I have mentioned this before and I know I will again but this
particular issue is very widespread and deserves a post all its own. At
least if you enjoy researching music in myths.
When
reading anything about ancient Greece that mentions "the flute", there
are very high odds that it should say "the aulos". Aulos is so
frequently mistranslated as flute that you almost have to assume
flute means aulos in any English text. The aulos is a double reed
instrument played vertically, sometimes in pairs and sometimes not. The
flute has no reeds and is played horizontally/transverse and almost no
one is crazy enough to try to play two at once.
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| Pan Playing Double Aulos Among the White Violets |
The recorder is sometimes played in pairs but again, the
recorder does not use reeds and so also isn't an aulos. The aulos does
not exist as a modern instrument and we don't know all the details of
how the aulos was made or played. We do have enough pictures from vases
and sculptures, as well as writings about it, to know it was not like
the flute at all. The aulos does seem to be somewhat like an oboe but
that comparison is not precise either since oboes are not played in
pairs and don't require a strap around the head. This means that
whenever you run into something saying "Athena invented the flute",
"Euterpe was the Muse of flute players" or "Apollo played flute with the
Muses" it almost ALWAYS means aulos, not flute.
Now just to
confuse things, there was a transverse flute in use in ancient Greece.
It was considered a country instrument, not very sophisticated and
linked to shepherds. There are almost no mythological stories that
feature this instrument and the only reference to a God playing one
(that shouldn't actually read aulos that is) that I have run across is
Pan and I'm not sure about that one. It is possible that the original
Greek text said panpipes or syrinx instead of flute, another common
mistranslation. Although since Pan was a God of shepherds, it is not
impossible that in this case, they actually meant the transverse flute.
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| Pan Playing Transverse Flute Among the Wild Columbine |
The transverse flute just didn't have enough respect
to be used in the stories. It is one of the oldest instruments in the
world but it took centuries for the flute to gain any standing among
other instruments in Western culture. Yet people kept playing it,
teaching it and writing music for it. And now, it is so hard for us to
believe that this instrument didn't matter in the past that we change
the name of other instruments to flute. Flutes can be sneaky little
things.
