Boat races have also their music, which is evidently intended to inspirit the oarsmen. The following is a description of such an event, (so far as it relates to music).
“On each side of the little mast that supports the national flag, are two men, who leave off striking the tum-tum, and executing rolls upon the drum, whilst the mariners leaning over their oars, row on vigorously, and make the dragon junk, skim rapidly over the water.
Whilst these elegant boats are contending with each other, the people throng the quays, the shore and the roofs.... They animate the rowers with their cries and plaudits; they let off fireworks; they perform at various points, deafening music, in which the sonorous noise of the tum-tum, and the sharp sound of a sort of a clarinet, giving perpetually the same note, predominate over all the rest. The Chinese relish this infernal harmony.”[145]
We have dwelt with some detail upon the music of the Chinese, for we consider these people, musically as well as ethnologically and philologically a series of contradictions, and especially differing from all our conceived notions of right and propriety: a nation where music is heartily loved, and taught to youth,[146] and yet where musical progress is almost unknown; where goodness and love are taught in the most beautiful writings, and where greater cruelties are practised than anywhere else on earth. They differ from us on almost every point. We mourn in black, they in white; we respect crowns as badges of honor, they the boots; we build solid walls, they make them hollow; we pull a boat, they push it; we place the orchestra in front of the stage; they behind it; with us children fly kites, with them, men; we scratch the head when puzzled, they, the antipodes of it, etc, etc.[147]
A nation so strange cannot be judged flippantly or speedily; only a short time since we held the Japanese in the rank of the semi-civilized; now they are making giant strides on the highway of progress. Who dare say that the Chinese may not yet experience a similar awakening? At present their heaviest drawbacks, in music, as well as in all civilization, seem to be, a senseless clinging to ancient usages; an education of the head, and not of the heart; an etiquette which becomes both ludicrous and burdensome in its requirements;[148] a totally false position of woman; and a theoretically competitive, but practically corrupt public service. There have recently been unmistakeable signs of progress, and, once begun, it is more than probable that the reform will be thorough and swift as it has thus far been with their neighbors. In such case, China will be of far higher interest to the world than she has been to us in our describing her as—a curiosity shop.
CHAPTER XVII.
MUSIC OF JAPAN.
It is a singular fact, that while the Japanese have in all ages given a great deal of attention to poetry the kindred art of music has been suffered to remain almost neglected. Their musical system has never been carefully formed or elucidated, and although they may vie with the Chinese in the beauty of their poetical effusions, in the field of music their research is nothing, when compared with the immense patience and study which the latter people have given to the subject.
Although there are few treatises on the art, yet the practice of music is now deemed an essential part of the education of a Japanese young lady, for contrary to Chinese custom, we find that in Japan, the female sex are proficient in the art.
Although at first glance there seems to be much affinity between Japanese and Chinese music, (so much so, that it seems natural to suppose that the former was an outgrowth of the latter) yet, upon closer analysis, these resemblances are found to be few, and the contradictions many and irreconcilable.
The Japanese songs do not appear to have been founded on the Chinese pentatonic scale, but rather upon the chromatic.