Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/190

174 Amiot. We have found further in the philosophical interpretation of this process in ancient China a suggestion of ideas current in our own time and race; and in the Chinese resolution of the problem of a music upon this foundation, several striking likenesses to that reached by the European musical consciousness. A device of detail like the Guidonian hand, proves to have its counterpart in China: perhaps also the "participatione" of the mediæval Italians. The same step (La-Si, Kio-pien-Tche) of the identical diatonic scale of Europe and China came to be equally divided in the two systems by a note which in China finally took the place of the next higher, while in Europe the two remained to form the germ of the modern chromatic scale. The transposing scales of ancient Greece seem to have been based originally upon an interval order identical with the ancient three-octave extension of the Lu, and to have constituted a system of primary and secondary keys like that of China, the nomenclature of the two being in a manner opposite. The Chinese method of naming is adopted in the key system of modern Europe, although the different origin of the latter results also in another which we have called individual. The distinction fundamental in European music since the Reformation, of a major and a minor scale, seems to have been incorporated in Chinese theory during mediæval times. We have seen reason to suspect, on the other hand, an extension of this distinction to the absolute pitch of the scale of reference such as has no counterpart in European music. Finally, our songs indicate that Chinese compositions may sometimes be conceived as written in the Tonic style, and that the same tonalities are recognized therein as obtained in European music of the middle ages.

Although the music we have been studying is that of a third of the population of the globe, it is still in great measure unknown to the rest of the world. The conclusions in regard to the Chinese system of keys which we have here based on the few data accessible to the Occidental student, are to be regarded not as established results, but as suggestions for further inquiry.