semitones of the octave.” It appears to me that the great source of misunderstanding has been in the European persistence in regarding “the twelve lüs” as meaning “twelve semitones”: whereas the Chinese name lüs means laws or principles.
I have examined these pipes by measures and do not find them in any way corroborating the semitonal relation; and simply taking the names accorded to the lüs and set forth in these diagrams, if we arrange the notes in successive order, neither do they bear out the scale claimed for them. Let us see: this is how they stand. Twelve semitones forsooth!
| ♯ | ♯ | ♯ | ♯ | ♯ | ||||||
| a—d—e— | f | ‿ g ‿ | g | ‿ a ‿ | a | ‿ b— | c | — | d | —f |
Thus the development of the scale shows only a central crowding of semitones, and not even an octave relation, plainly indicating an ancient growth through the tetrachord. The diagram showing how the lüs generate one another states that the longest pipe is nine inches; yet in the letterpress Van Aalst says that
The first tube was one foot in length in reality, but that the foot was considered as being only nine inches, because nine is perfectly divisible by three, whereas ten is not.
And further, that
The twelve lüs were used by the Chinese merely to regulate the instruments and give a uniform pitch to the music. The diameter of all the tubes must be the same. Mêne K’ang says that the circumference of all the tubes diminishes according to their length; but this is explicitly contradicted by Tas’i Tzü, who quotes Chêng K’ang-chêng and Ts’ai Yung (two great wine bibbers and famous writers on music), and he flatly declares that Mêne K’ang and his adherents know nothing about music. The tubes were all of the same thickness, circumference and diameter; only the length varied according to the sounds.
And so on, which shows how almost European the Chinese are in their humanity.
I have quoted largely from J. A. Van Aalst’s “Chinese Music” to which I am much indebted. The author is learned in the ways and in the literature of the Chinese, being himself in the Chinese Imperial Customs Service, and his work is published by order of the Inspector General of Customs, Shanghai.
The first tube in the diagram bears this inscription:—