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Wind instrumentsat any rate, those that chiefly concern uswork by setting up vibrations in air that is enclosed in a pipe or pipes. You cannot achieve this simply by blowing into the pipe. There are essentially three things you can do. You can blow sideways across the air columnacross the end of the pipe, or across a hole in its side. This is the principle of the flute.1 Or you can blow down the pipe with your mouth shut. The breath bursting out sets your lips vibrating against each other, and these vibrations are imparted to the air column. This is the principle of the trumpet and the horn. Or you can have a mouthpiece containing a vibrating reed that sets the air going. This is the principle of the clarinet and the oboe. |
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All three types of instrument were known to the Greeks, but those of the third type, known generically as auloi, were much the most important. |
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Aulos is a native word meaning basically 'tube' or 'duct'. The musical aulos was a pipe with finger-holes and a reed mouthpiece. The player almost always played two of them at once, one with each hand, so we shall often refer to auloi in the plural.2 |
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This practice of playing pipes in pairs was universal in the ancient Near East. We have a pair of silver pipes from Ur dating from about 2600 BC, now in the University Museum at Philadelphia, and paired pipes are depicted on later Mesopotamian and Egyptian monuments. Some Egyptian instruments have survived. A figurine from the small Cycladic island of Keros, dating from the middle part of the |
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1 The recorder and the tin whistle are examples of 'tipple' flutes, in which the player has the illusion of blowing down the pipe but in fact the specially designed mouthpiece sends his breath obliquely across the main air column and up a flue. |
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2 It is curious that Greek writers never seem to use the dual form aulo, as might be expected in the Attic dialect with objects so obviously making a pair. |
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