In Javanese and Burmese music these sets of gongs and drums are used incessantly, and form a kind of high-pitched, sustained tone beneath which the music is played or sung.

In Siamese music the wind instruments have a prominent place.  After having heard the Siamese Royal Orchestra a number of times in London, I came to the conclusion that the players on the different instruments improvise their parts, the only rule being the general character of the melodies to be played, and the finishing together.  The effect of the music was that of a contrapuntal nightmare, hideous to a degree which one who has not heard it cannot conceive.  Berlioz, in his “Soirees de l’orchestre,” well described its effect when he said: 

“After the first sensation of horror which one cannot repress, one feels impelled to laugh, and this hilarity can only be controlled by leaving the hall.  So long as these impossible sounds continue, the fact of their being gravely produced, and in all sincerity admired by the players, makes the ‘concert’ appear inexpressibly ‘comic.’”

The Japanese had the same Buddhistic disregard for euphony, but they have adopted European ideas in music and are rapidly becoming occidentalized from a musical point of view.  Their principal instruments are the koto and the samisen.  The former is similar to the Chinese che, and is a kind of large zither with thirteen strings, each having a movable bridge by means of which the pitch of the string may be raised or lowered.  The samisen is a kind of small banjo, and probably originated in the Chinese kin.

From Buddhism to sun worship, from China to Peru and Mexico, is a marked change, but we find strange resemblances in the music of these peoples, seeming almost to corroborate the theory that the southern American races may be traced back to the extreme Orient.  We remember that in the Chinese sacred chants—­“official” music as one may call it—­all the notes were of exactly the same length.  Now Garcilaso de la Vega (1550), in his “Commentarios Reales,” tells us that unequal time was unknown in Peru, that all the notes in a song were of exactly the same length.  He further tells us that in his time the voice was but seldom heard in singing, and that all the songs were played on the flute, the words being so well known that the melody of the flute immediately suggested them.  The Peruvians were essentially a pipe race, while, on the other hand, the instruments of the Mexicans were of the other extreme, all kinds of drums, copper gongs, rattles, musical stones, cymbals, bells, etc., thus completing the resemblance to Chinese art.  In Prescott’s “Conquest of Peru” we may read of the beautiful festival of Raymi, or adoration of the sun, held at the period of the summer solstice.  It describes how the Inca and his court, followed by the whole population of the city, assembled at early dawn in the great square of Cuzco, and how, at the appearance of the first rays of the sun, a great shout would go up, and thousands of wind instruments would break forth into a majestic song of adoration.  That the Peruvians were a gentler nation than the Mexicans can be seen from their principal instrument, the pipe.