Silk and Traditional Chinese Musical Instruments
Silk is the traditional material used in construction of strings.The Liji (Record of Rituals, c. Ist century BC) suggests that silkstrings represent 'puri- ty'(lian) and 'determination'...
Free and Lyrical Chinese Mountain Songs
Mountain songs belong to the mountains and wilderness. Inspired by nature under the sky, seeing the beautiful scenery of the mountain and rivers, the singers sing impromptu of what they see, freely ex...
Traditional Chinese percussion instruments and wood
Several highly idiosyncratic percussion instruments are included within this category,all with strong symbolic associations. The idiophone known as zhu is essentially a wooden box with outward sloping...
Traditional Chinese Musical Instrument, Sheng
The sheng is the earliest reed pipe wind instrument in China, and the world's first musical instrument with the use of free reed. It makes sounds through the combination of the reed and pipe, and...
Skin and Chinese drums
Used for drumheads, the historic significance of skin is found in the signaling nature of the drums themselves (rather than, say, in communion with the hideyielding water buffalo). More than twenty dr...
Clay and Ancient Chinese Musical Instruments
Clay is evocative of earth (di) as a fertile field. Constructed of fire-hardened clay, the xun globular flute is the only surviving example from this category.Following the appearance of the ancient S...
Chinese Traditional Musical Instruments,xiao a vertical bamboo flute
The xiao,also known as vertical flute, is a straight wind instrument. Different from bamboo flute, it has fixed tone holes without a membrane hole.In ancient times,use of the xiao was spread among peo...
Ancient Chinese stone instruments
A natural substance from the earth, symbolic of longevity and stability, stone was of obvious value for usage in ancestral rituals. Only one instrument type is found in this category, the qing stone c...
Ancient Chinese metal instruments
Bronze casting, one of the great technological achievements of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, was employed primarily for construction of ritual implements such as vessels and bells. There is quite stro...
Propriety and Music in Confucianism
Confucius's ideas about music apparently had a conservative and retrospective color.He insisted on "being happy but not lascivious,and being sentimental but not mawkish."Music shou...
