"
"That is exactly the opinion of many of your Western musicians on
the subject of our ancient Aryan, as well as of modern Hindu, music.
But, in the first instance, the idea of melody is perfectly arbitrary;
and, in the second, there is a good deal of difference between the
technical knowledge of music, and the creation of melodies fit to
please the educated, as well as the uneducated, ear. According to
technical theory, a musical piece may be perfect, but the melody,
nevertheless, may be above the understanding of an untrained taste,
or simply unpleasant. Your most renowned operas sound for us like
a wild chaos, like a rush of strident, entangled sounds, in which
we do not see any meaning at all, and which give us headaches. I
have visited the London and the Paris opera; I have heard Rossini
and Meyer-beer; I was resolved to render myself an account of my
impressions, and listened with the greatest attention. But I own
I prefer the simplest of our native melodies to the productions of
the best European composers. Our popular songs speak to me, whereas
they fail to produce any emotion in you. But leaving the tunes and
songs out of question, I can assure you that our ancestors, as well
as the ancestors of the Chinese, were far from inferior to the
modern Europeans, if not in technical instrumentation, at least
in their abstract notions of music."
"The Aryan nations of antiquity, perhaps; but I hardly believe
this in the case of the Turanian Chinese!" said our president doubtfully.
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