Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/39

furnishes whistles of the ocarina type, often molded into fantastic animal shapes. Wood, besides forming the bodies of stringed instruments, is made into clappers or castanets, into curious boxes that are sounded by striking, and into coarse oboes (usually with metal bells and other fittings). Bamboo provides the tubes of both direct and tranverse flutes, with 6-9 finger-holes, and for syrinxes and the 'cheng' (see below). Silk furnishes the strings for zithers (as the 'che,' with 25 strings, and the 'kin,' with 7), lutes (as the 'moon-guitar,' with 4 strings, the 'pipa,' also with 4, and the 'san-heen,' with 3), viols or fiddles (as the 'ur-heen,' with 2 strings, and the 'hu-kin,' with 4),and bow-zithers (as the 'la-kin,' with 20 strings). [Several other instruments are strung with wire, as the 'yang-kin' or dulcimer and the 'tseng' or bow-zither, both with 20 strings.] A gourd makes the resonance-bowl of the 'cheng,' having also some 13 or more little bamboo pipes, each of which contains a minute free reed of brass.

Bell-founding is supposed to have been acquired by Europe from China, and the 'cheng' is the prototype of several free-reed instruments in Europe invented since 1800, including the accordion and the reed-organ.

Fig. 11.—Chinese Temple Gong, elaborately damascened.

Fig. 12—Chinese Cheng and Japanese Sho.

The Japanese musical system was derived from China, but so long ago that it has now become distinct. The popular use of singing and of instruments is here an almost universal accomplishment of importance, but, on the other hand, the literary treatment of the art is meagre.