East playing West

A half-hour performance ensued, with a full complement of Chinese instruments, and players dressed in vividly colored courtly garb. It was a sound at once rigid and brilliant, precise in attack and vibrant in delivery. It was the most remarkable musical experience of his trip.

At the time, he didn't quite know what he was hearing, but later surmised that he had witnessed a re-creation of zhonghe shaoyue, the music that resounded at the temple while the emperor made sacrifices to Heaven. He walked for another hour in the temple park, thrilled to have had an aural glimpse of what he took to be the true music of China.

A little later, hearing a wistful melody coming from an unseen bamboo flute, he went in search of its source, hoping for another revelation. After making his way through a maze of pine trees, he found a man of great age and haunted visage, playing the theme from "The Godfather."

I found that these revelations contained in "Symphony of Millions" seem to explain some of the similarities between the occidental music with which I grew up, and that of the enchanting 'Middle Kingdom', perhaps belying Rudyard Kipling's 1889 poem in which he claimed:

"East is east, and west is west, and never the twain shall meet".

Let your own ears decide.