A soft bell-like sound to evoke sympathetic feeling (6)
I believe the answer is:
appeal
'sympathetic feeling' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both acts as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe you can see a link between them that I can't see?
'a soft bell-like sound' is the wordplay.
'soft' becomes 'pp' (musical abbreviation for pianissimo).
'bell-like sound' becomes 'eal' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'a'+'pp'+'eal'='APPEAL'
'to evoke' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for appeal that I've seen before include "Request for charity donations" , "Bring verdict for review by higher court" , "Plea" , "Charm; entreaty" , "Howzat!" .)