heaven and earth.
deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon
Which unscrutinable mysteries lie beyond the creation of all matters of the world, the Arts and Sciences? Many of these secrets are still unfanthomable to humanity but, despite this, mankind attempts to define them through logic, reality and the intelligible, and, only after, gives free rein to the imagination...
According to Greek mythology, the art of music was presided over by Euterpe, of the the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Her eight sisters presided over other forms of art and science; Clio was Muse of history; Thalia of comedy; Melpomene of tragedy; Terpsichore of choral song and dance; Erato of mime or love poetry; Polyhymnia of oratory or sacred poetry, Calliope of epic poetry and eloquence; and Urania of astronomy. Music was understood as the unrivalled sublimation of the Muses's creative talents, who taught Apollo (god of music and poetry; symbol of light and the sun; physical allegory of beauty and protector of the Muses) to sing and dance.
These days music is usually defined as: "The art and science of harmoniously combining sounds in such a manner that its constituent elements provoke a pleasurable hearing sensation and an intellectual excitment capable of unleashing emotions." Music is basically constituted of three basic elements: 'melody' (Greek: 'melôidia', Latin: 'melodia', meaning, 'sweet and soft singing'), 'rhythm" (Greek: 'rhuthmos', Latin: 'r(h)ythmus', meaning, 'cadence') and 'harmony' (Greek and Latin: 'harmonia', meaning, 'symmetry', 'proportion').
It is not known which of these three elements was first established, but it has been conclusively determined that 'harmony', as we presently understand it, was the last element to be defined, originating during the Middle Ages, in the ninth century, with the name 'organum': a duet of voices.
Both 'rhythm' and 'melody' are intrinsically related to the phenomena of human nature as well as those of 'mother' Nature: 'walking', 'breathing' as well as 'day' and 'night', the 'seasons of the year', the 'rainy seasons', and all that is bound to a duration and pre-determined by an order, that is, in accordance with the beginning and the end of a movement or action which settles a time-distance measurable between these two parameters (beginning and end). The tendency to 'rhythm' is so spontaneous and instinctive that it enables us to characterise our feelings, from intense pain to extreme happiness, from the deepest of miseries to the greatest passion.
In classical times, 'rhythm' was considerd the primordial element, active and masculine, of music. 'Melôidia' without 'rhuthmos' was something devoid void of energy and lacking strength. 'Rhythm' is what gives sound a determined and defined form, and therefore renders it intelligible.
In the year 2697BC, the legendary Huangdi• emperor (the Yellow Emperor) sent Ling Lun, • one of his ministers, to a place called Daxia, west of the Guilin mountains (the Chinese Olympus and supposedly the source of fengshui•) with orders to gather some bamboo canes in order to make som lüguan• (sound canes) and in order to establish the fundamental notes of music. Thus, the practical Chinese culture determined a set date for the dawn of its music.
It is said that in that region there is a valley called Chiehku, where bamboo of regular thickness grew. Ling Lun cut a section of bamboo between two nodes and took the sound produced by blowing through that cane section as 'the fundamental sound'. Then he organized a series of twelve cane sections according to his master's instructions, emiting twelve sounds (called lü•) which constituted a basic chromatic scale of music notation. In theory, these twelve sounds were created in correspondence to the lunar and solar cycles. There are several versions explaining the reasoning of Huangdi in establishing such theory: some say that he established this musical scale after listening to the songs of the fêngs•, a tribe living south of the Yangzi river, the first six half-tones corresponding to male voices, and the last six half-tones corresponding to feminine voices; others say that pêngs were not human beings but birds; still others suggest that the idea of primary sounds derives from the waves of the Yangzi river. A more realistic author explains that Ling Lun cut the bamboo canes following the accoustic laws already prescribed for tubular instruments.
All these hypothesis are open to doubt, but they are particularly interesting for a number of reasons.
Firstly, because the origins of Chinese music are situated in the remote western confines of the country, near the import of sources of foreign ideas.
Secondly, because the preoccupation of the Emperor in establishing an exact scale of fundamental notes indirectly reflects a close connection between archaic Chinese music and a religious and para-musical universe, because according to Chinese thought, to precisely determine the pitch of sounds literally means to correspond musical sounds with the forces of the universe. Another proof of this relationship is ascertained by the fact that each time a new emperor ascended to the throne one of his first acts was to command the royal musicians and astrologers to work together in order to determine the revised dimension of the cane sections prescribing the new imperial diapason established according to the propitiatory harmonics derived from the auguries of his reign, in consonance with the laws of Nature and the forces of the universe. The influence of Nature in the arts prevailed until very recently for the Chinese as the fundamental speculative element of their music.
Curiously, the Chinese did fully develop much this achievement. In fact, depite numerous alterations done throughout the centuries, they restricted their musical scores only to the first fundamental five sounds produced by the cane sections, firmly establishing a pentatonic scale which is still commonly in use at present: