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and instability was only made worse by the remarkable fact that, by contrast to the distinct and clearly articulated tones of stringed instruments, the pipes glide from one note to another, giving the impression of a constant and confused flux of sound. Plato likened pipe music to a beast n flight: 'the whole art of pipe-playing hunts the proper pitch of each note (i.e. of each and every note durng actual performance) by shooting at it as the note moves'." 'Pipes are in flux and never stay the same'says Aristoxenus'more than any other instrument they wander, because of the craft of pipe-making, because of manual techniques, and because of their own peculiar nature' (Harm. 43.12-24). There are thus two types of perpetuai movement which characterize the pipes: one arising from an inability to control the production of notes to reproduce exact tones; the other arising from the constant flux of sound as it glides from one note to the other. By nature Dionysiac, the pipes are like satyrs, the auletes of myth, whom Lissarrague ((1993) 212) describes as being in 'perpetuai movement, as though they were incapable of controlling their bodies'. In contrast to the pipes, the notes of strings were thought stable and precise: the Aristotelian Problems (922a) recommends pipe-accompanment to the voice, especially for bad singers, since the dissimilarity and precision of the lyre would make the singer's errors more conspicuous, as if measuring them against a 'yardstick'. The fourth distinctive feature of the pipe music is its manyvoicedness, its polyphony, or more strictly speaking, its diphony, since it is the double-pipes that were the standard instrument for theatrical performance. There is controversy about the relationship of the sounds produced by the two pipes, but vase paintings 'of auletes . . . almost always seem to show the fingers of both hands as equally busy, as though both were pfaying quite complex patterns of notes', and Pseudo-Plutarch's On Music speaks of the interplay of the pipes and the 'conversations' (SuXeKTOi) they hold with one another. 59 The pipes were thus 'many-voiced' by their very nature. 60 It is true that ancient music did not make
P lato P hlb. 56a5- 6 (t rans. Barke r (1987) 109, w ith minor adju stm ent). B a r k e r ( 1 9 9 5 ) 4 5 - 6 , ( 1 9 8 4 ) 2 2 7 , n . 1 4 0 , a n d 2 4 3 ; P s . - P l u t . D e M u s . 11 4 4 e , 1138b. 60 It was also, of course, possible to strike several strings at once on the lyre or kithara, indeed, the pipes were even more restricted by nature since the aulos pr od uc ed o nl y tw o s ou nd s si m u l ta ne ou s l y. B u t t he n um be r o f ch or ds a va i la b le t o
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extensiva use of harmonics or polyphony, but the common impression that they were totally absent or at best marginal is wrong, and largely due to the silence or hostility of our sources, since this was another realm of New Musical experimentation. 61 A fifth distinctive feature was the aulos' capacity for uninterrupted play, that is, a capacity to sustain a single tone, or to move without pause frorr one tone to another. In the fifth century professional pipers developed this capacity of their instrument. Ancient sources usually explain the use of the halter or phorbeia by professional pipers as an aid to breath-control, designed to help regularize the flow of breath into the pipes. 62 This hs long been received as evidence that the phorbeia helped produce softer and longer (continuous) tones (or series of notes) by preventing loss of breath around the sides of the mouthpiece and/or by helping the musician to maintain even pressure. 63 Comparative evidence suggests that the phorbeia did more than permit the lengthening of notes: it facilitated the technique of circular breathing, by which breath stored in the cheeks is pushed through the mouthpiece while the piper inhales through the nostrils, with the result that a piper can play indefinkely without pausing for air. 64 Vase painting frequently shows the piper's cheekseven without the phorbeia puffing up like a chipmunk's. S long as instrumental music merely followed song, pipe music's potentiality for sustained tones or phrases remaiied undeveloped. New Musical verse espressed its essential musicalityindeed its essentially auletic formof musicalityat ali leveis of language: the phonic, the syntactic, and the semantic.
the player of seven to elevenopen strings, was very limited, and they seem not to have been used with great frecuency. For chords on the kithara accompanying song see Barker(1995)49. 61 Barker(1995)esp. 50. 12 Schoi. Ar. Vesp. 582; Suta (s.v. cf)ppi,ov); Plut. De Cohib. Ira 456b-c; Simonidcs (cited by Plut. loc. cit.) Ir. 177; Soph. TrGF fr. 768. Plutarch's alternative explanation, that the phorbeia was a purely cosmetic device to preveni the cheeks from puffing out indecorously seems to owe a lot to a poetic conceit of Simonides, who recounted the story of Atiena's rejection of the pipes (invented by her) when ridiculed for the way they mace her cheeks puff out. >3 Purser(1890)357;How(926)104;MacDowell(1971)211 (adAr. Vesp. 582). Howard (1893) 29-30 reasonaby points to thephorbeia's additional benefit in aiding to support the pipes, leaving tfe hands freer for play. 14 Sachs (1956) 36; Romer ( 983) 141; Paquette (1984) 33; West (1992a) 106-7 Cf. Canthar. PCG fr. 1.