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
THE SWEET MONAULOS.
The mon-aulos, “the sweet monaulos,” not seen on the vases or wall-paintings, but known to have been, and still having a real existence in two solitary specimens now in the British Museum, and accompanied by that evidence, which is unique as it is precious, of the actual hollow bulb that tipped the pipe. The allusions I have made to these flutes in earlier chapters will be remembered, and now comes the fitting moment to enter into details. The illustrations fairly give the proportion as to distances, on a scale of one fourth, sufficiently clear to enable you to judge how the holes are arranged. The pipes are very nearly cylindrical, departing from the true figure only in being of a little larger bore at the upper end than at the lower; which may have been done by design, or the nature of the drilling means then in use may have caused the variation of bore. If you go, to look at these relics of the Greek age, you will not see them as here represented, but curiously contorted. They were found in a tomb on the road to Eleusis, near Athens, and the damp of many centuries has twisted and warped them; and one has been broken, snapped asunder at the middle. They are made of sycamore, and are very plain simple instruments. What value they had we cannot in any degree estimate; but I should imagine them to be of the ordinary kind familiar to every household in which music was cherished; for the Greeks also, like the Etrurians, followed the old world custom of burying with the dead the things they had most prized in life, even as the Egyptians did.
And these flutes lay beside the youth when they left him there sorrowing, and thinking how his cherished flutes would comfort him in his loneliness. Now, not even his dust left; gone, we know not whither,—to the underworld or to the heights of Mount Olympus. We of a foreign race think of this nameless youth, because here they have brought his flutes, and these speak to us of kinship. Not without strange feelings did I handle them and place my fingers covering the holes, that all plainly showed how they had been smoothed and warm by his—his fingers—playing soft Lydian airs: worn fingers that one day became pale, then cold as marble, and now unsubstantial and vanished utterly; as soon, indeed, mine will be. And yet we,—shadows, both—clasp hands over this great gap of time, whilst handling things that were loved.
How I hang over that case of treasures every time that I visit the Museum; foolishly fascinated perhaps, yet irresistibly so, looking and pondering. The fragment of a bulb that is left—for a fragment it is, only about three fourths of a whole—is, by the enthusiast’s valuation, beyond price. In one of the pipes, there is a piece of another bulb left sticking on the top; and, if you look closely, you will see the scored lines inside the pipe, and outside and inside the bulb, that were made so as to ensure close fitting when the bulb was pressed in. And look again, closely, and you will see at the top of each pipe, there is a little rim edge, and then a shallow groove about half an inch broad; and this, no doubt, was bound round with fibre or ivory or metal to prevent the splitting at the top, where the bulb was pressed in and made to fit securely, being, perhaps, slightly moistened by the lips, just as we do now when putting instruments together; and the operation was frequent, since the reeds, as I have said, were taken out after playing, and placed safely away in a little box called a tongue box.
The pipes are three eights of an inch in bore, and the finger holes are oval and large, in their smaller diameter quite as large as the bore. I measured the distance between every hole, and so obtained the correct length of the instruments as in their original straight condition.
By the kindness of Mr. A. S. Murray, then the esteemed chief of the department, I was able to take every particular I wished, and to calliper the bore of each pipe. The length of the longest pipe is thirteen and a half inches, and the shorter pipe is twelve inches and a quarter, just one and a quarter inches difference, which corresponds to the distance between each hole, showing that in depth of sound the pitch of the pipes differs by one whole tone.