The flute has
likewise the complete series, because through the blowhole it is a
pipe open at both ends. But while stating the law which governs the
pitch and harmonic scale of the clarinet, affirmed equally by
observation and demonstration, we are left at present with only the
former when regarding two very slender, almost cylindrical reed pipes,
discovered in 1889 by Mr. Flinders Petrie while excavating at Fayoum
the tomb of an Egyptian lady named Maket. Mr. Petrie dates these pipes
about 1100 B.C., and they were the principal subject of Mr.
Southgate's recent lectures upon the Egyptian scale.
Now Mr. J. Finn, who made these ancient pipes sound at these lectures
with an arghool reed of straw, was able upon the pipe which had, by
finger holes, a tetrachord, to repeat that tetrachord a fifth higher
by increased pressure of blowing, and thus form an octave scale,
comprising eight notes. "Against the laws of nature," says a friend of
mine, for the pipe having dropped more than an octave through the
reed, was at its fundamental pitch, and should have overblown a
twelfth.
But Mr. Finn allows me to say with reference to those reeds, perhaps
the oldest sounding musical instruments known to exist, that his
experiments with straw reeds seem to indicate low, medium, and high
octave registers.
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