Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

GETTING ORGANIZED

' I?? be fair, 'The Bloody Big Gap of 300??' - as it's known in our 1 house - did contain the early stirrings of the organ. At some stage m this period, some clever sausage decided that the aulos, or pipe, had???- fatal flaw and that was the aulos players. They were always miming out of breath. So, a 'pumped aulos' was born, on much the name principle as the uilleann pipes, where a player would squeeze an air bladder with one arm, while playing the pipes with both hands. Then, in the third century??, an engineer called Ctesibus, working in Alexandria, was said to have gone one step further with the 'organon hydraulikon' or water aulos, which used air compressed by the weight of water. Came complete with galoshes.

Ctesibus was the son of a barber and very popular with the emperors of Rome. As an engineer, he had worked on the restoration of the aqueducts. In fact, he had even designed machines of war for the emperor, intended to inflict maximum pain on those with whom they came into contact. So I suppose it was only natural that he turn his hand to the organ.

It was probably he who more or less invented it. Contemporaneous accounts tefl of his 'mechanike syntaxii, a pan pipe 'which is played with the hands and is known as the hydraulis' in which 'the wind mechanism forces the air into a pnigeus of brass placed in the water'. Got that? I think it's basically saying that he almost certainly developed the first organ, of sorts, and with it, presumably the first bandy-legged musician, with slighuy staring eyes, a somewhat mad smile and a tendency to invade your personal space. Or should I say, 'the organist'.

The organ was to prove a big hit at Delphi in 90?? when Antipatros won a big competition playing it. It was followed by the next big thing, some forty years later, just as Gaius Julius Caesar and Pompey were fighting it out for the laurel wreath, namely the oboe. In fact, although he is now almost always considered first and foremost a violinist, the Emperor Nero was almost certainly an oboe player. Sadly, when I think of the words 'Emperor Nero' now, I immediately see 'Emperor Christopher Biggins', swimming in a not-quite-voluminous enough toga in front of a set that's only just this side of shaky. I, Claudius has a lot to answer for.

Skipping blithely over the fact that the Chinese reordered their octave into sixty parts in 38?? - quite how or why, I've no idea - we get to another megalos trypa aimatodis. Although, in this instance, I should probably say 'grandis cavus sanguineus^.