Essays on the Origins of Western Music

by

David Whitwell

Essay Nr. 74: On the Ancient Oboe (Aulos)

Music of aulos, soothing and sweet...[1]

…..

Soon shall the glorious voice of the aulos go up for you again...

with such music as the lyre maketh to the gods![2]

The most important woodwind instrument of antiquity was of course the aulos, the double-pipe instrument which is so often pictured in vases of this period. Because it is usually mistranslated as a “flute” in English literature, we have elected to come right out and call it an oboe, its nearest modern relative, even though, of course, no one ever described an oboe as “soothing and sweet,” as did Sophocles the aulos. In our view there is no reason not to suppose there was an unbroken link between the ancient aulos and the medieval shawm which returned to Western Europe from the crusades.[3] The aulos was unquestionably a double-reed instrument as we know, for example, from Theophrastus, a pupil of both Plato and Aristotle, who described the cane plant used in making the aulos reeds which grew at Lake Copais in Boeotia. When referring to the vibrating part of the reed he uses the term zeugos which implies a pair of matched objects, i.e. the two blades.[4]

The ancient iconography nearly always pictures the player wearing a leather band to support his cheeks, implying some exertion was required. This explains the myth of the goddess Minerva, who invented the aulos, but threw it away as she observed, when looking in a river, how the exertion in playing it deformed her face!

Athenaeus ( c. 200 AD), quoting from a now lost book by Aristoxenus (4th century BC), writes that the latter knew five kinds of aulos, which he named: the virginal, child-pipes, harp-pipes, complete, and super-complete.[5] A 5th century BC fresco in the tomb of Leopardi, near Tarquinia, shows a bell on each body similar to that of the modern oboe.

We find some additional information about the reeds in Pliny the Elder’s (23 – 79 AD) Natural History. He offers the following miscellaneous information: that “melodious auloi” are made from the lotus tree[6], that some auloi were made from a type of bamboo[7] and that some auloi were made from reeds grown on the shores of Lake Orchomenus, a type of reed which required an unusual amount of curing.

These supplied the instruments for glorious music, though mention must also not be omitted of the further remarkable trouble required to grow them, so that excuse may be made for the present-day preference for musical instruments of silver. Down to the time of the aulos player Antigenides, when a simple style of music was still practiced, the reeds used to be regarded as ready for cutting after the rising of Arcturus. When thus prepared the reeds began to be fit for use a few years later, though even then the actual auloi needed maturing with a great deal of practice, and educating to sing of themselves, with the tongues pressing themselves down, which was more serviceable for the theatrical fashions then prevailing. But after variety came into fashion, and luxury even in music, the reeds began to be cut before midsummer and made ready for use in three years, their tongues being wider open to modulate the sounds, and these continue to the present day. But at that time it was firmly believed that only a tongue cut from the same reed as the pipe in each case would do, and that one taken from just above the root was suitable for a left-hand aulos and one from just below the top for a right-hand aulos; the reeds that had been washed by the waters of Cephisus itself were rated as immeasurably superior.[8]

We even have a fragment of contemporary advice on the technique of playing the aulos. The rhetorician and biographer, Flavius Philostratus[9], recounts a visit by a traveler named Apollonius to the most famous aulos player of the 1st century AD, a man named Canus. The instrument as he knew it had evolved from an instrument made from a plant to one made from a variety of materials, “of gold or brass and the skin of a stag, or perhaps the shin of a donkey.”[10] Canus provided this very rare glimpse into the basic technique of playing the aulos.

...namely reserves of breath...and facility with the lips consisting in their taking in the reed of the pipe and playing without blowing out the cheeks; and manual skill I consider very important, for the wrist must not weary from being bent, nor must the fingers be slow in fluttering over the notes....

Canus also made the interesting statement that if the audiences only knew how much pleasure he received from playing, instead of paying him, he would be required to pay them.[11] In describing the kinds of music he played, Canus provides a list of types of music which would seem familiar today: music for those who are sad, music for celebration, music for lovers and music for religious usage.

[The purpose of my music is] that the mourner may have his sorrow lulled to sleep by the pipe, and that they that rejoice may have their cheerfulness enhanced, and the lover may wax warmer in his passion, and that the lover of sacrifice may become more inspired and full of sacred song.

Upon further questioning, Canus admits it is the music itself which accomplishes these ends, not the aulos.

We know some additional names of ancient aulos players. Athenaeus mentions a player named, Asopodorus of Phlius, who, participating in a contest, was shocked to see the old noble art declining to the level of mere entertainment.

In olden times the feeling for nobility was always maintained in the art of music, and all its elements skilfully retained the orderly beauty appropriate to them. Hence there were auloi peculiarly adapted to every mode, and every player had auloi suited to every mode used in the public contests. But Pronomus of Thebes began the practice of playing all the modes on the same auloi. Today, however, people take up music in a haphazard and irrational manner. In early times popularity with the masses was a sign of bad art; hence, when a certain aulos player once received loud applause, Asopodorus of Phlius, who was himself still wating in the wings, said, “What’s this? Something awful must have happened!” The player evidently could not have won approval with the crowd otherwise. And yet the musicians of our day set as the goal of their art success with their audiences.[12]

Athenaeus mentions a strong willed aulos player of the Alexandrian Period, named Dorion, who is discussed by several early writers.[13] Once when dining in the house of a nobleman in Cyprus he praised a cup. When the nobleman offered to have another made for him by the same craftsman, Dorion answered, “No, he can make one for you; I’ll take this one!” Athenaeus explained this improper response to a nobleman by a musician in an old saying, “In an aulos player the gods implanted no sense; no, for with his blowing his sense takes wing and flies from him.”[14] Athenaeus quotes another, more touching, story about this musician by the writer, Aristodemus.

Dorion the music master, who was club-footed, once lost the shoe of his lame foot at a dinner party. He said: “I shall utter no heavier curse upon the thief than the wish that that sandal may fit him.”

Zeno (300 – 260 BC) compliments an aulos player,

The wise man does all things well, just as we say that Ismenias plays all melodies on the aulos well,[15]

whom is mentioned rather disrespectfully by another aulos player, Dionysodorus, who comments that no one will ever hear him play, like Ismenias, on ships or at the fountain in the town square![16]

We know that by the 4th century BC the aulos players were regular contract members of drama companies and that they wore costumes. We have considerable documentation for at least one famous player who was associated with the theater, Kraton of Chalkedon.[17]

Finally, we have a tragic poem of the 2nd century AD which refers to the suicide of an aulos player,

Clytosthenes, his feet that raced in fury now enfeebled by age, dedicates to thee, Rhea of the lion-car, his tambourines beaten by the hand, his shrill hollow-rimmed cymbals, his double-flute that calls through its horn, on which he once made shrieking music, twisting his neck about, and the two-edged knife with which he opened his veins.[18]

The reference to the aulos “with horn” describes a bell of animal horn which had begun to be used in Rome after the 1st century, AD.

Athenaeus mentions a number of famous teachers and their (now lost) treatises as well as famous aulos schools at Olypiodorus and Orthagoras.[19] Additional lost treatises that we know of are the three by Aristoxenus (born c. 379 BC), a student of Aristotle, On Aulos Players, On The Aulos and Musical Instruments,[20] On Aulos Boring.[21]

Aside from the comment by Canus, above, we have a few more clues to the nature of the repertoire of the aulos players. First, Strabo provides a description of an actual repertoire work played at a contest at Delphi, and we even know the name of the composer, one Timosthenes (fl. c. 270 BC). This work, performed by a rhapsodist with either aulos or lyre accompanying, told the story of a contest between Apollo and a dragon. It consisted of a prelude, the battle, the triumph following the victory, and the expiration of the dragon -- with the aulos player imitating the last hissings of the dragon.[22] By the way, Plutarch tells us that Alexander the Great organized aulos contests because he had little interest in the usual boxing and wrestling contests.[23]

Athenaeus gives a list of terms “applied to aulos playing,” but which to us looks like the titles of repertoire pieces: comus, pastoral, gingras, tetracomus, epiphallus, choir-dance, triumph-song, battle-song, gentle comus, Satyr’s whirl, door-knock, tickle-tune, and Helot-lad.[24]

The earliest functional employment of the aulos was to accompany the lyric poets of the 7th century BC. Apparently the performance skills of the aulos players gradually began to usurp the attention of the public, as we notice several writers, Plato among them, vigorously complaining over liberties being taken by the aulos player. Pratinas, in 500 BC, for example, reminded his listeners that the Muse had ordained that the song should be the mistress and the aulos the servant, and not the other way around![25]

By the 5th century BC the great dramatists held center stage and while the lyre is still mentioned in these plays, it does seem that the aulos begins to be the preferred instrument for accompaniment in the 5th century. Sir Arthur Pickard-Cambridge provides the reasoning of the time.

The instrument by which both the singing and recitative were normally accompanied in tragedy and comedy was the aulos. In the Problems of Aristotle, xix, 43, it is argued that the aulos gives a better accompaniment to the human voice than the lyre, because both aulos and voice are wind instruments and so blend better.... It appears probable that the lyre was used in the drama mainly for special effects, as when the young Sophocles played it in his Thamyris....[26]

The importance which the ancient Greeks assigned to the role of music in education is well-known. Aristotle, who supported the general importance of music in education, drew a line when it came to the aulos. First, he felt the aulos was simply too difficult for student to master. But he had three additional concerns which made this instrument unsuitable for public education.

The aulos is not an instrument which is expressive of moral character; it is too exciting. The proper time for using it is when the performance aims not at instruction, but at the relief of the passions.[27]

…..

Another objection is that when you play aulos you cannot at the same time sing -- thus detracting from its educational value. The ancients therefore were right in forbidding the aulos to youths...[28]

….

Also it distorts the face, as the old myth goes.

Finally, because the professional player, in Aristotle’s experience, cannot resist being influenced by the popular taste of the audience, the subsequent influence of this dimension on the character of the player represents yet another reason why an emphasis on a high level of performance is not appropriate to public education.

Thus then we reject the professional instruments and also the professional mode of education in music (and by professional we mean that which is adopted in contests), for in this the performer practices the art, not for the sake of his own improvement, but in order to give pleasure, and that of a vulgar sort, to his hearers.... The result is that the performers are vulgarized, for the end at which they aim is bad. The vulgarity of the spectator tends to lower the character of the music and therefore of the performers....[29]

Nevertheless, it appears the aulos did play an important part in education and continued to do so for more than a century after Aristotle. We can see evidence of this in a writer of the following period, Strabo, who mentions the use of the aulos in the course of his attack on the philosophy of the Alexandrian writer Eratosthenes (276 - 194 BC).

Eratosthenes contends that the aim of every poet is to entertain, not to instruct. The ancients assert, on the contrary, that poetry is a kind of elementary philosophy, which, taking us in our very boyhood, introduces us to the art of life and instructs us, with pleasure to ourselves, in character, emotions, and actions.... Why, even the musicians, when they give instruction in singing, in lyre playing, or in aulos playing...maintain that these studies tend to discipline and correct the character.[30]