Few travellers have heard a musical Chinese lady sing, and those who have enjoyed this rare event, say it is the most torturing of all Chinese music; from the _nose_ and throat issue the most droning and hideous sounds, and they seem to pile Ossa upon Pelion in the way of unnatural tones. Although the female voice is therefore lacking in the concerted music of this singular people, the parts sometimes run very high for male voice and the singers for these parts are procured in the same manner in which the papal choir in the last century, procured its highest male voices.[116] Of the divisions of the vocal parts in singing, very little is as yet known, although many books must exist upon the subject, which have hitherto been inaccessible to foreigners. The natural voice of the Chinese is rather high, and very high tenors are not at all rare in the empire. The voice in China is trained to much flexibility by the exigencies of the language, for the Chinese is in one sense, the most musical of languages, as a word acquires half a dozen different significations according to the pitch of voice, or inflection with which it is pronounced. The number of different words in the whole Chinese tongue does not exceed three hundred and fifty; all the additional ones, are simply variations of these by lowering, or raising the voice. This leads the foreigner into endless complications and misunderstandings; for example, the word _tchu_ pronounced clearly with the vowel of medium length, means “master,” but by extending the vowel a trifle it signifies “hog;” it also means “column,” and “cookery.” The syllable “_po_” has eleven different meanings—“glass,” “boil,” “captive,” “prepare,” etc., each of which must be pronounced with a different pitch and inflection.[117] Among the original words are some which decidedly are taken from nature, such as “_tchung_,”—“bell,” “_miaou_,”—“cat,” but these are very few. Some authors have endeavored to show from these facts, that the Chinese is in all respects a musical language, but this can hardly be conceded, for the inflections spoken of, are so slight as to escape the European ear, which surely would not be the case if they were really musical notes, since we have seen that Father Pereira, in the last century, was able to note down at first hearing, and imitate any Chinese song. The people in conversation give the voice a flute-like sound, but this has scarcely arisen from any special musical quality in the language itself. CHAPTER XIII. CHINESE MUSICAL COMPOSITIONS AND CEREMONIES.