Study on the lithology of stone chimes (stone musical instruments in ancient China) and Lingbi stone

Abstract

The oldest extant musical instruments in the world are stone chimes. This music was created by the 'eight tones' that could be produced by these 'stone' voices. Although many of these stone chimes have been unearthed from sites predating the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period in China, their discussion in archaeological reports is usually not very thorough. In this paper, the ancient and modern samples are analysed from the point of view of lithology. The aim is to explore how the ancients chose to make these stones, and to check that the type of stone from which these ancient Chinese stone chimes are made is actually those recorded in previous studies. The results show that most of the ancient stone chimes in China are made of limestone. These chimes required a material with a single, homogeneous and compact mineral composition. Lingbi chimes (a kind of 'lithophone' produced in Lingbi county, China, are pure in composition and have a fine microcrystalline structure, which is the best choice for making stone chimes. This paper makes a systematic study of the lithology of Chinese stone chimes. The results supplement a significant lacuna in the study of 'lithophone' and ancient stone instruments both in China and on a more global scale.

Attending to the Sounds of Sonorous Stones

“…Predating by centuries these Yorkshire musicians, lithophones made with limestone from the sediment-filled Huang He (Yellow River) Basin, were played during the Late Neolithic Longshan culture in China (1600-1046 BCE). The subsequent development of grinding technologies during the Shang dynasty led to the production of sets of stone chimes tuned to an eight-tone scale (Liuliu, Ying, Mingyue, and Qiao 2019).…”

“…The acoustic properties of lithophones, categorised as directly struck percussion plaques by the Hornbostel-Sachs system, have been more systematically analysed under the broad category of idiophones. As with a xylophone, for clear tonality vibrations must pass through the material swiftly, a process enhanced by stone with a dense, even, and homogeneous composition; discontinuities, such as pores, cracks, crevices, large crystalline particles, or structural irregularities, interrupt the transmission of sound waves, resulting in random vibrations that make noise, but do not ring (Liuliu, Ying, Mingyue, and Qiao 2019;Martorano 2018). To orchestrate this geological resonance, there are systems to measure and stabilise its variable dynamics, tools that in the hands of an attentive artisan enable limestone to be pitched to an eight-tone scale.…”