Scan 73
The American history and encyclopedia of music .., 1908
8 lines. Read by computer on 10 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1KOREA
3HORACE N. ALLEN.
5To westerners, Korean music, both vocal and instrumental, resembles that of China and Japan. Yet the Chinese and Japanese recognize a distinct difference and, naturally, prefer their own music. While the Japanese are indebted to Korea for their ideas of music, as they are for their beginnings in most other arts, this particular art has been so altered in transition and improved upon in the estimation of the Japanese, that the latter now profess to care little for the Korean music of the present day.
7Koreans are not admirers of our music, it seems to them to be too fast and noisy. On the other hand, the Korean gamut differs so from the European scale as to produce an effect discordant to the western ear. In this connection, I remember an amusing incident that occurred at Seoul in 1887, when an American admiral was making a visit of ceremony to the Korean court. He brought with him, for this occasion, the brass band of the fleet. These musicians were taken to the palace to play for the ruler of the country at an elaborate state banquet given in honor of the admiral and his staff. The band, unfortunately, was placed just outside the king's windows in a little courtyard surrounded by buildings, which so confined the sounds that the noise was simply deafening.
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