The Rise of Music in the Ancient World: East and West

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THE RISE OF MUSIC THE ANCIENT WORLD East and

West

CURT SACHS

The

RISE of MUSIC in the

ANCIENT WORLD East and

West

W W NORTON & COMPANY

INC

New

York

W W

Copyright, 1943, by

Norton & Company,

ISDN 0

Inc.

193 09718 8

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FOR THE PUBLISHERS BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS

23456/ 89

TO

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

CONTENTS PREFACE

13

One

Section 1

THE ORIGINS OF MUSIC

MUSIC IN EARLY SOCIETY

19

The

Theories of the origin ot music early early Its

2

Music begins with singing The ecstatic character of Shamans' songs The social character of early music

music music

peculiar singing techniques

COMPARATIVE MUSICOLOGY AND The phonograph

Earlier failure 3.

origin disclosed by the study of

ITS

METHODS

Transcription

25

The Cents

MELODIC STYLES

30

One-tone melodies Poetry chanted style Repetition form Symmetry

The

The Vedda

Two-tone melodies Melodies

in thirds

and fourths

woman

Further evolution The descending style Distances and intervals Tetrachords and penta The evolution of early melody mirrored by the babble melodies chords Earliest evolution

of

4

contribution of

European children

RHYTHM AND INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC Early rhythm

Clapping and striking

45

Drum rhythms

Instrumental

music 5

POLYPHONY Parallels

6

48

Drones and heterophony

CONCLUSION Section

1

Antiphony and canon 52

Two THE WESTERN ORIENT

HIGH CIVILIZATION AND MUSIC

57

Castes of musicians Musical organization in Legend, law, and logic Music in the Bible The Temple in Egypt, Sumer, and Babylonia Foreigners and musical provinces Jerusalem 2

MUSICAL SYSTEMS IN GENERAL Tetrachords and pentachords it Scales 'High' and 'low

3

Genus

64

Mode and how

MUSIC IN THE ANCIENT WESTERN ORIENT Egyptian fingerholes

scenes

The up-and-down

Equipartition

The

71

Systems read from Nakht’s tomb The di-

principle

lutanist in

to recognize

Contents

8

“Overtones” The singers' wrinkles and the seasons Melodic Crying to God and silent prayer Accents and neumes Jewish prospatterns, tropes, and cantillauon Women's songs Parallelumus mumbrorum Anody and rhythm Syrian, Armenian, Coptic, and tiphony and responsorial singing Harpers’ chords Polypnony Drones Ethiopian church music visive principle

Jewish music

and hands

4

CONCLUSION “The

cries

101

who burned

of the Victims

Section Three 1

in the

glowing arms of Moloch”?

EAST ASIA

GENERAL FEATURES

105

Well-bred music Music of the Vulgar music China and Japan Cosmological Music of the universe heart Music ot the single note Harmony of the spheres Music and measure Corconnotations rections in music 2

THE Ling

LU’S

The

lun's errand

The male and

ties

3

114

The lu’s Kabbala Difficulstandard tone Ascent and descent Japanese parallel

the female

THE SCALES The Chinese

121

The

Modes

scales

Japanese scale

Major-third pentaSaltndro Siamese,

Munggang Pelog Malayan scales tonics Piens, heptatomcs, and major Cambodian, Burmese scales 4

MELODY AND RHYTHM The No melody

5

Singing

136

The Daemonic

style

opera

Speech

"Guido’s hand”

Tabla-

Chinese

Rhythm and form

NOTATION The

140

Tonal notation

Ball script

Neumes

tures

6

POLYPHONY

145

7

Right and

Chords

Heterophony

left

music

ORCHESTRAS

149

Bridges between macrocosm and microcosm

Gamelan

Foreign orchestras

Section 1.

THE VEDIC CHANT

2

PICTORIAL The

3

Orchestral polyphony

reliefs

Gigantic court orchestras

Cambodia and Siam

Four

INDIA 158

AND LITERARY EVIDENCES

163

Bharata

SCALES Notes

The Pwe

165

Notation

Srutis

Gramas

Murchanas

Contents 4

172

Law and

Melodic patterns -

The

art

Legends

of the

Day

Water and

Gamakas

fire

mag-

Quivering

Drones

of singing

RHYTHM AND FORM

184

The

Talas

Poetical meter

6

freedom

Hours

Classification

Jatis

ics

5

9

RAG AS

art of

drumming

Alapa and raga

CONCLUSION

193

Credit and debit

GREECE AND ROME

Section Five

New 1

orientation

THE SOURCES

198

Pieces preserved 2

203

Instrumental notation

Vocal notation

THE GENERA

206

Diatonic, chromatic, enharmonic Its 4.

Misrepresentation

NOTATION Pitch

3

Treatises preserved

original

form

The high

Japanese parallel

age of the enharmonion Three-stringed lyres

THE SHADES

211

The Anstoxemans

The Ptolemaeans

Greek music sounded ‘Orien-

tal’

5

EARLY MODES Harmoma,

nese parallels

6

216

the Dorian family

The

Phrygian and Lydian

Again, Japa-

pedigree

THE PERFECT SYSTEM The

222

Decline of authentic structure Arrays ol keys Aeolian Tunings of the lyre Cryptic scales Early Mixolydian The F senes The dovetailed systems Solmization Earlier mistakes

7

THE

system

RELICS

Method 8

239

of analyzing

ETHOS

248

Mode?

The problem sion

9

Harmoma

Pitch?

Raga-Maqam?

Allopathy

ten-

253

Pedagogics

COUNTERPOINT? Accompaniment

Dynamo-thetic

Raga?

HEALTH AND EDUCATION Homeopathy

10

Analyses of the pieces preserved

256

Consonance

Dissonance

Contents

10 11

ACCENTS AND RHYTHM

259

Metric accents Melic accents Rhythmic patterns preserved 12

Poetic and motor

Rhythms

Tempo

FORM

266

Dithyramb

Evolution and stagnation Choral forms Nomos Contests istic music 13.

rhythm

Drama

ROME

Solo

272

THE GREEK HERITAGE

Section Six

IN

THE MUSIC OF

ISLAM The "Arabian” 1

AND MODES

SCALES The

style

seven steps

The

279 seventeen steps

Inversions and combinations

Three-quarter tones 2

MAQAM

285 Ethos, therapeutics, cosmological connotations

Patterns

3

RHYTHM

287

Emancipation from poetry Polyrhythm

Meters

4

Drumming

POLYPHONY Heteropliony

5

Rhythmic patterns

289

Drones

Ostmato

Consonance

FORM

290

TaqsTm

Pe$rev

Nuba

EUROPE AND THE ROAD TO MAJOR AND

Section Seven

MINOR The harmony Chains

bestial singing The gulf between The puzzle of medieval tonality The Landim sixth The Gregorian chant un-

of brave hearts

and southern

northern

of

thirds

and

music

The meaning of our staff notation Countcrchains Evolution to major Major allegedly "Germanic” The leading note (semitone) and musica ficta Ugro-Finnish parallels Tendency toward major in Chinese, Indian, Greek, and Islamic music The conflict Fnsia non carnal and the between vocal and instrumental styles neighing mare Harmony in instrumental styles Rhythm Meter and modi Oricntal also

•

EPILOGUE

312

INDEX

315

LIST

plate

i

OF PLATES

Egyptian Players with Double Oboe, Lute, and Harp facing page 64

plate 1a Egyptian

Flutist, Clarinettist, Harpist,

plate 2b Egyptian

Flutist, Harpist,

and Four Singers

65

and Singer

plate 3

Members

plate 4

Chinese Notation

plate 5

Chinese Women’s Orchestra

of the Court Orchestra of

65

Elam

96 page 142

facing page r6o

plate 6 a Korean Orchestra

161

plate 6 b Burmese Orchestra

161

plate 7 a Indian Dancers, Drummers, and Harpists

192

plate 7 b

Indian Dancer and Players with Drums, Transverse Flute, Lute,

and Harp

plate

B

The Skolion

192

of Seikilos

193

PREFACE

V

ISIBLE RELICS

of the ancient

world

deeply imprinted on our imagination the other remnants of antiquity

in East

— the

Our

and West are more

Bible excepted

— than

around

visions crystallize

emerging from the yellow sands, the phantastic outlines of

the pyramids

Roman

stupas and pagodas, the festive porticos of Greek and

temples

against the sunny sky

But they are

We

dumb

visions

do not hear Pharaoh’s court musicians,

inner walls of tombs and pyramids,

so livingly depicted

we do not know how

on the

"they beat the

sounding stone and swept the Ch'tn and Shi" in ancient China so the ancestors

youths

“came down and

who

visited",

we

nor can

to the

listen

solemnly ascended to the Parthenon for

singing

and worship

sacrifice

Music, immaterial and transitory, was scarcely ever recorded in antiquity,

and even of

the

living

its

handful of notations preserved give hardly an adequate idea

sound

The music

of the ancient world has faded

But one thing can and

shall

be kept alive

struggle to rid music of the limitation that establish

express

its

laws firmly on nature, to give

what human beings

feel,

away

the narrative of it

it

man’s

titanic

has in primitive society, to the

power and

subtlety to

despair and triumph, love and

awe and

hope.

This struggle has been much more than the battle that

mankind

has fought for

its

just a

rise

matter of music

narrow-minded

the battle against the inertia of deep-rooted habit and

contentment

Individualism has been

It is

from primitive conditions,

the outcome, but

individualism

kept from anarchy by the rigid norms that scholars built on laws of nature It

is

an exciting

story,

how

music has for thousands of years been

held in balance between the basic

facts that,

on the one hand, sound

is

vibration of matter ruled by mathematical ratios and that, on the other

hand, musical

art

greater fascination

works are immaterial, indeed, is

it

to

see

in

how many

irrational

different

counterpoises have been kept equal, and how, with races living far apart

went

similar

ways and met

all

And

a

still

ways the two

these differences,

in strange,

unwitting

Preface

14

Greeks and Japanese, Hindus and Arabs, Europeans and North

teams

American Indians This story has never been told

and

of incompetent,

It is

true that an incalculable quantity

imposing number of competent, descnbers

a less

have dealt with primitive, Oriental, and Hellenic music

But they have

only covered certain musical aspects of single countries, of China or

With

India or Greece in the

the exception of the excellent,

one hundred small pages

they involve

In studying

this

consequently

first

book

is little

— not

throw

light

the different and yet so

to

speak of the integration of both of

music

attempt

at

treats the rise

a

synthesis,

the reader should

not

of music in the ancient world and

concerned with the practice, the conceptions, and the

misconceptions of medieval and as they

all

has the music of ancient Greece been organically

in the universal history of

forget that this

short, survey

Eastern world and the manifold problems

styles of the

Still less

connected with the Orient

them

though

Robert Lachmann’s Musi!{ des Orients

book has covered

(Breslau, 1929), not a single closely related

of

modern Oriental music, except

on antiquity Nor should he forget

vantage such an attempt

is

at

in so far

what

disad-

placed by the incompleteness of our sources,

both musical and extramusical

Despite results

its

the

shortcomings,

more

I

trust that

my

endeavor

pretation of Oriental systems, answers to a great in the theory

is

justified

distinct outlines given to primitive styles,

by

its

the reinter-

many open

questions

and practice of the Greeks, and an exposure of the roots

from which the music

of the

West has grown.

A

vrai

difi

dire, toute perception

memone Nous

pratiquement, que

le

est

ne percevons, passe, le pre-

sent pitr etant Vin^aisissuble pto-

gres

du passe rongeant lavenir

AH

perception, indeed, already

We

memory tually,

present

is

perceive nothing, ac-

but the past, since the true is

the umeizablc progress

of the past

which gnav

t

at

the

future

henhi bergson, Matiire

et

Memoire

Section

One

THE ORIGINS OF MUSIC

MUSIC IN EARLY SOCIETY CIENCE

S tists

yet

has not yet dissipated the fog in which earlier centuries

who

uncertain shadows of gods or heroes

in a

supreme

saw

act of creation

had “invented” music Scores of philosophers, economists, and scienhave

two hundred years attempted

in the last

have not been able

one uncontested

to present as

much

as

to get to the truth,

and

one acceptable theory, indeed,

fact

"Imitation of the animals” was one of them True, some birds sing, but zoologists, unfortunately,

mammals,

do not

his close relatives,

them

classify

may whine and

ape, his nearest cousin, grunts

as ancestors of

whistle, bark

and coughs There

man The

and roar, the

no singing among

is

the next of man’s kin

With deeper music

to

insight into nature, Charles

Darwin

later tried

mating and alluring the opposite

sex, but

he was

who knew how songs And when

to trace

easily con-

mating played in

tradicted by those

insignificant a role

mankind's early

Karl Bucher’s notorious book, Arbeit

und Rhythmus

(first

ing teamwork,

critics justly

exist

A

among

objected that rhythmical

most primitive

the

third suggestion has

tribes

been more widespread and tenacious

from spoken language,

reads, descended

phers developed this theory

— Jean

it

intensified speech

music,

it

Philoso-

Jacques Rousseau in France, Herbert

musicians, from the Italian masters of the in 1600 to

Richard Wagner, clung

would be

sterile 1

But

to repeat it

to

it

stile

rappresentativo e Tecitativo

with remarkable enthusiasm

It

and analyze these hundreds of opinions pro

matters that

failures because they started first place,

was

England, and numberless others in various countries, and

Spencer in

and contra

means of facilitatteamwork did not

edition 1896), described music as a

all

of

them, pros

as well as contras,

were

from two erroneous presuppositions In the

they took for granted that so complicated a thing as music had

grown from one

root,

which of

itself is

more than improbable Music, bound

to the motor impulse of our bodies, to the vague images of our minds, and

Cf Carl Stumpf, "Musikpsychologie in England,” m Vierteljahrsschnft fur Musif{wtssen I (1885), pp 261-349, Carlos Vega, “Teonas del ongen de la miisica," in Sintens II (1929), pp 179-90 1

schaft

The

20 to

be

our emotion in

all its

Origins of Music

Du

bist die

Symphony and modern English

one edifying case the writer un-

in

on primeval developments were

consciously betrayed that his conclusions

based on the accent of Leipzig

used to

methods

scientific

about the origin of music,

Rufi and with samples taken from

to

and French speech melody, indeed,

men

music and the language familiar

to learn

Beethoven’s Seventh

was presented with references Schubert's

the

Thus, the reader, anxious

to ourselves

may

depth and width, eludes whatever attempt

made to find any simple formula The second mistake was to think of

strange and almost unintelligible that

It is

rested satisfied with guessing

and speculat-

ing where music was concerned

have found

Critics it

fault with this theory, less for this reason than because

what they considered the fundamental

neglected

contrast

that

music

required well-defined intervals, while the pitches and steps of speech were irrational

But knowledge of the simplest

have cut short

this

facts in East Asiatic

argument the melodic

style of the

music would

Japanese no dramas

depends on irrational distances This remark theories

It

is

not a confession of faith in Rousseau’s and Spencer’s

proves, on the contrary, that theories are futile unless solidly

based on facts and their historical connection

Theory, therefore, will be postponed until we have drawn possible to the origin of music Instead of guessing

how

near as

as

things could have

we go back to their earliest preserved form I feel embarrassed down such a truism, but unfortunately it is necessary to lay stress

happened, to write

on the plain

truth that the singsong of

finitely closer to the

and Schubert’s

However far back we

To

mankind, we

trace

fail to see

tribes are musically

the springing

beyond the

up of

first

at-

be sure, travelers relate that certain peoples of low civilization,

the Brazilian Guarani, for example,

music, games, and dances of music would

having not

in-

licdcr

music Even the most primitive tempts

Pygmies and Pygmoids stands

beginnings of music than Beethoven’s symphonies

yet

more

likely

been arrived

still

But such

at

led by the silence he found

lead too worried a

tales are little

life to

convincing

be due to cultural shrinkage than

think of

The to

lack

music

In most cases, however, the relater was misprimitive

and often would rather pretend

men

that they

arc shy with white visitors do not sing or dance at all than

Music in Early Society exhibit their rituals

and entertainments

and dances are confined

few

to a

music

to untried foreigners, or else

special

might

rest of the year lest they

21

ceremonies and forbidden for the

interfere with the

normal course of the

people’s lives.

Since witnessing the very origin of music

No

earliest observable stage

its

ing

out

it

— the

denied to

is

only working hypothesis admissible

which have been

lost

more highly

the world’s tribes, peoples, and races have lived in continuous

all

and war In

weapons,

the

2

intercourse since the very beginning of history, they have trade,

turn to

in contradistinction

and replaced by

developed languages of civilized neighbors Indeed,

we must

that the earliest

is

music must be found among the most primitive peoples, to their languages,

us,

prejudice or ‘plausibility’ will do in seek-

this process of

and implements

tools,

met

in marriage,

exchange and merger, they discard

their

But they preserve

their

for better ones

ancient songs, for singing, an expression of man’s soul and motor impulse,

has

to

little

do with the mutable surface of

struggle for existence This in the evolution of cultural

level

is

mankind

— Polynesians

why music It is

is

life,

and nothing with the

one of the steadiest elements

so steady that races of a relatively high

and Micronesians,

groups of European peasants hold onto musical

for

example

styles of

many

an astonishingly

archaic character, indeed, of the most primitive character

general culture of a people, therefore, cannot be judged by there

— and

we know The its

music But

hope, inversely, that the music of the most primitive peoples has

is

preserved a very early stage of evolution without the interference of higher civilizations

"The most arc fully for

primitive peoples,” however,

aware

that

among

which a previous lower

theless,

level of

some of them represent

allowed to

call a

minimum

is

not quite the correct term

the races living today there

—

We

no group of men evolution could not be supposed Never-

a stage

15

of social development that

we are who live in the open air witha quickly made abn As far as music is have no instrument of their own

especially those

out any shelter save a cavern or concerned, such peoples sing but

Music began with singing

However rudimentary man’s 1

life

It

this singing

may

conveys his poetry, and

be,

Cf Curt Sachi, The History of Musical Instruments,

flows

it

in rest

all

through primitive

and peaceful work Hew

York, 1940, pp

diverts,

60-2

,

The

22 daces,

and

lulls, it

and

strive for luck

Origins of Music

gives hypnotic trance to those in

life

magic incantation;

it

who

heal the sick

and

keeps awake the dancers'

yielding muscles, intoxicates the fighting men, and leads the

squaw

to

ecstasy

The most primitive tribe I came across were the Kanikas They told me, “we live among tigers and elephants We are not afraid We say ‘shoo’ to a tiger, and he goes away The headman of the village picked up his t{o\\ara bowed his head over it, and murmured a prayer Another, and another followed, scraping them up and down with growing excitement The leader recited a list of twenty or thirty divinities, in no particular order, repeating some more than others After five minutes or so one of the men began to tremble violently, and holding his kokkara with both hands straight out in front of him tapped it rhythmically on the ground The leader was the next to tremble, and his access was more violent He flung himself about, his pagri fell off and his hair fell down A third leapt, when the fit was on him, from his sitting posture about three feet into the air, and dropped again into his original cross-legged position The whole service was interspersed with shouts and yells from individual performers When it was over the mantizomenoi bent forward sobbing vehemently, and took a minute to recover One felt ashamed to have been merely an interested spectator amongst so much sinf

scraped iron tube],

likewise,

cerity

Of

8

this

kind arc the typical songs that shamans perform when they

A

tribesmen

to heal their

North Brazil may

example The

serve as an

tiny motif, a rapid triplet

the lower note and a sustained note a semitone higher,

Ex

I

try

medicine man’s song from the Taulipang in

TAULIPANG

after

3

3

1

is

on

steadily repeated.

Hornbostel 1

^

3— f

11

iff

The and

p

triplets are breathless, the

inexact,

tion, trickles

and

at last the

tempo

increases, the notes

melody, losing

away and

sinks to a slightly

which

example

in a final note

in our

lasts

its

grow

irregular

curve and rhythmic organiza-

lower

level, here,

eighteen seconds

it

fades

away

4

•

•

A H Fox Srrangways, The Music of HmdosUtn Oxford, 1914, pp 44-5 Transcribed by Erich von Hornbostel, "Musik der Makuschl, Tauliping und Yekuani." Theodor Koch -Grun berg, Vom Roroima turn Orinoco, vol III, Berlin, 1916, p 436 Cf also Cun Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments op ett pp 27 f 1

4

M

,

in

,

,

Music in Early Society

A

He

primitive singer behaves in different ways

23

singing voice;

strained

is

it is

it is,

and

is

meant

never what

is

extremes, his

to

modern

speech

to be, unlike the performer’s

He

expected to be superhuman, indeed, supernatural

quizes, sings through the nose, cries

and

yodels,

singers strive to be

5

yells

at liberty

from

often refrains

utmost pitch and power, but when frenzy pushes him

ventrilo-

and squawks, but

and natural

Primitive singers even have used special devices to veil their inborn voices

— voice mashj might be an appropriate term eastern Siberia, "the

placing

The

it

directly before his

earliest

canes, into

trumpets were megaphones cut from hollow branches or large

when speiking so-called

is

and

in

to his people, so his voice

mtthton

a strong

9 ,

one of the most primitive

had

a

to

tribes

mouth

”

very hollow sound

a small and tightly stretched

8

The

membrane, never had

give the singer’s voice a buzzing nasal timbre.

argument against deriving music from speech

»

The manner

7

the chieftain always held "a trumpet shell before his

any other purpose than This

With the Chukchi in Northdrum for modifying his voice, now ” mouth, now turning it at an oblique angle 8 uses his

which the player sang,

New Guinea

of

shaman

of singing,

more suggestive and

its

•

»

timbre, force, and specific animation arc often

essential than the melodies, cultural

and anthropologi-

depend on the way things are done rather than on the things themselves Musicology should be more interested in technique, if this

cal traits

not entirely appropriate word

is

admitted Only one style of singing and

anthropological area have been outlined so far

its

easily to be recognized sults

from such

American Indians

by a peculiar "emphatic” manner of singing which

factors as a certain voice-quality, strong accents

are re-

on every time-

This style prevails among the and constant time Indians of both Americas, including the Eskimo (also in Greenland), and among Siberian tribes who are related to the Indians, both somatically and unit, pulsation, slow

culturally as,

and

in

the “Palaeo-Asiatic” Chukchci and the Keto (Ostyak) on the and among the semi-Tungus Orotchee on the lower Amur River,

eg,

Jenissei River,

Korean folksongs

10

M

8 Erich von Hornbostel, "Die Entstehung des Jodelns," in Beneht uber Jen Mwjifwissenschafthchen Kongress in Basel 1924, Leipzig, 19Z3, pp 203-10 8 Curt Sachs, The History oj Musical Instruments, op eit p 34 7

8

8

Ibid Ibid

Cun

p 47 p 48

,

,

und Werdcn der Musikinstrumcntc, Berlin, 1929, p 106 M. von Hornbostd, "Fucgian Songs," m American Anthropologist, n a vol 38 Cf also George Herzog, "Musical Styles in North America, in Proceedings (1936), p 363 Sachs, Getst

10 Erich

,

1

The

24 The

Origins of Music

anthropological and historical importance of such statements

obvious, and

it is a

great pity that

we have

is

not yet a deeper insight into the

physiological aspects of singing styles

But then the primitive branch of musicology

is

very recent

Twenty-third International Congress of Americanists, 1928, pp 455-81 A O Vaisanen, “Wogulischc und Oscjakuche Melodien/' Suomalais-U grilatsen Seuran Toimitukjia, LXXIII,

of the

m

Helsinki, 1937

[

2

]

COMPARATIVE MUSICOLOGY AND ITS

METHODS

NO SERIOUS RESEARCH work in the field of primitive music was done before the end of the nineteenth century Occasionally, to be sure, travelers

remote countries had printed native melodies

in

even more I

how

naively told

first

and

When

explorer to cross the African con-

he had found the only song printed in his famous work, he

me

having neither

that he a

had heard the melody somewhere in Africa and,

musical car nor the training

write notes, he had

to

whistled the few bars to himself every day until, several

he had met his brother and easy to imagine

It is

books, but the

traveler’s ear

musical dictation were doubtful factors

his training in

asked Georg Schweinfurth, the

tinent,

in their

was rather limited The

usefulness of such examples

had bad luck

how

made him

write

down

authentic the script was

months

Besides, Schweinfurth

the song he whistled, far from being native,

known European

‘hit’

melody handed over

to

later,

the song he whistled

was

a well-

Negroes by some white

sailor or factory clerk

Hence

the

first

foreign influences

rule in studying primitive music

tan seaports, and melodies sung by natives

men

or

European and other

must be eliminated beforehand Music from cosmopoli-

done military

who have

service, should be left

lived

among white

untouched or

at least

ap-

proached with special care Every song collected should be accompanied by a detailed It is

text,

indicating sex, age, and living conditions of the singer

often rather difficult to distinguish between native style

and recent

importation In early civilizations certain songs look suspiciously European, but of

this

impression

European

is

most often misleading, against

influence, a careful examination will

question arc primitive and

Hence

a second rule

our

as

the rash

show

assumption

that the traits in

such have also survived in European music.

critical sense

should never be guided by a seem-

ing similarity, nor by any other prejudice

compared with the music of white men

«

s

®

Primitive music must not be

The

26

The white with

musician must

set aside

not only his music but his very

objectively our car records impressions, our brain reads

quite subjectively

self,

and prejudice However mechanically and hence

his tradition

all

Origins of Music

Western man

is

and interprets them

never free from adapting foreign melo-

dies to his

own

fifth tones

of Javanese orchestras as alternating seconds

musical language, he perforce hears the equal-sized

he unconsciously squeezes the rhythmic patterns of his

In the same

spirit,

six-

and few

thirds,

rhythms of India into the

intricate

own music

and

painters of the

eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries delineated Indians and Negroes

with the

To

classical

Greek bodies and

had

gestures that academic training

upon them

forced

check

this

weakness,

we need an

objective, incorruptible control

of other writers' musical transcriptions

and

of our

own

both

attempts to under-

The first device of this kind Thomas A Edison invented another American, Dr Walter

stand and render the music of foreign races

was

phonograph with wax cylinders

the

A

in 1877

dozen years

later,

that

about 1890,

Fewkes, introduced the new invention into musicology by recording

Passamaquoddy and Gilman of Harvard University marked lected songs of the

study in primitive music

As

a

in the

the

Zuni Indians

the very

when he published

beginning of

scientific

transcriptions of these records 11

consequence, archives of phonograph records have been founded

United States

12

ment, and instruction

and other countries They provide suggestions, equipand anthropological

to missionaries

they keep and duplicate the recordings and hold

These

se-

Dr Benjamin

latter,

again, are encouraged to transcribe

and

workers,

field

them ready

for students

edit the melodies

recorded Transcription into Western notation depends not merely on gifted and well-trained ears, but also on a special technique of symbolizing the peculiarities

in the

of primitive and Oriental music After

same

language, but

position as our alphabet fails

when

melody of any other language Our musical

modern Occidental music,

is

all,

our musical notation

is

serves those familiar with the

convey the pronunciation and speech

tries to

it

it

script, exclusively

created for

to record distances different

unable

from

standardized tones and semitones, or the timbre or the peculiar technique 11 Benjamin Ives Gilman, “Zuni Melodies, in Journal of American Ethnology and Archaeology I (1891), pp 63—92 Jesse Fewkes, “A Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folklore, in Journal of American Folklore III (1890), pp 257-80 Carl Stumpf, “Phonographierte Indianermelodien,’' in Vierteljahnschnft fur Musikwissenschaft VIII (1892), pp 127—44, the same in Sammelbande fur Vergletchende Musik wlSiensc ^ia f t I (1922), pp 113—26 1Z George Herzog, "Research in Primitive and Folk Music in the United States, in American Council of Lramed Societies, bulletin no 24 April, 1936, pp 1—96 '

W

’

*

-

Comparative Musicology and

Methods

Its

than the notes themselves

Dr

Erich

more

M

mind,

this in

Dr

Otto

Abraham and

in 1909 to develop a

method

for a

means of our modifications and addi-

accurate transcription of exotic melodies, with the

usual musical script, tional symbols for etc

With

von Hornbostel attempted

27

more important

of singing which in primitive and Oriental music are often

13

Most of

to

be

vague

with certain

sure, but

tempo,

pitches, phrasing, timbre, grace notes,

these suggestions have

become

some alterations made by later authors For instance, we feel today that a senes and therefore

notes confuses the reader,

obligatory, notwithstanding

of separate eighth or sixteenth

join the crooks of two, three, or

four of them in accordance with the melodic accents, even

if

the individual

notes convey different syllables of the text

Another system, on

the contrary, favored in this country

and Frances Densmore,

consists

round or angular,

curves,

replacing notes

in

be accepted

B

Gilman

I

staff

to represent the general trend of a

this system, useful in certain cases, is neither accurate to

by

and

by

lines

melody But

nor graphic enough

14

Transcription of exotic melodies by means of Occidental notes and staves

however

is,

—

at

psychologically— misleading

least

It

rakes our musical

system for granted and marks by special signs what then are appear as deviations, so that the reader exotic scales swerve

from

the absolute

norm This

of students in primitive

by Alexander

in 1890

This system has result of a certain It

Ellis’s

J

number

science

any individual note

of vibrations per second

a

= 220 v,

as the

a'

440 v

two such notes

method ignored the conception of distance While we clearly distance from B to C is shorter than the distance from A to B,

had no means

difficulty

b' 495 v

c"

18

Otto Melodien, 14

danger

earlier

feel that the

b’ to

a real

and Oriental music was completed

cares only for describing distances between

The

is

system of Cents

intact the definition of

left

to

9

9

The equipment

made

victim to the suggestion that

falls

Cf B (190B)

,

of adequately defining

them and circumvented

by the complicated process of comparing ratios

and c" 528 v

as— 440

495

,

the distance

Nobody can '

see

from

from

Abraham und E M von Hornbostel, in Sammelbande der Intcrnationalen I

Gilman, "Hopi Songs,"

ordon

1934. P

97

a gigantic scale

which

refers to

is

roughly outlined in the Talmudian

an episode of the Book of Joshua

Cumming, The Assyrian and Hebrew Hymns

of Praise,

New

York,

Music When

Ancient Western Orient

in the

93

Jordan and came unto Mount Gerizim and unto Samaria six tribes went up to the top of Mount Gerizim and six tribes went up to the top of Mount Ebal And the priests and the Levites stood below in the midst, and the priests surrounded the Ark and the Israel crossed the

Mount Ebal

in

Levites surrounded the priests, and

and began with the blessing

“Amen!"

When hymn

Moses, having led his people through the Red Sea, struck up the

men

of praise with his

He

were on this side and on that and both these and these answered,

Israel

t0

unto the Lord, for

"I will sing

hath

all

.

thrown

He ”

into the sea

took a timbrel in her hand, and

all

highly exalted

is

Miriam

the

the horse and his rider

the prophetess, the sister of

women went

and with dances And Miriam sang unto them “Sing ye to the Lord, " highly exalted the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea

The Jewish

philosopher Philo (b 30-20 b c

Hebrew

erudition lived in the atmosphere of

singing as antiphony

“On

of the

who

He

for

in spite of his

is

Greek

tradition, interpreted

this

the shore," he says in his Life of Moses, "the

Hebrews formed two choruses out God, Moses

),

Aaron,

out after her with timbrels

of the

men and

the

women and

praised

struck up the singing of the men, and his sister the singing

women They were

the leaders of the choruses

standing the identical texts the

men and

antiphony in the narrower sense,

women

the

women

against

’’

B1

But

sang,

men,

it

it

was

if,

notwith-

was not an at least

an-

tiphony in the wider sense, the choruses answering their leaders

Actual antiphony

is

obvious

over the Philistines "the

The

David’s return from his victory

sang one to another in their play, and

‘Saul hath slain his thousands,

said

A

when on

women

and David his ten thousands ” ’

verb ‘andh means “to answer, respond

large-size antiphony, possibly of singers

described in the

nian Exile (538

Book of Nehemia

When

b c ) the leaders rebuilt

52

"

and of players, seems

after the return

to

be

from the Babylo-

and dedicated the walls of Jerusalem

all their places to keep the dedication with gladwith thanksgiving, and with singing, with cymbals, harps, and with the sons of the singers gathered themselves together Then [Nche-

they sought the Levites out of ness, both lyres

And

mia] brought up the princes of Judah upon the wall, and appointed two great companies that gave thanks and went in procession on the right hand half of the princes of Judah and certain of the priests' sons with trumpets, and Judah, Hanani, with the musical instruments o£ David And the other company of chem that gave thanks went to meet chem, and they stood still in the gate of Sotah 7 5 Bl Philo, 13 I Sam

De

Vita

iB 7

Moym I

^

iflo

-

The Western Orient

94

the guard So stood the two companies of

God And

The

them

that gave thanks in the

the singers sang loud, with Jezrahiha their overseer

older rabbis of the

Talmud, who

still

house of

511

had seen the Temple, describe

basic forms of responsonal antiphony

The

1)

soloist

sang the entire melody, and after each half-verse the con-

gregation answered with the same

was used

The

2)

soloist

first

This form

half-verse as a refrain

113-118) and the

for the Hallel (Ps

Song of

(Ex

the Sea

15).

and the congregation alternated half-verse by half-verse

This was the traditional form of the

Shma

Israel

repeated the teacher's cantillation half-verse 3) In school, the children by half verse

Confirming refrains were prescribed

4)

"And all the The finest

people shall say

as early as the time of

Amen” (Deut

evidence of choral antiphony

gregational supper of the Therapeutic sect

Moses

27 21-26)

is

Philo’s description of a con-

S4

the one two choruses are formed up together and sewomen, and for each chorus there is a leader Then they is the most honourable and most excellent of the band sing hymns which have been composed in honour of God in many meters and tunes, at one time all singing together, and at another answering one another in The chorus of male and female worshippers, througha skilful manner out the singing and the alternation of the melodies, makes a truly musical

They

stand

all

men and lected, who

the other of

of

symphony, the of the

men

shrill voices

of the

women mingling

with the deep-toned voices

13

Responsonal anliphony

is still

used in

all

Jewish liturgies

The Yemenites,

form (1) the Jerusalemites used in the Temple, and the Babylonians sing it on Passover in form (2)

particularly, sing the Hallel in the

time of the

Choral antiphony

exists also,

Yemenites, for instance, sing in the following

half-chorus, sings the

the

melody

though only outside the synagogue The but one form of extrasynagogical poetry

arrangement The chorus (of men)

half-choruses of at least

first

all

two singers each The

first

divided into two

member

of the

first

verse (eight measures) alone in order to call

mind, and the following verses are alternately sung, the

to

half-verse bv the first half-chorus

second half-chorus

supposed

is

leader, a

If

to heat the

there

is

rhythm,

a coda,

it

and the second half-verse by the is done by all together Drums are

on Sabbaths, not admissible, the onlookers clap their hands Never are these antiphonies 11

Neh

in case they are not available or,

12 27-4^ (abbreviated)

i4 Philn, Dr Vita -B Quoted from

n

contem plattva f B3 Gustave Reese, Music in the Middle Ages, op

cit

p 60

,

Music

men

sung without one or two couples of

tempo up

thereafter in an ever increasing

# Antiphony

Western Orient

in the Ancient

dancing

— slowly

95 at

in Assyria should be taken for granted with the close relationreligious poetries

Though

no direct, irrefutable evidence of

C G Cumming,

the

this,

The Assyrian and Hebrew Hymns

to write a

of Praise,

whole chapter on the subject and

in the Assyrian

hymns,

there

at

hand

monographer

"The use of the refrain Hebrew hymns, indicates

to state

as in the case of the

as evidences of

dred and

fifty

years ago, the

sing and dance in

two

number

at a

sis, eight,

distance of

certain ancient Egyptian reliefs

tinual alternation of the

who

in their archaic civiliza-

or even

two or three

Cataract, in the

more men

Villoteau’s musical examples

where

Nubian rowboat

parties

“T

I

myself

on the Nile near the

and the congregation in

a

First

much

synagogue

heard by Curt Sachs

35 Nubians I

on

two choruses, each one singing two measures,

as the cantor

Ex

each,

show con-

the leader improvised and the crew responded very

same way

hun-

feet, exactly as

or else the second chorus |ointng in with an overlapping refrain participated in 1930 in

A

of ancient Egyptian traits

French musicologist, Villotcau, saw them

fronts of four,

which faced one another

*®

non-Jewish antiphony are playful per-

formances of the Nubians in Upper Egypt, tion have faithfully preserved a

is

had material enough

antiphonal responses between priest and choir and choir and choir.”

Nearer

and

«

«

ship between Assyrian and Hebrew

of

first

to a frantic prestissimo

Leader

H. Chorus

All these evidences are outshone by a letter of one of the St Basil (c 330-379),

onally

which defends

and responsonally,

as

the singing of the

Church Fathers,

psalms both antiph

do "the Egyptians, Libyans, 1 hebans, Pales-

tinians, Arabians, Phoenicians, Syrians, the dwellers

by the Euphrates."

BB

This proves that antiphonal and rcsponsorial singing between Libya and

Mesopotamia was no

less

than universal.

* 88 Charles Gordon 72-82, 99

8T Villotcau,

"Dc

Cumming, The

Assyrian

e and Hebrew Hymns of

l’6ut acmcl dc I’art musical cn Egyptc,”

moderne, Pans, 1826, XIV, 254-9 88 Cf Gustave Rccsc, op cit, p 63

m

Praise,

op

cit

pp

Description de L’Egypte, Etat

,

The Western Orient

96

The

Christian liturgy of

proves that antiphony

common

with the

is

Syria, nearest to the

Jewish liturgy of Palestine,

by no means the only

rest of the

trait

that Israel

had

in

Eastern world between Libya and Mesopo-

tamia

Although none of its melodies can actually be traced back to antiquity, unanimous in assuming that they contain original elements

scholars are

after Idelsohn

Ex 36 SYRIAN CHRISTIANS

There

same

is,

indeed, the

same preference given

style of cantillation,

and even

to tetrachordal structure, the

certain standard melodies closely re-

most archaic Jewish tunes, adaptability of melodic patterns

lated to the

to texts of different length

qualitative meters

and rhythm, the interpretation of irregular

by irregularly alternating short and long notes, accents

and neumes, parallelismus membrorum, and elaborate antiphony in

two forms

as half

chorus against half chorus and chorus against soloist

Northward, Syrian influence shaped the menia yet

We

do not know

this

earliest

to

be of

a

But even the modern cantillation of Armenia

melodic formulas, not on have been in prose, that with Jewish music

tion

church music of Ar-

music, however, the old notation has not

been deciphered, and the present melodies seem

recent date

is,

its

BB

scales,

much more is

based on

and her most ancient hymns are said

in free

rhythm Both

to

qualities constitute a rela-

80

In a similar way, the features of Jewish cantillation recur in the chant of Israel's

Christian neighbors in the

West

•

•

The

Copts, native Christians of Egypt, have preserved the racial features

of the ancient pre-Islamic Egyptians all

the Copts of Egypt.

the conquering Greeks,

almost untouched

and in church

still

use their language;

Romans, Arabs, and Turks have

In view of such perseverance, there

Egyptian music might to

a certain extent

is

hope

left

them

that late

be preserved in the chant of

Coptic churches ** A Z Idelsohn, ( 9 aa ), PP 364-89

Ages, op cu *“

Cf

,

p

"Drr Kirchengesang der Jakobiten,” in Archw fur Mustk.wissenschafl IV Egon Wcllcsz, and other sources cf Gustave Reese, Music in the Middle

43 a

the bibliography in

Guruve

Reese, op

at

p 434

u EQ

Music Chanting

is

in the Ancient

done by

in a thin, high,

—

—

Western Orient

97

few blind singers who

a

on the ground, perform

sit

and nasalizing voice and accompany themselves with the

tinkle of small cymbals,

much

Egyptians shook their metallic

as the ancient

Their melodies are definitely heptatonic and,

sistra

The

with comparatively rare ligatures and graces the impression of tetrachordal

Ex 37

—--u-

is

—

after

1—2

i

Newlandsmith

^rr r+r

mi

—

r

*

P-T-

J-

— as the author many times did —must be struck by the discouraging vagueness of

But whoever attends Coptic Cairo and in Luqsor

listener

syllabic,

often under

modes

copts

’V •SK

main,

in the

services

in all

notes inside a fourth or a fifth and, as a consequence, will prefer to refrain

from modal difficult

style

or

is is it

in general

analysis

a

The

question

how

to

interpret

an inherent quality of the Coptic

it

consequence of degeneration

and of Oriental singing

?

— and

this

vagueness

is

hence Egyptian

In face of the nature of singing

particularly, inheritance

is

likelier

than

decadence Ethiopian church music should in a similar

way

be taken into considera-

Abyssinia boasts of Jewish descent, believes that her

first emperor was the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and claims that

tion

her church has preserved the melodies of Solomon’s temple its

a

turn states that the

History in

bishop of Ethiopia was a Phoenician, that

neighbor of the Palestinian Jews, and that about 500 a.d Syrian

came

The

38 abyssinians

after

Herscher-CKment

cantillation of Abyssinian churches has scarcely

far, but at least in its

Jewish temple it

is,

monks

to that land as missionaries

Ex

be

first

performance there

the ends of the lines

the ancient Jewish sistrum or,

sistrum,

which

in

its

been investigated so

reminding us of the are marked by shaking the sistrum, is

a trait

more probably,

the ancient Egyptian

native country has been forgotten

,

The Western Orient

gS

Ethiopians, indeed, do not deny that there are close

church music and the melodies of the Copts

»

ing

as

—

between

their

*

#

too, is a fascinating trait

Polyphoni,

ties

01

of Abyssinia, and the

more

fascinat-

except for the Arabian influence in the masantjo or improvised

fiddle songs of

wandering minstrels

—her musical

life

appears to have been

untouched since olden times

Mondon-Vidailhet,

and

the best

music

"liturgical

monies,

I

among

French resident of Abyssinia, an excellent ohserver,

a

the very few writers on Ethiopian music, relates that

homophonous

not exclusively

is

In several cere-

noticed that before one of the groups had ended another group

ensemble was

a

very harmonious music in a

begging lepers who perform

lalibaloe before sunrise at the

had started so that

their

” complicated kind of counterpoint 62

He

of

tells

doors of their luckier countrymen, a

and

or even three,

in

doing

so,

woman

first,

then a man, then both

they sing, to translate Mondon-Vidailhet's

words, tn "a simple harmony, generally based on the third

A

third

form of musical teamwork

” 03

in Ethiopia belongs to the folksongs

sings the verses, the chorus joins in with a refrain,

called zafan

a soloist

and while

together sing the coda, the voices drop out one by one until

all

only a single voice

one musician But

is left,

after

04

more important

a

Arachin i

almost as in Haydn’s Farewell

another stopped playing and parallel

is

mentioned

Symphony where

left

in the

Talmudian

tractate

which, speaking of the double pipe, adds that the final

3,

cadence came from one cane only, “to already discussed the question for

make

which of

it

more agreeable

several reasons the

” I

have

two canes

blown together were less agreeable 05 Maybe they were played in unison and caused unpleasant pulsations when not tuned with the greatest care, or

1

1st

in the

they might have played separate parts, possibly

Droning 41

Cf

is

indeed the basic form of counterpoint wherever double pipes

I

Mondon

3 v, p

in Gustave Reese, ibid p 434 RLCeni contribution J d Abjssinie, in Zatschri/t fur Vcrglcic/icndc Musi^wijjsnschaft

the hihliORraph)

Climeni ‘Chants PP Si -7 83

and even probably

mariner of a drone

Vidailhet,

‘La

Musique ethiopiennc,"

in

,

Hufory

of Musical Instruments,

(1934),

Lavignac, Encyclopedic dc la Mustquc

3191

•• Ibid p 31B1 •• l hid p 3 1 Bo aB Curl Sacha, The

HerschcrII

op at

,

p 120

Music

The Arabian

arc played

triple clarinet

one pipe

Ancient Western Orient

in the

launeddas, and practically

melody and

for the

gg

and the double oboes of India, the Sardinian

argiil

bagpipes in the world provide

all

below

the other for a sustained pedal tone

the melody

Drones, archaic in themselves, were doubtless

On

sand years ago clarinet

on some

relief of the

and Sumer has

depicted,

is

one

pictures of the Egyptian

fingers the right cane with both

known at least Kingdom

Egyptian Old

On

other pictures, the

New Kingdom

cane

left

hand holds

The

wax, one

holes that the player did not wish to pipe, excavated in

or the early

New

left

is

merely sup-

cane sounds a

the cane above the highest

fingerhole, again, this cane cannot have contributed

note

double

(after 1500 b c ) the piper

hands while the

left

a

double oboes of the same time,

left

ported by the thumb, which clearly indicates that the

drone

five thou-

more than one

single

work were stopped with

Thebes and dating from the end of the Middle

Kingdom,

still

has the stopping

wax

in three of its four

fingerholes

The harpers'

polyphony,

Instruments

60

lastly,

well-known

a

my History of Musical Museum represents the

has been discussed in

relief in the British

Elamic court orchestra welcoming the Assyrian conqueror

among

its

players, seven harpists similar in

work

artist's

among

otherwise

formal consideration (PI

Each harper plucks two

and semitones

strings

As

umfoim

3,

the

numbers of the

or with

the fifth, tenth, fifteenth

minor

thirds

whether the tetrachords are arranged

anyway Supposing

the fifteenth sound a e,

e

the

and

and e" The result

two notes being

heptads or

is

a',

that the fifth string

,

p S2

thir-

in octaves, is

immaterial,

and disjunct tetrachords sounds A, the tenth and

and the eighth, thirteenth, and eighteenth,

an empty

distributed

fifth

among

orchestrated in the

modern wjy,

the seven players in different

binations, as double octave, octave, unison Ibid

strings plucked

and the eighth,

and whole tones The next question, in

since in the range of a score of strings, conjunct

alternate

players be explained

p 80)

— — the genus must be pentatonic, either with major thirds

follow in intervals of five teenth, eighteenth

acci-

of realistic, indeed almost photographic, accuracy,

nor can that single variation by an

»c and,

Such difference must noL be considered

plucking different strings dental in an art

in 650

details except that they are

all

and

fifth-

com-

"

The Western Orient

ioo

First

harpist

A-e?

Second

harpist

e-e'

Third Fourth

harpist

c'-e"

harpist

e'-e'

Fifth

harpist

a'-e"

Sixth

harpist

a'-e

Seventh harpist

The unexpected examination

to

results of

studying

(fl)-e'

this relief

encouraged

me

to

extend

other ancient pictures of harpists, both in Assyria

and

Egypt, in which the strings and plucking fingers were represented with similar distinctness b

c

,

I

found portrayed

the fifth, in Egypt,

fourths, octaves It is

from the

and unisons

in Assyria, in the

early third

Anyway,

use of pentatomcally tuned instruments, although

fl7

this, in

it

proves the

turn, does not

imply pentatonic melodies

Curt Sachs, “Zwcikiangc im Alterrum,'

16B-70

and

stress of essential notes rather

than a continuous accompaniment in parallels

pp

fifths

87

probable that this means an incidental

necessarily

seventh century

millennium b c on,

in Festschrift fur

Johannes Wolf Berlin, 1929,

[

4

]

CONCLUSION TO SUM UP

Despite an almost complete lack of direct information,

draw

conclusions by analogy and other indirect inference allow us to

vague outlines of how music was Large ensembles,

in the ancient

suggest a high standard of musical education,

The

system they followed can

down

open

the

and almost

principle

to

the skill,

in

Elam

Jerusalem

and knowledge

and

certainly a

lyres

imply the up-and-

pentatonic tuning that other lutes,

evi-

spreading from a center in

Iran, hint at the divisive principle

Singing, at least in the

last

out any trace of pentatonism syllabic,

Temple

a certain degree be inferred from the

strings of harps

dences confirm, the later long-necked

Mesopotamia or

Babylon, and

like the court orchestras of Egypt,

and the choruses and orchestras connected with

instruments used

the

Western Orient

one thousand years Its style as a

and only moderately spiced with

b

c

,

was heptatonic with-

whole was logogenic,

ligatures

basically

and mehsmas Melody

followed ready-made patterns or was composed of carefully classified motifs, not of single notes As a consequence, notation developed in the direction of group scripts, accents, and neumes, not of pitch scripts 1

‘Meter in the Greek sense was unknown, and ‘time’ with regular beats existed only in dances

rhythmically free,

it

and dance-inspired music

Religious melody was

followed the irregular meters of the words by lengthen-

ing the accented syllables, even

when

they were phoncticall) short

Besides simple solo and choir singing, music was by preference organized in the various is

forms of antiphony Exactly what role polyphony played

drones and consonant chords occurred

hard

to say

It is

important

,

to realize that the ancient

quite different from

Open

the

first

tion of 1887

what

volume of

and you

on instruments

historians of the nineteenth century

A

W

will find

risen above the level of a

at least

Western Orient had

a

music

conceded

it

Ambros' Geschichte der Musi ^ in its edithat "Assyrian music seems never to have

mere sensual stimulus”,

"was in any case voluptuous and noisy and

far

that the

music of Babylon

from simple beauty and

noble form"; and that the main task of Phoenician music was “to drown the

The Western Orient

102 cries of the victims

difference

from

the

who burned

in the

glowing arms of Moloch ”

Let us pigeonhole these rash and foolish misconceptions

do not know how of

its

that ancient

music sounded, we have

power, dignity, and mastership Not the

selves claimed to be

What

calm simplicity and noble grandeur of Greek music

its

pupils

least

is

Though we

sufficient

that the

a

1

evidence

Greeks them-

Section Three

EAST ASIA

[1

]

GENERAL FEATURES

T

HIS SECTION

deals with the music of China, Korea,

of Indo-China, from particularly Bali

Annam

and Japan;

Siam, and of the Malay

to

islands,

and Java

Chinese music can be traced back

Shang Dynasty between

to the

fourteenth and twelfth centuries b c Japanese music began only in the century a d

,

when Korean

the fifth

court music was adopted In the sixth century,

Japan became familiar with both Buddhism and the ceremonial music of China, though once more through Korea, while direct influence, without foreign intermediation, set in a hundred years later

on

to

China

also passed

Japan the ceremonial dances of India with their music, which were

Japanized

as the

A

solemn and colorful Buga\u

strong

wave from Man-

churia, in the eighth century, ended foreign influences on the classical

music

of

Japan

Japanese music

has been so

is

much

more

shorter

archaic than Chinese music, although

At

sight this

first

its

seems paradoxical

history

But

it

is

consistent with the general rule that things continue developing in their

native country, while natural evolution comes to

environments In many

may

respects, therefore, the

»

«

The ancient music of which we know

in the

Far East

a small part, of the music actually performed

who

in foreign

be better studied in Japan than in China

®

times

standstill

a

music of the ancient East

We

is

only a part, indeed

and enjoyed in those

early

are almost in the position of those of our fellow musicologists

deal with the

Middle Ages,

|ust as these

men

are

thrown on books

monks on monks’ music, while no heed was given to secular songs or dances, China's "popular music was contrary to established literary principles, and there was no recognized prec-

exclusively written by

edent for

The few 1

it,

so

it

monks

for

was simply ignored

"

1

1

passages in which ‘vulgar music

Gulik f The Lore of the Chinese Lute, op

cit

,

p 39

is

mentioned are contemptuous

East Asia

io6

In Confucius’ words, a vulgar-minded man’s performance

"is

loud and

His fast, and again fading and dim, a picture of violent death-agony are movements balanced, mildness and graceful heart is not harmonically foreign to

and Yin

Lu Pu-we,

that

and thought

that

and strange timbres,

They

tried to

mass

drums,

at

effects

or,

in

“They

1

and Fall describes

the poet of ‘Spring

and

bells, stones, pipes,

flutes beauti-

were worth whde They aimed

never heard of tones,

at

new

never seen before

at plays

outdo one another and overstepped the limits

True music is

vulgar was the "noisy” music of the tyrants of Hia

And

”

the loud sounds of big

deemed ful

him

’’

2

Confucius’ words, "the noble-minded man’s music

mild and delicate, keeps a uniform mood, enlivens and moves Such a

man

mourn

does not harbor pain or

ments are foreign ‘serenity’

The

to

him

”

3

good and bad music did not

contrast of

music meant the

step

last

music only with sticcato,

man who

a

wisdom

we do

not blame Prince

in full

ceremonial dress

’’

tired

so

much

music of

a

separate religious

few

sages, to

Thus Lu Pu-we “was

has grasped the

meaning

whom

ahle to speak of

of the world

— nothing that aroused unrest, passion, lust

of the heart

asleep, but

esoteric

”

*

no accelerando, no strong crescendo or decrescendo had a

place in such music

fall

lo

wandering the universe, from the cheap

in

entertainment of the nomnitiated

ihe

and daring move-

yuo ’music’ and

had the same graphic symbol

from secular music, but rather the

No

in his heart, violent

Music should be serene

when

I

must

listen to the

listen to the

1

Music was

No doubt 'good music’ could be exasperating, and Win of Wei (426-1587 b c ) for exclaiming “When Anuent Music, I think I shall Cheng and Wei, I never get

songs of

B

Rut whether good melodies were pleasant or boring, never has attitude

toward music been more Far East has given the

idealistic,

art a

#

Music,

to the

Chinese,

is

and having

unique place

*

in

its

so lofty a conception, the

spiritual life

*

born in man's heart Whatever moves the soul

pours forth in lones, and again, whatever sounds affect man's soul fucius himself, the nation's spiritual paragon,

Lu Pu 1

op cil Wilhelm, op at

4

Lu Pu-we op at

•

R

•

Lu

V

,

3

V

H

a

\an Gulik, op at p 37 Pu-we, op at p 73 ,

,

was

8

Con-

so deeply impressed

by

General Features some old hymn

that ‘‘for three

and when he played “This heart

An

is

107

months he did not know the

man who

the ch'tng, a

full that so beats the

sounding stone

Hsiang on

Then Master Hsiang

but no melody came

Master

Wen

“By

said

down, sighed, and

laid the zither

What

not bring a melody about

Cheng followed

of

Three years he touched the

his travels

all

said

“It

my mind

have in

I

meat,”

” 7

Wen

old legend relates that the music master

great Master

taste of

passed his house exclaimed,

strings,

means, go home.” not that

is

can-

I

does not concern

my heart can I express it on the instrument, therefore do not dare move my hand ” and touch the strings But give me a short while and then examine me After a while he again appeared before Master Hsiang, who asked "How about your playing' " Master Wen answered' "I have attained it; please test my playing” It was spring, and when he plucked the Shang string whac

strings,

aim

I

Not

at is not tones

until

I

have reached

it

in

I

1

and had the eighth semitone accompany, shrubs and trees bore

fruit

it

up and the shrubs and

tiees

and he plucked the Yu hoar

frost

When

froze

had the thawed

fifth at

and snow came

down and

dew

fell,

was summer

it

with the eleventh semi-

and lakes suddenly

the rivers

semitone respond, the sun began

once Finally, he sounded the

up, sweet

it

When

had come and he plucked the Chih string and

Kung

the other four strings, then lovely winds

came

the

breeze sprang

a gentle, tepid

deployed their splendor

string and accompanied

the winter

wind sprang up, and

a cool

was autumn and he plucked the Chiao

and had the second semitone respond,

string

tone,

When

and the

scorch

to

string

and united

murmured, clouds

of

it

ice

with

good luck

up powerfully

the springs welled

Music’s magical might to overcome the laws of nature has been praised in the legends of all nations

such has power that in

The our

—

it

music finds

is

its

The Chinese myth

voice and

deeper

not sound as

form

great heart in another people’s music rarely beats in unison with

own Everyone

has experienced

how

difficult

own

tional qualities in the musical style of our

years back, and

how much

his interpretation rights or 7

is

works the miracle, the great heart

the heart that

The

P 105

a conscientious

wrongs what

to grasp the

is

it

forefathers three

performer

the old

is

in

doubt whether

composer had

Original Chinese Texts of the Confucian Analecta, Uranjl

by

J

emo-

hundred

Steele,

in

mind

London, 1861,

East Asia

io8

But the gap between ourselves and

‘exotic

music

the visitor’s imagination or

vice versa, he

cool or even

is

Though we

Saldm’s

music

realize that

hardly bridgeable, who-

knows

ever has attended performances in the Orient

unmoved when

is

its

greater and richer than our

is

is

annoyed when they burst

are denied participation in all

seem

that the natives

sympathy

and

struck,

that,

Ya

into enraptured

we

delights,

own

at least

limited musical

would admit And this is a good thing to know As far as ancient China is concerned, emotion seems to have emanated much more from single sounds than from melodic turns Confucius’ stone capacity

slab provided

note by

one note,

power

its

beating must have enlivened this one

‘heartfelt’

to benefit

from the almost impalpable

intricacies of strik-

ing and deadening, and even of interference In a similar

Japanese

spirit,

flute players are still

expected to enliven the

individual tone, not only by a constant vibrato but also by skillfully sharpen-

ing

it

bevond

The

natural pitch

is

China

No

singing

a scholar

did not

two forms She and Ch'in

its

B ,

often erroneously called

the outstanding repiesentative of this esoteric music of ancient

"lute,"

But

its

long zither in

girl,

no actor were permitted

was expected

know how

to

to play it,

keep

it

to play this

somewhere

indeed, even

if it

instrument

in his studio,

even

if

he

had no strings In lonely

meditation or before a few selected friends, the player, having burnt incense and ceremoniously

instrument before

Few ing,

is

notes he

washed

him and begin

would

leave clear

would

his hands,

his

lay the long,

narrow

dreamy, delicate playing

and hard, mostly, the

string, after pluck-

given additional tension, so that the tone goes up for a

moment

or for good, or else, the stopping finger leaves the tone just plucked

and

rubs along the string with a wiping noise rather than a melodious glissando

Such continual wailing and sobbing, though certainly against our is

indispensable

And lies

when

taste,

East Asiatic music appeals to the heart.

here, too, beauty

not so

much

in the succession of notes as in each separate note in itself an entity in itself, calculated to evoke in the mind of the hearer a special reaction The timbre being thus of the utmost importance, there are very great possibilities of modifying the coloring of one and the same tone In

Each note

is

order co understand and appreciate this music, the ear must learn to distinguish subtle nuances the same note, produced on a different string, has a different

same string, when pulled by the fore finger or the middle finger of the right hand, has a different timbre The technique by which these variations

color, the

umbre

in 8

are effected

is

extremely complicated

of the vibrato alone there exist

Curt Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments, op

cit

,

pp

1

8

5—8

General Features no

109

than twenty-six varieties

The impression made by one note is followed by another, still another There is thus a compelling, inevitable suggestion of a mood, an atmosphere, which impresses upon the hearer the sentiment that inless

6

spired the composer

The ous in

single note actually counted for

more than melody chimes, numer-

hinds of orchestras, were mere

all

or bells, united in one frame,

ment Panpipes followed Confucius ended in ceive the tone"

it is

true,

the same principle

blow on

a single

and transmit

to the

it

metal slabs,

sets of single stones,

but not in any actual scale arrange-

a

Each verse of

Hymn

the

to

sonorous stone which was to "re-

following word Cosmological con-

notations were given to individual notes, not, as in the West, to melodic patterns

At

And

notation consisted in separate pitch symbols

first sight,

cut of a tone

seems

is

one would think that

matter more than

to

and

of the single tone

strictness, not

Law

musical world in which the exact

melodic relation to other tones, was

its

and

interested in accurate pitch

ment

a

avoided rather than sought, and tn which the single tone

and

its

scale

The

opposite

is

true

little

Both the mo-

freedom could be established only on law

on anarchy

and strictness, indeed, were imposed on music in China more than else, for “it was rooted in the Great One, the universal idea that

anywhere

tion of the

" 10

The world

itself,

manifesta-

Great One, integrated time, space, energy, and sound

The world

nobody can visualize

or even conceive

embodied eternal time

in

its

and

unalteiahle cycle of seasons, months,

hours

It

embodied

eternal space, toward East and West,

and North and

South

It

combined

into a

wood and

metal, skin and

stone

It

was power,

world was tone

Time and

in

its

whole

visible in

all

substances,

wind and thunder,

fire

and

wa

L

er

And

the

conceptions, as pitch and as timbre

two

and music were congruent and, aspects of the same One Their

space, matter

gruency, merely difierent

consequently, were congruent as well

a

in their condifferentials,

certain season corresponded to a

certain cardinal point, or substance, or musical instrument, or note

11

And

the four seasons were separated from one another, not only by definite

amounts of time but principle, there 8

was

also

by musical intervals

a fifth

R H van Gulik, op cit pp Lu Pu we, op cit V 2 Chou

from autumn i f

10

11 First described in the

It

following the up-and-down

to spring, a

fourth back to winter,

East Asia

no and

a fifth to

summer, producing the strange equation (already mentioned

in the second section) as similar to the late

Babylonian conception

Autumn

(F)

(C) Spring

(G) Winter (China

D)

Summer

C)

(Babylonia

Chinese wisdom has indulged in endless co-ordinations of

kind,

this

each instrument belonged to one of the cardinal points, substances the bell stood for west

powers

drum,

and winter, water and skin

for north

And

were associated

the notes

with the twelve months of the year and their allegoric animals dragon, snake, horse, sheep, ape, cock, dog, pig,

Cosmological connotations

and

and autumn, dampness and metal, the

rat,

—

tiger, hare,

and ox

of musical conceptions are, as the seasonal

equation of Babylonia shows, by no means confined to China There are quite similar equations in India, in the Islamic countries, in ancient Greece,

and even in the Christian Middle Ages planets, parts of the

are

compared and

eternal

harmony

human

body, moods,

associated,

and

seasons, months, days, hours, illnesses,

finally the

elements, and what not

cosmos

itself

sounds

in

an

of spheres

Certain passages from the Bible have been quoted as inspired bv the

harmony But

idea of cosmic

at best

they

show

preparedness for

a certain

accepting such an idea through the general conception that

ought

to sing

unto the Lord and "declare his glory

marvellous works

Psalm 96

12, in

to Philo,

who

the peoples ”

among

which

“all

in his Life of

united to form one chorus, the

The the

link

between them

morning

The Book

stars

is

that the ia Philo,

De

V ito

logical step

a

rejoice before the

from

Lord,”

that question in Job 38

“Where wast thou when

sang together'’”

of Job

harmony

would be

wood

earih”

“all the

the naiions, his

Moses exclaims "O Lord, have the stars, 12 power of singing a song worthy of thee

is

said to be late, Job himself lived in the time of the

Babylonian Exile (sixth century the idea of cosmic

It

the trees of the

among

harmony

of the spheres,

Moyiv

II

% 239

bc) On

to the

the other hand, Philo ascribes

Chaldeans Thus

developed from

it

is

earlier

highly probable

cosmological co-

—

in

General Features ordinations,

was given

shape in Babylonia and from there handed

final

its

over to the Jews, the Greeks, and probably also the Egyptians

One

thing should not be overlooked

from the

basically

was

tablished that a certain planet to

the

harmony

of the spheres differs

original theory of co-ordination

This

latter

had

es-

a certain pitch

was

another pitch, the harmony of the spheres meant something quite

dif-

to

another planet as

the planets, or rather their spheres, resounded in actual, though

ferent

imperceptible, tones

In neither form cal

the idea of a functional interdependence of things musi-

is

and nonmusical

self-evident,

it

cannot have originated spontaneously

in every country between the Pacific and the Mediterranean

Where,

then, did

it

come

to

That we do not know The evidences,

and when

life,

best of all

with Asiatic sources which

fails

?

methods,

to

go back

we sometimes

to the earliest

are not able to

date within a thousand years Moreover, the texts of Egypt, Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria,

and Persia are

silent

The

only statement

we

on the subject (which does not prove

were unknown)

that cosmological connotations

are allowed to

make

is

the earliest evidences

this

of these cosmological co-ordinations are Chinese and Greek, and as far as

Greece

East

is

concerned, the idea

But there

digenous

to

as yet

is

is

no answer

China or brought

in

as its

fire-red-Mars-south-summer

members

are hot

Sound,

whether

to the question

it

was

in-

from some other part of Asia

Co-ordination requires a tertium comparutionts Such is

fiom the

doubtless due to importation

logical

a

cosmological series

and self-explanatory

on the contrary, has

no

in

that

all

direct relation to

other categories of perception, except by the most abstract of ad likenesses

number and measure Sound in itself, however, vibration numbers,

open was

to shift

is

impalpable and unmeasurable, except by

which were unknown

from sound

to

in ancient

China The only way

sound-producing devices, from tones

instruments Pitch varied with the size of the vibrating relation

medium, and

to

the

between two tones could be expressed by the proportion of two

lengths of flutes or strings

But the

relativity of proportions

co-ordinations of cosmology

would not do for the use of music in the more than any other people

The Chinese

—

1

East Asia

12

needed absolute pitch

or, in

other words, a standard length

Indeed,

Lu

13

And so intimate Pu-we plainly states "Music stems from measure” became the connection of music and length that the Imperial Office of Music was annexed to the Office of Weights and Measures This idea, again, was not confined to China As un-Chinese and late a thinker as the Jewish poet, Jehuda Halevy weights, the proportions of various

everything

The

number.”

in

unit of length

became

a

1080-1140), said

“Measures,

14

imposed on the standard pitch was the metrical foot

China ruled whatever extended

that in

truly

is

(c.

movements, the harmony of music,

in length, width,

function of space, and once

more

and height Music

the universe appeared to

be one So close became the relation of pitch tone and foot that in the tenth century a d some learned Chinese, called upon to renormalize the spreading confusion, earnestly questioned whether pitch depended on feet and inches or the metric foot

on the

pitch tone

Correctness in music was not mainly, essential to the

if at all,

a musical

concern

It

was

cosmos Time and space, substance and power were beyond

man’s control But sound he created himself, in music, he look the heavy responsibility for either strengthening or imperiling the equilibrium of

the world

And

his responsibility

included the world's truest images, the

dynasty and the country, the welfare of the empire depended on the correctness of pitches

As

acts,

first

and

scales

a consequence, the readjustment of for,

would

music was one of

a

new emperor’s

the preceding dynasty have been eliminated unless

music was out of harmony with the universe 5 The Chinese have credited the very oldest dynasties with this order of thought The mythical Emperor Shun, said to have come to the throne

its

in 1285

bc, impressed on

Chinese chronicle, relates

The

"

his chief musician, so

‘Kwei,

I

command you

Shu King, to regulate

the earliest

music

measure The reed regulates the voice and the eight instruments, and you must harmonize them all, but without disturbing the due order Gods and men will then approve Yearly, notes should accord with the

’

in the second month, he journeyed eastward, going about the territories u Pu wr op at V 2 Yehuda HilrM Cusart cd Cassel IT % 6 Sonne The Philosophy and Theory of Music College Annual X\ (1941), p 265 18

I

14

‘

I

IV in

quoted from Eric Werner and Isaiah § 25 Judaeo-Arabic Literarure in Hebrew Union 1

General Features .

and adjusted the four

.

the notes of music

When

seasons, the

months and

113 the

first

days and tested

" 16

the emperor wished to ascertain whether his government

was

right or not, he listened to the six pitches, the five tones of the scale,

and

the eight kinds of musical instruments, and he took the odes of the court

and ballads of the

These of

Yue

village to see

ideas resulted

if

they corresponded with the five tones

under Emperor

fu, the Imperial Office of

Wou

(141-87 b c

)

18

in the foundation

Music, with special sections

to supervise

ceremonial, foreign, aristocratic, and folk music and a complete archive of national melodies

and preservation of 16

King 10

Its

chief concern, however,

was the establishment

correct pitch

W

era ml by H Mcdhurst Shanghai, 1846, pp by Walter Gorn Old, London, 1904, p 20 Mcdhurst edition, pp 69 f

The Shoo King,

,

transl

io,

33

f

The Shu

6

2

[

THE “EMPEROR HUANG make

pitch pipes

the north of the

]

LU’S Lun

to

Ling Lun went from the west of the Ta Hia and came

to

TI, so legend says, one day ordered Ling

Yuan Yu mountain Here he

took

bamboos from

which were

valley Elia Hi, selected those the internodes of

thick

and even,

and eul them between two nodes Their length was three inches, nine

He blew them and made scale He blew them and

their tone the starting note

‘That’s right

said

’

huang chung

Then he made

the

lines

of the

twelve pipes

Since he heard the male and the female bird Phoenix sing at the foot of

Yuan Yu mountain, he

the

He made

accordingly distinguished the twelve notes

out of the singing of the male Phoenix, and also six out of

six

the singing of the female Phoenix,

huang chung

note

Ta

"

which

all

could be derived from the main

11

Hia, which the English sinologist, Giles, had believed

was

of Bactria,

recently identified by Otto Franke

Tochars The Tochars,

Gobi desert

at

who had

lived

be

a district

country of the

as the

on the southeastern border of the

hc, were peace-loving

the thirteenth century

lease since

to

people and acted as agents between the Eastern and Western civiliza18

tions sec

Pitch pipes, however, were

It is

more probable

of deriving notes

unknown

in the

that the Occident presented

West

as far as

we can

China with the method

from one another a few more details Pere Amiot, on Chinese music, had mentioned one of them posthumous editor, Abbe Roussel, omitted it as

Later versions of the same legend offer the earliest serious writer in his manuscript, but his

1B to notice in a short footnote

"irrelevant"

and only called

this detail

particularly illuminating

is

it

Ling Lun, n

reads,

found

And a

tust

bamboo

own voice when he spoke made the huang chung Here at last, Chinese fact among so many extramusical data the

pipe that reproduced exactly the pitch of his

without passion, and

this

he

tradition admits a musical

1T 18

PP

lu Pu wr op cit p 478 Olio Fnnkc Das allc Ta-hia

11 19

der Chincscn,'

in Oxtanatuche Zeitschnft VIII (1910),

7-3

P£re Amioi

\femoirc iut

la

Mustquc dcs Chtnots Pans

1779, p

86

r.

The huang chung,

Lu’s

1

man’s voice and only subsequently normalized

®

The

15

was roughly taken from the medium pitch of

primarily,

in feet, inches,

and

a

lines

*

c

standard tonf huang chung, "the yellow

"begot”

bell,”

Most authors, however, have misrepresented

all

other tones

Overblowing,

this process

they have said, did not result in the octave, but in the twelfth (as the pipe

supposedly was stopped and did not produce even-numbered partials)

new

became the

note, mentally transposed into the lower octave,

the standard tone

blown,

second pipe was tuned to

this

When

fifth

of

over-

down by two octaves, And so on, twelfth by

again yielded a twelfth which, transposed

it

formed

A

The

fifth

a

whole tone above the standard tone

twelfth

This entangled cycle of

fifths

with

its

transpositions by one or several octaves

overblown notes and

up

to six

that the pipes

were cut with the aid of

subtracting and adding one third of their length

Chou

the Chinese foot

was divided

into nine lines, the standard tone

The

its

subsequent

neither convincing nor

none of the sources mentions blowing or hearing They

evidenced

on the contrary,

the

is

had

—

3 2

a ruler

and

3 4

into nine inches,

relate,

by alternately Space under

and the inch

pipe length of eighty-one lines

a

following pipe was smaller by one third or twenty-seven lines

third pipe

was longer than the second by one

The

third or eighteen lines

4s

Graphically

/54\ / 81

The way up is,

72

\ /

and so on

64

(musically speaking) was called an infertor generation (that

coming from below), and

the

way down,

Theoretically, this procedure resulted in

Operations were

a superior

G%

F%

stopped after six inferior

generation

chain of ascending fifths and

C D / /\/\/\/\ C% B G A F

E

descending 6 fourths

a

and

A%

\/

six

D%

superior generations,

so that, again theoretically, a complete chromatic series

was brought about

The

were

six

odd-numbered

pitch notes (our lower line)

called lu s or

"norms” and considered masculine, while the six even-numbered notes, later likewise called lu’s, had names which meant "companions, intermediate, and were feminine This shows that at the beginning the notes produced by inferior generation had no musical significance proper, or at lateral”

,

,

ii 6

East Asia

best a subordinate significance

the scries consisted of six lu's at equal whole-

tone distances.

»

Conceiving

a set of qualities as alternately

sequence of generations

their coexistence as a

And

yet

strongly calls to

it

»

mind

masculine and feminine and is

no everyday idea

certainly

cosmogeny

the kabbalistic

of the ancient

Jews which combined the eternal masculine with the eternal feminine

human God

and cemented them into the eternally

The

ten utterances or sphirot

crown

of

sphira

nor negative, but though sexless

it

created the world by

— principle

which there was of the most high

that

all

first

of

was androgenous This

called understanding

principles, the

first

sphira begot

The second

nine following sphirot in successive generations

all

all

— was neither positive sphira,

bind ), was negative and feminine, the third sphira, (

wisdom (hdf^md), was her child, positive and masculine And so on Once more we face the striking cosmopolitism of mystic ideas J F C

called

Fuller says of the Kabbala lated into

of Osiris

and not

“Aryan and Chaldean

In Egypt, the mysteries of the

it

and

impinged upon

Isis,

may

a little

especially

In

And

in

not

Moon

goddess, it

much,

it

much

will be

of the practical

Qabalah

to the

Tantras

found Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Zo-

”

roastrianism

view of such

the ancient

the

Assyria and Babylon gave

be traced to the Vedas, the Upamshads, the Bhagavad-

Gita and the Vedantas, and

more

it

esoteric doctrines perco-

Sun god,

Middle

some kind

of their harps

spiritual

cosmopolitism one might ask whether

East, particularly

of lu system in their

and

lyres, these

Sumer, Babylonia, and Egypt, had

music After

all,

with the open strings

nations must have based their musical systems

on the same up-and-down principle that the Chinese had

And

then

the

legends of China relate that the emperor's minister brought the lu's from the

West

•

Twice

in

explaining the lu's

we

used the

word

word, we warned the reader against supposing a

perfect

constant, I

F C

method it

of tuning

varied between a

Fuller

The

Secret

The

foot

minimum

Wisdom

of the

theoretically that the

measure

itself

twice, by this

Chinese ever had

was anything but

of twenty centimeters in the

Qabalah London (1937)

Chou

The period and a

maximum

Lu’s

117

Ming The

of thirty-four centimeters under the

ratio of these extremes, 3 5, forcibly resulted in a musical variation within

a

minor

sixth

if

the pitch tone

under the Ming! One can

was

C

under the Chou,

was the

it

E below

imagine what the musical consequences

easily

were when temples and palaces preserved venerable stone and

bell

chimes

from epochs in which the foot and pitch had been different So much for absolute The relation between

pitch

was no

the lu’s

The

less faulty

proportions 4 3

and 3 2 for the fifth, correct in theory, failed in practice, since pitch depended, not on one but on three factors the length of ihe tube, for the fourth

be sure, but also

to

its

diameter and the position of the player’s

lips

twelfth of the ground tone, produced by overblowing a pitch pipe

21

The and

generally believed to have controlled the issue, worsened rather than corrected the result For, according to

Dr Manfred

Buhofzer’s experiments/ 2 the pipe

longer

the overblown twelfth of stopped pipes

is

too high

than eight inches, and too low

is

shorter than eight inches

incorrectness

The

may amount

if

to as

the pipe

much

all it

The

realized in China, and the

importance of the diameter was considered only in history, in the

is

as a quarter tone

was not

influence of the blowing lips

if

a

few periods of Chinese official gaugers gave

second century ad, for instance, the

pipes the same diameter, but in the third century they gradually lessened line

by

number

line, starting

nine, derived

from nine

lines for the

huang

t

hung The very huang chung s

the nine times nine lines of the

from

was determined by numeral symbolism rather than by any mathematical ratio But even with correct measurements, length, indicates that the diameter

the pitches

would not have been

breath and the exact angle

were

likely to interfere

at

would graze but never

The ratio

reason

%

is

to a

which

,

crossed the upper orifice of the pipe

was doomed from the very beginning, because

hit the octave, indispensable in

mathematically obvious going on higher power,

the musician.

the cycle of lu’s

him by continuing

power

King Fang,

from twelve the cycle

in fifths

the octave has the ratio

three can ever coincide with a

In 40 b c

it

with theoretical calculation

Finally, the cycle of fifths it

entirely reliable, since the force of the

to sixty,

up

to

360

of

%,

building scales

means

raising the

but no power of

two

tried to correct the fault

and about 430 fifths

The

a d

by extending

somebody outdid

reader shall be spared the

grotesque ratio that results from the 360th power of

% — such

hairsplitting

Cf Curt Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments op cil p 418 22 Manfred Bukofzer, "Prazisionsmcssungcn an prunmven Musikmsu-umcntcn," in Zeitschnjt fur Phynk, IC 0936), pp 643-65, esp p 660 21

,

,

n8

East Asia

We

are not going to describe

to say that

procedure and

to so inexact a

was disproportionate

was

it

also ineffective

made

the futile attempts

all

since Suffice

it

the huang chung was uncertain from the very beginning and

the struggle never

came

The

to rest

history of Chinese pitch

and

centuries of confusion, deception,

some twenty

is

a history of

failure, the recipes

changed, and so did the results.

«

The

•

9

set of lu’s has been called a "scale ” Especially in

the auxiliary lu’s dovetailed in,

it

seemed

mature form, with

its

and consequently was de-

to be,

scribed as, a chromatic scale

This was

The

mistake

a

twelve notes never formed a scale in the nar-

rower sense of the word, and chromatic scale with

its

of fifths, each semitone

least of all

anything resembling our modern

equal semitones of one hundred Cents In a cycle is

separated from

its

neighbor by seven times the

= 4,914 Cents, which of course must be lowered x 1,200 = 4,800 Cents The result is 114 Cents for the

interval of a fifth, or 7 x 702

by four octaves or 4 semitone But since the whole tone amounts

204 Cents, the comple-

to

menting semitone cannot have more than ninety Cents Far from being well tempered, the set of lu's

—

at least as

it

should be were

it

correct

—

is

an

major and minor semitones which the Western ear can

alternation of

hardly tolerate

Moreover, the old discrimination between superior and inferior generaboih in arrangement and

tion persisted

name

who

the Chinese,

under-

stand the universe as the harmonious balance of yang and yin, the masculine

and the feminine

and the its

six

principle, called the six

even-numbered "female

own way

"

ascribes six of the lu's to a

it

bird So definite

was

odd-numbered

The legend male

related bird,

lu's

above

and

“male,”

tells this

six to a

the contrast that musical instruments, tuned to the lu’s,

never mingled the two

sets

in stone

and

bell

chimes the male

lu's

provided by an upper row, and the female by a lower row of slabs or

and panpipes, which consisted either of

two

sets

at first

were nothing but complete

male or of female pipes only,

or,

if

11

were bells,

sets of pitch pipes,

combined, had the

kept apart in two wings 23 In the Occidental conception, such

instruments would play continuous melodic lines dirough intervals

in

female

The

all

kinds of

Chinese, on the contrary, aimed at single notes only, the

Cf Curt Sachs, The History

of Musical Instruments,

op

cit

pp

168, 169, 176, 177

The selection of

which depended on

Lu’s

the season

1

and the particular

19

rite of the

day rather than on musical considerations

The the

confusion of the

enough

interesting

West

is

to

with scale — “dim” scale indeed, as — had been made long before, and in a way

series of lu’s

Koreans qualifyingly

call

it

a

a

be related That legend of the minister's errand to the

completed by a tradition that the male bird sang his notes in an

ascending, and the female bird hers in a descending, succession

in

The symbolism of male and female scales is obvious the male sex was many civilizations represented by an upward pointing symbol, and the

female sex by

a

But there was

descending one, just as in our books on biology or botany

a far

scending scales

descending tive singer

more important discrimination

ascending

scales

were vocal

It is

of ascending

and de-

a rule, were instrumental, whereas

scales, as

not

difficult to find the

reason

A

primi-

does not begin in the low register of his voice to climb up higher

and higher, he normally lower limit of

his

starts

range

from the high

register

and descends

Players behave differently

brought forth by opening the fingerholes hole by hole, the

same way,

the

open string and

lutamsts, fiddlers,

and players of

A

to the

piper’s scale

is

ascending In

it is

fretted zithers depart

from

pass to the higher notes of the stopped siring Indeed,

the second part of the seventh of the bocks called

Yo

tse relates that in the

ancient worship of heaven and earth the instruments played in an ascend-

ing senes of

lu’s,

and the voices sang

This contrariness, simplified by the that

all

still

in use

in a

descending

series of lu’s

24

under the T'ang (618-907 ad), had been

end of the sixteenth century

Prince Tsai

Yu

assumed

vocal keys were a fourth higher than the corresponding instru-

mental keys, voices and instruments used two different keys

a fourth apart,

and when

playing together they performed throughout in parallel fourths,

the voices

would sing

was

in F, while the instruments played in

exactly the contrapuntal

C

below This

form of che organum of the early Middle

Ages, in which the cantus was sung above, while the organum (originally meaning “instrument") accompanied in parallels a fourth lower In a similar way, the Siamese play parallel fourths on their gong chimes 28 Mrs Timothy Richard, Paper an Chinese Music, Shanghai (1899), p 5 Cf Carl Stumpf, "Tonsystcm und Musik der Siamcscn,” in Beitrage tur A\ustik_ und Must\wuseruchaf/, Heft 3, 1901, the same in Sammclbande fur V ergleichendc Mustkwtssenschaft I (1922), pp 172 f aD

,

East Asia

120

In Japan, the twelve

lu’s arc

known

as rttsu

—a term that must not be con-

fused with the name of one of the foremost melodic modes of the country. Pitch pipes, as in China, exist but are not important in musical practice Generally, the ritsu are fixed on the

ground of

the

up-and-down

principle,

players of the unfretted long zither l^oto stretch the first string to an appropriate pitch, then they tune the sixth string to the

eighth string to the upper

up by

The

fifth,

a fifth to the tenth string,

go back by

a

and so on

pitch itself “is within limits arbitrary

up, for a singer with a small voice of the note

is

vibrations.

27

it is

approximately middle

cates, as pitch tone, the It is to

and also derives

it

upper fourth and the

fourth to the third string and

for a loud singer

it is

tuned

down But the normal pitch The latest Japanese source indi-

tuned

C " 28

lowest d’ of the vertical flute shakuhachi at 292

be noted that the Middle East too uses d’ as pitch tone

from the lowest note

of

its

vertical flute

Francis Piggou, The Music and Musical Instruments of Japan Lomlon, 1909, p 85 87 Huao Tanabc, Japanese Music, Tokyo, 1936

and cdiuon, Yokohama-

3

[

]

THE SCALES THE NORMAL SCALE of the Far East of three

It consists

pentatonic without semitones

is

whole tones and two minor

alternately separated by

one or by two whole

thirds, the thirds

being

tones, ]ust as in the series of

black keys on our pianos

The

scale

is

usually presented in the form

These

much

five notes

in the

were

tied into the

same way

{ung

(do), shang (re), chiao

ung ) (do)

(mi), chth (sol), yu (la),

network of cosmological connotations

as the twelve lu’s

There was

close interrelation be-

tween the

This

K" n g

shang

chiao

chih

Cardinal points

East

Center

Planets

North Mercury

Jupiter

Saturn

West Venus

yu South Mars

Elements

wood

water

earth

metal

fire

Colors

black

violet

yellow

white

red

scale

the lu’s first

Notes

is

generally said to have originated from picking out five of

Such misrepresentation should not be repeated

indefinitely

In the

place, lu’s formed intervals out of tune and therefore unusable for

scales

Secondly, the scale

tem of

lu’s

itself

must have

was constructed Thirdly,

consisted of

two

the characteristic

Picking out the

existed before the artificial sys-

the lu's in their earliest

entirely independent sets of six

minor

thirds, fourths, or fifths in either set of the scale

would have meant jumping

five notes necessary to the scale

to and fro and picking at least two,

merely auxiliary female

arrangement

whole tones each, without

set

which

if

not three, of the five notes

at the

from the

beginning hardly counted

at all

This does not make sense In any case, deriving scales from systems

horse

all

and integrated

The

putting the cart before the

is

over the world, scales have been abstracted from living melodies in systems

'picking' out holds true only for the tonic

far as ritual

chung was

music was concerned, had

selected as the tonic

when

to be

\ung, which indeed,

one of the

sacrifices

lu's

were presented

as

The huang to

heaven,

East Asia

122

to the fifth for sacrifices to the earth, to

but the melodies were transposed

Moreover, all melodies the second, for the sun, to the sixth, for the moon were shifted monthly by one lu, so that the same melody, played in January in, say,

No

F

E, would be transposed to

sources ever speak of

in February

conforming the other four notes

four lu s

to

Quite independently, they follow one of the two methods of developing scales

from

a starting tone, either the cyclic principle or the divisive prin-

ciple Indeed, the long zither ch'tn follows both principles at once

open the

strings tuned by ear in a cycle of just fifths

accompaniment The melody

an unusual way end, thirteen

string,

on

the other hand,

instead of actual raised frets

little

which

the

two ends, and

that at

one half of the

from

total length, in

toward

one and two

thirds,

in

one and seven eighths The seven strings consisted of

—

48, 54, 64, 72, 81, 96, 108

one and

tone) and twenty-seven to thirty-two or 294 Cents (the

open

strings

a

—reproducing, in

their threads, the musical ratios of eight to nine or 204

the

five sixths,

the

and

number

varying

numbers

of

Cents (the whole

minor

Thus

third)

obeyed the up-and-down system, while the melody string

followed the divisive system Consequently, the melody and

ment had

mark

the center

one and three quarters, in one and four

fifths, in

for

fretted in

from the upper

start

in

of silk threads

is

mother-of-pearl studs, inlaid in the soundboard to

the stopping places, arc symmetrically arranged

has

it

and fourths, but only

different

major

thirds,

different

minor

thirds,

its

accompani-

and different

seconds

This discrepancy was certainly not due instrument like the chuen,

chimes (and probably also

made its

to insensitive ears

in the last century b c

Even

a

norm

for tuning bell

huge prototype, the \yun of the Chou a wooden soundboard, nine feet

Dynasty), united the same two principles

which were open and

long, supported thirteen strings, twelve of teenth, in the middle,

was

stretched along a calibrated scale

the thir-

This

scale,

however, differed from the symmetrical arrangement of the studs on the ch in, a picture that Prince Tsai later

— after

marks

Yu

published seventeen hundred years

either an old picture or an

actual specimen

— shows

•

Modal arrangements

e

«

of the Chinese pentatonic scale are best characterized

in Japanese theory There, the pentatonic octave of three seconds

minor

twelve

in a single series at proportionately decreasing distances

thirds appears

and two under two clearly defined forms ryo and ntsu

The

Scales

Ryo, called the Chinese and male mode, starts with two consecutive CDE GA C, and might be symbolized numerically (by its

seconds, say

characteristic

opening notes)

as 123,

A

good and easih

accessible

confinalis

it

has

C

as the finalis,

example

Haunts of Pleasure or The Fifteen Bunches A van Aalst’s Chinese Music J.

of

after

Ritsu, called “female” and preferred in Japan,

closer,

sometimes

to the

as the

“The

is is

van Aalst

very different

divided by a

forms

It

filling

note

upper, sometimes to the lower end Accordingly,

the rttsu scale appears in two forms,

numeric symbols

G

Flowers” on page 42 of

Ex 39 CHINESE SONG

an octave of two disjunct fourths, each of winch

and

the Chinese song

is

DE GAR D

and

D FGA CD

The

would be

124 and 134, and for ritsu in general, Our examples are a Japanese song and

for these

(with either 2 or 3 as a filler) the beginning of the Chinese Hymn to Confucius, probably the oldest 1-4

preserved piece of Far Eastern music

Ex

40 Japanese song

Ex

This makes

41

after

HYMN

TO CONFUCIUS

a total of three

124

134

Noel Pen

modes, which may be represented in

G A A

I2 3

CDE CDE CDE

this

way

G G A G A C

To judge from sources of the Chou Dynasty, there were seven loci for modal inversions of the pentatonic scale prob lbly before the scale itself was given seven notes But this modal wealth was scarcely more than a theoretical construction,

the

number

musical theory,

all

over the ancient civilizations, exhausts

of possible variations and combinations without ever caring

for the realities of musical

life

»

East Asia

124

Thu arrangement CDE GA original, standard

(123) has generally been considered the

form from which the other modal arrangements were

derived by the usual toptail inversion

This latter,

is

a

mistake, the 123 scale differs basically from any

forming

123 scale,

on

the contrary,

is

no sevenths or octaves Nor does fourth

wanting Instead, the

is

superimposed, the sixth

grows

(he fourth an original third nucleus

versely, a second nucleus grows a third

A

is

down

settle

it

form

normative power two

This entirely different nature of the 123 scale

One

fourth

in tetrachords; indeed, the very

lower third

show

of the best examples

is

is

thirds,

filled in,

is

neighboring note returning

primitive peoples in which the elements

songs of China

to a

practically always hexachordal, there are

in a pentachord, the a

a second affix or, in-

order to attain

affix in

fifth acts as the

more than

scarcely

The

which under the normative

or octaves, goes back to primitive patterns in

power of

1-4 scale

conjunct or disjunct, and resulting in heptads

in tetrachords,

and

to the fifth

evident from melodies of

better than in the elaborate

the following

melody from

Greenland

Ex 42

EAST GREENLAND

Farther back, two four-tone patterns precede the 123 scale the lower third filled in, but

of Fate

without

a sixth

one, with

(1235), appears in this Song

performed by the Voguls in West Siberia

Ex

43 voguls, Siberia

after

Viisanen

J= 108

The other, with the sixth, but without fillers (1 356), by a vocal melody from the Solomon Archipelago Ex

44 solomon islands J

=

132

may be

after

represented

Hornbostel

The Consequently,

this structure

the entirely different

1

is

a national scale of

own

its

to the so-called

a

each of

aspects of

its

Chinese scale

It

tetrachords has an

semitone below

scale appears in three ‘tunings,

to the three

hardly begot

«

•

undivided major third above and

spond

it

4 structure

pentatonic as well, but not ‘anhemitomc’

This impressive

125

must have been very old, but

•

Japan opposes

Scales

1

which

actually corre-

Greek modes, Hypodorian, Dorian, and

Hyperdorian Hirajosht

A

BCE F

A

(conjunct tetrachords with the supplemental octave below, hypo)

Kumot(joshi)

E F A B C

E

(disjunct tetrachords)

BCE FAB

lwato

(conjunct tetrachords with the supplemental octave above, hyper)

The first in importance the mode of the following Ex

is

Hirajoshi, the second,

Kumoi

Hirajoshi

is

nursery song after

45 Japanese nursery song

N oel Pen

Presto

A solo on the long zither kjoto, played in a death scene in the tragedy Kesa, illustrates

ie

Kumoi Ex 46 KOTO

SOLO FROM THE JAPANESE TRAGEDY KESA after

2B After Otto Abraham and E Sammelbande der Internationale n

Vcrglcichende Musif^unssenschaft

M

Abraham and Hornbostel

in von Hornbostcl, Tomystem und Musik der Japaner, IV (1903), P 35 * and Sammelbande fur

Mujif&erellschaft \

(1922), p 223

—

East Asia

126 Modulation

frequent

is

Kumoi

the passage from tetrachords)

The

first

of the

two following examples shows

(disjunct tetrachords)

to Hirajoshi

the second modulates inversely from Hirajoshi to

,

Ex 47 Japanese sonc

after

(conjunct

Kumoi

Noel Pert

All books agree in the ill-considered assertion that the Japanese flattened

two notes of

man

the Chinese scale in order to spice an all too lifeless pattern

has always been inclined to interpret as offshoots things that he hap-

pened

The

to learn at a later date

idea of spicing

ship and snobbery trary, to

is

suspiciously Western;

From

a psychological

it

smells of

modern

virtuoso-

standpoint one has, on the con-

concede that a greater contrast of intervals, bearing witness

stronger emotional tension,

is

scarcely ever a later

confirmed by a highly significant

development This

to is

Jajaancse folk music never accepted

fact

the Chinese scale, but, in spite of court and temple rituals, has again and

again

The

come back situation

ma|or thirds and semitones

to the

is

somewhat

similar in Korea, they have a pentatonic scale

DEF

of the 123 type and ‘flatten’ the third exclusively in folk

The

music

ma|or-third scale, therefore,

herited design that in

AB, and

this scale, too,

occurs

29 is

doubtless a substrate

— an

old, in-

times has glittered through foreign varnishes

all

*

*

»

Kindred scales have existed outside Japan and Korea India has them by the score in

ments

— with

two major

thirds, or

major and two minor thirds

Ex

*•

C

It is

all

possible combinations

hard

to tell

how many

49 INDIAN RAGA MALAHARl

S Keh, Die Korcamschc

and arrange-

one major and one minor, or even one

Sirassburg, 1935, p

after

15

of

them

C R Day

are

due

to

1

The

Scales

127

a later desire for completeness, rather than to musical necessity, in any

event, four of the scales enumerated in Bharata’s Natyasastra, India’s earliest

source of music, already have either two or at least one major third

Arlabhi, SddjodUyavati, Dhaivati, Niiadi Possibly the second and third of these scales are

Bharata’s

own

Mongolia,

meant

to

F

have the

sharpened (which according to

statement was in several cases necessary)

too, uses

major-third

scales,

30

though apparently no longer

always in pure form, our example, printed from Carl Stumpf’s short mono-

graph on Mongolian music, 31 contains

a

D that obviously belongs in a later

stratum

Ex

Even Greece knew

50 BURIAT MONGOLS

ajtar

Stumpf

the strong flavor of major-third pentatonics, a later

chapter will discuss the vital role of

its

Hellenic form, the so-called cn-

harmonion

And

the ancient Egyptians also tuned their temple harps to the maior-

third scale

The India,

presence of these scales in Mongolia, with evidences in East Asia,

Egypt and Greece,

assumption is corroborated by major-third scales among Moroccan who seem to stem from Central Asia and to have preserved many Central Asiatic civilization

—the house with

The Malay Archipelago

clings to the

singers perform in scales with

two major

/

492 fl0

Ilmari Krohn,

*

Mongohsche Melodien,"

traits of B1

major third more than jny other

thirds,

+ 94 + 210 +402 +

v.

Berbers,

several stones, for instance

country outside Japan In West Java, the most archaic part

398

This

hints at a possible origin in Central Asia

V

oi

ihe island,

such as (descending) aa

96 Cents '

498 in Zeitschrtft fur

Munkwissenschaft

III

(1920),

P 7i B1

Vicrteljahrsschnft fur Musif{wisscnschaft

III in Carl Stumpf, ‘Mongohsche Gesinge, (1887), p 303, and in Sammelbandc fur V crgletchende Munhu'isscnschaft I (1922), p no BZ E Parallelen Asiansche zur Berbermusik,” in Hornbostel Lachmann von und R Zeitschrtft fur Vcrgleichende Musi^u'tssenschajt I (i 933 )» PP A~ 1 afl Jaap Kunsi, Dc Toonhunst van Java, s Gravenhage, 1934 vol I| P 3*8

M

)

East Asia

128 That

two disjunct tctrachords, each of which consists of a perfect above and a semitone below the exact likeness of a Japanese

to say,

is

—

major third

Kumoi

scale

In similar arrangements, a great orchestras of West Java have Specialists ter of

The

scales

single instruments

Jaap Kunst’s book

the neighboring island of Bali,

is

all

over Java and

pelog This scale can hardly be rendered transcribed by Curt Sachs

Javanese pelog

51

West Java chap-

34

major-third genus of the archipelago, used

classical

and entire

with one or even two major thirds

evaluate the exact measurements in the

may

Ex

many

from Decca 20124

A

m'

BBIJBl.i- iWHift'aa

by

a

Two

standard pattern of Cent numbers

conjunct tctrachords form a

heptad, each telrachord consists of a major third above and a semitone or so

below Variation, however,

on

sime instrument,

the

measure

91 Cents,

and

is

The

very great

thirds

same

are rarely of the

The

one second would

the following second 176 Cents,

mately major third of 376 Cents would coexist with 4S8 Cents

and the seconds, even

sizes,

tctrachords arc larger,

a

and often much

and an approxi-

fourthlike third of larger,

than a just

fourth

1 o understand

this lack of regularity,

the end of the division

on Shades

I

in the

should

Greek

like to refer the

reader to

section of this book,

page

215

Malayan

scales are

distances have an it

is

a

indeed very

amazing

mere chance

free, to

to find a just fourth

country would be inexplicable unless just as little

known

put

as the

it

mildly Both pitches and

latitude even within the

Such

we knew

harmonic division of

same instrument, and

failure in a music-loving that the cycle of fifths

strings

The

was

orchestras of

the archipelago consist in fact of idiophonic instruments

which did not admit any palpable relation of length and pitch, the other classes are only represented by one or two drums and a casual flute or (Arabo-Persian) fiddle

answer

Whenever one asks for Balinese or Javanese tuning methods, the is that some old gong founder owns a few highly respected metal

bars inherited from a remote ancestor and uses them with

accuracy as pitch standards

" Ibid

pp

more

or less

In other words, scales have not been con-

197, 199, J88, 190, 309, 311, 31a, 318

The structed, but copied

Scales

129

and recopied throughout the centuries with ever grow-

ing incorrectness; the archipelago has

musical tradition, but no musical

a

science

Two

munggang and

archaic types of Javanese orchestras, called

k,odo\

ngore\, have a restricted range of only one tetrachord of the pelog kind

E C B They

(descending)

tuning

we

to

be very old

—older

than

itself

must confess

I

shrouded in mystery and ven-

and therefore have been considered

erated,

pelog

are particularly

is

that

said to date

am

I

not convinced

from

The

munggang Can

orchestra in

first

the fourth century a d Is this really 'old’'

earnestly believe that at so late a time,

more than

a

thousand years after

were ad-

the era of pelog - like scales in Greece, the Javanese, although they

vanced enough tone melodies

to

form orchestras,

still

had not progressed beyond three-

— notwithstanding whether

Indian influence or were

left to

1

they lived under East Asiatic or

themselves

?

I

believe the reasoning that a

heptad of two tetr.ichords must have been preceded by a single tetrachord is

a bit too

Pelog

cheap

is

formed authors It is

Nor do

any confirmation

see

1

in other instances

often misrepresented as a heptatomc scale, the thirds, unin-

the other

brought about by skipping two of the seven notes

say, are

way around

in

order to allow tor modal rearrangements

within the same range, instruments are given seven notes, two of which can alternate with their neighbors

and there

of the scale,

black keys in playing

C

Thus

there are seven loci for five degrees

no more 'skipping' than

is

when we

leave out the

ma|or

The question of mode is not quite easy Once there were three modes ncm or bem, lima or pelog, and barang Written in A, for the sake of simplicity,

would read

they

Nem Lima

(A)

B C

A B B C

Barang

E F

A

D EF

A

E F G

But Dr Jaap Kunst and, with him, Dr Manfred Bukofzer, kind enough cant role of to

have

to

me

mode and

at least

nem, with

send

its

his

unpublished notes,

particularly

insist

on the rather

on the neglect of lima

Still,

who was insignifi-

lima seems

an historical importance One cannot overlook the fact that conjunct tetrachords plus an additional tone below, cor-

I

East Asia

30

responds to Japanese Hirajoshi

with

its

disjunct tetrachords,

material,

And

if it

had

gather indeed that this

1

quarter tone than

lima would be a perfect K.umoijoshi, its

B

is

B

From Dr Bukofzer s

flattened

nearly always

should be This looks suspiciously like

it

by about a

flatter

compromise

a

between the two modes Such compromise would probably have

and of Persian

lutanists has

been attributed 35

from conjunct to disjunct tetrachords

due

a parallel

Western Orient where the neutral third of Zalzal of Bagdad (d 791)

in the

to a

The

to facilitating the transition final loss of

lima might be

certain feeling against disjunct tetrachords

Sslfndro or slendro, the other great genus of the Malays, considered female’ pelog,

masculine in opposition to the

is

generally described as an

octave divided into five steps of equal size, each step a tone, or

This

240 Cents

is

on the whole

true,

coming

to six fifths of

though exact equality

is

beiween 185 and 275 Cents These extremes, however, arc exceptions, the first optimum is around 231 Cents, and a steps vary

never attained

optimum

second

around 251 Cents

is

Ex 52 JAVANESE SLENDRO

transcribed by Curt Sachs

from Dccca 20124

B

very slow and freq^

original

The pieces,

picture changes

^

Inapt

when from

excavated from the

soil

recent instruments

and

of Java

bars have kepi a constant pitch

While

still

we

turn to very old

reliable because their

metal

modern metallophone includes

110

inv slip wider than 275 Cents, old specimens generally have one of 3 larger size

bttsseen 300 and 310 Cents

,

’

8

and

a

smaller large step besides of

around 2S0 Cents

Here

unmistakable traces of an ancient octave divided into three

are

seconds and two minor thirds believes

lit

But the

hears tr

ices of

p

division that

at

least every

Westerner

ancient thirds also testify to a temperament tending to

cflace the chiTcrcnce BB

—a

anyway between thirds and seconds Of the two thirds in each

Anuiinr DeUievrens, Etudes de Science music ale

2 • Etude

Appendice IV, Pans, 1898,

B

“

kunsi cn 476 477 .

\

C

J

A

kunst-v Wely, De Toon^unst van Balt Weltevreden, 1925

dd

[1 '

1

The

Scales

13

octave only one reaches or exceeds the standard distance of three hundred

Cents, the other

example

The

it

a

smaller in the

first

two examples, while

in the third

exact bearings of the slendro scale might also be taken in virtue of

the fact that tions

is

has actually been assimilated into the augmented seconds

all

common

features

to the

Javanese and the Balinese civiliza-

appear in a more archaic stage of development in Bali Consequently,

comparison between Javanese and Balinese slendro tunings must be ex-

pected to throw light on the evolution of that system

do not

differ very

much,

the distances

from tone

to

At

first sight,

they

tone seem to be just js

arbitrary in Bali as they are in Java Nevertheless, the trouble of evaluating

the four average distances

on

a greater

number

struments, both in Bali and in Java, yields age,

from tone

to tone,

219

(Sums

The

236

(Sums There

is

228

260

Cents

469

697

957

Cents)

in-

aver-

is

240 476

less

measured

The Bah

is

250

Java average

of carefully

a definite result

248

227

Cents

724

961

Cents)

temperament

in Bali, the distance of 697 Cents practically

coincides with the perfect fifth

Slendro has been believed, even in Java highly improbable, indeed, there

one among the Javanese notes sixth ” fifth

But they are

note

The

is

is

to

he older lhan pelog This

is

a definite indication of the contrary

called lima, "the fifth,"

and one nem, “the

so only in pelog, in slendro they are the fourth

and the

terminology must have been created for pelog and

later

transferred to slendro

0

The

question of mode

is

0

«

not easily answered Java had three slendro modes,

but they have no importance today, and even are nearly forgotten

They

are played on

the

same range and scale and only differ in orchestra are emphasized by single strokes these chief notes are

their distinguishing features

same instruments and

their

main

notes,

of the large

all

nem

in the in the

gong But not even

beyond doubt Dr Jaap Kunst found the second note

of the (ascending) octave used as the key note of the

per cent of

which

mode nem

in

642

melodies, the fourth note for sangd in 84 7 per cent, the

East Asia

132 fifth

note for manjurd in 59 per cent

— against 41

per cent of other chief

notes

This means disintegration But

—

ferent notes of the scale

hexachords of playing

— which

all

as in

it

start

from

dif-

the Indian gramas and the European

must have resulted

modes on

shows an original

also

in difficulties

when

the necessity

same one-octave instruments forced the Java-

the

nese musicians to project the three scales into the

same range

thirds

would

be necessary where the instrument provided seconds, and vice versa

And

this

might be the key

to solving the

our equal temperament was due

as

temperament could

easily be

to the

awkward

slendro problem Just

need of transposition, the slendro

understood as a compromise of seconds and

thirds This, in turn, could account for the decline of the all

depended on the

difference, not

on the

modes which

assimilation, of the

after

two kinds of

intervals It

seems that the modes

or, better, the

melodies ascribed to the modes,

matter today only from the standpoint of choosing the adequate time for

performance pieces sangd

is

in

nem

mode

the right

between seven and midnight, morning between midnight and three

are to be played

for the early

and for the afternoon between noon and seven, manjurd belongs hours between 5 ooam and noon This time table

The name

is

to the

unmistakably Indian

salendro points also to India

It probably stemmed from the Sumatran Salendri Dynasty, which ruled Java almost to the end of the first thousand years ad and had come from the Coromandel Coast in

South India Thus

it

might be wiser

to

connect slendro with ragas like

madhyamavati, mohana, or hamsadhvani than with

• Siam, Cambodia,

Burma

the Chinese scale

*

»

close the ring of East Asiatic scales

strong tendency toward equal

temperament

They have

that the slendro

the

arrangement

shows, without in the least effacing the contrast between tones and thirds is achieved by dividing the octave into seven (theoretically) equal parts, each of which would, if perfect, measure Cents

This

171.4

The

actual justness of these distances

ear without physical

viding an interval ,T

St

of course questionable, since the

and mathematical help

is

not capable of correctly di-

However much Carl Stumpf

m p(. Tonnilcm

y Vrrglnr/lmJt

is

und Musik der Siamejcn

Musics, cnic/lafl

1

(1911), pp

129-77

^

S7

— who himself •

had an

ind in Sammelb&nde fir

The excellent ear

—wondered

Scales

at the relative

133

accuracy with which Siamese musi-

cians tuned their instruments, the distances that Alexander

ured

38

The Siamese

Ellis

meas-

use these seven equidistant notes as loci for pentatonic

by skipping two of them

scales

J

varied from 90 to 219 Cents

at a time,

thus creating the clear contrast

between short tones of 171 4 Cents and neutral thirds of 343 Cents The skipping places determine the modal structures

(The eighth note heptad

I

II

III

I

II

-

I

—

III

is

— V

VI

V

VI

IV IV

V -

-

I

VII

I

I

not an end, as our octave, but the starter of another

)

Singers do not pay atic aria in

much heed

to this

temperament The following oper-

almost Western intervals alternates with orchestral ntornelh in

Siamese tuning

Ex

53

transcribed by Curt Sachs

from Decca 20127 2

Siamese operatic solo

Palace and temple music,

in

China

as well as in

rejected the infixed semitone since, far

the soul with sensual lust 30

Still,

a certain place in secular music,

The mode

nation

two

Korea and Japan, have

from soothing the passions,

the allegedly skipped loci

though

at first

and U34578, say

filled

way of alterwe have seen, in

only in the

that the Japanese call ntsu occurred, as

distinct forms, 12-456 8

it

have been given

DE GAB D

and

D FGA CD

Thus

the

Still,

melodies followed one of the two pentatonic patterns without ever

two purely pentatonic forms

of ntsu required a full seven-tone set.

combining them This to

was subsequently suspended

restriction

mingle the two forms

in

composers were allowed

the same melody, provided

that the critical notes

were kept alternative without ever touching and forming semitones 88

A

J

K.ch,

Ellu,

m

op nt

,

the latter publication,

p 39

pp 36-41

East Asia

134

54 Japanese song

Ex

after

Noel Pert

ban was lifted, at least in folk music on the other hand, was heptatonized in a more di123, insertion of a sharpened fourth and a major seventh

Finally, even this last

The ryo scale rect way by the

FG A" CD" F Similarly,

A"FE

d

the Japanese

cleave

Neither scale became

strictly

transitional, auxiliary character

names

the Chinese called

the epithet pien,

major thirds into two seconds

heptatomc The additional notes kept

a

and had not even the privilege of individual

them by

which means

«

A

their

CBA

'on

name the way

the

e

of the note directly above with to,’

’becoming,’

«

story, recorded

in contemporary sources, shows how far the Chinese were from an actual heptatomc scale Between 560 and a d a man from 578 Kutcha in Hast Turkistan astonished his Chinese listeners by playing Justly' a complete major scale on his lute p'i p'a Its notes were called ,

fochtha, sad ah k,

:ap,

fessor to

badah\, \ichi, shachi, shahukalam, shalap, panjam dzihdof these terms are obscure, some are obvious Pro-

huhdzap Some Nicholas

N

Martinovitch, whose opinion

suggest the following equivalents

small,

sprinkling, royal

word, hanging, the

wrong 'Of

I

sought, was kind enough

scattering, sonorous, exchanging, fifth,

course," he writes, “I cannot be sure in corruptions of these words are too great ”

strong tremolo, very

my

suggestions, for the

At 'bout the same time, another source claims that the twenty-eight modes’— whatever they might have been—could not be fixed by means ol the Chinese pitch pipes, but only by the strings of the p'l p'a 4 " foreign

In other words, the

noi the up i„d

ern m,i|or

scale

cit

principle

Still, the cross flute t, also adopted a Westheptatomc melodies have been more frequent the south of China.

\lu.geiher,

in the north than

Cubic, op

newly imported Western music followed the divisive

down

p

m

,

The Indeed, even Japan has

from Champa,

that

is

known

Cambodia,

of the Imperial Court But the

Scales

135

is first

mentioned

Cambodian

style,

whether the original Champa muju had

or

modern Japanese

The from

designate by this

evolution of East Asiatic scales

strictly

as

at a

and

it is

banquet

not possible to

had not the major

name

now

In 763, music

played

Japan was assimilated

style in

four hundred years later into the Chinese

the

Champa

a major scale,

tell

scale that

41

begins

to

pentatonic scales with thirds of any size

stand out

It starts

In a second stage,

heptatonics appear in the form of seven loci for strictly pentatonic scales

In a third, the two ‘skipped

1

loci are

admitted

to the scale,

though only

as

passing notes Finally, they are fully incorporated

Temperament had

a parallel evolution

Pelog represents a pretempera-

mental stage In China and Japan, on the contrary, well tempered to whole and semitones and to slendro, the original

minor

thirds

been assimilated, resulting in octave

41

tions

and whole tones

five nearly

have been

equal

r

aLher

thirds

In

have more and more

six-fifths of tones in

the

In Siam, Cambodia, and Burma, on the other hand, seven loci

have been assimilated

which

scales

minor and major

to

form almost equjl seven eighths of

tones, five of

arc actually used in melodies

Cf Noel Pen, op ctt and Paul Demieulle 'La Musiquc £ame au Japon, in Publicade l Ecole Franfaisc d'Exlreme-Onenl, Etudes dsiatiques I (1925), pp 200, 225

—

—

4

[

]

MELODY AND RHYTHM AND MODE,

SCALE

established

though not exclusively instrumental, have been

on instruments,

music they best show

in vocal

depend on the collaboration of instruments

that

Far East, however, knows singing

that the

It

entirely

styles

from instruments and consequently from the rigidity of

We

in those styles

must be emphasized independent

scales

and modes

need not discuss Buddhist cantillation But a section on East Asiatic

music would be incomplete without mentioning that peculiar recitative

found

that

The no

its

perfection in the Japanese no

form only reached

in us present

its

peak about 1500 ad

It is

an

archaic lyrical drama, derived from ecstatic rituals of the past, but laid in a

worldly atmosphere and performed by a few masked actors in a unity of word, melody, and dance

modern Occidentals, runs

to

the

recurring, patterns

first

to

Its

singing, far

strict

from the freedom so dear

no more than nine

stereotype, perpetually

appearance of the main dramatis persona, the

account of the second person's journey with which he introduces himself,

and so on This ever,

is

is

done

in a

uniform

cantillation

on one

how-

note, which,

interrupted by melodic formulas intoned in the uncertain, gliding

manner, with subsequent sharpening that we know from Japanese zithers and

flutes

dividual

These formulas

name such

ish cantillation)

are indivisible units, each of

When

chanting

is

lower, and even to another fourth

resumed,

will

it

a-e-B, or

drop

and then tump down by one or by two fourths

Rhythm

is

just

formula suggests

by

a

tion

as irrational as intonation, a stricter

meter, the singer

kind of rubato Only on the lower

more

The

which has

its

as ‘revolving,’ ‘color,’ 'tension’ (like the tropes in

|ump to the

to a level a

in-

Jew-

fourth

next whole tone

a-g-d-A

and even when

tries to

level are

a

melodic

destroy this impression

both rhythm and intona-

apt to be steady

on the stage, is formed by one stick-beaten and two hand-beaten drums and a transverse flute As a rule, the drummers strike an even rhythm though the voice is free Now and then, the flute orchestra, sitting

joins in

and soars above the voice; but

its

melody

is

neither co-ordinated

,

Melody and Rhythm nor even correlated

to the

137

song the two parts are not supposed

to

be heard

together, but to coexist, in a magical, not in an aesthetic, sense

With our

present terminology

not possible to give an adequate idea

it is

Koreans expect

at least their geishas

register 42 In general, “only children

and coachmen sing

of the strange vocalization of the East

low

to sing in a

from the stomach”, by preference high

Far Eastern singing

our cars

at

the beginning,

ceals his identity, lifts

compressed, explosive,

in pitch, often ventriloquially veering to the lowest

it

him

to the

this

Western

indeed

human

mask

nature,

Hans

The Chinese

which

is

unable

its

con-

experi-

Wotan,

the father of the

Nurnberg

form was ruled by

classical

it

the world of everyday

a

its

texts

few hundred

express ten thousand things and notions, so each syllable has

Understanding depends on

meanings

West-

wears

demons Once we have

not be otheiwise Monosyllabic languages have

ferent

appears

it

to realize the limitations of the

to contrast

Sachs, the shoemaker of

opera in

that the singer

and from

sphere of heroes, gods, and

mythic atmosphere, we begin

‘natural’ style

gods, and

his

as

rapidly affects even the unprepared

erner as the perfect counterpart of the

enced

is

nasal,

and continually interspersed with glissandi Unusual

register,

to

43

could

It

syllables to

many

dif-

on the

special intonation,

rising, level, or falling inflection of the voice

Melody to

is

under the necessity of following these

music against

an interrogative sentence that drops opera 44

Thus

the vocal music of classical

vocabulary provided

inflections,

melody would be

their natural speech

at the

end would be

China was

strictly

words

Ilss intelligible

in

set

than

some European

logogenic

A

musical

a stock of appropriate single notes for the level

tone

and of groups of notes for each of the three ‘tones,’ which again were subdivided into ‘male’ and 'female' forms, the

and

a

latter

being slightly different

tone lower

• Monosyllabic languages and short

are

much

•

•

are not favorable to quantitative meter, long

less vital

than

in

composite words True, poetry (and

doubtless music) followed definite meters during the

which the Chinese were 42 4B 44

particularly fond of elegant

T'ang Dynasty,

in

form To give an

Keh, op at

p 20 and E von Hornbostel, “Tonsystem und Musik dcr Japaner," loc at Cf John Hazcdel Levis, Foundations of Chinese Musical Art, Peiping, 1936

O Abraham

,

p 212

—

i

East Asia

38

example ii

a

of the eighth century a j>

poem

given the following aifected meter

,

"The Drinker

But then, the period of the T'ang was widely open

and

the

Middle

East,

and

in the Spring,”

48

may

this poetic style

to influences

from India

be due to foreign paragons

As a rule, Chinese has imposed the qualitative, strong-weak principle on poetry and music, with the syllable as the time unit or beat Since Chinese verses are extremely short

each verse

is

— four,

or six monosyllables as a rule

five,

musically rendered by one measure of as

many

beats, not, as

elsewhere, by a whole phrase

Such musicopoetical forms are or else symmetrical (rAi) the

Hymn

to

The

either asymmetrical

carries

it

in incredibly

purest realization of the symmetrical form

is

music Temple singers

long-drawn notes of equal value, each of which

one monosyllable of the

Once more,

verses a strophe cell of

(cA'j)

Confucius, main piece of the Confucian liturgy, which proba-

bly represents the earliest preserved stage of Chinese

perform

and rhapsodic

text

Four such notes form

a verse

and eight

the single note proves to be the generative

Chinese music (Ex 41)

•

«

•

Qualitative rhythm (‘time’), though often running against the accents of spoken words,

outside the Far East,

is,

common

in

among

Tibet and

Turkish peoples including Tatars, Kirghizes, and Bashkirs measures prevail

There

in the

same

are exceptions,

the

Four-beat

vast area

though

Both Korea and China have preserved

folksongs in three beats, and the Chinese themselves had

mixed measures

in the first

odd and even millennium But these again have been attrib-

uted lo foreign influences 48

Rhyihm number of

is

certainly less important than in other countries

percussion instruments in

all

The

great

parts of the Far East should not

mislead our judgment Most of them do not serve rhythm

at

all, rattles,

and scones had other tasks The drums themselves were struck with sticks and therefore served ume beating better than elaborate scrapers, bells,

rhythmic patterns -B

Heinz Trefzger,

M Hanz

Trefzgcr,

1

Djs Mmikleben der TaJig-Zcit, p 59

bid

in Stnica XIII

(1938),

p 5B

Melody and Rhythm It

would be

however,

a mistake,

139

compare such time beating with the

to

crude four beats of our big band drums In the oldest preserved classical

which

is

Sino-Japancse buga\u dances, the strong accent

emphasized by a stamp of the dancers and by

on the drum prepared by

and

three,

is

supposed

millennium a

to

powerful stroke

be of Indian origin, and Chinese and Japanese

d.

And

yet the

most

ad, someone wrote

a treatise

in the second half of the

typical trait of

sophisticated rhythmical patterns or talas, had

of this,

on drumming

est trace of

and not one of the Far Eastern

such patterns

and kept up

The

in percussion

even

three

styles

in the East

its

In

in China, with over one talas,

but nothing

has preserved the slight-

rhythms used

when

Indian music,

no chance

hundred ‘symphonies,’ which doubtless were Indian

came

a

last beat,

on the half-beat before one, two,

a soft stroke

music on the whole were under Indian influence

860

the

on the

FOUR

Buga^u first

style,

is

in

Tibetan orchestras,

47 are obthe other parts are silent,

viously not Far Eastern, but deteriorated Indian patterns

a

J

J

J

h

n

j

nj

c

jttz

J

J

J

/j

rrn iz j

J

/j j*

j j

jz

j

The elaborate polyrhythm of Balinese cymbal players that Mr Colin McPhee has recently described is not Far Eastern cither "The cymbal group may include as many as seven players each with a diflerent-sizcd pair of cymbals, performing a different rhythmic pattern The same rhythmic motives can be heard at times during the rice-stamping, when the steady

pounding

of the poles in the

wooden trough

is

accompanied

by various syncopated rhythms beaten against the sides or ends of the trough **

" 48

T Howard

Somrrrrl, 'The Music n( Tibet,

in

The Musical Times LXIV (1923), p 108

Colin McFhcc, "The Technique o£ Ujlinese Music,' logical Society no 6 (1943), p 4 »s

in Bulletin 0/

iht

American Mustco-

,

[

5

]

NOTATION NO LOWER

CIVILIZATION

the mental horizon

is

finds the

way

musical or other scripts,

to

narrow, and knowledge

limited in range, oral

is

memory, unburdened and unchal-

tradition has become almighty, and

lenged by other means of preservation,

is

trained to a hardly believable

degree

Many

particular circumstances

of writing relieved tradition

had

to contribute before the earliest

might weaken and, by

the fear that in times of distress tradition

music

forms

and memory Only one of them was valid for

an inexact rendition of the sacred songs, endanger the efficacy of worship.

A

remarkable example

the musical notation invented in the island of

is

by learned Hindu-Javanese

Bali

Mohammedan

caped from the

who

had

in the sixteenth century a d

es-

conquest of their native Java and wished to

preserve their traditional music

from oblivion in

a

new

country without

tradition It

consisted in a kind of shorthand

dong were simply rendered by without indicating rhythm

Wlule alphabets seem

the

the five notes dang, ding, dung, dbng,

little

symbols for the vowels

a,

u, i, o,

i,

48

have bad

to

uniform evolution, from

a relatively

symbols and from concepts

realistic pictures to abstract

to sounds,

musical

notation followed different principles from the very beginning, and most

peoples used several systems

at

once There were tonal notations, indicating

the individual notes by symbols taken

from the ordinary alphabet,

tures or fingering notations to lead the player's

hand whatever

tabla-

the notes

produced might be, neumes, which graphically depicted the melodic steps as directions rather

notations,

m

syllables or

The

I-ar

than as groups of two or three distinct pitches, group

which conventional groups of notes were designated by

East has had musical scripts at least since the beginning of our

era, particularly interested in individual pitches,

tonal notation This

and

bell

J

is

it

has above

all

favored

in the strictest sense true with the players of stone

chimes who, unconcerned with melody proper, strike one slab or

bell at a time, **

call

nicknames

Kunii in

each of which produces one of the lu's Logically, the pitches

C

]

A Kunu-v

Wcly, De Toonbunxl van

Bali,

op

cit

pp 47—6B

,

arc

known

(chung),

by the

tint (i),

from the

141

of the lu

ymg

first syllables

and so on Like

all

names

huang

(

chung ),

Chinese notations and the ordinary

symbols are arranged in descending columns which pro-

script itself, the

gress

Notation

right to the left

on the contrary, more concerned with melody than with absolute

Singers,

pitch, use the five syllabic

symbols which denote the pentatonic

scale

k.ung,

shang, chiao, chih, yu, written below or on the right of the corresponding syllable of the text

which

dicates to

Absolute pitch

is

not neglected, though, a head note in-

fundamental note

lu the

luting shall be

tuned (exactly

we do in the case of our clarinets “in A" or horns "in F”) The same kind of notation is customary with the players and of

all

Western

As

Most of

pipes

and

origin,

at the

these instruments

had

a

4,

p 142)

of the lute p‘t p'a

comparatively recent

beginn'ng their players probably were Mongols Chinese by the simpler

a consequence, they replaced the complicated

Mongolian characters

(PI

as

When

voices

and

lutes

perform the same melody,

both the Mongolian and the Chinese symbols are written under each syllabic of the text

»

East Asia

also

«

*

had rudimentary neumes

for those melodics in

curve mattered more than the individual pitches left

to

right, indicated

a dash,

left to right,

these dashes allowed for cither of a

less level

them Or

a little

'

'level

A

the

from

movement’,

x between two of

white

circle

meant

level

black one, an oblique movement, which in turn had to

be specified by additional syllables

composer halved

‘downward

wh'ch

dash, ascending

'upward', a hor'ZonLal dash,

descending from

movement, and

A

this circle,

as either falling

or rising

Sometimes the

white above and black below meant a more or

movement but freedom

make

to

it

oblique, black above and white

below denoted the contrary

The unavoidable manual Chinese use the hand

to

counterpart of

memorize

neumes

is

The movement in

not missing

the four types of tonal

phonetics, they touch the third phalange of the forefinger to indicate ping, the level tone, the tip of the

same

finger, for

shang, the rising tone, the

tip

of the ring finger, for ch'u, the falling tone, and the third phalange of the

same

finger, for ju, the (musically meaningless) dialectal shortening of

of the foregoing three

famous hand 80

is

movements

60

The

similitude of

Guido

obvious

John Hazed el Levis, Foundations of Chinese Musical Art, op

cit

p

17

any

of Arezzo’s

East Asia

4j

*&*+%* '%**£* *4£i efi

K

ii

* -^j- -

*#**& * 4 ^ 4 - *&**&* t S*«S *

Notation Signs for rhythm were shared with the other forms of notation But in general

mark the end of a phrase, number of syllables in the verse,

sufficed to

it

mined by

the

the phrase itself being deter-

each of which coincided— at principle— with a musical beat Occasionally one syllable might take more or less than a beat, such abnormal cases were either ruled by least in

tradition or left to the singer's personal taste

Tablatures were used by players of long should do in order

zithers

and

what

flutes to indicate

produce the required notes, rather than the notes themselves which were unchangeably fixed in making 01 tuning their fingers

to

the instruments Figures beside the syllables of the text denoted the strings to

A

be plucked

thumb,

figure right in the middle of the

shifted to the

left, it

column prescribed

dle finger

Not even what we might

taste, as in

older

European music So

call

graces depended on the player's

East Asiatic music

vital in

the deli-

is

cate vacillation that dissolves the rigidity of pentatonic scales that sible artifices

bols of their

have carefully been

beyond the bridge, quent sharpening of for just a

classified,

names, embodied in notation

nese koto players), that

is,

sharpening

named, and, by (to

/(a

by

a

releasing the string into

down

whole tone,

and heard,

a note already plucked

its

’

pos-

sym-

ki,

the string

the subse-

e,

sharpening

it

mitijl vibration, yu, the

same, but making the relapse very short bclore the following nole k a k1

all

the syllabic

quole the terms of Japa-

by pressing

a nole

ntju oshi, sharpening

moment and

the

indicated the forefinger, to the light, the mid-

is

played,

plucking two adjoining strings in rapid succession with the same

finger, utht, striking ihe strings

beyond the bridges during long pauses,

nagashi, a slide with the forefinger over the strings, mil

This tablature includes two symbols

that

many

do not belong

others

in the

—

domain

of

The script runs downPlate 4 Chinese Notation After John Hazcdtl Levis ward, the vertical columns read from right 10 lift The four columns with large symbols are the text, each symbol rt presenting one (monosyllabic) word The small signs on eilhcr side ol a column indicate he melody The right side symbols denote the exact pitches of every beat and word the first one, at the upper right corner, a the second and third ones, c" The following group of three, flanking ihe fourth word of the text, designates a ligature a'—c'—a' on one beat The fifth group means the ligature g’-a on one beat plus a rest the horizontal dash that marks the end of the phrase The left-side symbols are neumes, the first three indicating level movement, the fourth rising and falling, the fifth l

,

—

rising

movement

—

e

East Asia

144 graces

a

is

frequent phrase of five notes, two of which arc plucked

with the forefinger, two on a lower string with the middle finger, and the fifth with the thumb on a higher string, hazumu is a short falling phrase, consisting of a dotted note on the tenth string, followed by

These signs belong

the ninth and eighth strings.

two notes on

in the category of

group

notation

made

Recent investigation has scription of Sanskrit

S1

is

a

Chinese tran-

Indeed, the graces of long

East Asiatic music, are nothing else than the ga-

zithers, unparalleled in

makjn

clear that this tablature

symbols used in India

imported with the sway of Buddhism during the

of India,

Dynasty and given

to the

Han

technique of Chinese zithers, which became the

favorite instruments of meditative

Buddhist

priests

and monks

«

None

op these scripts indicates time values

instinct

B2

and tradition,

or else the

the beats Rut this notation

more than on

Rhythm was

composer added

rather inconsistent and

is

The Chinese

still

eighth notes were not

notation branched off

came

to

relies

on

the ear

write small circles beside the corresponding notes to indi-

and often mark the

second, and third

first,

beats bv simple dots Quarter notes, consequently, always

beat,

to

left

the eye

cate the fourth heats of the bars,

many

often

a special notation for

marked

at all

Thus

from the beat notation the

designate

a

a

had

a dot, while

rudimentary mensural

dot, properly

meaning

a

quarter note, while half notes were given two and

whole notes three dots Japanese notation

is

more

consistent

all

downbeats are given

circles,

alternuelv with single and with double periphery (to facilitate reading), vs

hilt the

even upbeats are indicated by smaller circles

When

eighths or

six-

teenths occur in koto scores, the figures denoting the string to be played are placed

between the

circles, cither

halfway

or,

for those

following a

dolled note, nearer to the subsequent circle

Some koto whole

note,

players have used mensural symbols

m

circle (like ihe

Tempo

a

full circle

for

the

upright semicircle for the half note (like a D), a quarter

upper pari of

is left

unwritten

It

a

D)

for the quarter note 53

vanes, however, though not within the same

piece, different tempi are supposed to contrast, not to blend 81

81

Cf llrtn7 Trcl/ger

Das Musikleben der Tang-Zeu, toe al p 52 "ang C.uung Ki kuang L lu Wang), Ueber die chincsiscllen Nuicnschnlten, lyaB ), pji u>-a Mueller tinigr Nntoen uber die lapamsche Musik, loc cjt p 19 (

III

(

88

1

in Siruca

6

[

]

POLYPHONY EAST ASIATIC CHORUSES Greek choirs did The curious

always sing in unison

— just

as

ancient

Buddhist worship every singer

fact that in

chants the same words in the same ihythm in whatever tonality he pre64

fers

no exception, while the

is

choral singing of Tibet belong

strange, never ceasing drones used in the

in the Indian, not in the

Chinese sphere of

Tibetan civilization

A

singer’s accompanist,

on

the contrary,

by an irrationally small particle of time, his general so,

nearly

This

all

is

as

is

expected to follow behind

an aide avoids riding abreast of

particularly the practice of Japanese flutists, but even

East Asiatic

accompaniment depends on

canonlike anticipation and retardation

The

shifted phrases,

mental realization of some melodic pattern, and the player, having

same pattern

mind, gives the singer

in

fully tries to follow

precise

—

when

are ahead

when

enths

of expression, in

is

which

probably not perceived

the singer dwells

a

One

upon

become

a

its

phrase In a more highly ajrpreciated

a

the continuous friction of seconds

and

sev-

dissonance in any Occidental sense

as a

In the sacred music of China, such

been simplified

— though not pedantically

the voice unexpectedly restrains

recent stage, this unavoidable discordance has

means

this

the freedom required and care-

His notes come in the correct

order, but are delayed

ornaments and

all

on

singer displays a rich, orna-

accompaniments have

rule of classical

music reads

to a great extent

while the singer holds

whole note, the long zither plays ihirty-two thirty-second note' and the

mouth organ adds one inhaling and one exhaling half note The stringed instruments always accompany in broken chords formed by the unison, fourth and octave or unison,

fifth

and octave,

in strict parallels

with the

singer

Japanese koto players have more freedom, they

now

fill

the gaps in

rhythm

left

now

support the voice,

by the singer’s sustained notes, thus pro-

ducing chords of octaves, perfect or diminished

fifths,

fourths, thirds,

and

even seconds

The 84

Occidental word harmony, however, scarcely applies here

C A

Wegelin,

‘Chinccschc Muzick,'

in

China IV (1929), p

143

These

East Asia

146

concords of two or three notes are not 'functional', they do not add a third

dimension

nor do they create an emotional atmosphere

to musical space,

they add to the singer's notes other notes that the

all cases,

In practically

singer has just abandoned or that he

is

going

to strike

and future superimposed, and nothing,

present, past,

up, they are melodic after

but piled up

all,

heterophony

The same shing

called

of

wood

mouth organ — the instrument

is

true with the chords of the

in

Chinese and sh 6 in Japanese

have described

I

it

as a piece

cut in the shape of a gourd

The neck serves as a mouthpiece and air conduct, while the body forms a windchest to feed the pipes Thirteen or more slender canes of different length (the highest

measuring sixteen

twenty inches) project upwards out of the

to

windchest in a circular arrangement, inside the windchest each pipe has a side hole

which

The

player blows both a

covered by a thin metal tongue

is

melody and, on other

pipes,

an accompaniment

in

chords In the court music of Japan old harmonics arc preserved

which were brought

country a thousand years ago from China, some comprise three notes,

to the

some five, some six Only two of the eleven usual chords correspond to occidental minor triads, the others consist of the notes of pentatonic scales sounding simul-

DE FGA)

taneously (for instance

or in oihtr combinations, as

B C

D E F A

These complicated harmonies are in modern China replaced by simple parallels of fourths and fifths In both cases, the melody is below its accompaniment, as ,s in ancient Greece and the earlier part of the European Middle Ages

The problem

of East Asiatic polyphony

contrast of right

The motley

and

left

had acted on Japanese music up

Manchurian, Korean, Chinese, Indian

in ihe so-called right

hig hourglass

drum

—could

Manchurian and Korean

music, with the cross

drum k^KK 0 both

flute

AS die

The #i

d te\i, the

flute

formed

mouth organ

in the ninth

influences

kpma

were

fuyc and the

oboe hichmki, the

drum

however, was

Beside these instruments,

lute biwa, the zither

taifo and the small

essential distinction,

the so-called left music,

sho, and the small cylinder

distinguishing instruments

styles shared the

well as the hrger

ad —

san no tsuzumi as the distinguishing instruments Chi-

nese and Indian influences, on the contrary,

with the cross

to 800

obviously not be blended

So the Japanese disintegrated them

century into two separate styles

unncd

not solved but clarified by the

music

influences that

into one organic style

is

sono koto,

as

gong shoko

in the relations of the

Curl Sachi, The History of Musical Instruments, op

cit

,

p

1B3

two leading

Polyphony instruments, the flute and the oboe

147

while in the

left,

Chinese music they

played in unison with the chords of the mouth organ, in the right,

churian music they played in counterpoint

The

court orchestra of the Mikado, which boasts that

the unaltered tradition of the elaborate five

form

of

polyphony

first

Its

millennium

timbre

is

Man-

50

light

a d

and

,

it

has preserved

performs

clear, since

very

in a

none of

its

melodic instruments reaches below the middle of the one-lined octave.

One mouth organ and one vertical lined octave, these

and

wind instruments

rating,

forming

play the melody high up in them an octave above All

play hcterophonically,

thirds or even grinding seconds,

becomes even more unsteady tional microtones

Ex

flute

a cross flute doubles

Below

now and

55 Japanese court music

Hiiau Tanabc, Japanese Music, op

cit

sepa-

their vacillating

curve

driven up by irra-

clamor, the lute follows the same ajtcr

,

p 15

three of

now

joining,

as the flutes are constantly

this strident

the two-

Mueller

,

East Asia

148

and the

zither koto joins in with a short,

dry ostinato motif Of the two drums, the

contributes rolls and both

trend, in fourths or other chords,

single and repeated blows, while the taifo adds some single strokes, the

gong marks

the beginning of each bar with a single

in the attempt to write

down

the score

from

example follows the score published by

Dr

a

blow The author

Mueller,

who had

57 tunity to test each individual player 07

Mueller,

'Einige Nulizcn uber die

failed

phonograph recording Our

japamschc Musik,” loc

cit

31-3

the oppor-

,

[

7

]

ORCHESTRAS ORCHESTRAS WERE SOUNDING BRIDGES

between the macro-

and the microcosmos, between the world of gods and ancestors and the world of the

living, since they

which stood

of

stance

and

embodied

classes of instruments,

all

the stone chime for northwest and stone; the bell

fall

and metal, the long

flute for east

each

for an element, a cardinal point, a season, a planet, a sub-

zither for south

chime

for west

and summer and

silk, the

and spring and bamboo, the trough and the

and wood, the drum

tiger for southeast

and winter and skin, the mouth organ

for north

for

northeast and gourd, the globular clay flute for southeast and earth chief musician, "said,

when

they tapped and beat

and struck and swept the

ch'tn

and she,

Kwei, Emperor Shun's the sounding

s tone,

accord with the chant, then [the spirits of

in order to

and progenitors

the ancestors |

came down and

The

visited

them

guests of

And

the principal seat

filled

the host of nobles virtuously yielded [place to one another

|

At the bottom

of the hall were the pipes and the tambours, which were brought into uni

son or suddenly checked by the beaten trough and the scraped the

mouth organ and

The

size of

shadow

the

bc)

the bell indicated the interludes

an orchestra mirrored the rank and power of

of gigantic imperial orchestras, the

tiger,

while

” 6H its

owner In

Chou Dynasty

(i 122-255

allowed the high dignitaries only twenty-seven (mostly blind) men,

sitting

on three

sides of

a

square, while the ordinary

noblemen had no more

than fifteen players in one straight line

The Han Dynasty

had, in the years 58 to 75 a d

,

three orchestras

religious ceremonies, the second for the archery of the palace,

for banquets

The

and the harem The

total

number

court also retained a large military

The

ons for war themes, and with feathers and

The Shoo King,

transl

829

dancers’ group, with weap-

flutes for

peaceful subjects,

and music by forming the writing symbols of the

text

11

members was

band

Orchestras included singers and dancers

closely followed poetry

of their

one for

and the third

by

W

H

Mcdhum, op at p 46

—

,

East Asia

15°

The T'anc Dynasty arts,

seems

bered from

and

‘standing,’

seven hundred

five to

ground plans

Several graphic

orchestras In one of

them

eight, ‘sitting

harps in a fourth

All together, they

illustrate the

num-

arrangement of some of these

the conductor has 20 oboes before

and

him, then 200

128 lutes in a third tier, 120

stone chimes are to his

tier, 2

’

members

in a second tier, 40 flutes

mouth organs

evolution

to their highest

have brought the court orchestras

to

them were

Si* of

(61S-907 ad), deeply interested in fostering the

left,

and

to his right, 2 bell

chimes, and an undisclosed number of drums behind the 4 chimes Another diagram shows that choruses occupied the left and the right of the orchestra

from the front

of forty-four players

ya drums form the

is

to rear

On a

arranged in a

circle,

third diagram, the dance orchestra

circle

with an inscribed square, twenty

while twenty-four performers with stamping

and drums are drawn up alternately in the square The court musicians were provided by an Imperial Academy of Music, the Garden of Pears Its female section, the Garden of Everlasting Spring, tubes, clapper tubes,

trained several

emperor, and musical

A

gift,

hundred young

it

was

also

who were

open

ladies

under the personal supervision of the

to girls of

outstanding beauty, though lesser

admitted with the

of auxiliary musicians

title

part of the female court orchestra, performing before

Huang

(713-756) and his mistress,

is

lightful painting of the eighth century a d

clapper,

and

in the rear a girl strikes a

harps, long zithers,

and

Besides

all

lady agitates a

— are

and mouth organs,

played in pairs ,B (PI

5,

p 160)

these indoor orchestras, the imperial court entertained a

outdoor band bals,

The conducting

big drum, the other instruments

lutes, transverse flutes, oboes,

metallophones and hourglass drums

Emperor Ming

depicted on a recently discovered de-

It

consisted of a

vanguard with 890 players

of gongs,

drums, and wind instruments, plus forty-eight singers, and

guard of 408 musicians in similar arrangement, that

men "° The Korean

is,

in all

no

huge cym-

a rear

less

than

1,346

ers

court in

had 772 musicians

•*

Kang

Setjo's time (1457-1468) entertained 572 play-

and choir singers and 195 apprentices, and

Cf

®*

(PI

6a,

as late as 1897 the

emperor

p 161)

Heim

Trefzger, "Dai Muukleben der Tang Zen loc nl p 6 B Courani, Esiai hmorique sur la muuque hutonque dcs Chinois, Enrydopddie dt la \lunque 11 C S Keh Die Koreanirche op nt p 17 ’

w Maurice

,

’

in Lavignac,

—

1

Orchestras

The Chinese court indulged also its orchestras The aristocracy, like

15

in the diversity, all

not only in the sizes, of

higher civilized groups, had a strong

and experienced the unique stimulus that imagina-

taste for exotic timbres

from foreign music The emperors appreciated presents of singing and playing girls from allied kings, just as the Egyptian pharaohs tion receives

had done before Confucius once took

when "the which Ke Huan

test,

test that

people of Ts‘e sent received,

departure from court as a proa present of

female musicians,

and for three days no court was held"

82

—

pro-

a

reminds one of the pronouncement of the great Jewish philosopher

and physician, Maimonides tolerated,

and by

Such delight

means

all

in foreign

times of e\pansion cians

his

Loo

were sent

( 1 1

that secular

,

when performed by

a

singing female

88

country had been conquered, native musi-

Chinese court to form

to the

music ought not to be a

music was seasoned with imperialistic pride in

Whenever

merely on occasion or

35—1204)

not

a

national orchestra

as a solitary tribute, but as a

alongside those already in existence,

much

as a

permanent

—not

institution

conquered country's

es-

cutcheon would be incorporated in the victor's coat of arms.

Of

the so-called Seven Orchestras entertained in 581

from Kaoli, a fourth

country, another from India, a third from Buchara,

Tungus

a

from Kutcha

in East Turkistan,

with twenty performers of mostly

Western instruments, which had been established

was

so

much

in favor that the

from Cambodia, Japan, mingled

in

ad, one had come

them The

Sill

t,

emperor

tried to bar

as early as it

384 aji and

Individual musicians

Samarkand, P.ukchei, Kachgar, and Turkey

'scholars,' puristic

defenders of the 'ancient' music,

protested, but in vain

The number tury, but

of court orchestras

was increased

some Cambodian musicians, engaged

cause their instruments were too primitive thirty-five

I11

Burmese musicians, and between

nine in the seventh cen-

in 605,

were sent back be-

Hoi or 802, the

the year 1000

two more Mongolian bands and Tibetan, and an Islamic orchestra were added

the monarchy, a

to

a

emperor hired

and the end of

Ghurka, an Annamcsc,

Japan was no less receptive than China In 809, the Imperial Academy of Music included twenty-eight masters of foreign styles Cambodian, Chinese, Sillan,

and others

64

* 02

The

68

Cf Eric Werner and

.

*

Original Chinese Texts of the Confucian Analecta , op

ni p 237 The Philosophy and Theory of Muiic in Judieo Sonne XVI Annual Arabic Literature, in Hebrew Union College (1941), p 281 84 Cf PauJ Demievdle, La Musique

v

D

A B

Modern

E

G~~A

k

i

E F G

?

D~E

B

Modern Bhairavi

Asavari

Hypodorian

Dorian

Madhyami

Sadji

DEFG A

G A B C D EF G v

B C

D

/

G A B Modern

D ~E

D

G

?

Modern

Khamdj

Kdphi

Hypophrygian

Phrygian

Gandhdri

NAddi

F G A B C D E F

C

F G A

C

Modern

c l)

F

Yaman

3

F G A~B

D E F G A BC

Tt

E F G Modern

Bilaval

Lydian

Hypolydian Dhaivati

B C

DE

F G A B

E F G

B C v

B

/

Modern Mixolydian

Some alterations, for given birth

to those

augmented seconds

gender of the Greeks and the like the

so-called

that characterize the

Gypsy

chromatic

Hindu

scales of later

raga Bhairava

Ex

58 raga bhairava J*

“1

r tv

might have departed from diatonics and

this reason,

Tlr

136

after

—

Abraham and Hornbostel

1

t

1

n

1

& #

•

mi

1

.m

i-m iwr.iifl

music,

,

India

178

of ragas, already indicated as sixty in a Sanskrit-Tibetan dic-

The number

tionary of the seventh century a d

29 ,

increased,

at least in

theory, to several

hundreds, indeed, thousands, the ancient Tamils calculated the

n 991

total as

10

,

Any enumeration would

And

there

native classifications, quite to the contrary, there are too

The most

interesting, typically Oriental division

from Siva Mahadeva’s

great ragas have sprung

from Parvatl, ragtnis

In

six

no want of

many

used in the north

five heads,

and a

five

sixth one,

great ragas has five wives or

and eight putras or sons with eight daughters-in-law or bharyas

recent

method

of classification, based on musical traits and probably

the best ever devised, is its

each of the

is

survey of the is

there were 132 ragas

all

A

his wife,

A

be both impossible and useless

groups actually in use will prove more helpful

was indicated by

NV

Bhatkande in Bombay

31

This

outline

All ragas are organized in ten groups according to the scale on which they are built 1) Bildval

group

the octave consists of

have the semitone above,

as in the

two disjunct tetrachords, both

Lydian octave of the Greeks Our two

examples present one of the heptatonic patterns, Bihag, and, from Udai Shankar's repertoire, the pentatonic pattern of

Ex 59 AACA BIHAG

after

this

group,

Abraham and

Durga

H ornbostel

J-U6,

Ex

transcribed by Curt Sachs after Udai Shankar

60 RAGA DURGA •1

= 128

ZB

Annnda Coomaraswamy, "Indian Music,"

80

N

Chengalavara) an, op op cit p 55

81 Poplcy,

,

cit,

p

81

loe at

p 166

Ragas 2)

Yaman group the same

3)

Khamaj group

Ex

scale

Purvi group

5)

and

Hypophrygian

group both tetrachords have augmented seconds (the

4) Bhairava

Gvpsy

with a sharpened fourth, Hypolydian.

the upper fourth has the semitone in the middle,

the lower fourth, above,

called

scale

179

so-

58)

the same, except for an

augmented fourth, no Greek

analogy

Marva group

6)

the lower fourth similar, the upper fourth regular

with the semitone above

Kdphi group

7)

both tetrachords have the semitone in the middle,

Greek Phrygian. Asavari group

8)

the upper fourth has the semitone

lower tetrachord in the middle, Greek 9) Bhairavi group (‘ascetic’)

My

low, Greek Dorian

below and the

Hypodonan

both tetrachords have the semitone be-

two examples

Bhairavi proper and

illustrate

its

pentatonic version Mdl^os

Ex

61

haga bhairavi

after

Eachmann

10)

Ex 62

R.AGA

macros

transcribed by Curt Sachs after Udai Shankar

insult Todi group lower fourth

The members first

of a

group

augmented second, while the

the semitone below.

differ mostly in the

number

of notes In the

group, for example, raga Bildval has the complete major scale, Bihag

jumps from

A

the upper fourth has an

augmented and has

is

C

to

E

and from

C and thus is From a Western

to

B,

Durgd

passes

from

D

to

F and from

a pentatonic scale of the 124 type

to

of the ten groups

and (7)

G

to (9),

a

standpoint, first unit,

and

we should

prefer a different arrangement

comprising the

a second unit,

six

diatonic groups

(0

to

(

3)

comprising the scales with augmented

c

,

India

180

But Bhatkandc was right from an Indian

seconds (4) to (6) and (10)

wc

standpoint, as

shall see in

what

•

follows.

•

•

Bhatkande's classification takes into consideration the hours of the day the ragas are supposed to be sung.

which

Most Hindus divide the day into p

m

,

at

when day and

separation,

and

six periods, (a) 4 00 to 7 00 a

night separate, (A) 7 00 00 to 4 00 a m and p

( ) 10

Musical attribution

is

to 10

m

,

00 a

m

and

p

m

,

m

and

after the

before the separation

ruled in the following

way

the two groups of

hours in (a) require those ragas that have the augmented second D\)-E. those that have

(A)

The two

D, E, and

A

periods of hours that

the position of the

natural, (c) those that have both E\} and

form

predominant

a

a pair are

musically differentiated by

predominant

in the lower tetrachord

denotes the hours between noon and midnight, a predominant in the upper tetrachord those between midnight and noon. 32

There

is

no

consistency, however, either in the division of the day or in

the association of certain ragas with certain hours Another system

on eight periods of three hours each and proceeds with the ragas lowing way

From

1)

6 00 to 9 00

From 900

2)

four

based

33

on the Gypsy

lished

is

in the fol-

am

scale, like

AM

to

one plays slow, dreamy, pure ragas,

estab-

Bhairava

noon Asavari and Bhairavi

ragas, with three

and

flats

From noon From 3 00

3) 4)

to 3

00

to 6 00

p

m

pm.

Kaphi ragas with two

flats,

Purvi and Marl'd ragas, with augmented

second and fourth 5)

From

6 00 to 9 00 p

M Yaman

ragas,

major with an augmented

fourth 6) 7)

From 9 00 p m to midnight major ragas of the Bildval group From midnight to 3 00 a m pentatonic ragas with three flats, .

like

Malkos 8) all

From

3 00 to 6 00

a

m

pentatonic ragas, like Hindolam, in which

the notes of Mailtos, except the first

,J Popley,

11

op ci ! pp 63 £ Fyzee-Rahamin, op cit p 76 ,

and

its

octave, are sharpened

1

,

Ragas The

general idea

is

ragas have most

clear

8

1 flats in

the quietest hours, ex-

tending from midnight to the hot time of the day, and reach a majorhke character in the cooler time between six and midnight

*

The

without stopping

alas, is

To

'

In vocal music, an accompanying lutanist plucks

on the four thin wire

softly

lute

frets,

strings of the

a large,

long-necked

European harmonium

often taken by a

the clarinets of snake charmers are

One

one or two players

manner

two oboe players

When

drone

geminated

felt ‘like a

at

of

“They took

was asked

ship without a rudder

•

Gamaka

pairs, in the

hands of

wax

34

or

no fingerholes

at all,

Western Asia and Egypt Fox Strangways heard

Tanjore

the second

form

to

pipe plays the melody, while the drone pipe

fingerholes but one stopped with

all

exactly in the

he

tambun,

of Indo-Persian character, the place of which,

provide drones in instrumental music, recorders, oboes, bagpipes, and

either

has

em-

raga, strictly speaking, also requires a drone or pedal note to

phasize the ‘predominant it

*

•

it

in turns to play chanter

to surcease ’ ” 88

first

and said

•

•

or ornamentation has been

“Music without gamaka" Somanatha

from droning, the

"life

and soul” of Indian music.

1600) claims, "is like a moonless creeper without flowers " Mr Coomaranight, a river without water, a

swamy, more grace the

Mr

definite,

would seem

though

accompaniment which Stoll briefly puts

The

it

it

‘‘The Indian song without

less poetical, says

Indian ears

to

(c

as bald as the

presupposes

European

” 36 But

“Without gamakas

a

I

art

song without

like particularly the

melody cannot smile

English translation ‘‘ornament,” however, wrongs the

Indian graces are not glued on some melody like cent Western music. the individual note

They

its

arc the very pulse

trills

way

” 87

gamaka

and mordents in

re-

and breath of melody and give

weight, shade, and meaning

In a way, Indian performance reminds one of skillful penmanship as

opposed

to printing

It

avoids the rigid array of separate letters, but joins

*Curt Sachs, Dte Muit^instrumenig Jndieni und Indonesienst op at, pp 165-7 BB A H Fox Strangways, The Muuc of Hindostan, op at p 46 10 Ananda Coomaraswamy, op at p 167 17 Dennis Stoll, "The 'Graces' of Indian Music," loc at, p 169 B

,

155, 15B, 159,

India

182 them

in

one long dash of the pen that the writer’s mood and motor impulse

vivify in spirited turns

And one more

and flourishes

stresses the single,

indeed the isolated, note, Indian music emphasizes the

step or even the interval

of two notes

in

while East Asiatic music

point should be understood

—not as a jump from note

one chord, but

melody Therefore the

individual note leads to the next note portamento, or

melodic progression,

it is

not as the fusion

to note,

as the actual unit of

a larger interval, but often only the irutt nearest at hand,

such turns would require, in Dennis for our uncultured

The ornaments have been neatly sando up and

Western ear

down with

in order to grasp

them

on

relifting the finger, flattening a note

with extraordinary strength, and India

when we were

” 3B

special

symbols

glis-

on the end,

weak echo produced nail

other refinements

3B

and plucking

We hinted

at

discussing the similar style connected with instru-

ments of the Far East Whoever

listens to

kind of ornamentation will often be at a a

in detail

by pressure of the

many

and frequently

the beginning, not

a wail by deflecting the string right after plucking, a

by

no

and other plucked instruments

and even written down in the stress put

is

may comprise

words, “an aural microscope

Stoll’s

for the vind, the sarod,

classified

there

else, if

rapidly deflected Such a deflection

Chinese performing on a ch'in or a

phonograph recordings of

loss to

Hindu

this

decide whether he hears

playing the lute sarod

Singers likewise indulge in numberless kinds of

trills,

portamentos, ap-

poggiaturas, backfalls, and mordents, and sometimes dissolve single beats in

more than

dozen pearling notes

a

To

speak the truth, singers of the ordi-

nary type often overdo ornamentation They appear to have an idea that the highest form of their art consists in introducing as much grace as possible, whether it adds to the beauty of their songs or not,

melody as much as possible by embellishments own, and so in nine cases out of ten it is quite impossible to follow either or the words of a song, since the singer is only anxious to exhibit what

in fact, they try to disguise the real

of their

the air

he fondly imagines

The

to

be his

skill

40

strangest aspect of ancient

classification of

gamaf{d appears in Narada’s surprising

rdgas into three groups

the

first

a quivering voice throughout, the second, those third, those

includes those sung with

with partial quivering, the

without any quivering

88 Ibid p 16B 18 Cf Richard ,

40

p DO

r C R

Simon "Die Notationen dcs Somanatha," in Kgl Baycnschc Akodcrme der Sitzungsbenchte der philolog Klasse, 1903, Heft III, pp 452-60 Day, The Music and Musical Instruments of Southern India and the Deccan • op r at , 1

,

,

Ragas

We would

183

awkward and beyond our

dismiss this unique tripartition as

comprehension But then,

it

should strike a note familiar

ldes that the to

neumes symbolize has two, quilisma and

be performed tremula voce These are

the eighth century, indeed,

was observed

seventeenth century and

customary

who

tribes

Singing, in

is

in the

to this

still

in

its skill

and

ethics,

traces of a

bloom

Vedic chant

day among

sing throughout with a bleating tremolo voice

was emphasized

.'*

fourth century b c

sweet voice,

,

know

expects a singer to

once

in India in

as late as the

Mongol

certain 1

nowhere

as

world India’s national epos Ramayana, composed

cient

the melod-

pressus, expected

European

late

important form of Oriental singing which was

students ac-

to

among

quainted with the music of the Catholic Church, which

else in the an-

in the third or

the science of music, to have a

to sing in the natural register, and to have a range of three

recommends him to eat sweet fruits and roots in small quantion his singing exactly as taught without any ingenious attempts improve the master’s composition or supplement it by flourishes, and

octaves

It

ties, insists

to

strictly

In

forbids

him

later times,

long paragraphs

to take

study of

these enumerations

to

human

treatises

physiology

43

achieve and what to avoid

less interesting

is

12

or any other remuneration

both northern and southern to the

was supposed

singer

money

We

take

it

on music dedicate

and

The

to

what

a

good

positive part of

for granted that the singer

be able to hold his breath, and that his voice be sweet and entertaining, not very loud nor very weak, but deep and rich

The

negative part, however, strikes us as singularly up to date, and no-

body can read these endless

lists

of rules without a smile of recognition:

one should not sing with closed

that

teeth,

open, with eyes tightly closed, with

jumbled up together and rolling with

with fear, with the mouth wide

twang, with

a nasal

swell his neck, gape, or like a camel, or

Cf

the

words

contracted stomach, with a plaintive or weeping expression, or with

a

raised eyebrows, that the singer should not shake his head,

41

all

in the throat so as to be incomprehensible,

,

make

for example, Joseph

show

his teeth

,

that

move

And many

frantic gestures with his

hand

van Oost, "La Musiquc chez

Mongols des Urdus,"

Ics

X/XI (1916/17) pp

363, 385 C Dharma, ‘Musical Culture in the Ramayana," loc cit Tirumalayya Naidu, Gang Vtdya Sanjivim, 1896, p 12

42

P

44

C

44

Fyzcc-Rahamm, op at

,

his eyes,

he should not crane his neck

p 71, Chcngalavarayan, op

cit

pp 447—53

p 82

in

others 44 Anthropos

-

[5

]

RHYTHM AND FORM INDIAN ter

RHYTHM in

marvelous wealth and importance shows

its

bet-

than the system of the Western and the Eastern Orient the two basic

forms of rhythmic organization meter and time

The Roman orator Fabius Quintilianus has given the shortest definition Metrum in verbis modo, rhythmus etiam in corporis motu est “Meter

—

only in words, and rhythm

exists

body

“

— read

time

Time, originating from pace and carnage, melody

in a rhythmical series of stressed

ently of their lengths

the motion of the

is

lar beats is stressed,

is

it

organizes

independ-

notes,

and therefore counted by regular beats The numeric first

out of every four regu-

and that the beats have the average tempo of

means the same type of

Meter

‘qualitative’,

and unstressed

symbols of times are fractions - means that the

steps;

—in

«

'quantitative',

it

stress,

while the tempo

is

organizes melody (like verse) in

a

rhythmical

senes of long and short notes Counting a long note as two shorts is

— the

typical in all meters

would appear

as 2

+

i

+

i

numeric symbol of meters

and an iamb

as

1

human

double

is

+ 2, which means

sums

—which a dactyl

that the

group

or foot or measure consists of long-short-short or of short-long

Over and over

the

Western music no

two forms of rhythm have overlapped than in ancient Oriental melody

—in

modern

less

South India's musical meter, ikshara, faithfully respected the numberless foot patterns in

To

which the arrangement of long and short was

help with this classification, the

Hindus have

classified

fabricated the

imposing word yamdtardjabhdnasalagdm Each three consecutive syllables, counting from the first, the second, the third, etc syllable, indicate one meter ,

yamdtd mdtdrd tdraja

rajabha

jabhana 44 Fabiui QuinnlianuE, IniUtutio oraiorta

IX

iv

Rhythm and Form bhanasa

——

nasala

•w-

salagdm In addition, using the two

last syllables

185

w w w ^—

only:

^ —

lala

— —^

laga gala

gaga

—

Symbols

for rests occur, but only

to define

groups of three

units,

— like

the medieval punctus dtvtsioms

which, for lack of accents, could not other-

wise be distinguished from even-numbered combinations

An

example of poetical meter in Indian music

of a praise of the divine ape,

Hanuman,

in

is

the following fragment

which every

short syllable is

rendered by an eighth note, while syllables long either by a long vowel or

by two consecutive consonants are given quarter notes

It

should be emphasized that meter in

than anywhere

else,

since

up

was

itself

to the nineteenth

48

in India closer to life

century

it

ruled

all

kinds of

written language

« India's

»

musical time has seldom the simple form of modern Western

rhythm One form of time, ekji, corresponds to our^, and the north has some simple patterns, allegedly introduced by the Mohammedans dhlma —

f + T+t + T or 7> But passed

to the

most

mic patterns or

The

and

^

in expressing these

rfl

=T + Y or T

rhythms

as

sums of

fractions,

characteristic organization of Indian

we have

melody

already

— the rhyth-

talas

simplest explanation of tala might be

a

rhythmic pattern that com-

bines the essential features of both meter and time

Its

numeric symbols

consequently are sums of fractions

The above-mentioned ywould

give an idea of tala, since

two three-beat groups in the metric avoids equivalence of 41 Airer

its

relation of a

members

Erwin Felbcr and Bernhard Geiger, op at

,

p

109

it

combines

spondee But the true

tala

1

India

86 The

space occupied by a pattern

late by ‘period

The subsequent

’

without any interruption

called vibagha, a term that

is

periods, repeating the

A period

composed

is

angas or ‘members,’ each one of which four, five, seven, or nine units of

may

first

we

trans-

one, follow

of one, two, three, or four

be the size of one, two, three,

time or beats

South Indian theory indicates the current patterns in the following survey Ekji

3

Rupa^a

2

Jhampa Tnputa

+2 3 + 2 +2 3

Mathya

3 + 2

Dhruva

3 +2 +3

Ata

3 +3

The tala

4

+3 +

2

+

+3

4 + 2+ 4 4 + 1 +4 +

+2

4

3

2

7 2+7

5

+ 44-2 + 2

7

+2+2 + +5 +2+ 5+

5

+ 5+2 + 2

2

underlined symbol indicates which of the is

The

the most frequent first

horizontal

+

1

2

7 5

+9

9+1+2

+2

7 + 2+ 2

5

5 4

9

5

2+5 5 + 1+2

4 + 1 + 2 4 + 2+ 2

1

+

+4

+

9

2

+2

9+2+9

+2+7

7+2+7+7

9

+ 24-9 + 9

+2

9

+

7 +7 +2

9

+2+2

five jdtis or varieties of

and does not need any

row denotes one-member

each

distinctive epithet

periods (or simple meas-

ures) of three, four, five, seven, nine time units or beats, in our notation-

J .,

The

i_j;

,

second row indicates two-member periods of two plus three, four,

five, seven,

And

J

so

nine units

on

Permutation well Moreover, Skillful

Dhruva

admitted,

is

all

members may be

drummers go

as far

reads 2 split

+ 4 + 4 + 4or

and dissolved

4

+ 4+2 + 4

as

into units

beyond the regular patterns

as they

want, one

of them, Sirphanadana, has been credited with a monstrous pattern of a

hundred units in members of two, four, and eight

« Rhythmic patterns appear at that

«

«

as early as Bharata’s

book (Chapter 31) and

time must already have passed through a long period of evolution

Bharata knows

five patterns,

the pure rhythms,

two of which

are pure and three

mixed Of

d

Rhythm and Form

187

one has eight time units

and one ten time

Of

the

mixed

/J.

J

J

J

/

units.

patterns,

one has

time units

six

J

J

/.

J

-

J

while two have twelve time units each.

j.

/

J.

J

j

j

jj.

and

J

J

J.

.

simple (as written), double,

All five patterns appear in three versions

with time values twice as long, and quadruple, with values four times as long to

It is difficult

we know to describe

understand the actual meaning of these patterns unless

about Indian time beating, and the syllabic abbreviations used it

in notation

Classical practice

beats, silent

and audible Of eight

silent gestures of the

hands and four were

had two kinds of

beats altogether, four

were

audible slaps

The

silent gestures

were

(a) a,

m, palm downward and the

palm upward and the

palm upward and the fingers bent,

fingers stretched out; (r) vi,

fingers stretched out,

(

hand

(

b)

to the right,

d ) pra, palm downward and

the fingers bent

The

audible beats were

(as the thigh) (

)

(a) dhru, snapping the fingers, (£) sa, slapping

with the right hand, (c)

ta,

slapping with the

left

hand,

sam, slapping with both hands

Every unit of time was accompanied by an indicative movement Every

member was

given one loud beat, in the simple

versions of the patterns

If a

member

second and following units were given

contained

as well as in the

enlarged

more than one

unit, the

silent gestures.

—

India

1 88

In performing these movements, the hands alternated from member to member sa as the audible slap indicated that also the silent gestures of the -

the right hand; ti prescribed the

same member were made with the

left

The

same

for

hand, and sam, both hands In duple time, the four parts of a period

fingers, too, alternated

were denoted by pointing

with the small finger and successively add-

first

ing the ring finger, the middle finger, and the index This was different in other rhythms

These

details are

somewhat

member,

for

Simple pattern

J.

J'

s s

J

J

s

s

named

A

last,

what we would do

not the

first,

beats of their rhythmic patterns, indeed,

sam, both hands slapping

—

quarter note of a period Actually, the audible beat did not

cannot be compared

to the

rather to the jerk in their

arms

With

the

we

knowledge of what

it

seems

deed would not Sa sa,

is

meaning

audible slaps

last

downbeat Once more, the

basically different

were assigned

roles

realize that the ’mixed’ triple pattern

not what

very

but warn

from

the

our musical style

J is

to the

stress,

accented downbeat of our conductors, but that prepares the

emphasis shows that Indian rhythm

stressed beats of

beats,

fit

to

in

be

J

to audible

the Indian picture is

silent

J

three equal beats, as in our

that the first beat

and

mentioned by Bharata

The

a silent gesture,

This indicates that the two

first

time,

which

in-

beat notation reads ru

and the other two,

quarter notes form one

member

J It

a

the steps of their octaves for their upper notes, they

they gave the greatest stress

shifted

that

s s

again, the ancient Indians did the opposite of

emphasized the

It

is

end of

J* J.

AAA

AA

Audible beats

just as they

point

the beginning, but the

mark

example

Silent gestures

Once

The important

irrelevant here

in antiquity the audible slap did not

was beyond the means of

J

classical notation to indicate values

than three eighths or dotted quarter notes So they had recourse

higher to

two

Rhythm and Form

189

quarter notes instead of one half note (as in plain song) and explained

meaning by

their actual

One more

the distribution of silent and audible beats

question arises from studying the beat forms

triple pattern in its

Bharata’s plain

simple version reads

:

j'j

j

Now

which again implies a symmetrical and therefore suspect rhythm both the double and the quadruple version indicate, by their audible

beats,

the asymmetrical arrangement

J

Is

the

first

version a copyist’s mistake?

But then, were the members of those early patterns permutable

modern

rigidly arrayed or

Could a pattern

talas?

like 2

+2+

1

+3

+ 2 + 2 + 3 or in any other sequence ? would be easy to rearrange one of Bharata’s two six-unit rhythms

just as well If so, it

as they are in

appear as

1

it would not differ from the other six-unit rhythm, which thus would no longer be a ground pattern Permutation could hardly have been

But then

permissible in Bharata’s time

On to

and three-unit rhythms

the other hand, the combination of four-

numberless complex patterns up to seventeen

with

five,

The

seven, nine, ten, and eleven units

vital quality of

Indian rhythm

is

developed

fully

sion into equal beats, as in our music, an

among which

units,

were particularly

measure

is

led

those

m favor

there

is

no

divi-

not divided into two

is the total of, say, three members with 3 + 2 there is no accent of force on the first with + 1 eighths Since or + 2 +3 5 units of members or periods, this smooth, fluctuating rhythm is to our even

halves and four quarters, but

time

as the flight of a

The rhythmic seldom

fails to

soaring bird

to

the gait of a horse

patterns are given so

unique

attention that the

indicate the tala after the raga

headed Malsart raga and Sulpha\ala

The

much

tala,

a certain piece

or Bilaval raga

composer

would be

and Tlntdl

tala

importance of rhythm in India becomes particularly evident in the role of her

drums Musical

scenes depicted on the earliest reliefs in

times b c prove that two thousand years ago they were just as indispensable as today, in 1051 a d

seventy-two

,

the Rajarajesvara

drummers among

its

Temple

at

Tanjore had no

less

than

one hundred and fifty-seven musi-

,

India

igo 47

cians,

Emperor Akbar’s hand consisted of cymbals, twenty-three wind instruments, and forty-two drums

and

one pair of

in the sixteenth century,

The drummer who accompanies

a singer uses either

heads or two drums with one head each

The heads

one

beaten and tuned to different pitches, besides, each head in notes, since the central part,

drum with two hand-

are in both cases itself

yields

two

loaded with a circular paste, sounds lower

than the outer ring

drums the regular

Usually, the player

on

a

‘audible’ beats with his right

hand

skin tuned in the tonic sa, and the ‘empty’ beats or hjialis with his

hand on the other drum head

in

lower pa,

-N

Right

left

as

x

.rj'j *

C

Left

drummers do not

with so easy a technique,

in-

talas.

A

fa-

the right

hand

plays

the pattern in regular time, including the \/>alis, while the left

hand

plays

But

skillful

stead, they

vorite

it

form

rest satisfied

develop counterrhythms without ever violating the is

same

the counterpoint within the

tala

in ‘augmentation’ twice as slowly

.N

j'

J

10230 J

J

Often, however, the two hands play different

talas,

J one

//J

203

j The two

patterns

/j

/ -N / 203 203

02034

1

1

1

j

j

may even

overlap

mj

j'U'j

j

•

/ij-j

/i/j

/1

1203 1203 1203 1203 1203 1023 0102 3010 2301 0230 j j x j j jy j / j

n

4T

1

1

1

1

Fox So-angwayj, The Music of Hmdostan op ,

cil

pp 79

f

J

in ordinary time

and the other in augmentation, for instance

1

xj

j

1023010230

or

1203 J

;j

j

1203 1203

Rhythm and Form Tempo and

agogics were fixed in classical times with

The Hindus had

precision of Indian classifications

124, and

the ratio

three shades in each of

certain forms of accelerando

The

191 all

main tempi

three

them Within

the methodical

and rallcntando were admitted

musical forms of ancient India are unknown But

sible to date back, in a general

way, the

common

traits

it

seems admis-

of later forms

particularly those characteristics that the north shares with the south

and

There

doubt that two thousand years ago the accompanied song was

is

scarcely a

—

to say the least

— placed foremost

sence of melody was the rdga with the

in

these nine tempi,

modern way

in musical life, all its

and since the

implications, just as

vital es-

it is

of shaping musical structure in Lhe spirit of rdga

today,

was prob-

ably followed in antiquity as well

The

spirit of rdga, the carefully

maintained balance of freedom and law,

has led to a dual form in art music

The

first part,

aldpa,

is

the antithesis of aldpa

rehearses the essential traits of the rdga in question, ticularly stressed, the appropriate to facilitate the listener’s

rhythmic

ornaments

first

its scale,

the notes par-

—both for his own benefit and

comprehension This

two

strictness in

are introduced in a third

and rdga proper

an improvised introduction in which the singer

is

done without words or

movements Words and rhythmic pattern

movement, but

still

with more freedom than the

rdga proper would admit

The

desire for

freedom and virtuosoship has

to a certain

the roles of aldpa and rdga, performers occasionally

on the aldpa and give the rdga not more than

extent inverted

would dwell an hour

fifteen

minutes

The

south,

more conservative than Hindustan, has not allowed the alapa to exceed the limits of a mere introduction Its hypertrophy thus appears to be a modern development that should not be mistaken for a heritage from antiquity

The second are

’static’

strophe

part or rdga proper

rather than

Within

this

pattern

pattern

in antiquity

itself is it

built in various forms, all of

monotony

insertion of ‘episodes’ before the

The

is

dynamic and follow

main

is

and

avoided either by a rondohke

subject

doubtless ancient But

which

the rigid rules of verse

we

is

resumed or by variations

are not able to

tell

whether

followed the rondo or the variation type.

Whatever the form, it relied on soloists or small, intimate ensembles is the chamber music of an aristocratic society, where the patron retains

"It

musicians for his

own

entertainment and for the pleasure of the

circle of

India

jg2

” 48 Orchestras are not properly in the his friends

modern theaters have porary musicians isLic effects

which

up some kind

built

indulge— like so

much

Hindu's line In truth,

of orchestra,

Udai Shankar

—

and a few contem-

in those delightful color-

appeal to the Western taste But at the bottom,

Indian music has been, and probably will be, chamber music, performed

by a singer, accompanied with the delicate double drone of the tamburi, or by two fiddles and two hand-beaten drums, or by a vlna, a violin, a

drum 18

Coomaraswamy, op at p 163 ,

and

Plate 7a Indian dancers, drummers, and Hli irliut, c

200

Plate 7H

u

harpists

Relief

lrom

After Cl. unite Martel Dubois

Indian dancer and players with drums, lute, and harp Relief lrom Pawaya, hrst centuries a d After Ooomaras wuny transverse flute

the temple at

P laii.

8

1 Iil

Skohon

—

of Seikilos

From

a

tomb

stele at Tralles in

Asia

Minor, c too b r The skohon begins on the sixth line The notes, pi teed abo\t the eonesponding syllables ol the lext, are liken trom ihe current alphabet and btlong to the so called \ ot il Notation The dashes ahoee

some

ol tluse notes are

rhythmic symbols

,

[

6

]

CONCLUSION INDIA’S

MUSIC was

nue of Buddhism,

it

had

East, of China, Korea,

what today

There was in itself, that

hammed’s

a

It

a decisive part in

has taken and given In the

forming the musical

and Japan, and with Hindu

settlers

it

reti-

style of the

penetrated

Indo-Cluna and the Malay Archipelago

called

is

never insulated

westbound exportation, too The

fact, of little

an Indian was credited with having beaten the

military expeditions

might

importance

drum

in

Mo-

be taken for a symbol of In-

at least

dian influence on Islamic music Although complete ignorance of ancient Iranian music forces us into conservatism

we

are allowed to say that the

system of melodic and rhythmic patterns, characteristic of the Persian, Turkish, and Arabian world, had existed in India as the idgas and talas

more than

a

hammedan

thousand years before

it

appeared in the sources of the

Mo-

Orient

In exchange, India’s music has been indebted

to

contributions from the

West Again, the picture must be pieced together out of tiny scraps of informa-

The South

tion

drum tambattam was known

Indian frame

in ancient

Babylonia under the Semitic name titnbutu, the strange South Indian stick 7ither kinnari

shared

its

name with King David’s

binnor, the

Hebrew

and in times bc

indi-

cating the arched harp, had for at least three thousand years been ,he

name

lyre, vina, a foreign

of the Egyptian harp

word,

as its spelling implies,

49

The

diary of a navi-

Penplus

Mans Erythraet,

Direct reports give evidence of musical exchanges gator

at

the beginning of the Erst century a d

relates that India in his

Cadiz ships “musical pher Strabo

50

time imported mousi\d from Egypt, Eudoxios of

girls” ( mousil^a pauhskfiria ) to India,

their favor Palestine

before 230 48

ad

and the geogra-

advises his readers to present Indian rajahs with musical in-

struments or pretty singing

win

,

the

,

tell

how

girls

from Palestine or Alexandria in order

to

even sent pipers, the Acts of St Thomas, written

a piper

came down

to the

Curt Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments, op 80 Strabo, Geography XV, i p 55

at

place

p 153.

where the

apostle

India

194 landed

now

But waves

over him and played

in India, "stood

this piper-girl

in it

all

was by race

head for

at his

a

long time,

” al

Hebrew

new

times the Indus Valley was the most vital gateway In ever

conveyed

to

India most of the instruments in use today, and above

long-necked

at a very late time, the

all,

a

which from time immemorial had

name tambun,

it is

such as

lutes,

tambun and

sitdr,

Mesopotamia and Iran The

existed in

appears in a late Sanskrit masquerade as tumburu-

true,

vina (just as Babylonian priests distorted Semitic terms into Sumerian in times in which this sacred language was no longer spoken), and linguistically

untrained natives have not hesitated to confer on this beautiful in-

strument the aureole of

a

thousand years because of lutes

do not appear in any

genuine Indian origin and its

name

spurious Sanskrit

literary or pictorial source

a

venerable age of five

Actually, long-necked

down

to the

end of the

Middle Ages

Any Greek

on Indian music, on

influence

the contrary,

is

more than

doubtful, although Alexander the Great’s campaign (333 b c ) had inaugurated a cultural interchange with Greece Indian and Greek scales were certainly similar in

many

were based on tetrachords vital in

respects, but this in

both countries

Indian music, had no analogy

in

was hardly avoidable

since they

The drum accompaniment,

so

Greece, and one ought to be

very careful in comparing the rhythmical patterns of India with the metrical combinations of Greek melody Also, while Islamic theory abounds in Greek terms and quotations from Greek authors, there is not the slightest

mention of anything Greek

The most important

in

Hindu

factor against

the dissimilarity of instruments

theory

assuming

direct

Greek influence

is

India possessed none of the instruments

of Greece, neither lyres nor pipes of the aulos type

Instead, Indian reliefs

in Hellenistic times, essentially created tors,

under the influence of Greek sculpdepicted arched harps and tubular drums, which in turn were not

known in Greece The following section

will

show how

different

were the ways of Greek

musicians fll

Ada

Apostoiorum Apocrypha, cd Lipsius-Bcmnci,

II

u 108

Section Five

GREECE AND ROME

N

O MORE

than

among them

a

dozen Greek melodies are preserved, and several

are

was discovered,

mere fragments But long before the

the interest in

Greek music outweighed the Indeed, Greek music

cination of any other period of music history

was

For

to a great extent history

who

beginning with those

first relic

on Greek music,

practically all writers

immediately followed the

fas-

itself

classical age,

quoted

and interpreted the theones of the past more than those of the present, and this

down

kind of tradition, often misunderstood and marred, was handed

to the

Middle Ages and kept and assimilated

into our

own

days without any

interruption It is

hard

to see

overwhelming education

is

what

role of

Greek

our

exaggerated idolatry of reasons for

concern

been created, and

The

own

in

nowhere

least of all in

years of

European

would not account

this

way

for the

has swerved from the

our

exist besides a purely

else has a

own

humanistic

complete theory of melody

world, in which melody has been

harmony and polyphony

second reason

The Greeks

two thousand

time, W'hich in a

however, might

is

the changing position of Hellenic

Greece was geographically

ited

Greek music has meant The

classical antiquely

this,

First, the fact that

drowned

civilization in

probably the main thing But

intensified interest in

Two

the unique appeal of

a part of

Europe,

its

music

Though

music was largely Asiatic

themselves admitted, indeed emphasized,

this fact

They

cred-

Egypt, Assyria, Asia Minor, and Phoenicia with the invention of the

instruments they used,

named two

of their

main

tonalities after the Asiatic

countries Phrygia and Lydia, refeired to Egypt as the source of their musi-

copedagogic ideas, and attributed the creation of Greek music to Olympos, the son of Marsyas the Phrygian

With

the rise of comparative musicology,

historians of earlier generations were tal

music

it

has

doomed by

dawned on us their

that

music

ignorance of Orien-

to misinterpret the sources

Greek music, appearing justify a retrial

in

a

new

light,

In resuming the discussion

seems interesting enough

we

are in a

to

unique position

through the unprecedented accumulation of written, painted, and sculptured testimonies, through a quite well-preserved theoretical system, an easily decipherable notation,

and even

a little stock of actual

melodies

9

THE SOURCES THE RELICS of Greek music number eleven, some of which are fragmentary

0

Pindar's First Pythian Ode, allegedly fifth century b c

in 1650 in

,

was published

Father Athanasius Kircher’s Musurgta Universalis But no source

could be found, and the piece, obviously written in a style later than Pindar's time,

The

1

probably fraudulent

is

first

1

stationary song of the chorus

(

stasimon ) from Euripides’

tragedy Orestes (fifth century), written on papyrus and fragmentary 2

A fragment, possibly

250 b c in the

Museum

Two hymns

3-4

in

from

at

a

Cairo

tragedy, written on a papyrus from about 3

honor of Apollo, engraved

treasury at Delphi about the

Minor 6

first

‘Sicilian’ Seikilos,

composed

Paean on the older Ajax's suicide and two other fragments on

Hymn Hymn Hymn

7 8

9

in the

6

tainly, older

tury a d by 1

Athenian

century b c and engraved on a column at Tralles in Asia

rus in Berlin, written

(1

in stone in the

middle of the second century bc‘

5 Skolion or drinking song by the

second or

2

Otto

J

down

a papy-

about 160 aj) but probably, indeed almost

cer-

8

to

Helios

to

Nemesis

to the

Muse, probably

Mesomedes

all

three

composed

in the second cen-

(or the last perhaps by Dionysios) and published,

Gombosi, “The Melody of Pindar's ‘Golden Lyre/ ” in The Musical Quarterly

XXVI

94 °)i PP 381-9 2 h. Wessely Der Papyrus Erzherzog Rainer, 1S92 8 Carlo del Grande, "Nuovo frammento di musica greca in un papiro del Museo del Cairo,”

Aegyptus V (1936), p 369 Theodore Runach in Fondles de Delphes III 11 (1912), Otto Crusius, “Die delphischcn hrganz tings heft zum Phdologus LI 1 I (1894) 6 Bulletin de Corrcspondcince hellemque, 1883, Otto Crusius in Philologus, 1891, Philipp Spitu, Einr nemufgcfundene akgnechischc Melodic/ in Vieriel/ahrsschnft fur Musi\wuin

4

Hymncn

X (1894), pp mj-ro Schubirt, 'Em gricLhischer Papyrus mit Notcn " in Sitzungsberichte de- Konigltch PreussMSchcn 1{ade n.ie der W'is\enschaften XXXVI (1918), pp 763 — B Albert Thicrfeldcr, “Ein neuaufgeTuncIcnef Papyrus in Zeitst/irtft fur Musif{wisscnschisseiijchaft Der Berliner Notenpapyrus," in Philologus LXXVII

Der neue gncchische Papjrus

PP 3M-i8 Rudolf Wagner, (1921), pp 256-310

I

The though without transcription, della

io

n A date, in

as early as 1581 in

from Oxyrhynchos

Vincenzo

Galilei’s

Dialogo

an anonymous

treatise

treatises

and casual passages

in the

supplement the few

lifeless

anonymous composer,

on music

on music,

8

ad, on papyrus

in Egypt, third century

small instrumental piece by an

Numerous Greek

199

7

Musica antica

Hymn

Sources

of

unknown

8

later quotations

from

books of nonmusical Greek and

lost treatises,

Roman

authors

notations with discussions of the laws and prob-

lems, the task and evolution of

what the Greeks thought was

their noblest

art

The

earliest

tioned role is

approach was made by physicists Pythagoras’

vague, but Lasos of Hermione (c 500

is

unmistakably credited with discovering vibration

Archytas of Tarentum (c 400 vibrations on

)

saw

the perception of

that there

as the

cause of sound

were even two forms of

sound depended

convey them

enos of

Tarentum

)

He was

no

less a scientist

he passed beyond sound production

cessors, but

became the

320 b c

earliest

“Rhythmics”

to

the outer

in

Greek music theory culminated

to the ear

(c

waves

stationary

sound-producing instrument, and progressing waves

in the air to

which

b c

much men-

b c ), Pindar’s teacher,

in Aristox-

than his prede-

sound sensation and

music psychologist His “Principles,” “Elements,” and

exist at least in a

fragmentary form Shortly

after

him, the

so-called Pythagoreans, led by Euclid (c 300), tried to find the exact

mathe-

matical ratios of the intervals as they presented themselves on the

brated string of the

The theory

of music reached another peak in the second century

Nikomachos, Aiabian-born Neo-Pythagorean, and with rapher Ptolemy, librarian of the great Library

Harmomka

left

cali-

monochord

the standard mathematical

at

the

a

d with

famous geog-

Alexandria,

who

in his

work on music The impor-

tance of Aristides Quintilianus’ Peri mousil^es in three books has only recently been fully realized slightly later

Among 7 Friedrich

Its

ample information

Harmontl^i etsagoge

of

the books of late antiquity, Bellermann, Die

Hymnen

is

supplemented in the

Gaudentios

we

are particularly indebted to the

des Dionysius

und Mesoinedes,

Berlin,

1640

Janus,

Smptores Musici, 1895, pp 462 ft Theodore Runach, La Musiquc gretqne 1926, pp 196ft 8 Grenfell and Hunt, The Oxyi hynthos Papyri XV London, 1922 no 1768 Hermann Abcrc, in Zeitsehnjt fur Must\ivuscnschajt IV (1922), pp 524-9 Theodore Reinach, in Rei/ue musicale III 9, pp 8ft B Fridencus Bellermann, Anonymi Scriptto de Musica, Berol 1841, p 98 ,

200

Greece and

Rome

Alexandrian Alypios (c 360 ad), whose comprehensive survey of Greek notation made possible the decipherment of Greek music, and to King

who concluded musical anDe Mustca which for a thousand

Theodoric's unfortunate chancellor Boethius, tiquity with a presentation in five

books

years was considered the musical bible of the

Most

of these treatises touched

upon the

Regiurn and Hcrakleides Pontikos laid

West music Glaukos of

history of

foundations in the fourth cen-

its

The golden age of the historical branch of musicology was the century a d The so-called Baedeker Pausanias inserted important

tury b c

second

seetions on the music at the ancient Pythian

description of

Greek

his Onomastil^on, important abstracts

standing

men were

games and on folksongs

in his

curiosities, the encyclopedist, Julius Pollux, gave, in

from authors

since lost

The

out-

Alhenaios, in the discussions of his Dnpnn^ophists, and

Plutarch, tn a special Dialogue Peri mousi\es, in which actual lectures on

Greek music were assigned

the various epochs of

to the guests at

an imagi-

nary banquet

The tered

details

from Plutarch, Athenaios, and the other writers are scatthis Greek section One point, however, might be

throughout

stressed at once

The

fined a s the era of plicity, 11

c

and dignity

began

which we would

came

to

This was written more than

ness to

Music history

Plutarch's

five

hundred

judgment was a

of musical facts

hundred yeirs

unique

shown

years later

fair

de-

And

yet

and fiisthand or

we do

not

just a repeti-

mirror of the universal unwilling-

deeply indebted to these

is

mass

Oriental authors, ihey have the fifteen

two main periods

which Plutarch

an end when the generation of about 430 and dignity to vulgar taste

contemporaneous opinions and do justice to ‘modern’ art.

posterity a

call classical but

music, was characterized by economy, sim-

beautiful It

history into

to sacrifice simplicity to virtuosoship,

know whether tion of

Greek music

the division of

Ctrl ter pet tod,

men

for

in their

having transmitted to

superabundance Unlike

us ihe rough outlines of an evolution in

Owing to them, we distinguish primeval period in which blended the songs of Grecian tribes and their Asiatic, Thracian, and Cretan neighbors, a classic il period of national of ancient life

a

Greek music, inaugurated pander, and

in the

a postclassical,

seventh century

rc

by the Lesbian Ter-

modern' period from about 450

subjectivism, characteristic of the time

on,

when

before the Peloponnesian

war,

b c

The led to the revolutionary art of

theos of Miletos

A

201

Sources

Phryms

of Mytilene

and

Timo-

his disciple,

sample of the bitter criticisms against these pioneers has

been given on page 173

The questions that Greek writers on music suggest, however, far outnumber those that they answer The main trouble is the impossibility of aligning the facts in chronological order

admittedly or otherwise, the

drew knowledge and opinions from sources antedating own epochs by generations and even centuries and mingled them

ancient authors their

carelessly

This

with contemporaneous ideas

fatal

confusion of times, men, countries, and styles has mixed up

terminology

Words

like

harmoma

,

etdos, tonos, tropos, systcma

As

thing but clean-cut and are misleading rather than helpful

quence, the historiography of Greek and larly

exposed

Roman music

were anya conse-

has been particu-

to misinterpretation

Unfortunately, the monopoly and undivided sway of classical philology

had no altogether good of scholarship

But

it

results

Nobody would

text

so venerable a branch

when-

some word or sentence, he sup-

ever the philologist did not understand

posed the

rail at

has been misused as a charter for ‘emendation’

corrupt and ‘corrected’

it

until he, a

man

of the nineteenth

century and patron of the philharmonic society of his town, was able associate

it

with

his

own

musical background and experience

editions of Plutarch’s Dialogue

’critical’

tarch's unobjectionable

some musicians were

on Music should be

statement that owing

to certain

able to play twelve tonalities

on

The

to

various

a lesson

Plu-

mechanical devices

five strings

was boldly

corrected to seven strings by Burette, to nine strings by Ulrici, and to four tonalities

Not

aware

ciently

What

on eleven

strings

all philologists,

is

that

by Reinach!

including philologizing musicologists, were

words weigh

little

the significance, say, of tn

unless one

knows

their

and sub, when we learn that

suffi-

meaning

in a

double

pipe one tube was mcentiva and the other succcntiva? Large dictionaries

provide

a disconcerting

number of renderings for both of these two prepois mere guesswork unless one has

sitions,

and picking out the proper ones

facts at

hand

The

only facts in the

Greece, and

field of

we may add

as

our vision are

well

double pipe of the Greeks, scarcely ever played is,

with an mcentiva and a succcntiva tube,

the vast span

parallels outside ancient

outside post-Hellenic

still

a

Europe

The

in early

medieval Europe,

common

instrument across

between Morocco and the Malay Archipelago

To

this day,

Arabs, Nubians, Ethiopians, and Negroes use the lyres of antiquity Should

Greece and

202 they not

know more

with the

last

Rome

about playing them than Europe, which did away

remainders of the ancient lyre more than a thousand years

agoi Pentatonic melodies, with major and with minor thirds, have had no 1

place in the evolution of European music, but they

China, and India Is

it

in daily practice.

really admissible to interpret the

numberless dark passages

authors with the conceptions of modern European music? logical

and promising

While

fanatical

rather than ‘‘pure”

on

music of

exist in Japan,

still

to

Or

is it

ask for information where tradition

philologists,

pluming themselves on

their achievements, their proteges

to

Greek

is still

their

have not been willing

in

not

more alive?

ignorance

confuse the

with the hideous cacophonies of "savages,”

advanced philologists have agreed that the

essential features of

were misinterpreted In the meantime, modern music comparative musicology to avoid the

pitfalls of projecting

upon ancient and Oriental music, have taken tionary reorientation in every sense of the

word

Greek music

historians, trained

the lead

modern

toward

by

ideas

a revolu-

10

1D Cf D B Mcinro, Modes of Ancient Greeks Music Oxford, 1894 J F Mountford, “Creek Music and Its Relations to Modern Times, in Journal of Hellenic Studies XL (1920) Cun Sachs, “Die Gnechischc Instrumcntalnotenschnft, in Zeitschnft fur Musikwissenschaft VI in Zeitschnft fur Mustl^wts (1924), pp 289-301, and ‘Die Griechisehe GesangsnotensLluift renschaft VII (1925), pp 1-5 R P Winmngton Ingram, Mode in Ancient Greek, Music Cambridge, 1936 Otto Johannes Gombosi, Tonartcn und SUmmungen der anti ken Munk (Copenhagen, 1939 ,

,

2

[

]

NOTATION THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE own

his

of the author of this

book springs from

struggles with the tangle of a notation unique in the world

The Greeks

used two different systems of notation

one, generally called the instrumental notation,

and a

an obviously earlier later vocal notation

We

understand both of them and are perfectly able to transliterate them

into

modern notation Their

known, and our custom of

actual pitches, though, are of necessity un-

calling the center a

arbitrary It seems, indeed, to be rather high since pieces preserved

since

it

flats as

between

b’

and

ejj

On

it

is

conventional

the other hand,

it

is

all

practical,

allows us to transcribe the ancient melodies with as few sharps and possible

This international agreement was unfortunately endangered when, beginning of this century,

Greek system relics)

not

if

places the ranges of

He

Hugo Riemann

at the

destroyed the consistency of the

lowered the vocal notation (almost exclusive

our

in

because, as he said, the former interpretation favored Hypolydian

mam

and wronged Dorian, which (allegedly) was

in all times the

the Greeks, and the German school did not

hesitate to follow

quences were catastrophic

scale of

The

conse-

while the old interpretation had allowed the

transcribing of the relics of Greek music without any signature or else

with one

flat

or sharp (Seikilos’ Skolion

charged them with from four

meantime

In the

points erroneous tonalities

and

11

I

was

to

no

two sharps), the Neo-German

less

able to prove that

Thus we

shift

than seven sharps

Riemaan’s reasoning was in

all

eliminate his and his followers’ impressive

restore the old simple keys

»

The instrumental notation was

9

used for the mesault\d, interludes for

pipes between vocal sections, and for the \roumata, pieces for stringed in-

struments without singing 11

Cun

12

It

consisted of letters belonging to archaic

Sachs, "Die Gnechische Instrumencalnoienschrift,” loc

11 Aristides

Quinulianus, op

cit

p

26

at

Rome

Greece and

204 alphabets, but differed

from any known

were given two symbols each, symbols, or rather one

The

versed

letter

letter

the notes

notation

other notes of the diatonic scale

all

written in three positions

B

E

and

had three

prone, and re-

erect,

erect signs designated the diatonic naturals (corresponding to

our white keys), and both the flattened and the reversed signs meant sharps

K

/’

**'/*/

V

U'

v

>’t\

There were

/

U

several puzzling questions,

B and C

never used erect signs for both

When

melody

C

wrote

is,

as Ejf

another sharp— say CJf above

The

however

or for both

-4

T

Hellenic composers

E

and

F

same

in the

these neighboring notes appeared together, the Greeks

with the flattened sign of B, that

sign of E, that

acuu.rt.l.u.cdu P 3 11 3 3


h

v

B— they

Gjff

Why?

as Z?$,

is,

—or a

before

many

F

with the flattened

either a sharp before

whole tone above

used the reversed signs of

author gave the answer

and

But when they needed

G

or

years ago

a natural

— say

C Once more why ?

“the lyre, chief instrument

was pentatonic without semitones and preserved its archaic tuning even when the number of its strings was increased beyond five T he of the Greeks,

script devised for

notes,

was a

With

a

such an instrument, indicating fingering rather than

tablature, not a pitch notation

" 13

pentatonic accordatura, the lyre had either a b or a

never both together, and the same

true of the c

is

and

/

c

bb

ab

g

/

0

d'

c

b

a

g

ft

HD

dV cV

bb

a\>

bb

a

g

f

b

a

g*

It

c

0

e

dr

c

HD

cV

d'

ED

bb

ab

c

d'

cf

0

a

s

/»

g

f

g

ft

cb‘

dV

c

\bb

r

c

d’

c

b

c

dr

cV

b

at

0

/*

eV

50, on Egyptian music, 74, on Far Eastern music, 124, 125, 127, 166, 177, 178,

hsiang, 107

1(14

Grove, 28, 258 Guarani 20

Guido d Arezzo,

,

137 on Indian music, Greek music, 250

Grenfell, 199 21/1

F

Hommel, E homophomc

143, 144, 181-3

Gregomn

huang chung,

1

1

4,

115, 117,

Huarr, 287 141

if, It

400,

289

hirajoshi, 125, 217

238

t.opaul, 174 graces, h'i

48, 146, 147, 256-7,

Hindolam, 180

160, 182

131, 14ft, 148, 130, 152, 153

1

49

214, 282, 286

'high,’ 69,

3

Grocheo

,

23, 26, 31, 33,

302

Humbert-Lavcrgne, 306

u8

on

,

1

,

Index

3*9

Khamaj, 177, 179 King fang, 117

Hunt, igg Husemt, 228, 282, 286 Huycn, 50 Hygros ben Levi, 61

\innor 193 t

Kirchcr, 198

hypate, 69, 222, 223, 236

Kirghizes, 138, 305

hypatoid, 249

kjthara, 214, 219

hypaton, 223 hyperbolaion, 222

hit hans

hyporchema, 266

kpdo\

219

kitharodos 271 ngore}{, 129

Kolinski, 51

kpma

iamb, 261, 263 Iastian, 227, 228-9,

Krohn, 127 \roumata, 203

Ibn-Sina, 278, 286, 289

Idelsohn, 79, 81, 90, 96, 283 mcentwa, 201 infix,

\ro14palon, 263 brush {a, 159

37

infrafix,

Kuba, L, 50 Kubu, 41, 50

37

intervals, 42,

212

\utcb, 286 burnoi 125, 217 {ung, 107, 1 21

Ionian, 227, 233

iqaat, 287 Iraq (country), 277

Kunst, J, 35,

(maqam), 286

Iraq jffl

1 12, 149 byrtos phtongos

kyun,

Iwato, 125, 217

an (us)

organization,

59-62,

of spheres,

style,

59-95,

110-n, kabbala,

116, in India, 194, psalms, 269

ham pa,

270

Lamprocles, 226

Jeduthun, 60

/

40, 47, 91, 127, 166,

lahbaloc, 98

fava, 26, 48, 127-32, 152

harmony

257

22

Lachmann,

176

Jews,

1

Lach, 33, 304

199, 258

,

128, 129,

Kwei,

Istna, 49

|

127,

Kutcha, 151

90

Isfahan, 214, 228, 282, 286

taits

39, 51,

131, 140

ison 260-1

Isaacs, 89,

juye, 146

koto, 58, 120, 125, 143, 144, 145, 148

233

Landino sixth, 297, 303 Langdon, 59, Ro Lasos, 199, 226, 268

launeddas 99

1H6

left

Josephus, 71 Jubal, 57 Julian the Apostate, 295

music, 146

Icimma, 212, 265, 279, 280 Lejeune, 310 Levis, 157, 14

Kabbala, 116

Libya, 95

Kachgar, 151 Kadar, 69

hchanos, 212, 222, 223, 236

bak.k.°> 146,

Kamel

Lied, 35 Lifou, 50

148

el-Kholcy, 284

hmd,

129, 131

Lindblad, 297

Kanika, 22 Daihatsu, 253

Linos, 63 Livius, 272

Keh,

Locnan, 227

Kdpki

177, 179,

I

Bo

126, 133, 150

keys, 224-5, 235, 239

logogenic, 41, 52, ioi, 137, 260, 307

\hah, 190

Lombardy, 50

150,

a

,

,

Index

320 Longinus, 257 ‘low,’ 69, 123

me sc,

lu, 114-20, 121, 140-1

Meshaqa, 284

216 and passim in the Greek sec

lion

Lucian, 254

mesoid, 249

Lu

Mesomcdes, 198, 249 meson 222, 223 metaboU, 240

Pu-ivc, 57, 106, 107, 109, 112, 114 luie, West Oriental, 62, 63, 74, 101, East Asiatic,

134,

14

146,

1,

147,

150,

153,

Indian, 163, 182, 194, Islamic, 278,279, 2B3, 2B9, 290

137, Indian, 160, Jamie, 287, European, 309-11

lydion (accordatura), 214, 228

lyre,

60, 61, 62, 63,

Midas, 271 mirhton, 23

Greek, 201,

Mixolydian,

119

West Oriental,

59,

71-2, 80, 101, Indian, itij,

204, 205, 209-10, 213-14, 217, 218, 229,

234

2J7, 247, 254, 257, 268,

.

mctallophonc, 109, 130, 150, 152, 153 meter, primitive, 45-6, Jewish, 8B-90, Chinese,

Lyall, 278

lyra, 214,

,

269, Ro-

man, 272

Indian,

131-2,

and

226-7

Greek section mode, general, 66

8,

passim

ma-grdtna, 65, 167-8, 280 Macusi, 40

East Asiatic, 122-5,

169-83,

Greek, 216-52,

Madagascar, 49

Mondon-Vidailhet, 98 Mongolia, 43, 127, 141, 151, 183

madhyama, 165, 177 Madh\arnavati, 132 Mahttr 249, 282, 285

monochord, 199 Monro, 202

Maimonulcs, 151

mordent, 182

major, 283, 300-11

Mordwms, 304

Mala hart, 126

Morocco, 277, 291

Mom,

,

51

Moses, 59

Malayan, 213 14, 115,

u6,

1 1 8,

123, 130, 137

Millions, 172, 179, 180

motor impulse, 36, Mountford, 202

46,

69

Maisari, 189

mousi\e, 262, 263

Manchuria, 105, 146

mouth organ,

mandra 159

Mueller, 5B, 144, 147, 148

maqam, maqamdt,

83, 249, 250, 285-6

Martunus Cappella, 272 197, 271

munggang, 129 murchand 169, 170-1 musica

falsa or ficta, 303

Marta 179, 180 masanqo 98

mutation, 300

masora b(j ma(h\a 186 mats 46

Mahawand,

305

McPhrr

T39

145, 146, 147, 149, 150,

muezzin, 277

manjurd 132

Marsus,

228, 282, 283

Naidu, 183

Narada

57, 163, 176

nasalization, 23, 78, 97, 137, 183 Nau>d 282, 283, 286

megaphone, 23 melogtnn, 42 52, mclopona 249

ncte 69, 222, 223, 236

men sut

netoid, 249

311

mcsaalik* 203

the

in

modi (metric), 310 modulation, 126, 240, 241, 242, 244, 263 Aiohana, 132

Lysikrates, 267

1

I s-

Islamic, 280-6

Lysiades, 267

male,'

184-5,

negative melody, 32 nem, 129, 131, 132

neumes, ioi, 300

306

Index pathogenic, 41, 52 pathos, 240

nginot, 83

Nikomachos, msada, 165

321

Passamaquoddy, 26

Newlandsmith, 97 199, 210,

117

Pausanias, 200

no, 20, 136

ptlog, 128-30

nomos, 251, 263, 268, 269-70

pentachord, 43, 64, 124, and passim

of primitive music,

notation,

140-4,

26,

101, East Asiatic,

Oriental, 85-8,

Indian,

161-2,

West log,

Greek,

165-6,

perfect system, 222-38 Peri,

N

Persia, 59, 193, 277-91

petrev, 290 petteia,

d tc\i, 146

West

Oriental, 59, 61, 62, 63, 73,

East Asiatic, 146, 150, 153, Indian, 163, 1B1, Greek, 270, Islamic, 289, cf

also

250

Pherekrates, 173, 232 Philippe de Van, 303 Philo, 93 94, 110 Phoenicia, 63, 95, 101, 197

phoenix, 114

pipe

Olympos,

phonograph, 26 phornnnx, 219 Phrvms, 201, 233

197, 208, 251, 256

one-tone melodies, 31 ontogeny, 43

P'i p'a, 134,

Oost, 183 orchestras, atic,

123, 125, 126, 134, 135

Prnplus, 193

203-5, medieval, 300

nuba, 291 Nubia, 72, 95, 201

oboe,

,

period, 35

West

Oriental, rot, East Asi-

129, 146-53,

Indian, 192,

Roman,

272, European, 307

141

pirn, 134, 220 Plggott, 120

Pindar, 198, 199 West Oriental, 71, 77, East Asiatic,

organum, 308

pipe,

149, Greek, 2or, 208, 237

orthios, 261, 265

106,

ostwalo, 148, 256, 289, 290

255, 268, 272, Islamic, 278, cf also oboe

141,

Ostyaks, 23, 304

pitch,

Ousclcy, 174 overtones, 77

pitch pipes, 114, 118, 120, 134

120, 203, 248-50, 285, cf

8,

also lu

plagal, 65, 217, 225, 299 Plato, 216, 254, 255, 257, 266 Plutarch, 77, 200, 201, 207, 208, 210, 212,

paean, 198, 253, 266, 267 Paikchei, 151

219, 226, 232, 235, 247, 251, 256, 264

paion 241, 261 Panan, 47

Pollux, 200, 270

panchama, 165

polyphony, primitive, 48-51,

,

Polynesia, 31

East

West Ori In

Panini, 158

ental, 98-100,

panpipes, 109, 118, 306

dian, 180-1, Greek, 256-8, Islamic, 28B.

Asiatic,

145-8,

Papuas, 33, 39 parallelumus membrorum, 92, 96

European, 308-9 polyrhylhmy, 47, 139, 288

parallels, 4B-50, too, 145, 146,

Poplcy, 64, 168, 169, 173, 178, 180

paramesf, 223, 236 paranele, 222, 223, 236

256

portamento,

34, 165, 181, 182, 207, cf also

glissando

paraphonic intervals, 258 parhypate, 214, 222, 223, 236 Paribeni, 272

pramana, 167 prathama, 159

parados, 269

pressus, 182

parthema, 267

program music, 270

partials,

prol{clcusmati\6s, 260

77 passacagha, 33

positive melody, 32, 277

Pronomos, 237

1

,

1

,

Index proslambanomenos

sa-grdma, 65, 167-8

222, 223

prosodia^os, 262

Sad ft 177 sdd]odisy avail, 127 ,

psalmody, 31, cf also cantillation Pscllos, 269 Ptolemy, 75, 199, 207, 212-14, 226, 247,

Safi al-Din, 75 Sakadas, 263, 270

Sakai, 30

248, 279, 2B0, 282, 283

sale n dr 0, 130-2

punctus divisioms, 185

pyhjion, 206, 210

sdman, cf Veda Samarkand, 151 Samoa, 46, 51

pyrnc, 260, 262

sangd,

Pythagoras, 75, 199, 278

Semang, 51

Pythagoras of Zakynthos, 237

semicadencc, 34, 83 Seneca, 273 sequence, 52

qanun, 289

sex, 40, 46, cf also

quadnvium, 57

shadja, 165

Puri'S j 179, 180

pwc, 153

quarter tones, 313, cf

also

Enharmonic

1

3

shadow

shamans,

quihsma, 183

women

plays, 153

shahjihachi

genus

132

1,

,

120

22, 23,

286

shang, 107, hi Shankar, 178, 192 raga

(flj), 172-83.

'9 1

.

( 2 49.

she, 108, J49

2 5o)

sheng, 146

Rahawi, 2R6 rallentando

shi

igi

Ramachandran, Ramimatya, 77

shof^o, 146

Siam, 119, 132-3, 152 Si^dh, 285, 305

Rdst, 249, 282, 283, 285, 286 rattle, 46,

138

shn, 146

78, 168

138

recitative, 136

Si 1 la, 151

Reese, 81, 94, 95, 96, 300 Reinach, 198, 199, 201

Sirphanadana, 1B6

repetition, 43, 48, 50, 52

sistrum, 59, 97

responsorial singing, cf

Simon, sitdr,

antiphony

rhythm, primitive, 45-6, Hebrew, 88-91, East Asiatic,

1369, Indian, 184-91, lamic, 287-8, European, 309-1 nee stamping, 139 Richard,

1

Ricmann, 203, 208, 218, 262 right music, 146

Rome

272

?l

3,

19,

Roussel,

14

1

133,

(i 77 )

rondo 191 Rousseau,

194

skplioti

,

269

slendro, 130-2

solmization, 23^-6

Solomon Archipelago, Somanatha,

19

ntsu wo, 122

Is-

i6r, 182

20

219

38, 124

18

Somervel, 139 sane kplo, 146

Sonne, 112, 151, 253 speech melody, 19, 23, 137 Spencer, 19-20 Speyer, 169 sphirot, 116

rsab ha

i6«)

Spitta, 198

rubai 0

136

spondciaf(ps 219

Ruelle, 165

spondeiasmos, 240

rupaf^a, 186

sport deios, 261

ryo. 122-3, 134

Sn, 175

,

,

Index iruti,

1

tempo, 144, 152,

280

66-7,

3 23 191, 249, 264

staccato, 106

Terpander, 200, 217, 230, 254, 256

stampers, 46, 150 stasimon, 198, 242-3, 249, 269

tetrachord, 43 and passim tetrapody, 262

slereon, 213

Thalelas, 254, 267

Stiles,

Thamyns, 271 Theo of Smyrna, 258

237 182

Stoll, 181,

107, 109, 117, 118, 138, 140,

stones, 106,

Therapeuts, 94 thesis, 234, 250, 26

149, 150

Strabo, 193, 270

Thierfelder, 198

Strelnikov, 32

Thompson

strophe, 269

Thorstcinsson, 297 Thot, 57

Stumpf,

19, 26, 38, 39,

ng, 132

Indians, 36

three-tone melodies, 37-8, 43

Siilphat^ata, 189 58-9, 63, 72, 73, 78, 80,

134

99

suprafix, 37

Tibet, 38, 138, 145,

Supriya, 169 svara, 169

ugcr, 149 ti{, 2H8

svanta, 6g, 158, 260 syllabic, 101

Umbutu,

symmetry, symphonic

263

Thrace, 200

succcntwa, 201

Sumeria,

1,

40, 50, 52,

I5I

timbrel, 59, 93, cf also

rfio,

290, 300

intervals, 257, 258

syncopation, 47 synemmenan 223

1

193 primitive,

time

45,

drum

Hebrew,

Asiatic, 138, Indian, 184-6,

Turopean, 309

5,

time beating,

78, 187-8

time of the day 132, 174, 179-80, 286 Timotheos, 173, 201

synemmenos, 230 syntono, 222

Syntonolydian, 227, 228-9 syntonon, 214, 228 Syria, 63, 95. 96, 277

Synanes, 304 system a 201

tintal

189

Tochars, 114 Todi, 179 tonos 201, 216 loptail inversion, 67, 124, 169,

sy sterna teleton, 222-38

Torres Straus 41 Torrhehos, 219

tablaturc, 143, 204, 206

"transposition scales, 234 Trefzgcr, 138, 144, 150 tremolo, 182-3

Tacitus, 295 tai!{o, 146,

148

triangle,

ta\, 288 tala

139, 185-90,

264

tambaltam, 193 tarn bun, 18 r, 192, 194

trill,

47

182

tnpody, 261

Tnp ufa,

1

8b,

Tamils, 165, 178

trite, 219, 221,

tana, 170

Invium, 57

Tanabe,

120, 147

taqsim, 289, 290 tarktb, 289 fasts,

216

Tatars, 138

Taulipang, 22 leleute

101

220

temperament, 212, 213, 283

trochee, 26

264 223, 236

r

tropes 84, 201, 216

trough, 149 trtiya

159 trumpet, 23, 6o, 6l, 93 Tsai yu. Bo

tuba (Gregorian), 302 lumburu v'ma, 194

Fast

Greek, 263

237

Index

3*4 Tungus,

wahda, 289

23, 151

Turko-Tatars, 138, 305 Turks, 138, 151. 193, 214, 227. 277-9,

3 12

90,

267

Wegelin, 145

fuwais, 287

Wcllcsz, 96

tviscngvar, 296

two tone melodies,

Wen,

32, 43

107

Werner, E, 112, Werner, H 43 Wertheimer, 34

'ud, 279, 281

151,

253

,

Udai Shankar,

178,

1

92

Wessely, 198

udatta, 69, 158

Wesrphal, 251

Ugro-Finns, 304

Wilhelm,

Ultoto, 37 Ulrici, 201

up and down

Wang, 144 wedding songs,

principle, 72, 77, 109,

122, 169, 279, 281, 282,

283

‘Uisaq. 228, 282, 286

116,

57, 106

Winmngton-Ingram, 202 women, primitive, 40, 50, ental,

58,

59,

81,

90,

51,

91,

West

93,

94,

Ori98,

East Asiatic, 150, 151, 153, Indian, 157, 163. >74

Vaisanen, 24, 40, 124, 304 variation, 191

lylophone, 46, 152, 153

Vedas, 69, 86-7, 158-62, 183 Veddas, 32-4, 40

Vega, 19 Venantius Fortunatus, 295 ventriloquism, 23, X37 vibagha,

1

86

vibrato, 108

Villoteau, 86, 95 163, 174, 182, 192, 193

179, 180

yodel, 23

yu, 107, 121

yue

Vincent, 256 violin,

Yaman, 177, Yamana, 37 Yccuana, 39 Yekto, 215

vibration, 199

vinii

y a, 150 Ya\a, 2B2

fu,

1

13

192

zafan, qB

Virgil, 272 virtuosi, 271,

272

Vitri,

303 voien, 296 Voguls, 40, 124, 304 voice mask, 23 Votyaks, 304 vowels, 165

Zalzal, 130, 2B3

zangula, 286 Zir-rfl^end, 286 zither.

108,

West 120,

Oriental,

122,

125,

Wagner, Rudolf, 198

East Asiatic,

145, 146, 148, 149, 150, 153, Indian, 163, Islamic,

289, 290

Zodiac, 286

Wagencr, 256 Wagner, Peter, 87, 302 Wagner, Richard, 19, 313

59,

zo![u-gattu, 217, 220

Zotenberg, 86 Zuni, 26, 39 Zunz, 80

143,

144,