AULOS TRANSFER

The Composer writes: I own an aulos that is a copy of an original in the Louvre Museum in Paris. Its date is thought to be any time between 400BC and 200AD and it was discovered in northern Egypt in 1969. I have composed a piece for my Louvre aulos (consisting of two cylindrical pipes each with a double reed) called Aulos Awakes (2022) that shows some of the possibilities of this instrument.
In my study of it and my explorations playing and improvising with it, I wanted to make a contemporary piece for oboe that reflects some of the other aulos music I created. I began by transcribing one of my oboe improvisations based on some of this material. I tried to emulate the microtonal pitch differences, particularly with unisons, that exist between the two pipes. The tuning is very flexible and not set in equal temperament (although one’s ear tries to correct differences) and there are often moments when any two notes sounding together, particularly unisons, can set off a fluttering in the sound when there is pitch discrepancy. I wanted to exploit these differences with bisbigliando effects, multiphonics and glissandi.
The piece begins exploring the note B (a prominent aulos note), that gradually settles to a high C. There follows a contemplative melody whose scale belongs to my Louvre aulos and this time ends on a high C sharp. This develops into a fast, urgent, and playful dance that engages a lively conversation between the two melodic areas of C and C sharp. The music resolves to the C natural and finishes on the starting note of B.
I can’t help but acknowledge the similarity in concept to Luciano Berio’s Sequenza VII for solo oboe. It is the idea of unpacking the note B into many timbral and harmonic areas. Berio’s piece has a drone on B throughout that produces a kind of polyphony. On the aulos one can also make a drone on B and play a melody against it. With only one pipe instead of two I have tried to make a counterpoint with one pipe, the oboe.

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