The Bianqing Tradition

Stone slabs tuned one note each, the bianqing chimes with bronze bells as the metal-and-stone core of early ritual music

Related

BianqingBianzhongYayue (Court Ritual Music)

Time and place

The bianqing is a set of stone slabs hung by pitch on a wooden frame. Stone chimes appear at Taosi in Shanxi and Erlitou in Henan; three-piece sets appear in the Shang, and the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng at Suizhou, Hubei, held thirty-two slabs in two tiers, inscribed with pitch names. Early courts and sacrifices used them, and later Confucius temples and the Qing court's ritual ensembles kept them.

What happened

Bells and chimes together were the metal-and-stone core of early ritual music. Bell pitch is set by size and by scraping the inner wall, chime pitch by length, width and thickness, a little grinding lowering the note. The Zeng chimes and bells came from one tomb, showing twelve-tone practice in the fifth century BCE. After the Han, as court ritual declined, the chimes became ceremonial furniture, still regulated in Confucius temples and state rites; twentieth-century reconstructions brought them back.

Musical features

Each slab gives one note, fixed by the stone and not transposable, with range set by the number of slabs. Slabs of limestone or jade hang on a frame and are struck with a wooden mallet; the tone is cold and short, contrasting with the long ring of bells. Playing is mostly single strokes, in ensemble with bells, drums, zithers and sheng; ritual music demands even metre, and the number of strokes in a piece is prescribed. Volume is modest, and gravity comes from ensemble and space.

What to listen for

Hear the cold, short stone, then how it interlocks with the bells' long decay. A chime's attack is hard and its decay fast, good for marking beats; a bell hangs on, so the two alternate. The library's Longchuan Diao from Hubei, Pusongling Liqu from Shandong and the Beijing temple song are a Hubei lantern tune, a Shandong qu tune and a temple chant, not bianqing recordings.

Common misunderstandings

The bianqing is often confused with the bronze bowl chime of Buddhist temples. The temple qing is a bowl-shaped bronze with a long ring; the bianqing is a set of stone slabs for court ritual. Another mistake is to treat the chimes as an appendage of the bells: they have their own scales and inscriptions and are a primary source for early Chinese tuning.

Sources

• 《中国音乐词典》编辑部编，中国音乐词典（人民音乐出版社）— 条目与年代核对，未引用
• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry "China" — framework and dates checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.