Home to the earliest musical scale in recorded human history, documents and musical instruments provide evidence that in ancient there was a well-developed musical culture. In 1999 at a neolithic site of Jiahu China archeologists unearthed six complete 9000 year old bone flutes. They are believed to be the oldest playable musical instruments ever found. Later, a 7000 year old xun, or globular flute, was unearthed in China. The instrument was designed around the minor third interval, which is still one of the organizing principles of Chinese music. As a result, preference for minor third and major sixth intervals masks the semitones of the Chinese scale, giving it the distinctive tone that's often difficult for the Western ear to discern even today. Listen to the 7000 year old xun.

This music dates back to the dawn of Chinese civilization with evidence of a well-developed musical culture as early as the Zhou Dynasty (1122 BC - 256 BC). The legendary founder of music in Chinese mythology was Ling Lun. One of the most important duties of the first emperor of each new dynasty was to search out and establish that dynasty's true standard of pitch. Chinese writings claim that in 2697 BC Emperor Huang Di sent a scholar, Ling Lun, to the western mountain area to cut bamboo pipes that could emit sounds matching the call of the feng huang, making possible the creation of music properly pitched for harmony between his reign and the universe. Also, according to documents written about 240 BC, emperor Huang Ti (2700 BC) told Ling Lun to build a set of 60 bells. Ling Lun came up with a mathematical method for creating pitch pipes to tune this large set of bells. Thus, Chinese history complicates the traditional view that Pythagoras and his followers invented the mathematical tuning methods bearing his name. Historical records in China indicate that a similar tuning method was developed two thousand years before Pythagoras. The spiral of fifths produced by Ling Lun's earlier system is almost identical to Pythagoras's solution.

Pre-Qin Bronze bell chimes were important orchestral instruments until they vanished from history 2,000 years ago, about the period of Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE). After this era, Chinese classical music gently declined except for an extended blip during the Tang period. The decline of art music started in the Wei-Jin periods (220–420 CE), and the music was gone by the second part of the Song dynasty (960-1279 CE). Listen to the 2000 year old bell chimes.

Although, for several thousand years Chinese culture was dominated by the teachings of the philosopher Confucius, who conceived of music in the highest sense as a means of calming the passions and of dispelling unrest and lust, rather than as a form of amusement. The ancient Chinese belief that music is meant not to amuse but to purify one's thoughts finds particular expression in the cult of the qin, a long zither possessing a repertory calling for great subtlety and refinement in performance and still popular among a small circle of scholar-musicians. A famous Qin scholar once said, "Though the qin player's body be in a gallery or in a hall, his mind should dwell with the forests and streams."

The Chinese also believed that sound influences the harmony of the universe. This aesthetic principle came to their height during the Pre-Qin period (770-476 BCE) with the age of Confucius, an unprecedented period in human civilization when talents and human resources were put to use in the most important creative endeavors. Major principalities in China competed to attract artists, scholars, diplomats, engineers, and musicians to adorn their courts. The rise of the science of acoustics supported the ever-increasing advancements in the art of music making.

A result of this philosophical orientation the Chinese theoretically opposed music performed solely for entertainment and musical entertainers were relegated to a low social status, much lower than that of painters though music was seen as central to the harmony and longevity of the state. Almost every emperor took folk songs seriously, sending officers to collect songs to inspect the popular will. One of the Confucianist Classics, Shi Jing or The Classic of Poetry, contained many folk songs dating from 800 BC to about 400 BC.

This continuity of aesthetics has been remarkably constant throughout the history of Chinese music, and it is understanding is crucial to comprehending Chinese music. The ancient Chinese defined, by mathematical means, a series of 12 frequencies called the lü-lü, from which various sets of five, or six, or seven frequencies, pentatonic and heptatonic tones were selected to make the major scale familiar to people the Western ear. But the Chinese aesthetics prefers to use interval rather than scale. The 12 lü approximate the frequencies known in the West as F, G flat, G, E flat, and E. The ancient Chinese system of tuning encompasses the closest approximations to the just intervals. Depending on the melodic progression, scale pitches are selected from 23 different steps within the octave so that each principal interval in the progression is just. Chinese musical compositions also utilize a system of intervals built upon both thirds and fourths. Listen to the traditional Chinese song, Moon Over Xun Yang River.

Melody and tone color are prominent expressive features of Chinese music, and great emphasis is given to the proper articulation and inflection of each musical tone. Most Chinese music is based on the five-tone, or pentatonic scale but the seven-tone, or heptatonic scale is also used as an expansion of a basically pentatonic core. The pentatonic scale was much used in older music. The heptatonic scale is often encountered in northern Chinese folk music.

Orchestral, ensemble, and solo instrumental music of China are considered some of the highest art forms in the world with multi-part formal design dominating these categories of Chinese music. A four-stage development is often used in melodic and harmonic design; qi or introduction, cheng or the elucidation of the theme, zhuan or the transition to another viewpoint, and he or the summing up.

Traditional Chinese Instruments

Chinese musical instruments traditionally have been classified according to the materials used in their construction, namely, metal, stone, silk, bamboo, gourd, clay, skin, and wood. Of these, the stone and wood instruments are obsolete. The older instruments include long zithers, flutes, panpipes, the sheng, or mouth organ. Also percussion instruments included clappers, drums, and gongs. Of later origin are various lutes and fiddles, introduced to China from Central Asia.
Chinese music is as old as Chinese civilization. Instruments excavated from sites of the Shang dynasty (c. 1766-c. 1027 BC) include stone chimes, bronze bells, panpipes, and the sheng.
In the Chou dynasty (c. 1027-256 BC) music was one of the four subjects that the sons of noblemen and princes were required to study, and the office of music at one time comprised more than 1400 people. Although much of the repertoire has been lost, some old Chinese ritual music or yayue is preserved in manuscripts.

In Ancient China traditional Chinese instruments were played solo, in a small ensemble to play at a small venue such as a restaurant or teahouse, or in a large orchestra to perform for the emperor and larger groups of people. There is no conductor in traditional Chinese music or the use of written musical scores. Music notes were memorized by the musician and then played without aid of written music. Traditional Chinese musical instruments include plucked and bowed stringed instruments, flutes, cymbals, gongs, and drums. Bamboo and bone pipes are among the oldest known musical instruments from China. Traditional Chinese instruments are divided into categories based on their material of composition. The categories include skin, gourd, bamboo, wood, silk, earth/clay, metal and stone. A traditional Chinese orchestras consists of bowed strings, woodwinds, plucked strings and percussion instruments.

Chinese Music of the Dynastic Era

According to Mencius, a powerful ruler once asked him whether it was moral if he preferred popular music to the classics. The answer was that it only mattered that the ruler love his subjects. The Imperial Music Bureau, first established in the Qin Dynasty (221-07 BC), was greatly expanded under the Emperor Han Wu Di (140-87 BC) and charged with supervising court music and military music and determining what folk music would be officially recognized. In subsequent dynasties, the development of Chinese music was strongly influenced by foreign music, especially Central Asia.

The oldest known written music is Youlan or the Solitary Orchid, attributed to Confucius. The first major well-documented flowering of Chinese music was for the qin during the Tang Dynasty, though the qin is known to have been played since before the Han Dynasty.

During the Qin dynasty (221-206 BC) music was denounced as a wasteful pastime; almost all musical books, instruments, and manuscripts were ordered destroyed. Despite this severe setback Chinese music experienced a renaissance during the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), when a special bureau of music was established to take charge of ceremonial music. During the reign (AD 58-75) of Liu Zhang the Han palace had three orchestras comprising in all 829 performers. One orchestra was used for religious ceremonies, another for royal archery contests, and the third for entertaining the royal banquets and harem.

Art music was at the center of the Chinese musical system. Music for the court and dance as an art were a minor part of this philosophical mainstream. Chinese classical music was at its peak during the time of Ji Kang (223-262 CE) at the tail of the Han period. Kang was one of the great poets, musicians and philosophers of China. His writings and musical compositions are still studied today.

Chinese classical instruments from this period were classified by type in a system known as the "eight sounds": silk (stringed instruments), bamboo (flutes and reed instruments), wood (woodblocks and similar percussion instruments), stone (stone instruments hit with mallets), metal (gongs and bells), clay (the ocarina-like xun), gourd (various free-reed mouth organs), and hide (large drums).

During the Tang dynasty (618-906) Chinese secular music or suyue eached its peak. Emperor Tai Zong (597-649) had ten different orchestras, eight of which were made up of members of various foreign tribes; all the royal performers and dancers appeared in their native costumes. The imperial court also had a huge outdoor band of nearly 1400 performers. Portions of Tang music are preserved in Japanese court music, or gagaku.

Among the many genres of Chinese music stemmed from Chinese opera. The first fully developed form of Chinese opera, called northern drama or beiqu, emerged during the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368). During the Ming (1368-1644) and Qin (1644-1912) dynasties, southern drama also called xiwen, flourished and underwent much stylistic musical development. The variety of Chinese opera known as Peking opera or jingxi is the most familiar in the West. It developed in the 19th century as a synthesis of earlier provincial forms.

Recently, an elaborate set of ancient Chinese bells dating back to 433 BC were found to play twelve tones and were tuned using perfect intervals. This seems to confirm a deeper understanding of music theory and chromatic tuning than even Chinese scholars had anticipated. Unfortunately, the Chinese emperor Qin Shiuangdi (ruling 221-210 BC) destroyed many music documents and instruments. Much of the evidence of China's advancements in chromatic music was probably lost at this time. Since then, Chinese music has traditionally been based on the pentatonic scale. Even after the bells were discovered in 1979, the Chinese government was slow to disclose the findings that would contradict their view of traditional music.