History and Classification of Ancient Chinese Musical Instruments
By admin on 2014-12-16

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One of the most important aspects of Chinese culture is its music. Ancient Chinese music made its presence as early as 256 BC with the emergence of the Zhou Dynasty. Ancient Chinese musical instrument can be broadly classified according to the manufactured materials like wood, stone, hide, silk, bamboo, gourd, clay, and metal. Ancient Chinese musical instruments can also be divided in terms of wind, percussion, plucked, bowed, and hammered string instruments.

There are a wide variety of Chinese instruments ranging from gongs, flutes, drums to mouth organs, and clappers etc. The silk instruments whose material silk is the favorite had strings that could be struck, plucked, or bowed. Pipa, Liuqin, Duxianqin, Se, Guin, and Saxin are some of the silk string instruments that had to be plucked. Erhu, a fiddle with two strings, is one of the most popular bowed silk string Chinese musical instruments.

The importance of the bamboo musical instruments can be deciphered from the work Night Revels of Han Xiazai. There are many flutes made of bamboo, like Bangdi, Dongdi, Yue, and Chi. Reeds were also extensively used for creating musical instruments like Nazi, Guan, Mangtong, and Bawu.

Wooden musical instruments were equally popular in ancient China. Wood was used for making the Bangzi, Guban, Yu, Muyu, and Zhu. With their years of tried and tested expertise they were successful in creating distinct melodious tunes with the help of these musical instruments.

The Chinese used stone to manufacture the Bianqin. It was a group of stones hung with a rope from a wooden structure. Metals were mostly used to make percussion instruments, like gongs, cymbals, and bells. Bronze was the most frequently used metal in making musical instruments. Laba, Chun, bronze drum, Luo, Bo, Nao, and Bianzhong are some of the famous metal made instruments. Fou and Xun were made from baked clay.

Gourd was used to make mouth organs like Yu, Hukusheng, Sheng, and He. Animal skin was utilized to make some of the finest ancient Chinese musical instruments like Tao, Bofu, Yaogu, Tanggu, Bangu, Biangu, Huzuo Wujia Gu, and Daigu.

The Chinese introduced more than 80 kinds of musical instruments and ushered in foremost classification structure of musical instruments in the world.