Chinese melodies are never definitely major or minor; are never intended to be so. The intervals are not the same as ours, and our notation does not express them with accuracy such as scientific analysis requires.
On the subject of the growth of scales my conclusions have been previously recorded, but I think that here, at the end of the pipe investigation, a brief repetition is desirable to impress the memory with the special view which is of importance to the musician’s survey.
Whether in the east the tetrachord or the pentatone had priority in development cannot be determined, for it may well have been that both were developed independently; I favour the idea that the pentatonic is the rudest in character, and originated with the wilder tribes of the east in a very primitive era, whereas the tetrachord seems by its nature to accord with early pastoral life. I am only concerned with the question of scales from the instrumentalist’s point of view; and I explain the prevalence of the pentatonic scale as growing out of the nature of the instrument,—first for the pipe there was one note, then there were two, and so on. Voices and pipes imitated one another, and the perception of the relation we call an octave seems to have been everywhere an instinctive perception.
I suppose it will generally be conceded that man is naturally lazy. Well, he will not exert his voice more than is necessary for his immediate purpose; so he takes more easily to the interval of the fourth, for to rise to the fifth means greater effort. Place your fingers on a pipe; the spread is not equal, there is a marked enlargement of space between first and second fingers. If holes are cut to correspond with this finger difference, then the result is contrary to the pipe’s need, for nature for equal tone interval wants the upper holes of the pipe to be nearer together: so the note turns out to be a tone and a half higher instead of the one tone distance. As with our keyboard, a long time passed before the thumb was brought into recognition to do finger work; so in the pipe, the use of the thumb was an after thought. Thus on the under side of the pipe a hole was introduced dividing equally or unequally this wide upper interval, itself forming another wide interval with the second note below; and in effect an overlapping arises in the pentatonic structure whereby the pentatone can be dissected into two tetrachords within the octave. Sometimes the distance of the first hole from the lower end of the pipe is greater, and makes the interval (a neuter third) appear at the beginning or end, according as we reckon the progression. In whatever way it may be, the pipe in the beginning made the scale.
There are many varieties of pentatonic construction, and the wide intervals may be in any position. Our best representative is found in the black keys of the pianoforte. We may commence on either F♯ or C♯, and thus vary the relations in progression of the scale.
A plaintive character in the music of native melodies is greatly due to the existence in the instrument of those imperfect intervals, the three-quarter tones, and the little leaps of tones that seem to fail to attain their aim, and never satisfy the listening ear of the European.
CHAPTER XXI.
In Ancient China.
THE FAVOURITE OF CONFUCIUS.
The stringed instruments which are of Chinese origin are but few in number, and they are not capable of producing any great volume of sound. They have several forms of guitar—a “balloon guitar,” a “moon guitar,” and an octagonal guitar. These possess four strings each, and are fitted with frets, and are struck either by the finger nail or by a plectrum. They have also a three stringed guitar with a long neck, but without frets. But compared with European instruments of the same class, they are poor and rude, both in tone and workmanship, and scarcely seem to have advanced beyond the primitive condition as to musical value. Similarly we notice their so-called violins, consisting of a bowl of some kind—half a cocoanut shell, or part of a gourd, or hollow piece of bamboo—to which a long bent neck is fitted, and with a drum kind of top of snake-skin covering the open bowl. The bow used is little more than a bent stick, strung as a bow is for arrow shooting. In playing, it passes between the strings. Sometimes there are four strings, but the most popular instrument has only two, and is almost devoid of resonance. The wonder to us is how a people so ingenious should have left their most popularly used instruments without improvement in any direction. It is true that some little attempt at decoration is made, but there is no lavishing of skill, no lifting of the commonplace to the region of art.