The inevitable Ling Lun was ordered to cast twelve bells to correspond to the twelve lüs. Metal, the Chinese say, is one of the five elements, and necessarily has its place in music. The bell metal is composed of six parts of copper and one of tin. When melting, the alloy appears to be of an impure dark colour, soon changing into a yellowish white, which gradually passes to a greenish white, and when this last has become green the metal is ready for pouring into the mould. There is in the South Kensington Museum a large and very handsome bell from a Japanese Buddhist temple, which is a fine example of the colour desired. The bells have not clappers, but are struck with wooden mallets.
Smaller bells, however, have clappers, and the little “Fêng-ling” or “wind-bells,” which hang at the eaves of houses and pagodas, are ingeniously contrived to secure effect, light silk ribbon streamers being attached to their clappers so that the softest breezes awakened the sweet sounds. The wind-bells were often hung in halls and corridors for sake of these effects.
Bells of all sizes, from those weighing fifty tons down to the small ones which swing on the eaves of pagodas, used to be found all over China. Some are ornamented with characters, some with designs and symbols; some are round, some are square; and all are mainly used for religious purposes. At the door of each Buddhist temple a bell is seen which the believers on entering strike “to call the attention of the sleeping gods.”
The most ancient Chinese bells were quadrate in form. Bells belonged originally to the Confucian religion, but the Buddhists also adopted their use, and they are commonly to be found in the temples of both. At the temple of Confucius is a great bell which the Chinese say is made to correspond with the very big drum; the one is not used without the other, for the drum had to give the signal to begin, and the bell had to announce the end of the hymn at the ceremonies. This bell is called the Yung Chung. There is another suspended upon a single frame, which has to give the note at the beginning of each verse in order “to manifest the sound” or give the pitch. This bell is called the Po Chung, and is here illustrated. The shape, as will be noticed, differs from that of modern bells.
| The Chinese Po-Chung. |
Fig. 34. |
All their bells are cast to produce a sound definite in pitch, and in their sets of smaller bells and gongs the primitive scale of sounds and its successive order was intended to be kept to so far as the means at command enabled them to secure accuracy, or as near as ceremonial usage required them to be—for with these people ceremonial is religion.
The next illustration is of the Yung-lo or “gong chimes,” composed of ten little gongs suspended upon a frame by silk cords. In making gongs the Chinese are marvellously expert, and specimens of the genuine ancient sort are highly prized here; the tone has a richness and endurance which moderns fail to equal. These little gongs are all of the same diameter, but differ in thickness. The Yung-lo is used at court, mainly on joyful occasions. The larger sized gongs—sometimes they are two feet in diameter—are remarkably fine, and are very generally in use in processions and at various social functions, as well as in temples to waken the gods. He must be a rare sleeper who would be deaf to such a call.
| The Yung-lo or Gong Chimes. |
Fig. 35. |