Excerpt from Chinese Music
The Chinese have the reputation of being a strange people, with a peculiar language, peculiar institutions, customs, and manners, utterly different from those of our Western countries.
Since Chinese ports were thrown open to foreigners, the influx of visitors of all kinds has continually increased. Missionaries, diplomats, travellers - some led there by duty, others attracted by the prospect of a new field for studies, and others guided by mere curiosity - have crossed the country in all directions. From these visits has resulted a large number of books - relations of travels, descriptions of country, customs, and manners - books on any subject, all tending to acquaint Western nations with the wonderful Celestial Empire, and, principally, to point out the immense difference existing between Chinese and European ideas.
Amongst the subjects which have been treated with the least success by foreign writers, Chinese Music ranks prominently. If mentioned at all in their books, it is simply to remark that "it is detestable, noisy, monotonous; that it hopelessly outrages our Western notions of music," etc. I do not wish to create any discussions by contradicting these and many other erroneous statements found in descriptions of Chinese Music: it would take too long a time.
In the description I give here I will endeavour to point out the contrasts or similarity between Western and Chinese Music, to present abstruse theories in the least tiresome way, to add details never before published, and to give a short yet concise account of Chinese Music.
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге Chinese Music (Classic Reprint) (J. A. Van Aalst)