Each section had a small loop or ring of metal, by which, being pressed against, the section was made to revolve, or to be partly turned round to cover or uncover the finger hole, so that the player threw out of gear, as it were, any hole not required in the mode he was playing in. When all the little loops are brought into line along the bottom of the flute, they look like caterpillars’ feet. Although I venture to speak of this as the Bombyx flute, I am aware that there are passages in ancient authors which may seem to claim the appellation for some other kind; but various statements so mystify us by their incongruity that we have to withhold belief, and to question how far the author was practically acquainted with the craft of the flute maker, and how far he may not have written from mere hearsay, not himself clearly comprehending all that was signified by the terms employed nor the various usages they might include. It is so in our own day, particularly in the matter of musical instruments. An instance in point occurs in the very case containing these flutes, for there is here another antique specimen (in kind quite distinct from these), which was found by Sir Charles T. Newton (our foremost authority on classical treasures), and he describes this as “a flageolet (plagiaulos) in bone and bronze, with mouthpiece still entire,” found in a tomb at Halikarnassos. Here are two questionable assertions. First, it certainly is not a flageolet, for flageolets have whistle mouths; second, it may or it may not, be the true representative instrument understood by the ancients as the plagiaulos. We are led to suppose that the meaning of the term is a side blown flute; but, for aught I know, the silkworm flute may be a true plagiaulos; for, obviously, from a practical point of view, this flute was held sideways, though blown with a reed, as will presently be explained. A flageolet is not a side blown flute; but what Sir C. T. Newton discovered is a most ancient example of a transverse flute—that is to say, blown in the same way as our orchestral flute, and held in the same position, and so is side blown. What I should be inclined to contend for, is that we have in reed flutes the di-aulos, the mon-aulos, and the plagiaulos, and that they originated in the order here shown.
| The Flageolet Proper. |
Fig. 21. |
Frequently small flutes are called flageolets by writers of the present day, but the true flageolet should have a bulb head. Its invention is ascribed to Juvigny, about 1581. The old French name is “flagol,” the German “flaschinet.” The name flageolet should properly be confined to those flutes or whistle pipes having a flask-like head or mouth-piece with a conducting neck—that is, a small tube inserted into a hollow bulb (hence the derivation of the name, from the same root from which “flagon” comes), and within the bulb a small piece of sponge inserted to collect and condense the moisture from the breath.
Adrian, junior, quotes Aristotle on the Bombyx flutes as to the length of the pipe, and says that “they were blown only with great exertion.” That they were difficult to perform upon, we may well believe; and we know that in our own clarionets the low notes require strength of wind more than the upper notes do; but the recorder or the translator may be responsible for the implication of great exertion. The longest flutes that have as yet been discovered are of the kind now under examination, and so far confirmatory of the right to the title that I have given them; and one of four (described in the next chapter) discovered at Pompeii, now in the museum at Naples, exceeds twenty inches in length, and in the copy of it made by Mr. Victor Mahillon the loops, being complete in their series, have strangely like appearance to caterpillars’ feet. I should not omit to remark that in our specimens, only traces exist here and there of such loops at points where they were soldered on; but, for verisimilitude, I have indicated the series on one of the pipes. At the second segment on the upper pipe marked with a short line—, the evidence is quite plain.
Whether the interior tube is of ivory, bone, or wood, the condition is such that the eye cannot judge; but in the Naples instrument I believe that, without doubt, it was ivory, and the bore three eighths of an inch, as it seems to be in this case. The great advantage of ivory is obvious, because the cylinder necessarily fits close, and any swelling of the inner tube from moisture was a liability to be avoided.
I have illustrated the square at the top of the mouthpiece, and shown the hole which is perforated in it and leads down to the body of the flute; and, looking at the diameter of the perforation—barely more than one eighth—the unsuitability of such for office of a lip blown flute, with its bore three times the size, is strikingly obvious.
Here is another instance of the little reliance that can be placed upon authority when it goes beyond its own particular line. In this display which is the greater, its ignorance of the nature and structure of musical instruments, or its scholastic jumble of science? This passage I find in “The Life of the Greeks and Romans, by E. Guhl and W. Koner, translated by Francis Hueffer.” “The aulos proper resembles our hautboy and clarinet, differing, however, from the latter in the fact of its lower notes being more important than the higher ones. The aulos consisted of two connected tubes and a mouthpiece, to the latter of which belonged two so-called tongues, in order to increase the trembling motion of the air”; and of the capistrum or head straps, “the purpose of this bandage was to soften the tone by preventing violent breathing.” For connected errors of statement of fact, and audacity of ignorance in drawing inferences, these authorities would be hard to beat. If one thing is more certain than another on the authority of the Etruscan vases, it is that the pipes were not in any way connected; and in a stone head found by Cesnola, at Salamis, the strap passing round the cheeks is carved, and shows over the mouth two separate apertures for the pipes. This, already referred to, is absolutely conclusive.
In the illustration, the raised mouthpiece merely appears to be nearer the top end in one pipe than in the other; for you should notice that in the upper one the end is jagged, and I have no doubt that originally both pipes were as the lower one, in which the end is completely closed. But whether interiorily the end was blocked near where the slant perforation entered the body of the pipe, I cannot see; I should say that it was, because we find it so customarily in flutes of other nations, both in modern and ancient usage. Here you will see that the distance from the end to the mouthpiece is quite two inches, and that end of the bronze cylinder was, I should think, a fixture; because I perceive that the mouthpiece itself is fitted upon a movable segment. Very curious that is, and no doubt had its purpose. Perhaps the design admits of the partial turning round of the segment of bronze to obtain a different angle of mouthpiece to the fancy of the player.
Then notice, further, that the top finger hole is but a short distance from the mouthpiece; and, according to all experience with such pipes reed blown, I judge that, as that hole gives the octave note to the lower open end, some additional upper length is in demand, perhaps four inches or more. So if the distance is reckoned from that hole to the top of the table of mouthpiece as two inches, we require the reed and its fittings to occupy a further extent of from two to three inches. The diameter of the hole bored through the block, being but little more than an eighth and a sixteenth, shows that reeds must have been used.