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.