A RARE IMPERIAL GILT-BRONZE ARCHAISTIC RITUAL BELL, BEI WUYI China, Qianlong mark and of the period, dated to the 10th year, corresponding to AD 1745 H. 31,5 cm / 21.22 kg Heavily cast with rounded sides and suspended from a gilt handle formed by geometric scrolls, the body decorated in relief with five alternating bands of stylised trigrams and spiralling bosses, interrupted on each side by a rectangular panel, each enclosing an inscribed tablet bordered by ruyi-head scrolls and above a small waisted lotus base, one tablet inscribed with a seven-character mark, 大清乾隆拾年製, 'made in the 10th year of the Qianlong emperor's reign', the other with a three-character mark bei wuyi, which relates to a classical pitch, the lower body above the base with pairs of archaistic motifs flanking two large plain circular cartouches. Weight: 21.22 kg Important German aristocratic private collection, assembled in China prior to 1904 and owned by the family since then According to the Confucian classical book on the rites of the Zhou dynasty, music, along with poetry, is the most important method of educating Confucian rites. Musical instruments Bianzhong (set of chimes) made of metal together with a set of Qing (sound stones) made of stones such as jade were used for playing music in the imperial court or as a ritual especially for playing the highest-ranking court music Zhonghe Shaoyue (Imperial Ritual Music) , these were highly valued in the imperial court of the Ming and Qing periods. The tones produced by the Bianzhong and Qing were called jingshi zhi sheng (harmonic tones of metal and stone) in classical China, symbolising the elegant music according to the taste of the noble upper class. A set of bianzhong contains 16 bells of the same size and shape, suspended in a wooden frame, their intervals differentiated by the thickness of their walls. The 16 bells form a tuning system of twelve zhenglü (tones in equal steps) and four additional beilü (repeated tones with doubled wavelength). The decoration of swirls and four abstract motifs of this bell corresponds to the decoration pattern of a bell from the Bianzhong series 'dasheng' of Emperor Huizong of the Northern Song. According to the imperial archives, Emperor Huizong had 12 series of bianzhong made with a total of 336 pieces, each series called dasheng. After the demise of the Northern Song, most of these were lost and collected in the palace collections of successive emperors. Three bronze bells from the dasheng series were in the palace collection in Qing times and may have been models for the making of these bells by the Qianlong emperor. A very similar bell, also dated to the 10th year of Qianlong's reign, but inscribed 南呂nan lü, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, a gift from Major Louis Livingston Seaman in 1903, museum number 03.15.3. Major Louis Livingston Seaman (1851-1932) was a military surgeon and was sent to China no later than 1900, serving among other things as private physician to Li Hongzhang (1823-1901). The bell 'bei wuyi' now offered for auction and the bell 'nanlü' in the collection of the Metrolpolitan Museum of Art should be from the same imperial Bianzhong set. Compare a complete set of sixteen bells, Qianlong, dated 1779, on a wooden frame, similarly cast with bands of trigrams and bosses but with different handles and plainer rounded curves around the lower body, in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated by C. Ho and B. Bronson, Splendors of China's Forbidden City: The Glorious Reign of Emperor Qianlong, Chicago, 2004, p.52, no.43. Minor wear, traces of use, slightly chipped