Post by sanmenxia on Sept 13, 2012 20:21:58 GMT
This book originally published in 1888 has some interesting pages on Chinese instruments:
Musical instruments : historic, rare and unique
by Alfred J. Hipkins
Scans of the book:
archive.org/details/musicalinstrumen00hipk
Text (has lots of OCR mistakes):
PLATE XLIV.
HU-CH'IN & BOW. SH^NG.
SAN-HSIEN. P'l-PA.
E learn from Mr. J. A. Van Aalst's comprehensive
treatise on Chinese Music, published, it may at first
sight appear somewhat oddly, by the Imperial Maritime
Customs (Shanghai, 1884), that the Hu-ch'in, the left-hand
figure in the Plate, is one of the most popular musical
instruments in Peking. The strings, four in number, are of silk, and
are tuned in pairs a fifth apart. This instrument is in fact a double-
strung Erh-hsien or Urh-hsien (Van Aalst and Dennys ; Ur-heen,
Engel), and has the same peculiar arrangement by which the bow is
fixed between the strings for playing. It is of cane and horsehair,
and the rosin for it is stuck upon the body, a hollow cylinder of
bamboo, wood, or copper, through which the long neck of the instru-
m"ent is thrust. The upper end of the body is covered with snakeskin,
while the lower is left open. The Erh-hsien, which has a similar
bamboo body but two strings only, is more generally popular than the
Hu-ch'in, and is met with all over China. The Ti-ch'in, according to
Dennys the favourite instrument with blind men, is also similarly
bowed, and has half a cocoa-nut shell for the body, covered by a thin
board. These bowed instruments, it is believed, found their way into
China with the Buddhist religion.
The name for the next instrument, the reed mouth-organ, Sheng,
sounds like " shung," rhyming with " sung." From this ancient
instrument have come the modern popular developments of the " free-
reed " organ, first applied about 1780, at the instance of Professor
Kratzenstein, to organ reed-stops by a Copenhagen organ-builder
named Kirsnick, who had settled at St. Petersburg, an invention soon
afterwards carried to Germany by the celebrated Abbd Vogler. The
104 MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
French Harmonium and American Organ, the concertinas and accor-
dion, are well-known examples of the " free-reed " principle, which
differs from the Church organ beating-reed inasmuch as the reed or
vibrator of metal does not overlap any part of its frame. The Sheng
is a gourd with its top cut off and a fiat cover cemented upon it.
Twenty-one bamboo pipes are inserted round the cover, but four,
being intended for convenience in holding the instrument, do not
sound. Those intended to sound are provided with small brass reeds.
By a peculiar arrangement, unique in reed instruments, the wind,
attacking all the reeds simultaneously, at once escapes by ventages in
the pipes, until stopped by the fingers for the pipes that are to sound.
The lengths of the pipes are merely ornamental, the actual lengths
required being determined by slot-like cuttings in the pipes, not seen
in front. There are seventeen sounding pipes, as already said, but
only eleven notes, as some notes are repeated in the unison or octave.
The scale, which the a pen pres musicians are satisfied with, may
be thus noted —
fl ^ ^ 1*^ r f r
i
3=4
=f=
i ^
The succession of notes in the first octave resembles that of the
ancient Phrygian mode and that church mode in which Thomas
Tallis's famous service is composed. The exact measurements of the
intervals heard at the Health Exhibition are to be found in Mr. A. J.
Ellis's Paper On the Musical Scales of Variotis Nations, published in
i\iQ Journal of the Society of Arts, London, 25th March, 1885.
Mr. N. B. Dennys, in his valuable notes on Chinese Musical
Instruments read before the North China Branch of the Asiatic
Society, 21st October, 1873, gives the name of the three-stringed
instrument in the drawing, with a long neck like a tamboura, as
San-hsien, with which Mr. Van Aalst agrees. The Peking musicians
called it Sien-tze (pronounced like Shen-zy). Like the Japanese
Siamisen the San-hsien has no frets. The drum-like body is covered
on the upper side with snakeskin, the under side being left open as in
a tambourine or banjo. The three strings were tuned ascending a
minor tone between the first and second, and a fifth between the
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 105
second and third strings : the outer strings being consequently a major
sixth apart. The strings were plucked by two bone plectra extended
like claws beyond the ends of the fingers, and the player stopped
a Pentatonic or five-note scale, thus :
^•-
^^
nearly in just intonation.
The P'i-p'a, according to Dennys and Van Aalst, or Balloon
Guitar (the Peking musicians called it Phi-pe), has a body nearly a
foot in diameter, from which it takes its English name, and four
strings played usually with the fingers and tuned as fourth, fifth, and
octave from the lowest note. The large semi-elliptical frets above the
finger-board were not used by the player at the Health Exhibition ; he
restricted himself to the twelve frets upon the finger-board. The
P'i-p'a is usually played by men who, in the South of China, are hired
as minstrels or ballad-singers. The stopping of this instrument was
pentatonic, as with the San-hsien, and the scale began upon the same
note, but the tuning of the fretted instrument was less good than that
noted of the unfretted one. Mr. Van Aalst informs us that the notes
are reiterated by rapidly passing the long finger-nail or plectrum back-
wards and forwards across the string, to produce an effect of sostenuto
similarly sought for in Europe for the Mandoline, Bandurria, and
Dulcimer. These instruments belong to the Music Class Room of the
University of Edinburgh.
14
XLV
PLATE XLV.
CHINESE TI-TZU, SO-NA, YUEH-
CH'IN. JAPANESE HIJI-RIKI.
CHINESE LA-PA.
HE Ti-tzu to the left in the Plate is the Chinese flute. It
is usually bound round with waxed silk and ornamented
with tassels. It has seven holes besides the embouchure,
that nearest to the latter being covered with a thin
^ membrane as in the Provencal galoubet, taken from the
sap of the bamboo and melted at the moment it is applied, intended to
make the quality of tone more reedy. The remaining six holes are
stopped by the fingers. According to Mr. Van Aalst, twelve notes in
a diatonic succession, beginning upon the A of the violin, form the
compass of this instrument, but with much uncertainty of intonation,
which may be as much due to the measuring for boring by the instru-
ment-makers as to the peculiarities of an ideal Chinese scale. The
scale played at the Health Exhibition, South Kensington, in 1884, by
a native ti-tzu player, was a B flat scale with the third rather sharper
than the minor but less than the major third, that is, a neuter third,
which, as we have seen, is frequently met with in Eastern non-
harmonic scales. However, there is great difficulty in determining
wind instrument scales accurately, from the power the player has to
alter intonation by blowing differently.
The Chinese So-na is a copper wind instrument — a kind of oboe
— played with a double reed. On account of the shortness of the reed
there is a disk below it to protect the lips of the player. There are
two small pierced copper spheres like those in the trumpets in Fra
Angelico's paintings, beneath which are the seven finger-holes in the
front and two thumb-holes behind the pipe. A loose brass cone of
considerable size covers the lower end and is fastened to the upper by
a string. This instrument is possibly the Indian Soonai. There are
io8 MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
nine notes, as in the Scotch bagpipe, which the So-na somewhat
resembles in quality of tone, but it is more strident and disagreeable.
The scale, as played by a native at the Health Exhibition, gave intervals
of whole and three-quarter tones resembling the bagpipe, but as the
performer succeeded in playing with other instruments that apparently
differed in scale, the accommodation in blowing must be credited with
the approximately satisfactory result.
The Yueh-ch'in, or Moon Guitar, so called from the shape of the
sound-board, has four silk strings tuned as fifths in pairs. The strings
are struck with the finger-nails, which the Chinese wear long, or a
plectrum. The strings are sometimes of copper instead of silk. The
instrument is chiefly used to accompany the voice, and the repetition
of a note, as in the P'i-p a, appears to be a favourite effect.
The next wind instrument in Plate XLV. is the Japanese Hiji-
riki, a conical pipe with a double reed inserted in the larger end. From
this cause the instrument sounds about an octave lower than a pipe
that is cylindrical. The Hiji-riki is of bamboo, the interior being
covered with a bed of red lacquer. It has seven finger-holes and two
thumb-holes at the back. The scale, as given by Mr. Victor Mahillon,
from whose Catalogue Descriptif et Analytique du Miisee Instrumental
du Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles, I have been glad to borrow, here
and elsewhere, is diatonic, with the occasional insertion of a sharp
fourth. This interval is frequently heard in Chinese music, when there
are ascending seven-note scales. The disk suspended at the top of the
pipe is adjusted, when the Hiji-riki is played, to protect the player's
lips — a precaution due to the shortness of the metal reed.
The long trumpet is the Chinese La-pa, with a sliding tube on the
trombone principle. It gives four notes, the octave, twelfth, super-
octave, and seventeenth, but not the prime. As may be imagined, it is
a military instrument, but Mr. Van Aalst informs us it is a privilege of
itinerant knife-grinders to blow it in the streets to announce their
whereabouts. A La-pa, with the bell bent back, is used at wedding
processions.
The instruments drawn in this Plate belong to the Music Class
Room of Edinburgh University.
PLATE XLVI.
JAPANESE KOTO.
HIS is the thirteen-stringed Sono Koto of Japan, and a
very beautifully-ornamented specimen, lent for drawing
by Mr. George Wood, of Messrs. Cramer and Co.,
Regent Street, London.
The strings of the koto are, as in all Japanese
stringed instruments, of silk drawn through wax, and the accordance
follows the pentatonic system already described in connection with the
Siamisen, and as given by Mr. Isawa, Director of the Institute of
Music at Tokio, in twelve different popular pentatonic accordances,
which are the foundations for, but, as will be explained, do not exactly
fix the intervals of the koto player's performances. The strings are
equally long and thick, and are strained to one tension, the notes
being obtained by means of movable bridges, of which there are as
many as there are strings. Two strings, the first and third, are tuned
alike, at the interval of a fifth above the second or lowest note. The
tuning is generally done by ear note by note, the player pitching the
instrument to his voice, which is good if a high voice. The classical
Japanese music is Chinese, and may have come to Japan with Chinese
art, through the Corea. It is, however, only played in the Imperial
household or the Shinto temples. Both classical and popular music are
pentatonic, but the Japanese in no way avoid semitones, which give
the Chinese so much trouble when they endeavour to produce them.
The koto player, in performing, squats very low upon the ground,
and wears plectra-like wire thimbles on the right hand, terminating
in small projections of ivory, touching with them only the shorter
division of the strings. He has, however, the power, by pressing
down the longer unsounded lengths with the ends of the fingers of
the left hand, or pulling them towards the bridges, to increase and
decrease the tension of the strings, and thus sharjDen or flatten the
notes and modify the tuning by intermediate tones — a licence not used
no MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
unsparingly. The Japanese pictures of koto players invariably show
this practice. The dimensions of this Koto are, approximately :
length, 6 feet 2^ inches ; width, 8| to 9! inches ; depth, about
if inches at the sides. The instrument is made of strong Kiri wood,
and has two openings on the under side. The beauty of the ornament
of the instrument drawn could hardly be surpassed. The drawing
shows enlargements of the two ends, one half the actual size, and
displays the highly decorative adornment of this remarkable
instrument.
The favourite popular tuning of the Koto is called Hira-dioshi.
It is thus given by Mr. Isawa and other authorities : —
Wt
\m-
w=s^
The music-master at the Japanese Village, Knightsbridge, London,
tuned the Koto to a Siamisen (Plate XLVII.), with the pentatonic
intervals marked on the neck according to a peculiarity of intonation
referred to in the description of that instrument.
,^»*ii^!
t' 9 r^^
XLVII
PLATE XLVII.
SIAMISEN, KOKIU, BIWA.
HESE are Japanese instruments. The Siamisen and Biwa
were drawn by permission of the Japanese Commission of
the Inventions Exhibition, 1885. The Kokiu in the centre
of the plate, and its long fishing-rod bow in four lengths
of black wood mounted with silver, belong to the writer.
The Siamisen is the commonest Japanese stringed instrument, and
is played by the singing girls (Gesha) ; it has been the characteristic
musical instrument at the Japanese Village, Knightsbridge, London.
The name was there pronounced Samiseng (the a as in father), and
Dr. Miiller, in an elaborate article on Japanese musical instruments in
the Mittheihiiigen dcr Dent sc hen Gesellschaft fur Natnr tind Volker-
kiinde Ostasiens, 6'" Heft. (Berlin, 1884), invariably writes Samiseng,
but the spelling Siamisen is here adopted on the authority of Mr. Shuji
Isawa, the Director of the School of Music, Tokio. In length it is
about 37 inches, and has a resonance membrane of parchment stretched
upon a nearly square wooden body that is 7J inches high, 6\ wide, and
3 deep. There is a knob on the under side for a string holder, and the
upper and under sides of it are covered with a selected part of a cat's
skin, on which the bridge also rests. By the little black spots on this
skin the value of the instrument is determined. Four give the highest
value ; two mark ordinary instruments ; while those without spots are
cheap. The size of the Siamisen is determined by the singer's voice.
Good voices are high voices ; consequently a good singer requires a
smaller one. For convenience in moving about, the body and neck are
made to separate. It has three silk strings and in common practice as
many accordances, \\z. - ^ J *^ 1 ((1) ' J — <^ — ; ^^'^
- (f p) ~ J ^ It is without frets, but the fingered scale which the
Japanese musicians at the London "village" appeared to know only,
112 MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
was indicated by small marks upon the neck, and agreed with the
tuning of the thirteen-st ringed koto. It has thus five intervals in the
octave, that differ, however, from the Chinese pentatonic scale, and
from that known in Java as Salendro. The Japanese, as heard at the
" village," may be described, when descending, as a major third, a
semitone, a neuter or mean third (neither major nor minor, but
equivalent to a three-quarter tone and a whole tone), thus
-the X denoting" the mean third. This
was accepted as right by natives of various parts of Japan brought
together in the village whose speech dialects were not the same,
although their musical dialect was thus uniform. However, since Mr.
Isawa gives the interval as a minor third, and in performances which I
have heard the minor effect certainly predominates, I am disposed to
accept the mean third here recorded as only a widening of the normal
minor third. Great latitude has to be allowed in dealing with scales,
especially those of non-harmonic origin. Our own equal temperament
narrowing of the same interval is rarely noticed by us, and passes as a
matter of course. The Siamisen is employed to accompany the dancing
and singing women, and its tones are an important aid to the effect of
their performance.
The plectrum of the Siamisen is called in Japanese Batsi. It is
shown in the plate.
The Kokiu is a kind of fiddle, in its construction very like the
Siamisen, only that it is played with a bow (kiu) instead of a plectrum
or striker (batsi). It is usually a woman's instrument, but is now
very little played. Dr. Miiller only heard one player in Tokio, a blind
man, from whom he took his description of the instrument and the
manner of performance. The whole length of the Kokiu is about 25
inches, the body being 5 inches long and broad. It is 2^ inches deep
and covered like the Siamisen. Instead of the strinsf-holder of the
latter it has a 2^ inch long round metal slip to which the strings are
knotted. The bridge is long and very low, with notches to receive the
strings ; three being equally spaced, while the fourth is very near the
third. The strings are tuned rK J ^ ^ \ \ — the two near each
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 113
other being unisons of the highest note. The bow is 45 inches long,
of four lengths as already mentioned. It takes to pieces for transport.
It is flat behind and oval in front. It is bent at the top nearly to a
right angle, and the whole rod is very elastic. It is strung with white
horsehair about 32 inches long, the horsehair being imported, as there
is no long horsehair in Japan. It is fastened with a silken knot into
a silver holder. In order to play the Kokiu the bow is taken with the
thumb, middle, and little fingers, the index finger being extended along
the back. With stretched-out fourth finger the player strains the slack
hair of the bow, then takes up the instrument, vertically resting it
upon the knees, between which the metal string-holder is grasped.
Bringing the hair of the bow to the edge of the resonance body, the bow
is simply moved horizontally backwards and forwards, the middle part
of the bowstring only being employed. The strings are brought into
contact with the bow by a rotary movement of the instrument. Some-
times only one E flat string is used, sometimes both. Double notes are
very rarely used. The sound of the Kokiu is very like that of the
Hurdy-Gurdy, but much weaker in comparison.
The Biwa is a lute-like instrument in the shape of a divided pear,
becoming narrower upwards. The body is about 34 inches long, of
which 7^- come on to the finger-board. There are four frets on the
finger-board. It has four strings in two thicknesses tuned, according
to Dr. Miiller, prime, quint, octave, tenth, like an infantry bugle, but
Dr. Isawa gives no less than six accordances. The Biwa is played
with a bill-formed batsi 6.^ inches long, made of horn, wood, tortoise-
shell, or ivory.
Musical instruments : historic, rare and unique
by Alfred J. Hipkins
Scans of the book:
archive.org/details/musicalinstrumen00hipk
Text (has lots of OCR mistakes):
PLATE XLIV.
HU-CH'IN & BOW. SH^NG.
SAN-HSIEN. P'l-PA.
E learn from Mr. J. A. Van Aalst's comprehensive
treatise on Chinese Music, published, it may at first
sight appear somewhat oddly, by the Imperial Maritime
Customs (Shanghai, 1884), that the Hu-ch'in, the left-hand
figure in the Plate, is one of the most popular musical
instruments in Peking. The strings, four in number, are of silk, and
are tuned in pairs a fifth apart. This instrument is in fact a double-
strung Erh-hsien or Urh-hsien (Van Aalst and Dennys ; Ur-heen,
Engel), and has the same peculiar arrangement by which the bow is
fixed between the strings for playing. It is of cane and horsehair,
and the rosin for it is stuck upon the body, a hollow cylinder of
bamboo, wood, or copper, through which the long neck of the instru-
m"ent is thrust. The upper end of the body is covered with snakeskin,
while the lower is left open. The Erh-hsien, which has a similar
bamboo body but two strings only, is more generally popular than the
Hu-ch'in, and is met with all over China. The Ti-ch'in, according to
Dennys the favourite instrument with blind men, is also similarly
bowed, and has half a cocoa-nut shell for the body, covered by a thin
board. These bowed instruments, it is believed, found their way into
China with the Buddhist religion.
The name for the next instrument, the reed mouth-organ, Sheng,
sounds like " shung," rhyming with " sung." From this ancient
instrument have come the modern popular developments of the " free-
reed " organ, first applied about 1780, at the instance of Professor
Kratzenstein, to organ reed-stops by a Copenhagen organ-builder
named Kirsnick, who had settled at St. Petersburg, an invention soon
afterwards carried to Germany by the celebrated Abbd Vogler. The
104 MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
French Harmonium and American Organ, the concertinas and accor-
dion, are well-known examples of the " free-reed " principle, which
differs from the Church organ beating-reed inasmuch as the reed or
vibrator of metal does not overlap any part of its frame. The Sheng
is a gourd with its top cut off and a fiat cover cemented upon it.
Twenty-one bamboo pipes are inserted round the cover, but four,
being intended for convenience in holding the instrument, do not
sound. Those intended to sound are provided with small brass reeds.
By a peculiar arrangement, unique in reed instruments, the wind,
attacking all the reeds simultaneously, at once escapes by ventages in
the pipes, until stopped by the fingers for the pipes that are to sound.
The lengths of the pipes are merely ornamental, the actual lengths
required being determined by slot-like cuttings in the pipes, not seen
in front. There are seventeen sounding pipes, as already said, but
only eleven notes, as some notes are repeated in the unison or octave.
The scale, which the a pen pres musicians are satisfied with, may
be thus noted —
fl ^ ^ 1*^ r f r
i
3=4
=f= i ^
The succession of notes in the first octave resembles that of the
ancient Phrygian mode and that church mode in which Thomas
Tallis's famous service is composed. The exact measurements of the
intervals heard at the Health Exhibition are to be found in Mr. A. J.
Ellis's Paper On the Musical Scales of Variotis Nations, published in
i\iQ Journal of the Society of Arts, London, 25th March, 1885.
Mr. N. B. Dennys, in his valuable notes on Chinese Musical
Instruments read before the North China Branch of the Asiatic
Society, 21st October, 1873, gives the name of the three-stringed
instrument in the drawing, with a long neck like a tamboura, as
San-hsien, with which Mr. Van Aalst agrees. The Peking musicians
called it Sien-tze (pronounced like Shen-zy). Like the Japanese
Siamisen the San-hsien has no frets. The drum-like body is covered
on the upper side with snakeskin, the under side being left open as in
a tambourine or banjo. The three strings were tuned ascending a
minor tone between the first and second, and a fifth between the
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 105
second and third strings : the outer strings being consequently a major
sixth apart. The strings were plucked by two bone plectra extended
like claws beyond the ends of the fingers, and the player stopped
a Pentatonic or five-note scale, thus :
^•-
^^
nearly in just intonation.
The P'i-p'a, according to Dennys and Van Aalst, or Balloon
Guitar (the Peking musicians called it Phi-pe), has a body nearly a
foot in diameter, from which it takes its English name, and four
strings played usually with the fingers and tuned as fourth, fifth, and
octave from the lowest note. The large semi-elliptical frets above the
finger-board were not used by the player at the Health Exhibition ; he
restricted himself to the twelve frets upon the finger-board. The
P'i-p'a is usually played by men who, in the South of China, are hired
as minstrels or ballad-singers. The stopping of this instrument was
pentatonic, as with the San-hsien, and the scale began upon the same
note, but the tuning of the fretted instrument was less good than that
noted of the unfretted one. Mr. Van Aalst informs us that the notes
are reiterated by rapidly passing the long finger-nail or plectrum back-
wards and forwards across the string, to produce an effect of sostenuto
similarly sought for in Europe for the Mandoline, Bandurria, and
Dulcimer. These instruments belong to the Music Class Room of the
University of Edinburgh.
14
XLV
PLATE XLV.
CHINESE TI-TZU, SO-NA, YUEH-
CH'IN. JAPANESE HIJI-RIKI.
CHINESE LA-PA.
HE Ti-tzu to the left in the Plate is the Chinese flute. It
is usually bound round with waxed silk and ornamented
with tassels. It has seven holes besides the embouchure,
that nearest to the latter being covered with a thin
^ membrane as in the Provencal galoubet, taken from the
sap of the bamboo and melted at the moment it is applied, intended to
make the quality of tone more reedy. The remaining six holes are
stopped by the fingers. According to Mr. Van Aalst, twelve notes in
a diatonic succession, beginning upon the A of the violin, form the
compass of this instrument, but with much uncertainty of intonation,
which may be as much due to the measuring for boring by the instru-
ment-makers as to the peculiarities of an ideal Chinese scale. The
scale played at the Health Exhibition, South Kensington, in 1884, by
a native ti-tzu player, was a B flat scale with the third rather sharper
than the minor but less than the major third, that is, a neuter third,
which, as we have seen, is frequently met with in Eastern non-
harmonic scales. However, there is great difficulty in determining
wind instrument scales accurately, from the power the player has to
alter intonation by blowing differently.
The Chinese So-na is a copper wind instrument — a kind of oboe
— played with a double reed. On account of the shortness of the reed
there is a disk below it to protect the lips of the player. There are
two small pierced copper spheres like those in the trumpets in Fra
Angelico's paintings, beneath which are the seven finger-holes in the
front and two thumb-holes behind the pipe. A loose brass cone of
considerable size covers the lower end and is fastened to the upper by
a string. This instrument is possibly the Indian Soonai. There are
io8 MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
nine notes, as in the Scotch bagpipe, which the So-na somewhat
resembles in quality of tone, but it is more strident and disagreeable.
The scale, as played by a native at the Health Exhibition, gave intervals
of whole and three-quarter tones resembling the bagpipe, but as the
performer succeeded in playing with other instruments that apparently
differed in scale, the accommodation in blowing must be credited with
the approximately satisfactory result.
The Yueh-ch'in, or Moon Guitar, so called from the shape of the
sound-board, has four silk strings tuned as fifths in pairs. The strings
are struck with the finger-nails, which the Chinese wear long, or a
plectrum. The strings are sometimes of copper instead of silk. The
instrument is chiefly used to accompany the voice, and the repetition
of a note, as in the P'i-p a, appears to be a favourite effect.
The next wind instrument in Plate XLV. is the Japanese Hiji-
riki, a conical pipe with a double reed inserted in the larger end. From
this cause the instrument sounds about an octave lower than a pipe
that is cylindrical. The Hiji-riki is of bamboo, the interior being
covered with a bed of red lacquer. It has seven finger-holes and two
thumb-holes at the back. The scale, as given by Mr. Victor Mahillon,
from whose Catalogue Descriptif et Analytique du Miisee Instrumental
du Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles, I have been glad to borrow, here
and elsewhere, is diatonic, with the occasional insertion of a sharp
fourth. This interval is frequently heard in Chinese music, when there
are ascending seven-note scales. The disk suspended at the top of the
pipe is adjusted, when the Hiji-riki is played, to protect the player's
lips — a precaution due to the shortness of the metal reed.
The long trumpet is the Chinese La-pa, with a sliding tube on the
trombone principle. It gives four notes, the octave, twelfth, super-
octave, and seventeenth, but not the prime. As may be imagined, it is
a military instrument, but Mr. Van Aalst informs us it is a privilege of
itinerant knife-grinders to blow it in the streets to announce their
whereabouts. A La-pa, with the bell bent back, is used at wedding
processions.
The instruments drawn in this Plate belong to the Music Class
Room of Edinburgh University.
PLATE XLVI.
JAPANESE KOTO.
HIS is the thirteen-stringed Sono Koto of Japan, and a
very beautifully-ornamented specimen, lent for drawing
by Mr. George Wood, of Messrs. Cramer and Co.,
Regent Street, London.
The strings of the koto are, as in all Japanese
stringed instruments, of silk drawn through wax, and the accordance
follows the pentatonic system already described in connection with the
Siamisen, and as given by Mr. Isawa, Director of the Institute of
Music at Tokio, in twelve different popular pentatonic accordances,
which are the foundations for, but, as will be explained, do not exactly
fix the intervals of the koto player's performances. The strings are
equally long and thick, and are strained to one tension, the notes
being obtained by means of movable bridges, of which there are as
many as there are strings. Two strings, the first and third, are tuned
alike, at the interval of a fifth above the second or lowest note. The
tuning is generally done by ear note by note, the player pitching the
instrument to his voice, which is good if a high voice. The classical
Japanese music is Chinese, and may have come to Japan with Chinese
art, through the Corea. It is, however, only played in the Imperial
household or the Shinto temples. Both classical and popular music are
pentatonic, but the Japanese in no way avoid semitones, which give
the Chinese so much trouble when they endeavour to produce them.
The koto player, in performing, squats very low upon the ground,
and wears plectra-like wire thimbles on the right hand, terminating
in small projections of ivory, touching with them only the shorter
division of the strings. He has, however, the power, by pressing
down the longer unsounded lengths with the ends of the fingers of
the left hand, or pulling them towards the bridges, to increase and
decrease the tension of the strings, and thus sharjDen or flatten the
notes and modify the tuning by intermediate tones — a licence not used
no MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
unsparingly. The Japanese pictures of koto players invariably show
this practice. The dimensions of this Koto are, approximately :
length, 6 feet 2^ inches ; width, 8| to 9! inches ; depth, about
if inches at the sides. The instrument is made of strong Kiri wood,
and has two openings on the under side. The beauty of the ornament
of the instrument drawn could hardly be surpassed. The drawing
shows enlargements of the two ends, one half the actual size, and
displays the highly decorative adornment of this remarkable
instrument.
The favourite popular tuning of the Koto is called Hira-dioshi.
It is thus given by Mr. Isawa and other authorities : —
Wt
\m-
w=s^
The music-master at the Japanese Village, Knightsbridge, London,
tuned the Koto to a Siamisen (Plate XLVII.), with the pentatonic
intervals marked on the neck according to a peculiarity of intonation
referred to in the description of that instrument.
,^»*ii^!
t' 9 r^^
XLVII
PLATE XLVII.
SIAMISEN, KOKIU, BIWA.
HESE are Japanese instruments. The Siamisen and Biwa
were drawn by permission of the Japanese Commission of
the Inventions Exhibition, 1885. The Kokiu in the centre
of the plate, and its long fishing-rod bow in four lengths
of black wood mounted with silver, belong to the writer.
The Siamisen is the commonest Japanese stringed instrument, and
is played by the singing girls (Gesha) ; it has been the characteristic
musical instrument at the Japanese Village, Knightsbridge, London.
The name was there pronounced Samiseng (the a as in father), and
Dr. Miiller, in an elaborate article on Japanese musical instruments in
the Mittheihiiigen dcr Dent sc hen Gesellschaft fur Natnr tind Volker-
kiinde Ostasiens, 6'" Heft. (Berlin, 1884), invariably writes Samiseng,
but the spelling Siamisen is here adopted on the authority of Mr. Shuji
Isawa, the Director of the School of Music, Tokio. In length it is
about 37 inches, and has a resonance membrane of parchment stretched
upon a nearly square wooden body that is 7J inches high, 6\ wide, and
3 deep. There is a knob on the under side for a string holder, and the
upper and under sides of it are covered with a selected part of a cat's
skin, on which the bridge also rests. By the little black spots on this
skin the value of the instrument is determined. Four give the highest
value ; two mark ordinary instruments ; while those without spots are
cheap. The size of the Siamisen is determined by the singer's voice.
Good voices are high voices ; consequently a good singer requires a
smaller one. For convenience in moving about, the body and neck are
made to separate. It has three silk strings and in common practice as
many accordances, \\z. - ^ J *^ 1 ((1) ' J — <^ — ; ^^'^
- (f p) ~ J ^ It is without frets, but the fingered scale which the
Japanese musicians at the London "village" appeared to know only,
112 MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
was indicated by small marks upon the neck, and agreed with the
tuning of the thirteen-st ringed koto. It has thus five intervals in the
octave, that differ, however, from the Chinese pentatonic scale, and
from that known in Java as Salendro. The Japanese, as heard at the
" village," may be described, when descending, as a major third, a
semitone, a neuter or mean third (neither major nor minor, but
equivalent to a three-quarter tone and a whole tone), thus
-the X denoting" the mean third. This
was accepted as right by natives of various parts of Japan brought
together in the village whose speech dialects were not the same,
although their musical dialect was thus uniform. However, since Mr.
Isawa gives the interval as a minor third, and in performances which I
have heard the minor effect certainly predominates, I am disposed to
accept the mean third here recorded as only a widening of the normal
minor third. Great latitude has to be allowed in dealing with scales,
especially those of non-harmonic origin. Our own equal temperament
narrowing of the same interval is rarely noticed by us, and passes as a
matter of course. The Siamisen is employed to accompany the dancing
and singing women, and its tones are an important aid to the effect of
their performance.
The plectrum of the Siamisen is called in Japanese Batsi. It is
shown in the plate.
The Kokiu is a kind of fiddle, in its construction very like the
Siamisen, only that it is played with a bow (kiu) instead of a plectrum
or striker (batsi). It is usually a woman's instrument, but is now
very little played. Dr. Miiller only heard one player in Tokio, a blind
man, from whom he took his description of the instrument and the
manner of performance. The whole length of the Kokiu is about 25
inches, the body being 5 inches long and broad. It is 2^ inches deep
and covered like the Siamisen. Instead of the strinsf-holder of the
latter it has a 2^ inch long round metal slip to which the strings are
knotted. The bridge is long and very low, with notches to receive the
strings ; three being equally spaced, while the fourth is very near the
third. The strings are tuned rK J ^ ^ \ \ — the two near each
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 113
other being unisons of the highest note. The bow is 45 inches long,
of four lengths as already mentioned. It takes to pieces for transport.
It is flat behind and oval in front. It is bent at the top nearly to a
right angle, and the whole rod is very elastic. It is strung with white
horsehair about 32 inches long, the horsehair being imported, as there
is no long horsehair in Japan. It is fastened with a silken knot into
a silver holder. In order to play the Kokiu the bow is taken with the
thumb, middle, and little fingers, the index finger being extended along
the back. With stretched-out fourth finger the player strains the slack
hair of the bow, then takes up the instrument, vertically resting it
upon the knees, between which the metal string-holder is grasped.
Bringing the hair of the bow to the edge of the resonance body, the bow
is simply moved horizontally backwards and forwards, the middle part
of the bowstring only being employed. The strings are brought into
contact with the bow by a rotary movement of the instrument. Some-
times only one E flat string is used, sometimes both. Double notes are
very rarely used. The sound of the Kokiu is very like that of the
Hurdy-Gurdy, but much weaker in comparison.
The Biwa is a lute-like instrument in the shape of a divided pear,
becoming narrower upwards. The body is about 34 inches long, of
which 7^- come on to the finger-board. There are four frets on the
finger-board. It has four strings in two thicknesses tuned, according
to Dr. Miiller, prime, quint, octave, tenth, like an infantry bugle, but
Dr. Isawa gives no less than six accordances. The Biwa is played
with a bill-formed batsi 6.^ inches long, made of horn, wood, tortoise-
shell, or ivory.
