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been published since. Often the inequality of the spacing is so marked that it can only be intentional. But can we discover the intention? |
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There is reason to believe that pipes incorporated certain basic intervals as a matter of design. A passage in Aristoxenus suggests that auloi were commonly bored to give successive intervals of 3/4 tone, 3/4 tone, tone, and then again 3/4, 3/4; the sequence  makes up the interval of a fourth. A slightly later Peripatetic writer observes that in auloi the length-ratio 2: 1 corresponds to the octave interval and that 'the aulos-borers take it so'.80 He is writing at a time of more sophisticated auloi than those of the Classical period; but we also hear that before Pronomus' invention of collars the aulete needed a different pair of auloi for each mode, which certainly implies that an aulos' holes should contain some clues to its intended scale. According to the unanimous testimony of all the ancient writers on music, the interval of the fourth was basic to the structure of every modal scale. We should therefore expect that an aulos would normally have at least one pair of holes yielding notes a fourth apart, in other words at distances from the reed-tip in the ratio 4 : 3. As has been said, we never know just where the reed-tip was. But it is some-times possible to estimate it closely enough to identify the relevant holes. Once that is done, it becomes possible to determine intervals for the other holes. This is the approach which J. G. Landels has fruitfully followed in his analyses of the Brauron and Reading auloi, and it can be extended to several others.81 |
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Here is a list of extant auloi and aulos fragments from the Archaic and Classical periods. |
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1. Thirteen bone fragments from Sparta, c.650-600 BC. R. M. Dawkins, The Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta (London, 1929), 236f. and pl. CLXI-II. |
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2. Two little girls' auloi from Ephesus, c.600-550. D. G. Hogarth, Excavations at Ephesus: The Archaic Artemisia (London, 1908), 194 and pl. XXXVII 12; T. J. Dunbabin (ed.), Perachora: The Sanctuaries of Hera Akraia and Limenia, ii (Oxford, 1962), 448f. British Museum, GR 1907.12-1.423. |
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80 Aristox. Harm. 2.37; ps.-Arist. Pt. 19. 23. Ptolemy, on the other hand, implies that aulos-makers work by trial and error (Harm. 2. 12 p. 66. 32). |
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81 R. J. Letters's attempt to do this, however (CQ 19 (1969), 266-8) makes some improbable assumptions about mouthpiece-extrusions, especially with the Elgin auloi, and yields dubious results. |
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