With its origins likely during the Bronze Age, from an area around what would now be Tibet, the gong only became popular in Europe towards the end of the 18th Century when first recorded in Western Orchestral music by Gossec in his ‘Funeral March for Mirabeau’ from 1791. During the Victorian period, the aristocracy developed a taste for the exotic, and it was at the time that this ancient musical instrument became more commonplace in the home.