Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 February 1891 — Chinese Music. [ARTICLE]

Chinese Music.

The musical art of a people who represent one-lifth of the earth’s population ought to be studied; if mot for the sake of aesthetic pleasure, at least in the interest of scientific knowledge. Yet there is scarcely a department in the history or philosophy of music concerning which the information to he found in the books is so unsatisfactory as that of Chinese music. Even a historian of the thoroughness and profundity of Ambros, after devoting many pages to an attempt to elucidate the Chinese theory, seems willing to believe the first traveler ..who sets down the modern practice of the art as nothing but crude, barbaric, unregulated noise. Crude, barbaric and noisy Chinese music certainly is, but not unregulated. Even the little music which can be heard on any holiday in the Chinese quarters in New York will serve to disclose to a discriminating ear that it is nothing if not methodical. The difficulty on the part of the historians has been that they have never come in contact with the Chinese, and therefore have had to depend on the descriptions of travelers and missionaries touching the practical side of the art. Correctly to apprehend music, however, requires special qualifications of education and natural gifts, and these have been possessed by so small a minority of those who have written about China that they are scarcely worth enumerating.— H. E. Krehbiel, in Century.