In the pair of wooden pipes belonging to the Elgin collection at the British Museum, one of the bulbs, partly broken, but preserved in the same case as the pipes, was fastened to the pipes by means of waxed thread, the indented lines being still visible on the rim of the bulb. The aulos was kept in a case called sybene[14] (συβήνη) or aulotheke[15] (αὐλοθήκη), and the little bag or case in which the delicate reeds were carried was known by the name of glottokomeion[15] (γλωττοκομεῖον).[16] Two Egyptian flute cases are extant, one in the Louvre,[17] and the other in the museum at Leiden. The latter case is of sycamore wood, cylindrical in shape, with a stopper of the same wood; there is no legend or design upon it. The case contained seven pipes, five pieces of reed without bore or holes, and three pieces of straw suitable for making double-reed mouthpieces.[18]
Aristoxenus gives the full compass of a single pipe or pair of pipes as over three octaves:—“For doubtless we should find an interval greater than the above mentioned three octaves between the highest note of the soprano clarinet (aulos) and the lowest note of the bass-clarinet (aulos); and again between the highest note of a clarinet player performing with the speaker open, and the lowest note of a clarinet player performing with the speaker closed.”[19]
This, according to the tables of Alypius, would correspond to the full range of the Greek scales, a little over three octaves from
to
It is evident that the ancient Greeks obtained this full compass on the aulos by means of the harmonics. Proclus (Comm. in Alcibiad. chap. 68) states that from each hole of the pipe at least three tones could be produced. Moreover, classic writers maintain that if the performer press the zeugos or the glottai of the pipes, a sharper tone is produced.[20] This is exactly how a performer on a modern clarinet or oboe produces the higher harmonics of the instrument.[21] The small bore of the aulos in comparison to its length facilitated the production of the harmonics (cf. Zamminer p. 218), as does also the use of a small hole near the mouthpiece, called in Greek syrinx (σῦριγξ) and in the modern clarinet the “speaker,” which when open enables the performer to overblow with ease the first harmonic of the lowest fundamental tones. To Mr Albert A. Howard of Harvard University is due the credit of having identified the syrinx of the aulos with the speaker of the clarinet.[22] This assumption is doubtless correct, and is supported by classical grammarians,[23] who state that the syrinx was one of the holes of the aulos. It renders quite clear certain passages in Aristoxenus, Aristotle and Plutarch, and a scholion to Pindar’s 12th Pythian, which before were difficult to understand (see [Syrinx]).
| Fig. 4.—The Plagiaulos. Castellani Collection (Maenad Pipes), British Museum. |
| Fig. 5.—Ancient Greek Double Pipes. Elgin Collection, British Museum. |
The aulos or tibia existed in a great number of varieties enumerated by Pollux (Onomast. iv. 74 et seq.) and Athenaeus (iv. 76 et seq.). They fall into two distinct classes, the single and the double pipes. There were three principal single pipes, the monaulos, the plagiaulos and the syrinx monocalamos. The double pipes were used by the great musicians of ancient Greece, and notably at the musical contests at Delphi, and what has been said above concerning the construction of the aulos refers mainly to the double pipes. The monaulos, a single pipe of Egyptian origin, which, by inference, we assume to have been played from the end by means of a reed, may have been the archetype of the oboe or clarinet. The plagiaulos photinx or tibia obliqua, invented by the Libyans (Pollux iv. 74), or, according to Pliny (vii. 204), by Midas of Phrygia, was held like the modern flute, but was played by means of a mouthpiece containing a reed. Three of the existing pipes at the British Museum (the two in the Castellani collection, and the pipe from Halicarnassus) belong to this type. The mouthpiece projects from the side of the pipe and communicates with the main bore by means of a slanting passage; the end nearest the mouthpiece is stopped as in the modern flute; in the latter, however, the embouchure is not closed by the lips when playing, and therefore the flute has the acoustic properties of the open pipe, whereas the plagiaulos having a reed mouthpiece gave the harmonics of a closed pipe. The double pipes existed in five sizes according to pitch, in the days of Aristoxenus, who, in a treatise on the construction of the auloi (Περὶ αὐλῶν τρήσεως), unfortunately not extant,[24] divides them thus:—