Taiwan Today

Confucius heard the Shao music while he was in Ch'i. He forgot the taste of meat for three months thereafter. "I never thought music could be so beautiful," he said. Chinese music is one of the three great systems and goes back some 5,000 years. In fact, Chinese language is itself musical. Westerners sometimes say the Chinese speak in a singsong way. The Peiping dialect (Mandarin) has four tones and some other dialects have more. Vendors call out their wares melodically. Waiters "sing" their orders to the chef. In olden times, shopkeepers sang of the good quality of their goods and the reasonable prices. Students improvise melodies when they are memorizing texts. They move their heads from side to side, keeping time with the melody, as they recite for a teacher. Formal music is unlike that of the West but melodic. The pentatonic scale was used until about 600 B.C., when two semitones were added. Harmony entered Chinese music only in modern times. Traditionally, there are 84 scales as compared with the 12 of the two modes (major and minor) in the West. Some of China's ancient instruments are introduced in these pages. At the let is the sheng with a sound like bagpipes.

 

 

 

 

China's national music - known as kuo yueh - doesn't have a "Top Ten." But instrumentalists, orchestras and performances on radio and television are leading to a modest renaissance in Taiwan. Originally this was a music of rites and ceremonies. Emperors established their own orchestras; one of these was made up of women. The heights of popularity were reached in T'ang times of more than 1,000 years ago when royal troupes numbered hundreds of musicians, singers and dancers. Identified clockwise starting at top left, the instruments on these pages are: Hu chin, one of the violins, with round bamboo sounding box. Erh hu with a wooden amplifier in octagonal shape. Pai hsiao or panpipes, supposedly invented by the Emperor Shun 4,000 years ago. The wooden fish is one of many percussion instruments. Made of bronze, the chun is tapped in time with the drumbeat. Gongs are of great importance in the music of the drama, which the West knows as Chinese opera. So are the cymbals, which are seen below with more gongs. The kung hou is an ancient harp of 23 strings. Finally comes the cheng, a zither which combines the sounds of harp, guitar and piano. This is a popular solo instrument of Japan and Korea as well as China.

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More than 100 instruments are found in the Chinese musical family. Many of these are to be seen in frequent classical music performances in Taiwan. Top: Cheng is plucked and may have 13 silk or 16 steel strings. Center from left: Sheng has 17 pipes and reeds and has a plaintive sound; it is the horizontal flute, usually made of bamboo; and hsun is the porcelain version of the famed "sweet potato" or ocarina. Bottom: Classical orchestra performing. These days many of the best players are girls.