Tityrinoi and totare, calamauloi and ciaramelle, kerauloi and cirauli

Since ancient times, some words, in part onomatopoeic in origin, have designated minor and marginal wind instruments. These instruments are of different typology; what links them is that they are understood to be especially close to nature, are believed to belong to primitive stages of human existence and are used by people who are also understood to be “primitive” and “natural”: children, shepherds, hunters, snake charmers. The same instruments are mentioned in the poems of Theocritus, Lucretius, Virgil; then they are again listed and described by organological studies of the 17th and 18th centuries; finally, they are still in use in the musical traditions of many places: still in the hands of shepherds, children, hunters, snake charmers (or their descendants), semi-professional musicians. The persistence over time of the types, forms and names of minor or marginal aerophones - and the changes they undergo through different historical periods and places - is the terrain on which the relationship between the actualization of myth and the mythologisation of reality is concretely investigated.