Four flutes were found at Pompeii, and they were all of one pattern, of greater length, yet following the same system as in that latest Greek invention illustrated and described in the last chapter, and indeed may be considered as the final development attained by the Greeks in instruments of the flute kind, for nothing has to this day been discovered in advanced superiority to it for musical capability or for display of refined workmanship and technical ingenuity.
These instruments, are, it is true, classed as Greco-Roman, but they are essentially Greek, although of the period of the Roman dominion. The body of the flute is ivory, and it is twenty-one inches long, bored throughout in perfect cylindrical bore three-eighths of an inch diameter. Think of the skill necessary to accomplish this with most primitive tools! Then the ivory is surrounded by a closely fitting series of cylinders of bronze and silver alternately in sections, and each section possesses just sufficient ease of fitting that it may be caused to rotate on the ivory by simple pressure of the finger upon a little metal loop which had been provided for that purpose. The end sections are fixed to the ivory tube, and thus hold the others in their positions. The appearance of the instrument is most attractive—bands of olive-coloured bronze, with bands of silver intervening. The finger holes, to the number of eleven, are bored in the ivory at the proper distances, and corresponding holes are made in the bronze tube. When these holes in the ivory and in the bronze are set in line and correspond, then the note can be sounded proper to each opening as related to the sounding lengths of the tube; but the player, by turning any selected bronze section to the right or left, can close the finger hole so that the note is left out of the scale. It is a charmingly simple device, and yet how many ages had to pass before human intelligence contrived it, and nations of men had passed likewise—gone back into the dust that they rose out of.
This city of Pompeii still speaks to us. Its message is of dust and ashes, very human in its meaning. From the ashes came this silent record of a dead music. There was a day of garlands and of feasting; young men and women joining in dance and song, and listening to this flute piping its well-loved melodies; and the flute was laid down, warm with the fingers of the player resting awhile from mirth inviting music, and then—after a long while—it is found just as it was left that day, with the four notes closed off, which the player wanted not, in the scale of the mode chosen for that last melody breathed from this flute by living breath.
This was the series of notes which the flute was capable of giving, and the closed-off notes are, as will be seen, each marked with a cross, Nos. 1, 4, 5, 6:
The depth of pitch may seem cause for surprise when we remember that our flutes of the present day that are nearest in length of tube to this Greek instrument do not reach by an octave this extreme low compass. The difference arises through the means of excitation for producing sound from a cylindrical pipe; this therefore is a reed blown, not a lip blown, flute, and properly belongs to the clarionet species. In pitch, it descends lower than our A clarionet, and we have to modify the conclusion generally held that the Greeks only used instruments of high range of tones.
Now, taking up the remaining three of these four flutes which were found together in one mansion, on which was written the name, “Caio Vibio” (as was seen on the day of their discovery, December 10th, 1867), we notice that they also had their lowest note B in the 8-foot octave. The reeds were placed at the top of the instruments, not branching out aslant as indicated in the specimens illustrated, earlier, (page 96), of this particular construction; and the instrument was held in position like our clarionet, only lifted more to the horizontal probably, for on this point we have not, that I am aware of, any ancient representation. No. 2 has twelve notes, there being one note interposed which is not found in No. 1. It is F[n]; but the extent of compass is the same, whilst the closed holes are 4 and 7:—
In No. 3 we find other differences, and this peculiarity, that the second and fifth sections are not pierced with holes, so that practically the corresponding notes were permanently closed—there is no note between B and C♯, no note between D and E. Observe that the first note in each is marked (0), for this is the note from the open end of the pipe when all finger holes are closed:—
