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scale, which is d e  f a b  c' (perhaps to be supplemented with e'). The instrumental notes are c, f, and d'this last recalling the observations of Aristoxenus. The d' chimes away mechanically, it seems, at the start of each dochmiac bar (or at least every second bar), coinciding on successive apparitions with vocal  , a, a, and d. The other two instrumental notes, cf, occur in tandemtwiceand it looks as if the two auloi here diverged to blow the chord of a fourth. The concurrent vocal note is lost at the first place; at the second it is b, which, as it happens, gives us the very combination cited by Gaudentius as an example of a tritone harmony, f-b. |
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Isolated instrumental notes appear in much the same way in two scraps from another papyrus in Vienna, discovered along with the Orestes piece (8 PVindob. 29825 frs. c and f). In one the vocal notes visible are e  a, the instrumental ones B (once with the vocal a, making the chord of a minor seventh) and d'. In the other we see again an instrumental B, and vocal d e a b c'. |
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The heterophony suggested by these papyri is very different from that described by Plato: no flurry of additional notes, just a few special tones repeated at intervals to create a changing series of striking chords with the vocal line. Sometimes the recognized concords of fourth, fifth, or octave were produced; sometimes other intervals such as thirds, tritones, sixths, or sevenths, which according to Greek doctrine were discords but which, it had to be acknowledged, could give quite a good effect. The author of the pseudo-Aristotelian Problem 19. 39 speaks of aulos accompaniments which use discords but finish in unison with the vocal line; he says that they 'give more pleasure by the ending than displeasure by the preceding divergences'. |
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In Chapter 3 I made sporadic reference to the lyres of East Africa. As this is the one region where the tradition of lyre-playing has survived as an inheritance from the ancient Mediterranean world, it may be of interest to note that in Ethiopia |
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performance on lyres includes instrumental preludes and interludes; when accompanying the voice they usually duplicate the melody, producing a certain amount of heterophony, or play an ostinato accompaniment often derived from the basic vocal pattern on which the song may be based.42 |
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42NG vi. 272. |
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