Why did the ancient music in China only have five sounds: Gong, Shang, Jiao, Zheng and Yu?

This can be regarded as a problem related to the traditional music mode in China. There are many different musical patterns in different periods in history.

Gong, Shang, Jiao, Zheng and Yu are collectively referred to as orthography. The semitone of pitch is "Qing", and the modern notation is #. One and a half tones lower than the positive note is called "change", which is B, and one whole tone lower than the positive note is called "leap". The contemporary notation is bb (heavy scale reduction). These scales other than consonants are called partials. The commonly used partials are: clearing the angle, changing the sign, changing the palace, leap quotient, leap palace and so on.

If a piece of music contains only five positive notes of "Gong Shang Jiao Zheng Yu", it is a pentatonic scale. A pentatonic scale composed of positive tones can be composed of six tones if a partial tone is added, and seven tones if two partial tones are added.

Of the seven tones in China's traditional music theory, only the positive tone can be used as the tonic, but the partial tone cannot be used as the tonic. The most commonly used seven tones mainly include three categories: pure music mode, elegant music mode and Yan music mode. In the three categories, there are five combinations of positive notes and seven tones, totaling fifteen seven tones.

Taking the palace pattern as an example, the scales are: Palace, Upper, Angle, Clear Angle, Positive, Yu and Biangong, corresponding to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 respectively.

Take the pattern of elegant palace as an example. The scales are palace, quotient, angle, sign change, sign, feather, palace change and palace, which correspond to 1, 2, 3, #4, 5, 6 and 7 respectively.

Other modes are not illustrated. . . Too many. If you are interested, you can find your own books on ancient music theory in China to learn.

In a word, China's music has a very long history. As early as 8,000 years ago, the bone flute of Jiahu site in Wuyang County, Henan Province could emit seven tones, and later generations have continuously developed three-point profit and loss method, five tones, twelve laws and twenty-eight tones and other musical theories.