Yellow Bell: Music of the Universe in Ancient China

Early hominids were in China as far back as the Paleolithic period. Chinese civilization probably began in the Huang River valley c. 3000 B.C.E. Traditional Chinese history began with the Hsia dynasty c. 2000 B.C.E., while the first period for which valid historical evidence exists was the Shang dynasty of the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries B.C.E., during which the Chinese developed a writing system and a calendar.

China was probably the first civilization to record a detailed system of myth and science based on the concept of a musical universe.

Magic Sounds
As in other ancient civilizations, the Chinese musicomythological belief system was founded on the prehistoric idea that sound/music connected humans to natural and supernatural forces throughout the cosmos.

"The belief in the power of music to sustain (or if improperly used to destroy) Universal Harmony was but an extension of the belief in the magic power of sounds. As a manifestation of a state of the soul, a single sound had the power of influencing other souls for good or ill. By extension, it could influence objects and all the phenomena of Nature." (Picken, 87)

Magic sounds came to be associated with magic numbers. Numbers seemed to operate according to unvarying rules. Therefore, numbers symbolized the eternal laws of nature and were believed to have metaphysical properties. By applying divine measures to the production of their musical tones, the Chinese created a music system that they believed was a revelation of the eternal laws of cosmic order.

Ritual Tones
The foundation of the Chinese music system was a tone called the huang chung ("yellow bell"). The Chinese depended on the "correctness" of the pitch of the huang chung and on the orderly generation of tones from it to preserve a harmonious correspondence between their music and the cosmic order.

In Chinese tradition, the huang chung system began in the third millennium B.C.E., but the system was not recorded till about the third century B.C.E. The original tone of the huang chung and the original meaning of its name are obscure.

Various legends and theories have been proposed. For example, the original tone may have been that produced by a pipe one Chinese foot long, supposedly representing the norm in nature. The tone was also said to be the pitch produced by a man speaking without passion. The name yellow bell may have come from the use of bells to produce tones at some early stage in the system.

Eventually, however, the tone was produced by a length of bamboo pipe. As each new emperor came to power, he believed that it was his duty to recalculate the length of the imperial pitch pipes so that his reign would harmonize, more accurately than his predecessors had, with nature and supernature (this concept remained with Chinese rulers up to recent times). The length of the pipe producing the huang chung changed dozens of times, from about eight inches to about thirteen inches.

The huang chung also had a practical use, the size of the huang chung pipe determining the Chinese standards of length and weight. In fact, the Imperial Bureau of Music became a division of the Imperial Bureau of Weights and Measures. The music of the universe-as symbolized by the huang chung-was an important part of everyday life in China.

From the huang chung, the Chinese derived eleven other tones by blowing across the tops of a set of bamboo pipes whose lengths were determined by mathematical proportions. The pipes were alternately two-thirds and four-thirds the length of each preceding pipe, so that the vibration rates of the tones were alternately three-halves and three-fourths the rate of each preceding tone, thus producing, after the huang chung, a series of ascending fifths and descending fourths.

The pipe-length ratios were based on the powers of two and three because the Chinese believed that two was the numeral of earth and three was the numeral of heaven. A music system based on the careful use of those numerals thus expressed the harmony between earth and heaven.

Because the huang chung changed so many times, the Chinese did not have a system of absolute pitch. Traditionally, however, the huang chung is represented in modern writings by the F above middle C. Therefore, the huang chung and the eleven other tones in the series of ascending fifths and descending fourths are as follows: F, C, G, D, A, E, B, F-sharp, C-sharp, G-sharp, D-sharp, and A-sharp. The next tone in the series would be E-sharp, which is simply F again.

Arranged in ascending order, the twelve tones form what is now called the chromatic scale: F, F-sharp, G, G-sharp, A, A-sharp, B, C, C-sharp, D, D-sharp, and E.

The ancient Chinese, however, regarded the twelve tones not as a chromatic scale but as a matrix of available pitches in their system. The tones were conceived primarily as individual entities for ritualistic uses depending on the season and the rite (see "Cosmic Music," below).

For ordinary music purposes, the Chinese employed a pentatonic scale that corresponded with-though it may or may not have been derived from-the first five tones of the huang chung series of ascending fifths and descending fourths (F, C, G, D, and A, arranged into the pentatonic scale F, G, A, C, and D). There is also evidence that heptatonic (seven-tone) scales were sometimes used.

Cosmic Music
The ancient Chinese equated the orderly generation of tones in the huang chung series with all other types of order in the cosmos.

For example, the twelve tones in the series were regarded as a divinely conceived set providing a cosmologically correct tone for each of the twelve hours of the day and the twelve months of the year.

The huang chung was believed to correspond to the middle direction, the planet Saturn, the whole year, the color yellow, feeling, and other objects, qualities, and concepts. Another tone stood for the west, Venus, autumn, white, taste, and so on. Yet a different tone stood for the east, Jupiter, spring, blue, smell, and so forth. Other tones had similar associations.

Because of its cosmic meaning, music was thought to have an ethical influence on human behavior. Therefore, tones stood for such things as political offices and even human virtues.

This traditional cosmology, with the huang chung, or yellow bell, at its center, was a well-organized combination of myth and science that gave order and unity to all of existence and, in particular, elevated the individual human life by profoundly interconnecting it with music, nature, and the universe.
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