MUSH

[s. 533] : A city of Eastern Turkey, 83 miles southeast of Erzroora, in a large plain, one of the most jjopulous of the whole section. The population is Kurdish and Armenian. The Kurds are very fierce, and treat the Christ inns most oppre ively. The district of Sasun, notorious as the scene of horrible ma acres of Armenians in 1893, among whom he labors. 2. After a mi ion has become succe ful tlie newly formed churches are ment of Praise, and this demands a thorough Ivnowledge of the foundation principles of music. As to the study of the music of savages by misRev. A. sionaries we may cite some examples. L. Riggs has made a very interesting study of Dalvota music, publishing specimens of songs of love and war, songs of sacred mysteries and songs. Tliey are extremely simple, and abound with the repetitions so natural to unsocial tutored minds. A widow’s lament expre es the deepest heart wearine and despair. Their music is also very simple. It consists of melody alone, with rude accompaniment, mainly for marking time. The men sing, while the women sound one single falsetto note ai, at, ai, keeping time with drums. They do not appreciate harmony. The minor key is their favorite, tho the major key occurs in their war songs. Their instruments are the drum, and pipe. The drum is more than a foot in diameter, and from three to ten inches deep. The rattle is made of segments of deer hoops The conjurer tied to a tapering rod of wood. The uses a gourd shell with a few pebbles inside. rattle, usual pipe is a sumac flageolet, nineteen inches long, with a diameter of five-eighths of an inch. Six peculiar partition forms the whistle. notes are burnt on the upper side, and a bra A thimble forms the mouthpiece. The pitch is A Prime, changed to G Prime by a seventh hole. Sometimes the pipe is made of the long wing or thigh-bone of a crane or swan. Dakota music is rude, but its power is measured by the adaptation of its wild melody to savage life in the wilderne , where in the misty moonlight the night air bears the plaintive sounds, with the hollow ba of the drum-beat, along the waste, full of po ible war whoops, and where each bush may hide an enemy. Dr. S. Wells Williams has given in his Middle Kingdom a graphic description of Chinese music and musical instruments. However small their attainments in both theory and practise, no nation gives to music a higher place. Confucius taught that it was e ential to good government, harmonizing the different ranks in society, and causing them all to move on in unison. The Chinese have sought to develop instrumental rather than vocal music. The names of the notes, ascending regularly from the first line of the staff to the third space above it, are as follows: first line, ho; first space, then i, chang, chi, kung, fan, liu, uit; first space above, i, then chang, che, kung, fan, the last being on the third space above. The real tone cannot be represented by our staff. The second octave is denoted by affixing No the sign fin, a man, to the simple notes. chromatic scale exists at least no instrument is made to expre flat and sharp notes. There are two kinds of music in China the northern and the southern. The octave in the former seems to have had only six notes, while sz; — — the eight-tone scale prevails in more cultivated Music is written for only a few in circles. Music and Mi ions struments, and the notation good for one is usele for another, because marks meaning to push, fillip, hook, etc., are added to denote the mode of playing; indeed, the combinations are so complicated that the Chinese usually play by ear. All music is in common time; no triple measures are used. Of harmony and counterpoint they know nothing. Marks to regulate the expre ion are unknown, nor are tunes set to any key. No description can do justice to their vocal music, and few can imitate it. Some notes seem to i ue from the larynx and nose; tongue, teeth, and lips having little to do with them. Singing is usually in a falsetto key, somewhere between a squeal and a scream, and yet it is plaintive and soft, and not without a certain sweetne . Chinese musical literature is voluminous. A work on beating the drum dates from a. d. 860, and contains a list of 129 symphonies. Among 12 instruments described in the chrestomathy are 17 drums of various sizes, then gongs, cymbals, tambourines, and musical vases in considerable variety. Stringed instruments are not so numerous. They have nothing that resembles the lyre. The kin or scholar’s lute is deemed the finest. Easy Le ons for this lute is a work in two volumes, explains 109 terms, and has 29 pictures of The in strut he position of the hand in playing. ment itself is ancient, and is named kin, “to pro It is a hibit,” because it restrains evil pa ions. board, four feet long and eighteen inches wide, convex above and flat below, where two holes open into hollows. Seven strings of silk pa over a bridge through the board at the wide end, and are fastened by nuts beneath. They are fastened to two pegs at the smaller end. The sounding-board is divided by thirteen studs, so placed that the strings are divided into halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, sixths, and eighths, but no The seven strings enclose the compa sevenths. of a ninth, or two-fifths, the middle one being treated like A on the violin, and the outer ones tuned to one-fifth from that. The interval is treated like our octave in the violin, for the com Each of the pa of the kin is made up of fifths. outer strings is tuned a fourth from the alternate string within the system, so that there is a major tone and interval tone le than a minor third, and a major tone in the fifth. The Chinese leave the interval entire and skip the half tone, while we divide it into two unequal parts; so the mood of the music of the kin is different from our instruments, and for that reason none of these can do There are other instrujustice to Chinese airs. ments like the kin, one with 30 and another with Som.e resemble the guitar, lute, and 13 strings. spinet, with strings of silk or wire, but never of The pipa, a balloon-shaped guitar, has catgut. four strings, is three feet long, with twelve frets to guide the player. The strings are tuned to the intervals of a fourth, a major tone, and a fourth, so that the outer strings are octaves to each The san hien, or three-stringed guitar, other. resembles a rebeck in shape, but the head and neck are three feet in length. The strings are tuned as fourths to each other, and their sound is low and dull. The yueh kin, or full-moon guitar, has four strings in pairs that are unisons with each other, with an interval of a fifth between the pairs. It is struck briskly, and used for lively tunes. The two-stringed fiddle is merely a bamboo split stuck into a bamboo cylinder, with two 516 strings fastened on pegs at one end of the stick and pa ing over a bridge on the cylinder to the other end. They are tuned at intervals of a fifth. As the bow pa es between the two strings much care is needed in playing not to scrape the wrong string. The harsh grating of this wretched machine is very popular among the natives. The ti kin (crowing lute) has a coconut shell for its body, and is even more di onant than the last. The yang kin is an embryo piano, consisting of bra wires of different lengths, tuned at proper intervals, and fastened on a sounding board. The sounds are very attenuated. The sang, in like manner, is an embryo organ, a cone shaped box, with a mouthpiece to blow in, and thirteen reeds of different lengths, inserted in the top, the valves of some opening upward and others downward. They are provided with holes also that may be opened or closed by the player. It is very ancient. Some think it the organ invented by Jubal (Gen. iv: 21). The Chinese think it more curious than useful. Their wind instruments are numerous. The hwang tih (flute) is twice the length of our pipe, made of bamboo, and pierced with ten holes. The two near the end are not used. The mouth hole is one-third of the way from the top. The shu tih (clarionet) takes the lead in musical performances. It has seven holes, but no keys. Its tones are shriU and deafening, and therefore popular. street musician fits a flageolet, or small clarionet, to his nose, slings a small drum under one shoulder, hangs a frame of four cymbals on his breast, and with a couple of monkeys sallies forth, a peripatetic choir and orchestra. The stem of the horn is retractible, like a trombone. There are other varieties, however. The lo (gong) is the standard type of Chinese crashing harangue of rapid blows on music. this, with a rattling accompaniment of drums, and a crackling symphony of shrillne from clarionet and cymbal, is their beau ideal of A A music. They have heard good Portuguese music for ages, but have never adopted either an instrument or a tune. A Chinese band makes the European think of Hogarth’s “Enraged Musician.” Each performer seems to have his own tune, and bent on drowning the noise of all the rest; yet they keep good time, only no two of them are tuned on the same key. The Rev. Dr. Eli Smith, of the American Syria Mi ion, found that hymns composed in Arabic measures could seldom be sung in our tunes, and our musicians were puzzled by the intervals in Arab music. On the other hand, Arabs could not repeat our scale. A treatise on Arab music by Michael Mishakah of Damascus explained the difficulty; and from that, with Rosegarten’s edition of Ispahany’s Book of Odes, and Faraby on Ancient Arab Music, Dr. Smith wrote a valuable paper which was published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society. The principles are quite near to those of Persian and ’Turkish music also. He says that sounds are natuiaUy divided into groups of seven, rising one above the other, each the response to the one below, and the ba of the one above. The group is called an octave, diwan, and the octaves are composed of tones, pi. buruj. The first is called yegdh, then osheiran, drak, rest, dugdh, sigdh, and jehdrg/ih. bur], This is the first octave. The second is naw a, huseiny, auj, mdhur, muhaiyar, buzrek, and mohurdn. The last is the response to – ’ —“^ 61V The first of the third octave is remel Hty, the response to naw a. The next octave is the response to the response of naw a, and so on ad So in the first series below yegdh infinitum. they say the base to jehdrgdh, to sigdh, and so through the list, then the base to the base of jehdrg , etc. The intervals between these notes They are divided into two cla es, one containing four quarters and the other three. The former are from yegdh to osheiran, from rest to dug , and from jehdrgdh to naw a. The latter from osheiran to arak, from arak to rest, from dugdh to sigdh, and from sigdh to jehdrgdh. The first cla then has three intervals with twelve quarters, and the second four intervals with twelve quarters. The modern Greeks divide the intervals into seconds, and make three cla es. One cla , corresponding to the first of the Arabs, divides the interval into twelve seconds; the second cla divides it into nine seconds, and is from dCig to sigdh, and from huseiny to auj. are unequal. The third cla , from sigdh to jehdrgdh, and from auj to mahur, has seven seconds to the interval. So their octave contains seven intervals and The Arab and Greek scales sixty-eight seconds. coincide only at four out of the sixty-eight seconds. This is the substance of only four of the thirty pages of the paper. Chapter II. describes Arab melodies now in use, and Chapter III. is devottd to musical rhythm, and Chapter IV. to musical instruments, describing stringed instruments like elud (literally the wood, whence our word”lute”) the Arab guitar, the kemenjeh, or Arab fiddle, with a coconut shell for its body, like the Chinese ti kin; the tambur, a kind of mandolin, and the kanun, corresponding to the yang kin of the Chinese orchestra, only, it would seem, a better instrument. Then of wind instruments, the nay or flute, kerift, mizmar, sunndy, urghan (organ, see Chinese sang), and jenah. In India, music was formerly much more scienT here idolatry has detific than at present. graded music, and the martial music of the Its country has changed with its government. religion now has little to do with music, except dancing with the girls in connection of the temples. Operas are unknown, and theatrical music is of a low order. Marriages furnish the chief occasions for musical display. There are many kinds of musical instruments, as drums, trumpets, horns, cymbals, hautboys, and violins, but the performers have little skill and le taste. The wedding orchestra varies from six to twenty performers. Singing is an accomplishment of women of doubtful morality, who are much eniployed for this purpose by the wealthy. Chrislianity is changing all this, not generally, it is true, but gradually and permanently, for the native convert must give vent to his new joy in songs of praise, and they do this not only the church, but also in their families and when alone. Even before conversion, music does much to prepare the way. A favorite and most succe ful mode of introducing the Gospel in western India is the kirttan, i. e., solo singing by native evangelists with orchestral accompaniment. In September, 1880, Rev. Mr. Bruce of Satara visited Wai with his kirttan choir. The people crowded to hear, espeHuncially as the leader had been a Muslim. dreds stood outside of the building in the rain, and listened for the first time to the way of salvation through a Redeemer. The whole city was m Music and Mlsalons moved, and Christ was the great topic of conversation for many days. Rev. H. Ballan tine, called the Dr. Watts of the Mahratta Mi ion, prepared a hymnal for the churches, and another for the children, which met with great acceptance among the people. Rev. E. Webb was an enthusiast in his researches into the laws of Tamil poetry. It is extremely elaborate in its rhythmical const ruc In 1853 he published a Tamil hymn-book, containing hymns in our meter, children’s hymns, and chants with music, but the largest part of the volume was made up of hymns in native meters. Many copies were taken at once by the English mi ions in Tanjore and Tinnevelli, and singing was introduced in congregations of the American mi ions in places where it had been unknown before. An edition of 2,000 copies was soon exhausted, and a new one was i ued in 1858. Tho the people hear listle ly the most important truth in prose, they give eager attention 1o the same truth when versified and sung. In October, 1860, Mr. Webb gave an account of Tamil versification to the American Oriental Society, defining the two kinds of syllables, then the feet and the stanzas in which they were combined. Tho the natives could see no measure in our verses, or melody in our music, yet hymns written in their own meters, and set to their own melodies, are extremely popular. He read some of them in Tamil with elaborate rhyme a onance and alliteration. He described also the music of the Hindus, known all over India under the same Sanskrit titles, and indicated its relation to our own scale. Ancient India excelled Greece in her cultivation of music; and tho no new tunes have appeared for centuries, those of the best periods still exist, and for these the hymns were composed. Tho in other mi ions there may not have been the same zeal for native music, yet in them receive “the light of the all, as soon as men knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,” they feel impelled to praise the name of the Lord, and mi ionaries are glad to a ist the effort to praise as soon as the spirit of praise appears. It is interesting to look over the record of the beginnings of work on this line in the various mi ions. In Turkey, tho at that time they had few hymns ready for use, yet they could not wait to prepare more, but in 1850 i ued an Armenian hymn-book of only 55 pages. This was followed in 1853 by one in Armeno-Turkish, of 112 pages, i. e., Turkish in Armenian letters, and the next year saw an Armenian Hymn and Tune Book of 300 pages, so rapidly grew their hymnology. That same year (1854) the Greek hymn-book appeared, of 100 pages, tho 16 pages of hymns had been printed as early as 1833. All these were 16mo, but in 1855 appeared a work on church music, in Armenian, of 44 pages, Then in the same language a hymn and 8vo. tune book for children was published in 1860, 40 pages 8vo. This was followed by 24 8vo pages of It seemed additional hymns and music in 1863. as tho good men kept on composing hymns, and, as fast as they did so, the churches could not wait, but had them printed for use at once. Next year (1864) appeared a hymn-book of 104 ICtno pages in Arabo-Turkish, i. e., Turkish in Arabic The following year four hymns were type. printed on one 8vo sheet, and in 1866 a supplement to the Armeno-Turkish hymn-book, of 88 tion. 3Insic and Mi ions Aablus pages 16mo, made its appearance. Next came an Armenian Sunday-school hymn-boolc of 134 16mo pages, followed next year by a Sunday school hymn and tune book in the same language, of 128 8vo pages. The year 1869 saw a volume of Armenian h3’mns and prayers of 192 pages 16mo. The same year welcomed a GrecoTurkish hymn-book of 264 16mo pages, and a second cdi ion came out ten years later. In 1869 the Armf nian hymn-book had grown to 426 pages, and four years later a fresh edition contained 430 pages. This was followed by a supplement of 56 8vo pages to the Armenian hymn and tune book in 1877, and as tho that was not enough, an appendix of 16 pages more was i ued the same year. Such a list of publications indicates an abounding spiritual life that makes what would otherwise be the driest of statistics an occasion of great joy to all who love the prosperity of Zion. In Bulgarian, three pages of hymns and tunes were printed in 1861, the year following a hymn-book of 24 12mo pages, and in 1865 a hymn and tune book of 64 8vo pages. The hymn-book in 1872 had grown to 154 16mo pages. In Syria, while the mi ion was still under the care of the American Board, 200 pages of versified Psalms were printed about 1868. The same year gave 200 pages of children’s hymns to the Sunday schools, and before the mi ion pa ed into the hands of the Presbyterians a hymn-book appeared, first of 300 pages, and after that of 500. About 1874 a hymn and tune book was printed, containing an introduction teaching how to read our musical notation. This was afterward Since then printed separately, 30 pages 8vo. hymns have been prepared to suit the Arab tunes, and are now published with the tunes. A curious feature of these hymns and tune books is that the music has to be reversed to suit the Arabic system In 1882 the Psalms of writing from right to left. in verse were printed for the use of the United and Reformed Mi ions, hymns alone, 400 18mo pages; with tunes, 500 12mo pages; and wUh tonic Sol Fa notation, 600 12mo pages. In 1885 a new 8vo hymn and tune book, containing 327 hymns and 280 tunes, was prepared by Rev. Samuel Jc up and Rev. George Ford, and a second edition was called for in 1889. A hymnbook without tunes appeared in 1885, of 418 pages 18mo. This advanced to a second edition in 1887, and a third in 1889, showing a very encouraging demand for such a work. In the Persian Mi ion the hymn-books have gone through several editions. The last, i ued in 1886, has about 300 hymns, mostly translations, but adapted to 1he expre ion of Christian feeling in Persia, and also to the wants of the young in their Oriental homes. Music has been taught by the mi ionaries. The popular tunes are those used in congregations the United States. The chants of the ancient Syriac and ancient Armenian are used in religious worship, and are very popular. The words, of course, are in the vernacular, and so the congregation can join. They are used especially in chanting the Psalms, and also some other portions of the Scripture, such as are found in books for responsive reading at home. m MUSKOKI LANGUAGE. See Creek. 536