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upon the art, the contents of which are but slightly known to us. The details of music at state and religious functions are supervised by an imperial bureau, and degrees in music are given on examination. Yet the popular use of music is limited, being largely in the hands of traveling beggars (often blind).

The tone-system is theoretically complicated. Its basis is probably tetrachordal, like the Greek, but in practice it tends to a pentatonic scale, discarding semitones. But the division of the octave into twelve semitones is also known and in theory is applied somewhat intricately. The rhythms of song are emphatic and almost always duple. Some rudiments of harmony are known, but are rarely used except for tuning.

The tones of the pentatonic series may be roughly represented by our tones f, g, a, c, d. They bear fantastic Chinese names—'Emperor,' 'Prime Minister,' 'Subject People,' 'State-Affairs,' 'Picture of the Universe.' For each there is a written character, so that melodies can be recorded in a letter-like notation, written vertically. Many melodies have been transcribed by foreign students. Their pentatonic basis gives them a peculiar quaintness, recalling old Scottish songs. In 1809 Weber took one of these as the theme for his overture to Schiller's Turandot, but such adaptations are extremely rare.

One peculiarity of Chinese speech has musical significance. The language consists almost wholly of monosyllables, each of which has different meanings according to the 'tone' or melodic inflection with which it is pronounced. It is possible that these 'tones,' which are four or five in number, have relation to song. At all events, dignified or poetic utterance tends towards chanting or cantillation.

It is interesting that in cases where European music has been introduced by missionaries it has sometimes been adopted with astonishing ease and enthusiasm, extending even to elaborate part-singing.

Chinese instruments are numerous and important. But it is uncertain which of them are indigenous and which are borrowed from other parts of Asia. Native writers say that nature provided eight sound-producing materials—skin, stone, metal, clay, wood, bamboo, silk, gourd—and classify their instruments accordingly.

Thus dressed skin is used in manifold tambourines and drums, with one or two heads, the sizes running up to large tuns mounted on a pedestal. Stone appears in plates of jade or agate, single or in graduated sets, hung by cords from a frame and sounded by a mallet or beater, producing a smooth, sonorous tone. Metal is wrought chiefly into bells, gongs and cymbals of many shapes and sizes (the gongs sometimes arranged in graduated sets), but also into long, slender trumpets. Clay