Wind instruments are common to all races. Flutes and fifes were known both to the Aztecs and Peruvians, and flutes, flageolets, oboes, horns, bagpipes, and trumpets are in constant use among the others. With the Aztecs conch-shells took the place of trumpets of metal. Deserving of special mention are the Chinese cheng, a set of small bamboo pipes with free reeds, precursor of the modern organ; the Hindoo tubri, a popular form of bagpipe used by the snake charmers of India; and the Arab zamr, a particularly shrill variety of oboe.

Thus we find in use among ancient semi-civilized peoples and among the Oriental races of the past and present the three great families of musical instruments; instruments of percussion, string instruments, and wind instruments, from which we have chosen and developed our orchestra. We are recalled to the remark of Saint-Saëns, already quoted, that all the musical systems of these peoples were products of human artistic ingenuity, working instinctively for artistic ends. The instinct for expression in music works so far in all races alike. But whereas those races whose music we are discussing were content with the harsh or dry sounds of the primitive instruments we have mentioned, the races of Europe have been impelled by the desire for ever richer and more flexible tone to develop and improve these instruments. Of the clumsy, hoarse viol they have made the perfect violin; of the hunting horn the mellow French horn of the orchestra; of the tremulous clavichord and spinet the powerful pianoforte. Music has become an art of sound. Those people whom, for the sake of convenience, we group together in this chapter as exotic never dissociated music from the dance or from elaborate ceremonies of one sort or another. The art of music hardly attained independence. Therefore we are almost at a loss to appreciate it outside the highly ceremonious societies in which it played its part and a discussion of some of the uses to which it was put is necessary in our chapter.

III

With the exception of the Mohammedans, the first and foremost use of music among the exotic races has been in religious rites of one sort or another. And in this connection it is in most cases an accompaniment to religious dancing and pantomime. Music is rarely looked upon in the Orient as a means of social diversion or artistic enjoyment in itself alone, such as we consider music of the orchestra or the string quartet. Only in the form of poetic song or of orchestral accompaniment to the religious or secular ballet is it highly appreciated.

The hymns chanted in a sing-song manner, the monotonous tunes accompanying the temple services and sacred dances of the ancient Mexicans would, no doubt, prove intolerably wearisome to our ears, but the Aztecs took such pleasure in them that they often sang during entire days. And, quite in the eighteenth century manner, the wealthy Aztec nobles maintained choirs of singers and bands of professional musicians. At the great Sun-feast of the ancient Peruvians, ‘the long revelry of the day was closed at night by music and dancing.’ Some sort of song flourished among this people. There was a class of minstrels. Aside from the traditional melodies which have already been mentioned, the music of some of the distinctively Inca (not Spanish) dances, the huaino, the cachua, the cachaspare, has come down to our own day.

In China music is for the most part confined to sacred ceremonies and dancing. Père Amiot, a French missionary who spent some time in China in the second half of the eighteenth century, wrote down the following celebrated chorus; a hymn in honor of the ancestors, sung in the emperor’s presence to the accompaniment of sacred dances, and the typical Chinese orchestra:

Part one.

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See hoang sıen Tsou
Yo lıng yu Tıen.
Yuen yen tsıng heou.
Yeou kao tay hıuen.