Programme Notes

In the sixth century BCE, the aulos emerges as the leading musical instrument of Greek culture. Like the piano and organ, it provides choirs with harmony, dancers with rhythm, composers with dramatic chromaticism, and crowds with audibility beyond anything possible on string instruments. Doublepipes may have led popular musical culture for centuries, if not millennia, before 586 BCE, when Sacadas of Argos won the first panhellenic solo piping championship. We are told:

In the time of Polymnestus and Sacadas there existed three musical modes, the Dorian, Phrygian, and Lydian. It is said that Sacadas composed a strophe in every one of these modes, and then taught the choruses to sing the first after the Dorian manner, the second according to the Phrygian, and the third after the Lydian manner. This nomos (a set piece) is called Trimeles (tri-melody) due to its shifting between modes.

Although aulos means ‘pipe’, the classical aulos has two pipes, one for each hand. Originals made of bone, or bone and metal, are regularly unearthed across Europe, North Africa, Southwest Asia, and Central Asia. If bulldozer drivers are sensitive, building works are halted and archaeologists summoned. Thousands of fragments lie in museum drawers, but these represent a tiny fraction of ancient production because most auloi were made of Common Reed (Phragmites australis), which generally decays.

In the Roman era, bone became the emblematic material of the aulos, evidenced by its Latin name, tibia (the most tube-like bone in any skeleton). In Greek, however, the instrument is often called lōtós (λωτός), hence the name of our ensemble and instrument-making enterprise: Lotos Lab. Lotos is a dark-coloured heartwood that Pliny tells us was prized by aulos makers. His botanical description may be identified with Ziziphus lotus, a native of northern Africa with deliciously sweet fruit. 

Lotos Lab conducts multi-sensory experiments that push at the boundaries of knowledge. We endeavour to overcome problems of cultural prejudice and scholarly bias by bringing world-leading skills and diverse perspectives to the table. We collaborate to interpret ancient evidence in ways that convince a broad spectrum of specialists. Our passion is to make the musical instruments and songs of ancient civilizations accessible to all, building a deeper sense of belonging across place and time.