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CCTV to air 'ancient' concert
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CHINA Central Television (CCTV) will telecast live a concert played with a group of ancient musical instruments dating back more than 2100 years.
The concert will last three consecutive days starting from today, the Lantern Festival, which marks the end of the two-week Spring Festival period.
The musical instruments are serial bells, chime stones, drums of various sizes and for different purposes, 25-stringed plucked instruments, and others.
They were unearthed last July in a pit around the Luozhuang Mausoleum, the earliest West Han Dynasty (206 BC-24 AD) royal mausoleum ever unearthed in China.
Since excavation started in June last year, archaeologists have found numerous valuable funerary objects in Luozhuang Mausoleum, 40 kilometres east of Jinan, capital of Shandong Province.
The chime stones found in the mausoleum outnumbered the total pieces in the previous excavations of tombs of the West and East Han dynasties (206 BC-220 AD), according to archaeologists.
For their fine craftwork and good preservation, the serial bells are considered the best from the West Han Dynasty, Yu Weichao, archaeologist and former curator of China Historical Museum, noted.
In the Dynasty, it is rare for all the instruments to be made for actual use, rather than solely for funeral purposes, Yu said, adding that the numerous, well-preserved instruments are enough to equip a court orchestra.
The experts found that the all instruments have been attuned when they were buried and could be played today. CCTV will telecast live the concert played by musicians using the instruments during the three days at noon, with pieces yet to be decided.
Judging from the earth seal already found, archaeologists believed that the mausoleum dates back to 186 BC.
Though the coffin chamber has not yet been opened, archaeologists inferred from the plentiful relics in the pits that the owner of this mausoleum could be of such a royal standing as a king.
(Xinhua)
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