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the Phrygian auloi, where it is clear that the two pipes had differentiated roles.97 |
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The instrument had quite a penetrating tone, to judge by the ability of a single pair of auloi to accompany a choir of up to fifty men. The larger sizes must have had a fairly deep voice in view of the narrowness of the bore. Aristophanes represents the sound of piping by mümü, mümü, and likens it to the buzzing of wasps.98 'Buzzing' (bombos, bombyx) is associated particularly with the lowest notes. There was in fact a particular manner of playing called 'wasping' (sphekismos) in reference to this effect.99 Playing in a high register could be characterized as 'screeching', or as 'squawking like geese'.100 Pollux provides a list of adjectives applicable to piping: they include strong, intense, forceful; sweet-breathed, pure-toned (ligyros, cf. p. 42); wailing, enticing, lamenting.101 |
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The aulos was noted for its ability to express and to arouse different emotions. The old aulos-tunes attributed to Olympus, even if badly played, according to Plato, have the power to possess the hearer with frenzy and mark him out as being in need of religious purification.102 Aristotle calls the aulos 'orgiastic', i.e. conducive to religious frenzy, and it is regularly mentioned (together with drums) in connection with Bacchic, Corybantic, and suchlike ecstatic cults.103 We hear of a man whom the sound of auloi at the symposium always affected with panic.104 'Longinus' speaks of the aulos sending |
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97 See above, pp. 91f.: also Apul. Flor. 3 (Hyagnis the first to play two pipes instead of one, separating the hands and making a musical blend of high and low, acuto tinnitu et graui bombo, with the left and right hole-arrays); Festus p. 109. 13 M. (unequal pipes with a different number of holes). |
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98Eq. 10, Ach. 864-6; cf. Pl. Cri. 54d. In Pl. Cra. 417e, when Socrates produces the hypothetical word from which he wants to derive blaberon, 'boulapteroun', Hermogenes comments that it sounds like an imitation of the aulos prelude of the nomos of Athena. |
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99 Hsch. |
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100 Hsch. s.v. krizei; Diphilus fr. 78. Cf. Festus (Paulus) p. 95 M, 'gingrire properly refers to the noise made by geese; hence a certain type of small pipes is called gingrinae'. |
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101 Poll. 4. 72, cf. 73. |
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102 Pl. Symp. 215c, cf. Minos 318b. |
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103 Arist. Pol. 1341d21; Aesch. fr. 57, Eur. Hel. 1351, Bacch. 127 (Phrygian pipes), Men. Theophoroumene 27f., etc.; cf. p. 91. Those possessed by Corybantic madness think they hear aulos music (Pl. Cri. 54d; cf. Galen vii. 60f. K., Aëtius Iatrica 6. 8). |
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104 'Hippoc.' Epidemics 5.81. |
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