| In the aristocratic culture of Bronze Age China (especially during the Zhou Dynasty, ca.1100-221 B.C.), ritual music was an essential factor to rulership. Music performed at seasonal and ancestral ceremonies was conceived of as enacting cosmological principles; it embodied sophisticated theoretical speculation. The most advanced technology available was used for producing suitable musical instruments.; From an archaeological vantage point, this thesis explores the intellectual, artistic, and technological sides of Bronze Age music-making. The source materials under consideration comprise, principally, a large number of musical instruments found archaeologically during the last half-century. Interdisciplinary in thrust, the thesis addresses such aspects as instrument typology, archaeological and social context, epigraphic documents, references to music in the classical texts, and ethnographic parallels. At the center of the analysis are the 65 bells found in the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng (d. ca. 433 B.C.) at Leigudun, Suizhou (Hubei Province); their inscriptions provided a body of authentic and systematically coherent texts relating to Chinese musical theory.; After an initial look at the components of the ritual orchestra in Zhou China (chapter I), the remaining chapters of the dissertation concentrate on chime-bells. The acoustical properties, manufacturing technology, and typological development of Zhou dynasty bells are discussed (chapter II). Musically useful chime-bells are clearly distinguishable from bells whose main function was in signal-giving (e.g. in warfare). Each musical bell was designed so as to emit two distinct tones; following the typological filiations through time, it is possible to approximately date the invention of this unique bell-type and to trace its gradual technical perfection.; With the help of their inscriptions, the precise role of bell-chimes in a ritual setting is elucidated (chapter III). Then, on the basis of frequency measurements taken from excavated bells, some fundamental features of Zhou musical theory are analyzed at some detail (chapter IV). Finally, social and economic factors involving bells are addressed through the treatment of a few representative examples (chapter V). Chime-bells derived their cultural meaning from their specific place in the sumptuary hierarchy structuring the possession of status goods in Chinese Bronze Age society; they went out of use at the end of the Zhou dynasty. |
