Chapter 9 Section 5 Splendid underground music hall

In June 1978, an ancient tomb of the Warring States Period was excavated in Suixian County, Hubei Province. Once the music relics unearthed came out, they immediately shocked the world.The music relic in this ancient tomb is the underground music hall built when Zeng Guojun "Y" was buried.The east chamber and the middle chamber of Zeng Houyi's tomb are filled with rare musical instruments in the world: chime bells, chimes, drums, se, qin, sheng, panxiao, and chi, a total of 124 pieces, the most exquisite of which is a set of chime bells.In addition, it is the first time that real objects such as qin, pan flute, and drum have been discovered, and chi is the earliest piece of unearthed cultural relics of similar musical instruments in China.The instruments in the east room include ten-stringed qin, five-stringed qin, se, sheng, snare drum, etc. These instruments can be used to form a small silk and bamboo band. Sheng) the joy of Se".The musical instruments set up in the middle room are centered on heavy bells, chimes, and drums, and there are also panpipes, chi, sheng, and se.These instruments can be used to form a large bell and drum band, and the music played is judged to be the "music of bells and chimes" commonly used by the princes and nobles in sacrificial ceremonies in the pre-Qin period.

The large chime bells in the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng consist of 64 pieces of bronze bells of different sizes, which are divided into three layers (small at the top and large at the bottom) on the west and south walls of the middle room and hung on the brackets of the curved copper-wood structure. .The three-story painted beam is lifted by six bronze warriors with their hands and heads, bearing a whole set of bronze bells with a total weight of more than 2,500 kilograms. After more than 2,000 years of history, it still stands as it was when it was unearthed. What a spectacular miracle on earth !What is even more admirable is the incomparable achievements in music science at that time: each of its bells is cast with inscriptions in wrong golden seal script, with a total of more than 2,800 characters, most of which have specific music content, which can be divided into phonetic inscriptions There are two categories of inscriptions and rhythm inscriptions, which respectively record the name of the tune (temperament) of each bell's pronunciation.After being struck, each bell can emit two tones, and these two tones form a minor third relationship.Comparing the inscription with the actual scientific sound measurement after unearthed, the sound of the whole set of chime bells is beautiful and the rhythm is accurate. The basic scale structure is the same as the seven-tone scale in C major which is commonly used internationally today. The total range is more than five octaves, and the center range is 12. The semitones are complete, and can be freely transferred, and can play various music composed of pentatonic, sixtonic or seventonic scales.The music inscriptions show the corresponding relationship between the rhythms of Chu, Jin, Qi, Shen, Zhou and Zeng Guo during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States period, reflecting the frequent exchanges in music culture among the various princes at that time.Five people are required to play this set of chime bells, three of them hold six mallets to hit the three groups of small and medium-sized bronze bells in the upper and middle layers respectively, and the other two hold wooden rams and stand left and right to hit the big bronze bells in the lower layer respectively.It can be imagined that at the moment when the chime bells are playing grand music, it is accompanied by the melodious tunes played by pan flute, chi and sheng, the brisk melody played by qin and harp, the complex rhythm of drum beating, and the crisp harmony of chime beating. How beautiful and moving the music is when it sounds in unison and in symphony.

The discovery of the underground music hall in the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng and the publication of the test results are of great significance in the field of musicology research: it shows that the Chinese nation had scientific absolute pitch and relative pitch in their music life before the 5th century BC. The concept of height; all kinds of scales including the heptatonic scale have been used; the traditional harmony thinking mode of multi-part performance is possible; the relatively complete theory of melody and the physical acoustics practice of producing melody and formulating melody have been established.