The Japanese have great love of beauty which shows itself in their festivals, held in the spring when the cherry trees blossom and azaleas bloom. Then, too, their Geisha dances are full of grace and have the most winning names, such as, Leaf of Gold and the Butterfly dance. At the time of the festivals bands of musicians and dancers rove from place to place in gay costumes and add greatly to the fun. The Geisha girls are trained to sing and dance to the accompaniment of the koto and samisen to amuse the people.
The Japanese and Chinese are Buddhists, or worshippers of the prophet Buddha. In their temples they chant the whole service on one note accompanied by the sound of cymbals and the tolling of a deep rich gong. We know these gongs for we have often been called to dinner by them in America.
About 200 years ago a musician named Yatsubashi, the father of Japanese national music, invented a way of writing down music for the koto. Each string has a number and this number is set down and is read from top to bottom instead of from left to right on the staff, as we read music.
Of late years Japan has been interested in European customs and has adopted so many of them that they are called the “Frenchmen of the East.” Among other things that they imitate is our musical system. So today they have symphony concerts and piano and song recitals in which they hear European artists and they themselves perform music of our composers. They send many of their young people to Europe and America to study music. This may lead to discarding their own music in time even as they are giving up the kimono, for our less picturesque costume.
Siamese, Burmese and Javanese
The yellow races seem to like the same kind of music and use almost the same instruments. Nevertheless each nation has its own special instruments. For example, the Burmese have a drum organ made of twenty-one drums of different sizes, hung inside of a great hoop; they also have a gong organ in which fifteen or more gongs of different sizes and tones are strung inside a hoop. The player sits or stands inside the hoop and plays the surrounding gongs. Sometimes it looks very funny to see a procession in which this instrument is carried by two men while a third walks along inside a hoop, striking the gongs not only at the side and in front of him but also behind him. (Figure 14.)
This instrument is a very important part of the Javanese orchestra called the gamelon in Java. Their particular musical possession is the anklong, a set of bamboo tubes sounded by striking them. We have heard some Javanese songs sung by Eva Gauthier and we found great beauty in them. Many of these songs are centuries old.
In these countries the people are very fond of making musical instruments which look like animals and the things they see around them, as for instance, the Burmese soung, a thirteen stringed harp, with a boat shaped body and a prettily curved neck. Think, too, of playing as they do in Burma and Siam on a harp or zither shaped like a crocodile! (Figures 12 and 13.)
The Siamese use more wind instruments than the people of other Oriental lands. When Edward MacDowell, our famous composer, heard the Siamese Royal Orchestra in London, he decided that each musician made up his part as he went along, the only rule being to keep up with each other and to finish together. The fact that they thought they were doing a really lovely thing made the concert seem very comical. But the Orientals can return the compliment. A few years ago the Chinese government sent some students to study in Berlin but after a month’s time they asked to be called home because, “It would be folly,” they said, “to remain in a barbarous country where even the most elementary principles of music had not been grasped.” (From Critical and Historical Essays of Edward MacDowell.)
