Aaron Rabushka wrote:

>Very often it seems as if composers in the European tradition of CM use
>a pentatonic scale (all the black keys on the piano will produce one)
>to invoke things Chinese.

This has been talked about on this and/or another classical music lists
before.  So far as I can hear, pentatonicity alone doesn't make music
sound what we consider typically Chinese.  I hear nothing Chinese in "Old
MacDonald" or "Auld Lang Syne".  But I'd identify the music accompanying
Chinese films as Chinese, blindfolded and not knowing that a Chinese film
was being shown.  While being essentially pentatonic may be a necessary
condition (something of which I'm not at all sure) for music to sound
Chinese, there's also the choice of intervals, the phrasing, the sliding
from note to note, w/out which a pentatonic passage will sound (to me at
least) quite occidental.

Walter Meyer