THE TEACHINGS OF EXPERIMENTS.
As there are no known existing examples of the Diaulos, the extreme interest attaching to the Lady Maket flutes as the original representatives of the later use of the Greeks, justifies the fullest investigation of the scale they give into our hands, with an enduring testimony of truth, that goes beyond that afforded by painting or written record.
Very greatly esteeming the permission given to me to measure and take the particulars which I have stated, I made all haste to get models made for me in metal upon which to investigate the scale.
My experiments were made with arghool reeds and metal pipes, copies of the originals as nearly as possible the same in bore. I obtained for the ground tone of the pipes, B in the eight foot octave; and, in this order, the tones following:—
1st pipeiixxB–——D—E—F♯—G♯.
2ndx”xxxxiB—C—D—E.
The pipes being cylindrical in bore with a true transport of air through them, are subject to the law displayed by the clarionet, sounding an octave lower than like length open organ pipes or lip-blown flutes.
Then for harmonics I obtained the double octaves, with sometimes a slurred intervening single octave, passingly heard in the rise to the double octave. This is curious, though not unexpected when one has been accustomed to the seeming vagaries of reeds. Practically, nature does not always proceed according to academic rules. When reeds are combined with pipes, the resulting pitch is due to a compound of two forces pulling in opposite directions; the reed drawing to high pitch, and the pipe to low pitch, each acting upon the other. Some reeds will not yield to the coercive effect of the pipe more than to about the extent of a fourth, with preservation of real truth of intonation; and at such limit the reed flies back to the starting pitch and recommences, or plays false. A free reed will not bear to be drawn down by the pipe associated with it to more than an octave; and if attempt is made to cause it to respond lower in the scale (by a greater lengthening of pipe), then it makes a jump back to its original pitch. After that there are other curious relations, such as not responding beyond a fourth, and so on; particulars of which need not here be gone into. Therefore, discrepancies in experiment need not cause surprise.
Simultaneously Mr. T. L. Southgate and Mr. J. D. Blaikley, attracted to the same pursuit, entered upon a course of experiment, the results of which were set forth at a meeting of the Musical Association. Mr. Blaikley is well known in connection with wind instruments, and his judgment upon musical pitch may be absolutely relied upon; and Mr. T. L. Southgate is also well known as a keen investigator in all musical matters; and as an aid to his own knowledge and skill he was fortunate in obtaining as an associate in these experimental researches, the practical experience of Mr. Finn, who, accustomed to flutes and hautboy reed instruments, could bring into use the little artifices in producing sounds from the reeds which the amateur in wind instruments lacks knowledge of.
The summary of the results arrived at, shows for the
1st pipexE♭———G—A♭—B♭—C♭
2ndx”xxiE♭—-F—G—A♭
These were obtained with a small straw reed. (The E♭ is the third space in the bass clef). Nearly all the intervals prove to be less than ours, and are, as we should term them, flat. The experimenters used small straw squeaker reeds, and also Arghool and bagpipe reeds, the results in each case differing. So that, unless we can ascertain more definitely what sized reed the Egyptians had in use, the pitch notes arrived at are but approximately right.
That my own experiments bore a lower estimate of pitch is due to my using ordinary arghool reeds, heavier than could by any supposition have been fitted to these little pipes, yet the relative course of the sounds produced is seen to be the same, and therefore is confirmatory of the use of that particular kind of reed, and in accordance with known laws of the reed and pipe, so that my first guess or calculation, founded upon the length of the pipes, was correct. The length of pipe 17-3/4 inches, to which add 1-1/2 inches for length of reed. This is the sound of the full length of the pipe, note
| or |
The relations of the notes, one to another, as ascertained by Mr. Blaikley, are in close correspondence with the harmonic scale as elicited from the horn or trumpet, from the high D to G; and also the scale of the highland bagpipe has its succession of notes in similar relations of pitch. This harmonic scale is here given, so that by comparison the relation may be understood.
| vib. | |||||||
| The four holed pipe gives | { | E♭ 160 | G 194 | A♭ 213 | B♭ 233 | C♭ 257 | |
| The three holed pipe gives | { | E♭ 160 | F 177 | G 197 | A♭ 215 | ||
| By harmonic scale | E♭ 160 | F 177·8 | G 195·6 | A♭ 213·4 | B♭ 231·2 | ||
| (the increment is 17·8) | 9th | 10th | 11th | 12th | 13th |
Note by note the natural harmonic scale ascends by an equal increment, differing essentially from the diatonic, which only doubles its number of vibrations at the distance of the octave. Thus, although the sounds of the above are given by name, as near as can be stated, yet it is a notation for convenience only.
The general reader will best understand the matter as estimated to me by Mr. A. J. Hipkins. From E♭ to G is a bagpipe, or neuter third,—from this G to A♭ is a 3/4 tone,—the A♭ is therefore a perfect fourth from the E♭. The G being a quarter tone flat, it makes with the C♭ a small or flat fourth. The fifth lying between F and C♭ is also very flat, in fact equal to a tritone. The remaining notes are two 3/4 tones, which land us at C♭, a minor third from the A♭. An arrangement very appropriate for wailing. The Greeks also it should be remembered had 3/4 tones.
These particulars have great interest in musical enquiry, and help us to see how fortuitous has been the growth of the scale, and how characteristically “minor” the music of different races seems to us, whilst in reality quite outside our scale and distinct from it in development. The flat fourths I have found to be persistent in Chinese music, and for very good natural reasons, as will be fully shown in subsequent chapters on the Chinese ancient instruments.
The very low sounds given by these flutes are necessarily weak and have no penetrative power, nothing like what we should expect to be adequate for ceremonial use, or for the purposes to which we imagine the flutes applied in public life. A procession, for instance would, by the mere noise arising from walking drown the sounds, unless the walkers trod in sand. The conclusion I am driven to is that the skill of the players was devoted to eliciting the shrill harmonic tones, and that the low range of tone was seldom brought into requisition. The length of the pipes suggests this view, and the extreme slenderness seems to be adopted for the purpose; since it is inimical to volume of tone, yet favours under strong breath pressure the eliciting of high tones. Any day some new discovery may confute our speculations; but still we cannot but indulge in them. We, with modern eyes, look upon these flutes only as musical instruments; but to the Egyptians every tone heard alone or in combination, every movement, every gesture of the player had its mystic meaning, and its occult significance in association with rituals and observances and ceremonies.
In these early ages, double flutes appear to have flourished everywhere amongst neighbouring nations; and the single flute, if the pictured representations and designs are to guide us, was comparatively rare. We note the fact, but, as to why the double flute was popular, we are quite in the dark. Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians,—which nation first had them? Far back as our spoils from the ancient cities and tombs and palaces and temples may date, it is very certain that the double flutes had their origin in far earlier times, and had passed through periods of evolution from some type ruder than the instruments which we find depicted. I have remarked how the added tone furnished by Lady Maket’s flutes indicates a large advance in the progress of civilization in her day, for probably flutes without such had had their run of popularity, perhaps centuries earlier. So that, when we speak of primitive pipes and primitive tetrachords, we think of long anterior dates, long before the particular instruments were fabricated which we have cognizance of. Advance is very slow.
We should remember the great gap of time—two thousand five hundred years—before men arrived at the idea of a simple lever key to extend the scale of oboes and flutes by one note; and then think of the possible interval between the time of early common use of pipes comprising four tones in their range and the advent of a pipe with one finger hole and one more added tone. May be in the popular tradition, some young god invented it. Think of the commotion amongst the Greeks when a daring innovator added one more string to the lyre!
The Egyptian double flutes seen in the paintings are of greater length than those used by the Assyrians, who so far as we can tell, from their incised tablets seen in the Nineveh Gallery in the British Museum, had only short ones. It was in the hands of the Greeks that changes began to be made, the first noticeable feature being the greater diameter of the pipes. It was not until about five hundred years after the death of Lady Maket that Egypt was opened up to the Greeks; all foreigners had been previously most rigidly excluded. The Egyptian instrument called the Arghool is a comparatively modern instrument, for we never find a trace of it in ancient paintings; and the drone, which is its chief feature, was most likely an Arab device founded on the long pipe of the earlier Egyptian (see page [45], Fig. 9).
But the Arghool reed itself had a very ancient origin, and we rightly consider it the oldest of reeds, and as essentially belonging to the Egyptian double flutes. If you look at the engraving you will see that, at the top of the pipe itself, a short piece of smaller pipe is inserted; and, again, a piece of still smaller pipe is added in which the reed has been cut. Thus there is, as it were, a double step, ingeniously accommodating the fitting in of the reed in the simplest way.
| Fig. 11. The Arghool with its drone and lengthening pieces. |
Instead of having pipes with different sets of holes, this has but one pipe, and it has six holes, therefore employing the fingers of both hands, the second pipe which is without holes is bound to the shorter pipe, and has two or more lengthening pieces which are used by the player, according as the custom has determined for the particular air played, for this holeless pipe is nothing more than a drone pipe of deep tone, such as a bagpipe has; some idea of harmony must be involved since the small lengthening piece increases by about a tone the depth of pitch attained. One curious custom should be noticed, the attachment of the portions to one another lest they should be lost; the tongued reeds that are placed in the players mouth are tied in the same manner by rough bits of string. In the wilder parts of Asia horsemen travel carrying with them a hautboy kind of instrument with four or five extra reeds, strung in a chain fashion and loosely hung round the neck of the pipe for use when a new reed is required, or a choice of one of different quality of tone is desired.
Fig. 12.
The Egyptian Zummarah.
There is another popular native instrument, much more ancient than the arghool called the Zummarah it consists of two pipes tied together (not to be called double pipes) the holes in each being the same in position and the same in number, five. Some representations of very archaic kind, carved, have been found, I do not remember any paintings in old Egypt, but Mr. Flinders Petrie has discovered two specimens in the Coptic cemetery at Gurob, complete with the reeds, and the date of these is given about A.D. 500. The question arises, were such pipes in use at any period earlier than our era A.D. and if so, how near to the time of the Lady Maket?
The tonality is the old Egyptian.
Another kind of flute in primitive relation is seen figured in Egyptian paintings; it is a single long pipe, held aslant, and sounded by blowing across the tip obliquely. It was called seba or sabi; and the open, slant-cut, tip end is thinned off to a feather edge.
| Fig. 13. The Seba or Sabi. |
The representative national pipe now in use is called the “Nay.” This pipe is about fourteen inches long, and it is only in the method of blowing that it corresponds to the ancient pipe.
The various kinds of flutes we see depicted by the Egyptians in their paintings, were used in concert with other instruments—lyres and grand harps in pairs, capable of giving fine volume of tone—through which the flutes would have to be heard, although not perhaps so simultaneous was the playing, as with us; since there are reasons for believing that their orchestration was more in the nature of alternation of instruments, one class leaving off and others taking up the strain and only occasionally combining for fulness or strength, associated perhaps with the voices of the multitude in popular acclaim. In later days in Egypt’s decline, it is on record that Ptolemy Philadelphus employed a band of 600 musicians to celebrate the feast of Bacchus.
| Fig. 14. Arab Player on the Nay. |
In India we find flutes which seem to show a compromise or blending of the tip-blown and side-blown methods. In the India Museum some pipes may be seen with a curiously shaped hollow tip, cut with a slant curve, across which the player blows. These several ways are but different illustrations of one and the same principle—that is to say—the stream of air blown across the hole creates suction in the pipe, which reaching its limit is constantly broken with a rapidity of action resulting in periodic vibration of definite sound or pitch.
On the walls of one of the Vase Rooms in the British Museum are displayed, running almost the length of the central part of the wall of the room, two wall paintings. The period is called Archaic, and the figures have a formality which contrasts with the freedom of design in a later period. In each painting, which is a facsimile from an Etruscan tomb at Corneto, there are two male flute players, and women dancing to their playing; and all the flutes they are using, and which they hold trumpet like before them, show reeds of the arghool kind, the double step I pointed out just now being plainly marked, and the upper one in each instance coloured a brown olive, whilst the pipes are white. Seen through an opera glass the details are very distinct. One pair of pipes has three holes in each pipe marked. The pipes are thicker and shorter than the flutes in the Egyptian wall paintings described above, and we find that similar proportions are apparent in some Assyrian wall designs. In the tablets of Assurbanipal, date B.C. 650, the double pipes are short and are conical, which is quite a distinct feature in double pipes, and would cause the sounds to be an octave higher in pitch.
The two extremes I have cited, during which the double pipes of the original style are in evidence, cover a long period, the wall paintings of the time of Thotmes the Third and the carvings on the Sanchi Tope gate—that is from B.C. 1600 to about A.D. 100. During all these centuries, the double flutes have entered into the national life of many peoples, and at various times concurrently one or other of the varieties I have named have likewise been in popular favour. One remarkable period, however, there was, when an innovation intervened. A new Greek invention appeared, and held the field for several centuries. Etruria, about B.C. 500, seems to have been the place of origin of the new double flutes; or it may be said that here they come first into historic presence. On this Italian plain a Greek colony settled; and we consequently term these flutes Greco-Etruscan flutes, the distinguishing features of which have been preserved for us on the marvellously beautiful vases that were buried in their tombs,—death being the preserver of empictured life.
Here then we leave the valley of the Nile, and, after an interval of six centuries from Lady Maket’s decease, view another and a distant region, amid a new state of civilisation. One lingering touch of association with the Lady Maket’s flutes is found in Miss A. B. Edwards’s description of a funeral in Egypt in the year when she travelled “One Thousand Miles up the Nile.”
At a funeral in Nubia, the ceremonial with its dancing and chanting was always much the same, always barbaric and in the highest degree artificial. The dance is probably Ethiopian; the white fillet worn by the choir of mourners is on the other hand distinctly Egyptian. We afterwards saw it represented in paintings of funeral processions on the walls of several tombs at Thebes, where the wailing women are seen to be gathering up dust in their hands and casting it upon their heads just as they do now. As for the wail—beginning high and descending through a scale, divided not by semitones but thirds of tones, to a final note about an octave and a half lower than that from which it started—it probably echoes to this day the very pitch and rhythm of the wail that followed the Pharaohs to their sepulchres in the valley of the tombs of the kings. Like the zaghareet or joy cry which every mother teaches to her little girl (and which, it is said, can only be acquired in very early youth), it has been handed down from generation to generation, through an untold succession of ages. The song to which the Fellah works his shadoof, and the monotonous chant of the shakkieh driver, have perhaps as remote an origin; but of all mournful human sounds, the death wail that we heard at Derr is perhaps one of the very oldest,—certainly the most mournful.
From this vivid picture of real life we can now understand that our little wailing flutes, recovered from that rock cut tomb, meant very much to the old Egyptian race.
A piece of the old poetic writings comes to me at the time present, that seems to complete the circle of our thoughts around this long lost nation—it comes from old Chaldea, the motherland, is one of the choice and highly valued finds of explorers, recently acquired by the British Museum,—tablets of popular songs of Chaldea which date at least B.C. 2300, and possibly earlier. These are distinctly called songs. One bard says,—
I will sing the song of the Lady of the Gods;
Listen the great ones,
Attend ye warriors,
To the song of the Goddess Mama,
The song which is better than honey and wine.
In fair reason may we not conceive that through long ages tradition held its sway amongst the people, and that these pipes were dedicated to the goddess Mama, were given into the hands of women to play and to cherish the melodies of songs that belonged to their race, and that they named the twin pipes Mamms, in affectionate reverence for the “Lady of the Gods” whose song was better than honey and wine.
CHAPTER V.
In the Land of Etruria.
THE GRECO-ETRUSCAN DOUBLE FLUTES.
THE BULBED OR SUBULO FLUTES.
The Song of Linus is heard to-day in the land of Egypt; the sacred melody played on the double flutes in ancient days survives without change, but no player on these pipes exists; the song is sung in wailful cadence by lips of another race, for the old race has vanished
in the long corridors of Time.
Strange is the irony of history! The dwellers in the land have forgotten the name of their song, and call it after a Greek myth. Yet, in its origin, it was a very real song of lament, a true outcome of human sorrow, age remembered and treasured in the hearts of the old Egyptian people, and perpetuated by tradition even amongst those who were strangers in the land, who tilled the soil, and lived in the ruins of the past. It was a lament for the king’s son, known as the Song of Maneros, so that grand old interviewer, Herodotus, tells us. He had thought this Song of Linus to be a famous song of Greek origin.
This is what he says:—“I have been struck with many things during my enquiries in Egypt, but with none more than this song, and I cannot conceive from whence it was borrowed, indeed they seem to have had it from time immemorial, and to have known it by the name of Maneros, for they assured me it was so called from the son of their first monarch, who being carried off by an early death, was honoured by the Egyptians with a funeral dirge, and this was the first and only song they used at that early period of their history.”
Plutarch says Maneros was the child who watched Isis as she mourned over the body of Osiris.
Herodotus is constant in admonishing the Greeks that Egypt is the mother of wisdom, and that for a vast deal of the learning and the arts they pride themselves upon they are indebted to her by direct inheritance. What he, a Greek himself, in his day told them we have found true, and in all the light of modern researches the old historian is well supported. We are accustomed to locate Egypt on a few hundred miles on the banks of the Nile, losing sight of the fact that, in the days of her dominion, her power extended far and her influence was felt in all the lands bordering the Mediterranean wherever civilization held sway. Her royal dynasties were a living force for thousands of years.
One startling record was discovered by Professor A. Sayce. He tells us that he has read the graven tablets of Tebel-Amarna (now in the Berlin Museum), which prove to be letters sent from the king or governor of Jerusalem to the Egyptian sovereign, in the century before the Exodus. This governor owed allegiance to the Egyptian monarch, and his letters were dated from “‘the city of the mountain of Urusalem, the city of the temple of the god Uras, whose name there is Marru.’ Thus long before the days when Solomon built the temple of Yahveh, the spot on which it stood had been the site of a hallowed sanctuary.”
Along the whole Asiatic coast of the Mediterranean the Egyptians had their military settlements, and consequently there ensued a mingling of many tribes and races. The Greeks, or as they came to be called, the Hellenes, were a composite people with a Pelasgic basis. There was, however, distinct Egyptian colonisation. Cecrops is said to have led a colony from Sais in Egypt and to have founded Athens in 1556 B.C., and Danaus, who seems to be a brother of Amunoph III., is also said to have left Egypt and to have founded Argos, of which he became king, and died, B.C. 1425.
The perpetual trading that was going on between the Phœnicians, Greeks, Italians and Egyptians, brought the land of Tuscia under the influence of Egyptian ideas, and of this the sepulchres of Etruria give ample evidence. The domestic life, the industrial arts, the religious rites, the paintings and sculptures, and even the mode of burial, all are exhibiting new adaptions of older faith and customs; the different development being due to differences in race, soil, and climate, to inheritance and environment. If we look back far enough we shall find that the geography of the country, the outcome of its geology, forecasts the destiny of its inhabitants and writes the history of its peoples.
Of all the variety of vases fashioned by Greeks and Etruscans, the types of the different forms we find existed long before in Egypt, and these vases have been buried in tombs—large underground chambers that are the counterparts of Egyptian tombs—and they have been placed there to please the spirits of the dead, by devoting to them the things that were most loved, most prized, during life. They used the sarcophagus, though they did not mummify or embalm the dead, but laid out the body dressed in its garments, or encased in armour of the period, with strappings of copper and bronze bosses for breastplates, placing it on a stone bier surrounded by its treasures, often of great value, and leaving it to moulder into dust by natural decay. The paintings on the walls of these dwelling rooms of the dead illustrate banquets and scenes of domestic and public life, and afford us most valuable indications of the ways and manners of long past days. A large number of these chambered tombs have been opened, with their treasures untouched since the day of burial. The first that was discovered was by the chance pushing aside and uprooting of a bush by a peasant tending his goats at evening, who, looking through the opening he had made, the setting sun throwing its light into the chamber, was seized with mortal fear at the sight his eyes fell upon; rushing home to his people he described what he saw, the body lying there dressed in the habit as it lived. The next day, however, no body was there, only the figure of it in little heaps of dust, and the metal links and the two round breast bosses fallen, indenting the dust. Those who explored the tomb and recovered its treasures were inclined to the belief that the peasant did see the human form, but that, as in similar cases that are known, it collapsed upon the admission of air and light.
The tombs were rock hewn, or built of stone and then covered with earth appearing as mere tumuli. The chambers many of them being twenty feet by twelve, and superstition asserts that in more than one instance lamps were found still burning with perpetual fire although fifteen or twenty centuries had elapsed since they were lighted.
The painting described in the last chapter, copied from one in a tomb at Corneto (meaning at the necropolis of Tarquinii, the ancient city) shows very clearly that the earliest double flutes possessed by these people were of the Egyptian kind, with a similar form of reed; and this same design I have also found on one or two vases, and also evidently the same style is meant in other instances, in which the details are not worked out, in both paintings and vases. Thus far we trace the connection between Etruria and Egypt as regards the flutes, with Greece as a continuing link.
The people of Etruria were an ancient race, occupying both sides of the Appenines, they are now believed to have been Pelasgian Tyrrhenians, they had great naval power, and in origin were related to the old Egyptian stock, or, as some say, to both Lydian and Lybian. How long they had inhabited the Tuscan land we do not know; they displaced or absorbed an earlier race, as is the custom of invaders. They spread southward as far as the Tiber centuries before Rome was, and founded a city called Tarquinii about 1040 B.C. Etrurian kings ruled at an early time in Rome, probably up to about 500 B.C. The immense cemetery of Tarquinii is all that remains of the ancient city, which is now succeeded by the Corneto city, built close to the old site.
The Etruscans it is judged came about 1200 B.C. They attained renown in bronze work and in pottery (remember here that the Lady Maket flutes date about 1100 B.C.). Historians state that Greeks from Thessaly entered Italy from the Adriatic side and introduced by their influence the higher development of art into Etruscan work. Be that as it may, there is no doubt cast upon the historical record concerning one Demaratus, a merchant of Corinth, who made great wealth by trading with this old city Tarquinii. He migrated 657 B.C. and settled there and married a lady of noble family. His two sons became famous in Roman history. He had views upon Art, and brought with him from Greece two potters and one painter and thus did good service to the land of his adoption.
Another influx of Greeks is recorded. This colony of Greeks came, however, in a peaceful fashion, and settled there, having fled from a plague or famine in their own land, in Lydia.
That the Etruscans constantly went to and fro, visiting the chief cities of Greece, is manifest, since many vases bear official inscriptions that they were prizes won at the Dionysian festivals, and at the Panathenæan games. The knowledge of these facts adds wonderfully to the interest in these vases, and enables us to understand something of the feelings which induced the burial of things that were valued personal belongings, and caused on the walls the paintings to be limned of banquets and races, and wrestling contests and musical contests, in one or more of which probably the dead man had won renown.
The musical instruments on which they excelled were the double flutes, the trumpet, and the lyre, and on these they have conferred an immortality by the ceramic art which they carried to so high a state of perfection.
I have in the matter of dates brought together a few points which I would have you look upon not as mere antiquarian lore, rather as connecting our thoughts in a survey of the progress of music, and to give an idea of the association of these three peoples, Egyptian, Etruscans, and Greeks, in its development. You should keep distinct in mind the early Etruscan period under Egyptian influence, and the much later period when Greek influence had sway from 600 B.C. to 300 B.C. It is this later period of Art that we are now entering and a very remarkable one it is.
Etruria has given us a new thing: this is the subulo flute, the new Greco-Etruscan flute. It is a mystery that has not been fully solved: and, although I have my theory about it, as you will find, and have regarded these flutes very lovingly, scrutinizing every vase with a most personal affection, yet until some actual specimen is recovered from the past, I am denied that supreme satisfaction desired by the ardent investigator,—proof. Before I began many years ago to state my impressions concerning the indications given by these vases, I do not know that anyone thought the matter worth notice, or said “Here is a new invention in flutes.” The peculiar feature of the construction is the presence of one, or two, or three bulbs, or cocoon shaped terminations at the upper ends of the two flutes. The peculiarity in the form was generally supposed to be ornamental, and an artistic way for lightening the upper part of the pipes; or, at most, a piece of decorative conventionalism. The learned saw no purpose behind the appearances, and therefore the idea of device or constructive design was not to be entertained. The illustrations here given are copied from figures depicted on the vases in the British Museum, and you will notice no longer the straight conjunctive tip-pieces of the step-like pattern the Arghool fashion of Egyptian flutes as displayed in the Corneto painting. That fashion has become old, it is out of date. Suddenly a change has come without a sign, in the home settlement in Tuscany. Centuries probably intervene, and a new influx of settlers arrives, this time of pure Greeks or Hellenes.
Fig. 15.
One of the illustrations I give is taken from a representation on a vase of a flute player at a musical contest. He wears a phorbia or capistrum, which is a kind of leather bandage or bridle, used in precaution lest he should burst his cheeks in blowing; and the band has two holes pierced at the mouth for the insertion separately of the pipes. The fact of the use of the pipes in the band separately is beyond question, since the actual pattern of the band exists in a relic from Cyprus in the Cesnola collection at New York, and the holes in it are not large enough to admit the bulbs, but only the tip portion as shewn here. This player, as you will notice, is playing one of the new double flutes,—not an Egyptian flute.
Female players also used the phorbia in playing. Dennis notes on a vase “an auletris with black hair, and a phorbia over the mouth, stood by the bier playing the double pipes”—thus keeping up the Egyptian custom.
The reeds are not now taken into the mouth. Drawings of the Arghool should have shown that each reed was, at the tip, tied to the pipe by a slack rambling string, for by these bits of string each reed is connected with its pipe lest it should be lost. This is shown in the Summarah drawing. Enthusiasts newly trying the Arghool are very ready to drop it, since they soon feel sick from the unpleasant sensation of the reeds and the loose bits of string in the mouth, and it is an experience one remembers.
Come with me to the Vase Rooms of the British Museum and look at some of the spoils of Time. Mr. Dennis in his beautiful work on the Vases of Etruria says “the enormous quantities of the vases that have been found in Etruscan soil, within the last fifty years alone, may be reckoned not by thousands but by myriads.”
In these rooms—and there are three large rooms devoted to these specimens of fictile art—there are some hundreds of vases. Many hours I have spent amongst them, brooding over their beauty, and wondering of the tales they told of a people long passed away and a religion once the glory of the earth. On numbers of vases flute players male and female, are depicted, sometimes three or four on one vase; and the various attitudes I observed, and the indications of purpose they betokened, led me believe that there was some meaning beyond mere ornamentation in the cocoon like bulbs of the flute heads. I examined minutely vase after vase, and discovered at length out of the whole number three vases on which were delineated players handling their flutes each in a different manner, and these conveyed clearly to my mind the conviction that the bulbs were detached pieces which the player was able to arrange. Then arose the question in my mind, “for what purpose?” You have the three pictures before you. Now it is very curious that only by means of the Greco-Etruscan art work are the subulo double flutes brought to our knowledge (for distinction, it may be well to give these bulbed flutes the name by which the Etruscan player was called); and yet the period during which this new invention was in vogue, comprises that in which Greece was at the height of her intellectual power. The age of Pericles and Phidias, of Plato and Euripides, of the rearing of the Parthenon and of the grand Temple of Jove at Olympia!
The dates of the vases of the best period, all are included between 440 and 330 B.C.; some earlier, also showing these flutes, date back fifty years more. Thousands of these recovered vases are distributed in museums and private collections, and have been of inestimable value for the insight they have afforded into the domestic life of the Greek people. Aristophanes in one of his comedies, written about 450 B.C., makes a bit of satire out of these flutes, causing Micas and another to say—comically complaining of their master—“Let us weep and wail like two flutes breathing some air of Olympos.” All that their poets and other writers told us of their flutes and flute-players fails to come home to our understanding until associated with these enduring pictures; and we know at least that they are genuine records, and that time has allowed no hand to tamper with them. It is evident that flute music exercised a fascinating influence over these people; the player is present alike in scenes of mirth and revelry, in solemn ceremonials and in funeral procession; and yet we are so far away in thought culture and sentiment, that we are unable to imagine what that music was that it could give such delight, and be accounted one of life’s chiefest luxuries. Here, beyond question, we have the testimony of the eye that it was so; and we know that the natural laws of sounding pipes are the same to-day as yesterday, and the limits of capability of four or six holes allowed but a very narrow range for melody.
The player was called by the Etruscans “Subulone”: by the Greeks “Auletris” and the flutes known as “Auloi.” The pipes were formed of boxwood, lotus wood and sycamore.
Was it on these double flutes that Lamia played and so ’witched the world that it built a temple to her, and paid divine honours to her name? Were these the flutes spoken of as being able to play in three modes, the famed flutes, the invention of Pronomus the Theban? The date given of Pronomus is given as about 440 B.C., and is that of the period of these vases.
|
The Satyr’s Hands and Flutes. |
Fig. 16.
The sportive fauns and the lush-eyed satyrs of the woods have indeed learnt the mystery of these pipes and make merry under the vine-leaves. I have in my mind’s eye now a curly-headed satyr handling the pipes, and I wish that I knew the charm to bring before you the saucy curious look with which he is regarding them. All that modern exigencies allow me I give here, just the hands and the pipes. Notice the expectant thumb; what is it he is contemplating? What is he about to do? He intends to press the bulb of the pipe, but evidently something is wrong, and I am so anxious to know what it can be. Then there is a short line on the top of the furthest pipe; it was a puzzle to me years ago, and the satyr and I we are still puzzling over it. Each pipe has but one bulb, and I think very probably these simple creatures of nature would be unable to manage more. Four oval holes are given to each pipe, the artist has so marked them, and the firing that the vase underwent in the kiln retains them with indelible truth. When I see on wall paintings that finger holes are marked I am doubtful, because it may be the work of an overwise restorer, and so of copies of the wall-paintings on the tombs; and, indeed, I am sorry to know that modern painters and engravers are not trustworthy in details, but palm off home made suppositions about the proper finish of musical instruments, the nature of which they do not comprehend. They are ignorant even of any necessity for comprehending such simple things.
I was looking over a valuable book on sculpture yesterday, in which highly finished delineations were given of the friezes of the Parthenon; in one engraving four flute players were represented each playing a single pipe. I was dazed; wondered if my memory had played me tricks. So I went and looked at the marbles, and sure enough I was right; the sculptor had carved two hands and two pipes in the natural way of the double pipes! At that period I should not expect to see the single pipe, and I do not remember on any Etruscan vase a player on one pipe only. Neither should one expect to see the bulb form represented here because the straight form suits best the sculptor’s art; and in marble vases, also, the double pipes are quite plain as may be seen on a beautiful vase in the entrance hall of the British Museum. Read Keat’s poem, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” and then go and look on this marble picture of
The happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new.
Or if you are denied that delight, read those five stanzas of a poem that will be immortal as the memory of our race, and will outlast the marble beauty it realizes; read it in quietness, and then, in Keat’s sweet words,
With eyes, shut softly up alive,
the scene will grow within you, as that pale singer heard it, singing
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone;
Fair youth beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those leaves be bare;
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, well-a-day! if I allow the pages of “Endymion” to allure me the hours will run by and no work be done.
The vase on which the satyr is painted, with his frisky tail, is called a Lekythos, and was especially dedicated to funeral ceremonies holding oil or perfume; but what the satyr has to do with such, I do not know, unless it was that the entombed owner had been a jolly old fellow himself, and liked such company.
The satyrs are frequently seen playing the double flutes, and I have noticed that in most instances men players use flutes that have not more than two bulbs, whilst the flutes that have three bulbs seem to be of more delicate make and are assigned to the female players; for they, as we know, were renowned for the highest excellence in the art.
The muse Euterpe, who presided over pastoral poetry, is represented on one vase, seated and holding the pipes in her left hand resting on her knee, whilst with her right hand she encloses the upper part of one of the pipes and is pressing the tip with her thumb. It was this design that first arrested my attention. I saw that the fingers held but two of the bulbs: there was not room in the hand for more, whilst the pipe that was free had the three bulbs: hence, at that moment, one was missing. What did it mean? There is no instance ever of a pipe of two and a pipe of three bulbs being played together as a pair.
| Euterpe preparing her Flutes |
Fig. 17.
The position of the hands of Euterpe and the method of handling the flutes are shown in Fig. 17. The painting is on a vase called a Krater, a vase intended for mixing the water and the wine, and its fine breadth of shape is admirably fit for the display of the paintings. There is a vase close by on which this custom of mixing the wine is depicted; the usual proportions were three of water to two of wine, sometimes it was two of water to one of wine; whilst the drinking of wine without water was accounted vulgar,—a sign of coarseness of taste, and was in some Greek states prohibited by law.
The vases called Amphoræ were for containing the measure of oil given to the victor in the Panathenæan games, and are often inscribed with the date of the contest, and name of the owner, and the words “One of the prizes from Athens.” On some vases we see the player in the musical contest, standing mounted on a low stool. Eratosthenes tells us that boxing to the sound of flutes was an Etrurian custom.
On a Hydria the scene depicted is a Music Lesson, and very life-like it is; there are two seated female figures, one has the two flutes with bulbs, and the other has a Kithara or lyre, a dog plays his part in it by listening, a panther cat is sitting on a stool, and a child free as nature leaves him is playing on the floor. It is a capital picture of Greek domestic life. Another vase presents the player on two flutes in full face, and distinctly shows that the second joint of the fingers was used to cover the holes, a custom which previously I have alluded to is thus confirmed by good evidence.
Confirming the use of four holed flutes, there is, in a case in the Greek and Roman saloon, a slab representing in relief two satyrs treading grapes in a wine press, and a youth lustily blowing the double flutes to keep them to time in their movements, and most evidently the right hand flute shows four holes, clearly and roundly cut.
Another grand vase I found. This was an Amphora, on which was represented a female figure, Meledosa, preparing to play on the double flute; she holds them in her hand, as in Fig. 18, and as you will notice, with her forefinger of the right hand lightly pressing the top of the pipe, each pipe distinctly showing three bulbs; in this instance, the pipes are each completed ready for playing. Certainly we cannot regard the tips of the pipes as reeds; the shape does not correspond in outline to an Arghool reed, and if we imagine an oboe type of reed in use at that period, this design would not correspond, for no player would press the tip of a reed of the oboe or the bassoon kind. What, then?
| Meledosa’s Flutes Complete. |
Fig. 18.
My idea is that this bulb form was adopted for the sake of using a concealed reed. That the bulbs were hollow, I am perfectly sure; because of the witness of a most precious fragment, preserved in a case in the Greek and Roman saloon, belonging to one of two pipes of a later date, found in a tomb near Athens. The Greeks called the double pipes diaulos, and these have been considered to be the representative of such; but they are not so, being distinct pipes used separately, as I shall have in another chapter to elucidate. Only about three quarters of a bulb remains, but one pipe still holds a broken portion. The length of that bulb, I should say, was originally in about the same proportion to the pipes as we see upon the vases; so that there is no doubt about the hollow bulb, as a real thing. Now, considered by itself the one bulb was a distinct invention in art, and as such it was complete in itself, yet after a time the invention was carried further, and the wonder is why? what end did it serve to introduce more?
The purpose of having two or three bulbs went beyond that of the original invention of the subulo pattern, and was, I imagine, an ingenious device to provide that the player should be able to transpose the reed from one bulb to the other in order to play in a different mode or key, virtually without altering the disposition of the fingers; lengthening the pipe by transferring the reed higher, or shortening the effective sounding length of the pipe by placing the reed in the next lower or in the lowest bulb of the three: thus the player would have the choice of three modes or keys, whilst his pipes would remain outwardly the same. The bulb forms an artificial mouth, as was the custom many centuries later in the cap of the cromorne. The position of the reed determines the effective length of the pipe; the difference of pitch would be in each case one tone, as I find that the length of bulb corresponds with the distance between two finger holes of the pipe. Does this solve the mystery? Be that as it may, I have found in these vases a source of ever renewed pleasure.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Tombs, tombs of a dozen buried cities, once gay with life, full of the daily sympathy of pleasure, and no less of sorrow. They gave the dead their gold and silver and jewels; they gave them food, fruits, oil and wine, and left them to silence and slow time. These lovely Amphoræ buried, these festal Kraters empty,—and once brimmed with wine! We think, irresistibly drawn to think of them, with Keats’s longing wish:—
O for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep delvèd earth.
The chamber had been rifled a thousand years or more; gold and ornaments gone, only the dust and the skeletons of men and women, young men and maidens,—the most perishable of things, the vases the most enduring. The owners bought their burial land “in perpetuity;” and, like the old Egyptians, they builded for a very brief and rudely broken eternity.
CHAPTER VI.
In the Land of Greece.
FROM ETRURIA TO ATHENS.
What a merry lot those Subulones were, piping to song and dance and good cheer. I have been laughing over an Etruscan picture of one of these jovial fellows laying down on the grass upon his back, all the time lustily playing his pipes, and kicking his legs in the air, in sheer exuberance of merriment. And I have wondered what could that music be which so evidently was a never failing source of enjoyment to him, and to his race.
The old adage says “simple things please simple folk.” Simple the music must have been, because of the very limited compass of such instruments as we see delineated; and I have thought that, maybe, the old folk songs of eastern Europe preserve to us fragments of that ancient music. Simple, indeed, but to hearers and players in those days representing the fulness of art. The suitability of such music to such instruments is clear enough, for the tunes need but a range of a few notes, and come easily into the compass of rustic voices. Century after century these old melodies have been cherished, and seem to have perpetual life. They antedate all histories, and none can trace them to their earliest springs. How that one haunted Beethoven which he put into his Ninth Symphony, and made his chief theme,—a simple phrase of a few notes that seems as if it would go on for ever. For thirteen years it crops up here and there in his works, until at last he found full deliverance for it in the crowning effort of his genius.
In the last chapter, I showed you by illustrations the three distinct usages of the double pipes as improved by the Etruscans, and I sought to demonstrate that their new invention comprised, first, a concealed reed in a hollow bulb; secondly, such a disposition of the reed that one, or two, or three bulbs were allotted to each pipe, and that the purpose of such an arrangement was to obtain an adaptability in the reed, that it might be placed at pleasure in either bulb. I judged that the invention had three stages, first when there was one bulb, next when two were used, and finally three. My reasoning is confirmed by a Kylix in the 2nd Vase Room of the British Museum, it is of the early or archaic period (B.C. 480-440) and the pipes are with one bulb only. The player, a female player, has the left-hand pipe longest, thus evidently indicating a transition period in pipes linked to Egyptian custom.
These conditions imply corresponding advances in musical art, for by the new methods it becomes possible to play in three different modes or scales; since if we suppose the reed to be placed in the bulb nearest the pipe, the player would produce, as the lowest note, A; if placed in the bulb above, he could produce G; and if in the highest bulb, reach as low as F. Although his fingering would remain the same, the pitch would include a different range in each case, and, as we should say, he would thus be able to play in different keys. I reckon by the relation of the length of the bulb, which is equal to the distance between two holes, that each change would make a difference of a whole tone. The art of the player would greatly alter intervals, especially by partial covering of the holes flattening pitch to required degrees for the particular mode.
When we read of the various Greek modes—of the Dorian scale, the Phrygian, Lydian, Mixo-Lydian, Hypo-Dorian, and others—we should not forget that one was added to the other in order of time, and the full system only gradually evolved. And in this Etruscan period, the music was probably limited to the single tetrachord on three modes, and so remained for a long time. We, in some instances, see on the vases that the pipes are marked with three holes each, sometimes with four; although it is rarely that the holes are indicated at all.
The Egyptian flutes had three holes to one pipe and four to the other, which only extended the scale one note higher than the three holed. In these Etruscan flutes, however, it is by no means clear that the second flute extended the compass, for the holes seemed to occupy in each the same position as to distance. It is open to consideration that a difference in the pitch of the reed itself of one of the pipes, would possess the power of influencing that pipe to the extent of a semi-tone, if such entered into the design of the instrument, and so we find a reason for the second pipe. On my models, I sometimes make a difference of a whole tone in each note of the scale produced. In default of any true knowledge of Greek practice, I think that we may fairly attribute to the artist some such design in the construction of the pipes.
It is a natural conclusion that the first invention of man in the way of flutes would be a single pipe for the production of one, two or three notes; then with a sense of a scale the four notes. From the single pipe the double pipe would arise, with a view to some variation of such a scale, to which the ear was predisposed, and so the method of double pipes would be fixed by custom.
We may be quite sure that when double pipes were first adopted there was a meaning in the method. The assumption that one pipe preceded the two does not seem to hold in the case of these bulbed flutes with the four holes, they seem to start as di-aulos.
The Etrurian vases give no instance of single flutes. In truth, another invention was necessary, and it came in course of aftertime from the Greek mind. Like most useful inventions, it was marvellously simple—nothing other than the giving of six holes to one pipe, and fingering the one pipe with fingers of both hands, and with one thumb added; even that thumb hole may rank as a distinct invention of intrinsic importance to art. A similar delay we know occurred in association with key-board instruments, and it was only in Bach’s usage that the thumb was raised to the rank of efficiency and placed on an equality with the fingers.
It is remarkable that in the progress of civilization the later way of development should have been from the double flute to the single flute, through perception of the better aid to execution and display that was afforded by the single flute, and evidently when this change came, the idea of different modes had gained acceptance, the two pipes no longer constituting a pair, but each pipe intended to be taken up in obedience to the choice or change of mode.
This is a very significant advance. Let us now study the nature of