| Show JAPANESE MUSIC there art in it that bunot cunot hana laid by occidental to one who never beard it it is biblo to give a definite idea of japanese music and to one who haars hoars it for the first time it must either repel or strangely attract fo its fantastic intervals and fractional tones demand a totally bew ednee of musical appreciation and call into being a new set of musical sensa bione tione it is as if a hitherto closed door between sense and spirit had been suddenly thrown open one feels that if reincarnation be true one might through this door alone remember and reconstruct those vanished existences only in the tones of their own sn a bird which has but throe notes have I 1 heard anything so occult japanese music is like japanese art which with its spirit sense and symbolism its strange method it brush handling might seem merely at first but which gradually reveals to the initiated eye mysteries within mysteries of artistic form and perception until one finds oneself encompassed by a now art world where is subordinated to feeling and whose finest effects are obtained through the art of omission As for instance in the greatest paintings of fujiyama the gafred itself is discovered to ie the bare white nn painted silk as if color and line could bo but the boundaries and outer confines of pure isolated idea so in japanese music its methods are not ours its climaxes come in crashes of silence in sustained and soundless pause the notes subordinated to a silent something an inner sense which while restraining or even repressing sound is the very ecstasy of musical sensation in vain we attempted to analyze this subtle effect to reduce it to the terms of our musical consciousness it defied and eluded us as spirit must always defy and elude sense and we perforce contented ourselves with following the strange rounded isolated notes sustaining ourselves breathlessly on its wonderful nausea and yielding to tho irregular cadenced charm of the singer whose face at first so unremarkable deemed to grow of a shining effulgence u she thus interpreted to us an unknown world washington star |
