For a conquered race the Burmese certainly held their heads remarkably erect, looking the usurper straight in the face without any shame for their own position. The fact was, a very superficial acquaintance with our habits and mode of living had convinced them of our superiority in every respect—save one.
It is very curious that every Eastern native looks down on our music with undisguised contempt. Our bands might discourse the gems of Chopin, Beethoven, and Balfe, but only the veriest loiterer would stop to listen, and, to judge by his expression, it fell as flat on his ear as a penny trumpet would on ours.
Real music was too refined and complicated for nerves accustomed throughout generations to coarser measures in harmony. This was the same all over Hindostan; and it is therefore surprising that our regimental native bands were remarkably good before the Mutiny.
A Burmese band consisted of a number of drums in a circle, and diverse brass instruments, awful to look upon, and still more awful to hear; though what they lacked in harmony they certainly made up for in noise. With the exception of the ubiquitous and irrepressible mosquito, the whole of the lower creation fled before it; and only a sense of dignity prevented many of us from following suit.
The performers must have been animated by extraordinary zeal, if the manner in which they hammered on the drums and blew through the wind-instruments be any criterion. As I invariably hastened in a direction opposite to that which was taken by the performers, I never witnessed the climax of the celebration; but if it continued for long on the same _crescendo_ principle as that with which it passed me, I should think it must ultimately have resulted in rupture of the drum-heads and explosion of the remaining instruments.
The effect of music on nations, and through them on individuals, certainly furnishes matter for a deal of interesting study and comparison. In the primitive state it is simple and natural: Eastern nations make use of it to produce temporary excitement, a method that we have retained in our military bands, or, combined with dancing, as the food of love.
It has always been inseparably connected with religion and religious observances, from the organ and choir of Western religions to the drum and cymbals of the East. If the imagination of the poet can give to “airy nothing a local habitation and a name,” music has a yet greater power; and they are indeed twin sisters, poetry and music raising the civilized mind far above the ordinary range of things earthly. There will doubtless always be some mortals, even in the highest stage of civilization, who are nowise susceptible to the beauties of music; of them our poet for all time has spoken in uncomplimentary terms, perhaps harshly; but, if such a being is not to blame, he is at least incomprehensible.