DgcityA bell struck in China around 650 BC is among more than 70 ancient instruments going on display in Phoenix from November 6, in the first wide-ranging American exhibition of musical treasures excavated from China’s southern kingdoms. The show gathers objects more than two thousand years old, many never before seen in the United States.
The exhibition at the Musical Instrument Museum was organised with the Hubei Provincial Museum under the guidance of China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration. It features more than 40 artefacts on their first American trip and ten Grade One national cultural relics, the highest protection grade China assigns and a designation rarely granted for objects travelling abroad. Among the highlights is the bo bell of the Marquis Qiu of Zeng, cast around 650 BC, and a painted chime in the flamboyant Chu style, where phoenix designs can still be made out despite two millennia of fading.
The southern kingdoms that held the middle Yangtze region, above all the state of Chu, built a musical culture distinct from the plains of the Yellow River. Sets of bronze bells, stone chimes and lacquered instruments governed court ritual and marked rank, while scales and tuning systems developed far earlier than many outside specialists once assumed. The instruments on show were buried with rulers and nobles, and survived in waterlogged tombs across present-day Hubei.
The displays place the instruments alongside ceramic and stone figures of musicians, bronze swords, armour and jade pendants to set the music within courtly life, with excavation footage and modern performances supplied by the Hubei museum. The museum marks the opening with three days of curator talks, demonstrations and live music from November 6 to 8.
Visitors can measure the achievement against the most famous find from the same region, the 65-bell set from the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, dated around 433 BC and now held in Wuhan. Its bells span five octaves and can play a full twelve-note scale, an acoustic feat Europe would not match for two millennia. Each bell carries inscriptions describing pitches and transposition rules, evidence that Chinese theorists had worked out a precise tonal science rather than relying on craft rule of thumb.
