Construction
As can be seen above (Photograph of the Poseidonia Aulos by Stelios Psaurodakes, now housed in a museum in Paestum), the original instrument was made by drilling sections of deer bone. My replica, however, was made of acacia, as access to deer bone is scarce in the modern day, and acacia is a wood that can be found in the Mediterranean. Furthermore, other auloi have been found that were constructed of wood, making this a reasonable choice for material, such as the Louvre aulos, likely found in Egypt and made of wood, rather than bone.
To construct the aulos, I used modern power tools. I would have preferred to produce mine by hand, so as to learn more about the process of construction. However, due to time constraints, using a power drill and an electric lathe was ideal.
I began with various diagrams created by referencing work done by Bakogiannis et. al and Psaroudakes, which take mathematical approaches to the shape and dimensions of the aulos. Using their specifications, I created diagrams using the precise dimensions of the original aulos to ensure that my replica would be harmonically similar to the original instrument. I then took pieces of acacia and cut sections of the proper length for the components of the aulos, and drilled the 1cm bore into each piece. I then placed the sections on a mechanical lathe and turned them until I had interlocking components with an airtight seal. I treated them with wax to ensure their long-term survival and began to work on the reeds.
The reeds were the most difficult part of the process. Eventually, I decided upon bassoon reeds, as the reeds I made out of phragmites australis, the material that the Greeks and Romans would have used, that I harvested myself, would not function. The intention was to sand a reed until it was paper thin, and then slowly press the reed together to create a double reed. Unfortunately, the reeds in Indiana are not thick enough to create a proper reed, when compared with those in the Mediterranean. Bassoon reeds are the closest modern analog, so I chose to use those instead, in the interest of time and performance.
Ultimately, this project concluded with a functioning replica of the aulos of Poseidonia, with minor liberties taken with the design due to resource availability. The tone they create is similar to other reproductions of this aulos, which means that, all in all, the project was successful.
Bibliography
- Bakogiannis, Konstantinos & Polychronopoulos, Spyros & Marini, Dimitra & Terzēs, Chrēstos & Kouroupetroglou, Georgios. (2020). ENTROTUNER: A Computational Method Adopting the Musician’s Interaction With the Instrument to Estimate its Tuning. IEEE Access. PP. 1-1. 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2981007.
- Bellia, Angela, ed. 2014. Musica, Culti E Riti Nell’occidente Greco. Telestes, 1. Pisa: Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali.
- Bodley, Nicholas B. 1946. “The Auloi of Meroë: A Study of the Greek-Egyptian Auloi Found at Meroë, Egypt.” American Journal of Archaeology 50 (2): 217–40.
- Mountford, J. F. 1939. Introduction to the Greek Aulos by Kathleen Schlesinger. London: Methuen.
- Landels, J. G. 1981. “The Reconstruction of Ancient Greek Auloi.” World Archaeology 12 (3): 298–302.
- Polychronopoulos, Spyros, Dimitra Marini, Konstantinos Bakogiannis, Georgios Th Kouroupetroglou, Stelios Psaroudakes, and Anastasia Georgaki. 2021. “Physical Modeling of the Ancient Greek Wind Musical Instrument Aulos: A Double-Reed Exciter Linked to an Acoustic Resonator.” Ieee Access 9: 98150–60.
- Psaroudakes, ‘‘The Aulos of Poseidonia,” in Musica, Culti e Riti Nell’Occidente Greco. Pisa, Roma: Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali, 2014, pp. 117–129.
- Wallace, Robert W. 2003. “An Early Fifth-Century Athenian Revolution in Aulos Music.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 101: 73–92.
- Winnington-Ingram, R. P. 1939. “Book Review: The Greek Aulos.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 59: 305–7.
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