The Research On Several Questions Of The Sheep Horn-bell

The sheep horn-bell, which and timbal are the twinborn brothers, is a very characteristic musical instrument in the southwest of China. It had ever a glorious history, but nowadays, when Chime-bell and timbal are both studied deeply, the sheep horn-bell is noticed Very few. Under the circumstances, this paper, on the basis of the achievements which others had attained, makes a deeper study into the sheep horn-bell by philology, archaeology of science and technology, archaeology of music history, cultural anthropology. Firstly, this paper counts up the basic data accurately and probes systematically into the following questions: the origin, the dates, the clan which it belongs to, the types, the using ways, the distribution; secondly, the paper focuses on the musical performance and the problem of tuning technique. Thirdly, by the musical detection analysis and the comparison with Chime-bells, this paper points out that the double-tone technique was not applied to sheep horn-bell. Fourthly, through the comparative study of horn-bell with other local ancient musical instrument, the study reveals that the horn-bell had a very close relationship with timbale and huan-niu-bell. Finally, the paper tries to analyze the reasons why the sheep horn-bell was ruin.