he
third volume of the _Asiatic Researches_--makes an attempt to render one
of their most popular songs. The original, of which he also gives a
copy, looks like a mixture of Egyptian hieroglyphics and Chinese
characters, and how far our notation represents it it is impossible to
say; for, though Sir W. Jones was an erudite Oriental scholar, that of
itself would not render him a good translator of Hindoo music. The air
is a song of love and spring, and the measure is indicated, "rapid and
gay:"

[Illustration: MUSIC.]

Kindred to Semitic and Hindoo music, though venturing on bolder
intervals, is Chinese, Persian and Arabian. The almost untranslatable
airs of India assume in China something like an artless melody. Their
smallest intervals are semitones, which have been in use, like
everything else in China, from time immemorial. Nevertheless, in the
diatonic series of seven intervals the Chinese usually avoid the two
semitones by omitting the fourth and the seventh, so that their scale
consists really of only five intervals, and as they regard F as their
principal key (just as we regard C as ours), the Chinese scale stands
thus:

[Illustration: CHINESE SCALE.]

This scale is, however, by no means confined to China, but is met with
in several Asiatic countries--Japan, Siam, Java, etc. In order to judge
how it affects the character of music, I have copied the following
Chinese air and Japanese song from Carl Engel's _Researches into Popular
Songs and Customs_:

[Illustration: CHINESE AIR, "MOO-LEK-WHA."]

[Illustration: JAPANESE AIR.]

Arabic music, which is Asiatic in its foundation, shows decided traces
of the wider civilization and greater independence of character to which
this race attained. The delicate gradations of sounds are still adhered
to in the form of multitudes of grace-notes, but the intervals are
longer and the melodies more decided. The overloading of the melody by
an excessive use of trills and grace-notes by Persians, Arabians, and
even Spaniards, in their popular music, indicates some common sentiment;
and it is remarkable that the European Jews preserve this same Oriental
ornamentation in the vocal performances of their synagogues. Numerous
examples of Arabic music may be found in Lane's _Modern Egypt_. This
writer professes great admiration for it, and says he "never heard the
song of the Mekka water-carriers without emotion," though it consists of
only three notes:

[Illustration: MUSIC.]