Scan 36
Musical Courier 1901-04-24: Vol 42 Iss 1100, 1901
56 lines. Read by computer on 22 September 2026. Printed page 37. See the scan on archive.org.
1Chinese Music.
3ALLUSION to the Chinese as a people of song is certainly not common, and one persisting in it might lay some claim to originality. Yet with no people is the departure from natural tone, which may be classed as song, in more general use. Their speech is a cadence. At least one dialect in the North abounds in words whose meaning depends altogether on inflection. There are words in that dialect that could be spelled only one way in English, and yet have eight different Chinese meanings. The native ear distinguishes them by inflection, and it does it as unflinching as the eye distinguishes the written characters for them. Enough of the language for practical purposes in daily intercourse may be acquired quite easily by an outsider, but although men come to China beardless and remain all through their active years, the foreign ear rarely masters that delicate shade of tone which fixes with certainty the meaning of words. The Chinese talk the chromatic scale almost by intuition.
5There is no important ceremonial without music. It has as prominent a part in the services in the temples as in the Roman Catholic churches. The great periodical functions which the Emperor conducts are regulated by musical program. No social affair is complete without music. It attends the pleasure and the griefs of the people, the weddings, the banquets, the gathering of friends and the funerals. In the theatres the orchestra has scarcely a moment's rest through an entire evening. A neighborhood will drop the tasks at which it may be engaged to crowd around street musicians. Wherever one may go in China, the presence of coolies at their work is invariably noted by the sing-song with which they accompany it.
7Opinions are, of course, settled as to the effect of the Chinese music commonly heard. It offends in too many ways for enumeration. Yet the merit of noise is not without recognition. The large cymbals which the Cantonese use produce mass effects not equaled by any other instrument in the world. They can be made only at Soochow, which on that account is as famous in its way as Cremona. The Germans tried to imitate them, and followed measurements exactly, but failed. Then someone came here from Germany and offered 20,000 marks to be taught the art in a Soochow shop. Money could not buy it, and Soochow will probably for generations to come, as for generations past, hand down from father to son the process by which two disks of brass may be made to produce a louder, fuller and longer tone than can be got in any other way in an orchestra.
9Cantonese make a horn which, with the aid of a reed mouthpiece, puts the bagpipe out of commission. Its sound is as true as that of the Scotch favorite, and so far surpasses it in piercing strength that the bagpipe may be fairly said to be only a poor imitation. The common banjo, carrying never more than three strings, is not only infinitely more graceful than the American instrument, but it is capable of better performance. No lofter name than fiddle is deserved by the Chinese crudity so called, but, judging from what one may hear on it, a violin expert, with a few weeks' practice, ought to be able to handle one so that an ordinary listener, not seeing the performer, might suppose that he was playing his proper instrument. The clarinet, which dominates popular performance, does not differ essentially from that used elsewhere, and the Chinese varieties of flute include the standard instrument. Some of the flutes have a hole to which a bamboo film is attached, somewhat softening the tone and giving it a tremolo.
11There are horns, hoboies and minor instruments capable of approaching orchestral production as it is understood in lands that have modern music, but as assembled and adjusted in China, everyone knows that the sound is always distinctive, often discordant and on no account enjoyable. It none the less proves that in order to suit their own ears the Chinese have not lacked invention in sound producing instruments, and it sustains the first impression that, in their own way and after a fashion not calling for select descriptive adjectives, they are a musical people. When it shall be shown why, exclusive in all else, they should have been expected to conform their tastes in this line to foreign standards, it will be time to retract or modify the general proposition.
13Differences between Chinese and other music are not more marked than are general differences between this ancient people and moderns. Music appeals to sympathy here as elsewhere. In a congress of those who hear music through the understanding Chinese delegates would not be convinced that their style had not as sound basis as any other. Those learned in this line can talk upon it with as fine soporific effect as can foreign savants. They can prove that their system is founded on nature, and can demonstrate scientifically, according to their view, the close relation of heaven and earth in their art.
15There can thus be no use in trying to convert by argument, for if there is anything that can compare with foreign conceit it is the esteem which the Chinese have for things their own.
17If their scale produces sounds not to be rendered on a foreign tempered instrument; if they have no semitones and are unable to engage in major and minor moods on the foreign plan, they regard those details as vagaries in which there is no occasion to indulge, but rather to shun. A foreigner is apt to find it as difficult to get into accord with Chinese music as he is to learn to write the language accurately. When foreigners who have been close students of things Chinese for forty years cannot write two pages of copy that will pass muster with fairly educated natives twenty-five years old, there is a racial hiatus that is manifest as well in music.
19The Chinese think it no disadvantage that their music is not marked with terms of expression or of time. Teaching those things is a business, and masters learn by tradition. A tailor, cobbler and musician are built the same way in some respects. Give one a coat, the other a shoe, and the third a tune, and they will turn out exact reproductions. If left to their own devices without a pattern, they are almost certain to go wrong. The ordinary native musician learns a tune from hearing it played. When he has it, he rarely lets it go. If it becomes desirable to add his instrument to others for the sake of volume, that object is the main consideration. Whether tones blend or not is a minor matter. It must be a fierce discord that native hearers cannot enjoy. Should the combination get too strong for them, and the offense be traced to a wind instrument, the method of correction is to blow a little harder or a little softer than before. String players are supposed to keep somewhere near pitch if they can do it without sinking their individuality.
21Ceremonial music is less liable to this form of aggravation than is the popular kind, for the instruments of ceremony have fixed tones, like bells, gongs, cymbals and trumpets, and their separate and joint use is regulated with reference to effects not at all unimpressive. Environment of scene, architecture, costume and ritual, indeed, invests many of the ceremonies with a quality to which such ponderous music seems well adapted.
23It is not difficult to understand why much of the music heard publicly should degenerate into mere noise. No one becomes a professional musician to whom any other chance opens. He ranks with a low caste, and, having thrown himself into it, he may as well entertain no hope of getting out. The public considers him, and he considers himself, a sort of mountebank. He cannot look for social, or artistic preferment to better his condition or standing. The people who pay to hear professionals, whether at the theatre or elsewhere, like noise in full measure, and the musician knows his business and gives it to them. Since foreigners have usually a chance to bear only the kind of music furnished at public entertainments, common observation in regard to it is as restricted and untrustworthy as that which in the United States regards the Chinese as a nation of laundymen and small grocers. Those who can get the privilege of visiting nice native homes hear something wholly different. There are such homes, the doors of which open to foreigners who do not approach them as though they wished to break in and see the animals.
25Musical education is as attractive an accomplishment there as with foreigners of taste. There are no professionals in China who can compare with educated amateurs in skill or in musical feeling. Loud instruments are not barred from homes, nor are they favored. Amateurs in nearly every city have musical clubs, which meet at the homes and whose performances no one hears except members and friends. They not only produce standard native works, but some of them originate. It is possible, also, for a foreigner with decent address, and one who is not suspected of being prompted by mere curiosity, to visit where, meeting an entire family, his preconceived notions of domestic exclusiveness vanish in one short object lesson. In the face of general testimony, it may not be doubted that the Chinese as a race adhere to the custom that keeps the women out of sight when there are men callers, but whatever the common practice among themselves, there are Chinese whose instinct leads them to treat foreign guests as they understand those guests are accustomed to be treated elsewhere. In such houses one may hear the best Chinese music performed in the best manner.
27A mechanism called chin, resembling a harp, but lying flat on a sounding board; the yangchin, of somewhat similar construction, but having sets of strings instead of single strands, and played with bamboo slips, very flexible and hammer tipped; long necked and moon guitars, flutes and horns constitute the equipment of a well-stocked musical household. The tones of the yangchin resemble somewhat those of the zither or of the dulcimer. When well handled this instrument produces music that would be attractive anywhere. Sometimes the guitar or flute and one or more voices may be heard with it. A bunch of reeds shaped into an instrument called the sheng, rarely played except by the most cultivated amateurs, is believed to have suggested the modern organ. The Chinese say that one who learns it is so entranced that he is ever playing, and many fear to try because, since its tones may be produced continuously by alternate expulsion of breath and inhalation, they think that the sheng habit induces bronchial disease.
29Since nearly all Chinese music is written in unison, there can be little attempt at effects of harmony, but performers indulge in fifths, and occasionally in thirds, and the instruments are so unlike that the resulting combinations are engaging and thoroughly characteristic. There is a flavor of originality about them wholly wanting in the native music over which visitors to Honolulu become ecstatic. It sometimes happens that a composition will get beyond the compass of one of the performing instruments. The only thing the performer thinks he or she can do is to rest until the procession comes that way again. Composers of music which cultivated taste favors understand, of course, the limitations of the instruments for which they write, and it is surprising how varied and attractive they can make tonal coloring. Native Italian music it not sweeter than that which may be heard in many homes in China.
31There is as little part singing as part playing, and the voices of the women are thin. Whether nature or art is responsible for this may not certainly be known. Their speaking voices indicate the possession of different registers. Their own music seems always to have been sung with thin voices, and it contents them. Private performance has none of the shrillness that is always heard in public.
33What the Chinese might do with music not their own is not wholly conjectural. As their training has been melodic, modern art may well appall them. Yet a few have undertaken its study and have become fairly proficient both in vocal and instrumental lines. Their work proves the error of the impression that the Chinese cannot appreciate foreign modulations. It is not capacity but education that they lack. Music that pleases cultivated taste in China pleases foreign taste, and it may be permitted to conclude from what one may learn without trying to become pedantic that a Chinese may become as skilled and as appreciative in foreign modern music as a foreigner can become in relation to native music of undoubted merit. There is much worth saving in the crude art which the Chinese cherish, and a service to the musical world may be performed by one with patience and ability to present foreign transcriptions of some of it.—Frederick W. Eddy, in New York Times.
35Carreno's Farewell Recital.
37TERESA CARRENO has said "farewell" to New York, and several hundred enthusiasts tarried about the stage in Carnegie Hall on Monday night and made her last piano recital a memorable occasion. These enthusiasts crowded about the stage and recalled and recalled the pianist. She was compelled to add no less than three numbers after she had finished her recital program. The list played by Madame Carreño before she received the ovation from her admirers follows:
39Sonata, in B minor…………………………………………..Chopin
40Etudes Symphoniques………………………………………Schumann
41Sonata, op. 109……………………………………………..Beethoven
42Impromptu, op. 90, No. 2…………………………………Schubert
43An Arabian Night (Serenade)……………………………….Regina Watson
44Mazourka Etude…………………………………………….Regina Watson
45Marche Militaire…………………………………………….Schubert-Tausig
47Like all geniuses, Madame Carreño is an artist of moods, and Monday night she was possessed by the dominant power that sweeps all before it. She had, however, her poetical moments, in the Largo of the Chopin Sonate and the Andante of the Beethoven Sonata. But when she reached the Schubert-Tausig "Military March" her climaxes were startling.
49The pianist played first her own captivating waltz. Then she gave one of her battle horses, the Liszt "Campanella." She came a last time smiling sweetly, and played the Chopin "Butterfly" Etude in a brilliant style. Thus she opened and closed her farewell to New York with Chopin.
51A wagon load of flowers were sent around to the stage entrance by Madame Carreño's admirers. Whether she returns again to the United States or not, this generation of music lovers will not soon forget the majestic "empress of the keyboard."
53Recital by Lillie d'Angelo Bergh.
55A LARGE and fashionable audience attended the song recital which Miss Lillie d'Angelo Bergh gave at the Waldorf-Astoria last Monday afternoon. Miss Bergh was heard in a great variety of selections ranging from Bach, Brahms, Schumann, Schubert, Loewe to Fontenailles, Vidal, Hadley, Chadwick and Lehmann. She was assisted by her pupils, Mrs. Edward E. Milke, mezzo-soprano, and André Destamps, basso-cantante (graduates of the professional course of the school). Other assisting artists were Oley Speaks, baritone; Clinton Elder, tenor; Miss Gertrude Bennett, the popular young actress, a pupil of the D'Angelo Bergh school, in monologues; Julian Pascal, pianist, and Miss Jessie M. Utter, accompanist.
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.