Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/77

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No. I.]
CHINESE MUSICAL SYSTEM.
61

The two new notes divide the two thirds of the scale in the same way: a new interval of 90 cents, which is that called in European music a Pythagorean semitone (2/25/46/3), appearing between one of the new notes and Tche, and the other and the higher octave of Koung. These two are the subsidiary notes of the Chinese scale, and were called the two "pien," the name signifying literally "changing into."[1] That next below Tche was called " pien-Tche," and that next below Koung, "pien-Koung." The whole series was called the "seven principles" (Tsi-Ché). This is the identical determination of the intervals of a seven-step octave scale, which, given in the theory of Pythagoras, remained the foundation of the European musical system for two thousand years thereafter, and was definitely relinquished only during the sixteenth century. The Tsi-Ché of China and the diatonic scale of classical and mediæval Europe may be alike defined as an order of intervals in which a (Pythagorean) semitone alternates first with two and then with three major tones.[2]

While in China music has been founded in the main upon the simpler scale of five steps, evidence of the antiquity of the "pien" is not wanting. In answer to theorists who regarded them as an innovation, Prince Tsai-yu (1596) declares that one

  1. Or, as Père Amiot defines it, "that which passes from the state of possibility to that of existence." (p. 55.)
  2. A nomenclature whose first employment is attributed to Guido d' Arezzo (eleventh century) is now applied in the following way to the various notes of this order: The note below the group of three tones is called Fa; then follow (upward) Sol and La: Si being the name applied (from the sixteenth century) to the note above the group of three tones; the note below the group of two is called Ut (later Do), Re being between, and Mi above them. With these the names given in China to the notes of the same order correspond as follows:

    FaSolLaSiDoReMi
    (204) (204) (204) (90) (204) (204)
    KoungChangKiopien-TcheTcheYupien-Koung

    In the development which the diatonic scale has undergone in modern times, first into the harmonic, and then into the tempered scale of our pianos, this symbolism has come to have two other slightly different meanings, as follows:

    Modern diatonic: (204) (182) (204) (112) (204) (182)
    FaSolLaSiDoReMi
    Modern tempered: (200) (200) (200) (100) (200) (200)