America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat [74]
-- by which Chinese poets and lovers have revealed their thoughts and won their quest for centuries. The stirring tom-tom, if not the ragtime which sets the occidental capering to-day, was common to the Chinese three or four hundred years ago. They heard it from the wild Tartars and Mongols -- heard it and rejected it, because it was primitive, untamed, and not to be compared with their own carefully controlled melodies. Mr. Emerson Whithorne, the famous British composer, who is an authority on oriental music, made this statement to the London music lovers last week:
"`The popularity of Chinese music is still in its childhood. From now on it will grow rapidly. Chinese music has no literature, as we understand that term, but none can say that it has not most captivating melodies. To the artistic temperament, in particular, it appeals enormously, and well-known artists -- musicians, painters, and so on -- say that it affects them in quite an extraordinary way.'"
Chinese music from an occidental standpoint has been unjustly described as "clashing cymbals, twanging guitars, harsh flageolets, and shrill flutes, ear-splitting and headache-producing to the foreigner." Such general condemnation shows deplorable ignorance.* The writer had apparently never attended an official service in honor of Confucius, held biennially during the whole of the Ching dynasty at 3 A.M. The "stone chimes", consisting of sonorous stones varying in tone and hanging in frames, which were played on those solemn occasions, have a haunting melody such as can be heard nowhere else. China, I believe, is the only country that has produced music from stones. It is naturally gratifying to me to hear that Chinese airs are now having a vogue in London, and that they will soon be heard in New York. It will take some little time for Westerners to learn to listen intelligently to our melodies which, being always in unison, in one key and in one movement, are apt at first to sound as wearisome and monotonous as Madame Patti's complicated notes did to me, but when they understand them they will have found a new delight in life.
-- * Wu Tingfang is quite correct to deplore this statement as a description of Chinese music. However, in all fairness, it is an accurate description of how a Western ear first hears CERTAIN types of Chinese music. After successive hearings this impression will fly away, but until then CERTAIN types are reminiscent of two alley-cats fighting in a garbage can. This is not meant as a degrading comment, any more so than Wu Tingfang's comments on opera. Some music is an acquired taste, and after acquirement, its beauty becomes not only recognizable but inescapable. Certain other types of Chinese music can easily be appreciated on the first hearing. -- A. R. L., 1996. --
Although we Chinese do not divide our plays into comedies and tragedies there is frequently a good deal of humor on the Chinese stage; yet we have nothing in China corresponding to the popular musical comedy of the West. A musical comedy is really a series of vaudeville performances strung together by the feeblest of plots. The essence seems to be catchy songs, pretty dances, and comic dialogue. The plot is apparently immaterial, its only excuse for existence being to give a certain order of sequence to the aforesaid songs, dances, and dialogues. That, indeed, is the only object for the playwright's introducing any plot at all, hence he does not much care whether it is logical or even within the bounds of probability. The play-goers, I think, care even less. They go to hear the songs, see the dances, laugh at the dialogues, and indulge in frivolous frivolities; what do they want with a plot, much less a moral? Chinese vaudeville takes the form of clever tumbling tricks which I think are much preferable to the sensuous, curious, and self-revealing dances one sees in the West.
Although musical comedy, or, more properly speaking, musical farce, is becoming more and more popular in both Europe and America it is also becoming proportionately
"`The popularity of Chinese music is still in its childhood. From now on it will grow rapidly. Chinese music has no literature, as we understand that term, but none can say that it has not most captivating melodies. To the artistic temperament, in particular, it appeals enormously, and well-known artists -- musicians, painters, and so on -- say that it affects them in quite an extraordinary way.'"
Chinese music from an occidental standpoint has been unjustly described as "clashing cymbals, twanging guitars, harsh flageolets, and shrill flutes, ear-splitting and headache-producing to the foreigner." Such general condemnation shows deplorable ignorance.* The writer had apparently never attended an official service in honor of Confucius, held biennially during the whole of the Ching dynasty at 3 A.M. The "stone chimes", consisting of sonorous stones varying in tone and hanging in frames, which were played on those solemn occasions, have a haunting melody such as can be heard nowhere else. China, I believe, is the only country that has produced music from stones. It is naturally gratifying to me to hear that Chinese airs are now having a vogue in London, and that they will soon be heard in New York. It will take some little time for Westerners to learn to listen intelligently to our melodies which, being always in unison, in one key and in one movement, are apt at first to sound as wearisome and monotonous as Madame Patti's complicated notes did to me, but when they understand them they will have found a new delight in life.
-- * Wu Tingfang is quite correct to deplore this statement as a description of Chinese music. However, in all fairness, it is an accurate description of how a Western ear first hears CERTAIN types of Chinese music. After successive hearings this impression will fly away, but until then CERTAIN types are reminiscent of two alley-cats fighting in a garbage can. This is not meant as a degrading comment, any more so than Wu Tingfang's comments on opera. Some music is an acquired taste, and after acquirement, its beauty becomes not only recognizable but inescapable. Certain other types of Chinese music can easily be appreciated on the first hearing. -- A. R. L., 1996. --
Although we Chinese do not divide our plays into comedies and tragedies there is frequently a good deal of humor on the Chinese stage; yet we have nothing in China corresponding to the popular musical comedy of the West. A musical comedy is really a series of vaudeville performances strung together by the feeblest of plots. The essence seems to be catchy songs, pretty dances, and comic dialogue. The plot is apparently immaterial, its only excuse for existence being to give a certain order of sequence to the aforesaid songs, dances, and dialogues. That, indeed, is the only object for the playwright's introducing any plot at all, hence he does not much care whether it is logical or even within the bounds of probability. The play-goers, I think, care even less. They go to hear the songs, see the dances, laugh at the dialogues, and indulge in frivolous frivolities; what do they want with a plot, much less a moral? Chinese vaudeville takes the form of clever tumbling tricks which I think are much preferable to the sensuous, curious, and self-revealing dances one sees in the West.
Although musical comedy, or, more properly speaking, musical farce, is becoming more and more popular in both Europe and America it is also becoming proportionately