Piping Hot

This article is part of our music special.

In the intersection of body positivity, self-love, and former band geeks, an unlikely hero has risen to worldwide fame: Lizzo. The “Truth Hurts” singer and co-songwriter’s love for her instrument “Sasha Flute” (@sashabefluting) and her unconventional pop-star background as a classical music major are an integral part of her personal brand of self-acceptance, encouraging fans to lean in to the passions that make them unique. Out of this “Lizzo Effect,” the Flute Center of New York reported a stunning 30% increase in sales of beginner flutes in 2019.

This is a shocking rebrand for people who play my instrument, the stereotypical image of whom is, as popular orchestral-music satirists and YouTubers TwoSet Violin quipped, “always a blonde chick.” The blend of Lizzo’s feminist stance, her identity as a queer Black woman, and the emphasis on her own sensuality with her popularization of the instrument calls into question established societal narratives about who flute players are and how we act.

But I’ve come to realize that this move toward a more sexualizable image of the flute is anything but new. After all, it was the pastime of choice of one of the most sex-driven Greco-Roman gods, so it was only a matter of time — the 1910s, to be exact — until classical composers started to explore the myth of Pan and Syrinx as depicted by Ovid and Longus. In particular, two compositions that used the flute within the context of their reimaginings of these myths met with such appeal that they have forever altered the course of the instrument’s expressive palette. Like Lizzo’s influence on beginner flutists today, flute works based on classical mythology are why people like me fall in love with playing the flute.

Part of the flute’s image problem during the 19th century came from being overshadowed by a sexier neighbor. In the orchestra, the flute is seated just to the right of the oboe and its sibling instrument, the English horn. These instruments, which have a focused sound and plaintive quality, are related to a number of Middle-Eastern reed instruments. Their sound, combined with Eurocentric 19th-century views of morality, led in part to their codification as an instrument that can express desire, sensuality, and sexual expression.

Take a listen to two excerpts from Bizet’s 1875 opera Carmen: the sensuality of the descending oboe melody from the “Aragonaise” with the purity of the harp and flute duet of the “Entr’acte/Intermezzo.” The flute, a stand-in for the virginal and the innocent, is the dialectical opposite of the sexualized oboe, much as the chaste — and, unsurprisingly, white — Micaëla is the opera’s counterpart to the bohemian, Romani antihero, Carmen. If the stereotype of flute players is as “blonde chicks,” oppositions like this are where that image gains its power. The co-opting of the oboe’s sensuality as a stand-in for any non-white woman belies, through music, the exoticism and sexualization of women of color that is present throughout Prosper Mérimée’s characters’ words.

Enter classical mythology.

With the dawn of the French Impressionist movement in the visual arts and the Symbolist movement in French poetry came a return to fascination with Classicism, and, with it, reimaginings of mythological tales. But not just any mythological tales: those told in nature, using nature.

Most music historians would agree that the first opera to survive to the present day is Peri’s Euridice, composed in 1600. The Orpheus myth was an obvious choice: Orpheus, son of Apollo, brings his lyre to Hades to win the god over and retrieve his dead wife Eurydice. As the genre of opera was taking shape, composers leapt at the chance to convey a “music-will-save-the-world” narrative just as they were creating a new theatrical genre. As just a sampling, Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas, Mozart’s opera Idomeneo, re di Creta, Gluck’s opera Iphigénie en Tauride, Beethoven’s ballet Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus, and Berlioz’s opera Les Troyens adapted the writings of Ovid, Homer, Euripides, Plato, and Virgil from the 17th to the mid-19th centuries. Yet despite a considerable emphasis in opera on mythological tales, typically told through allegory to contemporary politics, one aspect of mythological lore is conspicuously lacking among these influential works: the stillness of the bucolic.

The pastoral as a genre in music (borrowing its focus on the natural world and its go-to instruments from pastoral poetry) sprang up around the same time as opera, and the two roads converged for a time. Among the works of the French Baroque composer Jean-Philippe Rameau, five operas draw on pastoral topics, although four out of five of these were subtitled “pastorale héroique.” The necessity that there be a hero (an almost inescapable necessity in the marketing of opera) takes the upper hand over the creation of a moment, an impression that rings more heavily in the ears of listeners than the plot conflicts themselves. The revolution that occurred among composers influenced by French Impressionism in the late 19th century was the return to pastoral imagery: like the painters who inspired them, Debussy and Ravel aimed not to push a morality tale, nor to politicize mythology, but to give their audiences the gift of soaking in the full impression of a moment within a mythological narrative.

Like composers whose operas adapted the Orpheus myth almost three centuries prior, these composers’ myth of choice centers around music through Pan’s pursuit of Syrinx. The sexually insatiable half-goat/half-man, enamoured with the nymph Syrinx, pursues her into a ravine. She, terrified of his advances, transforms herself into reeds, which he fashions into a set of pipes upon which to play a lament. Unlike the “music-conquers-all” genre-initiating spin upon which Peri capitalized in 1600, Pan is no Orpheus, and the music generated within the myth is not that of regaining one’s beloved and overcoming the odds; instead, it is much more sinister. And without the need to moralize the actions of mythological characters, the presence of a sung text suddenly becomes superfluous. The new way forward is instrumental music.

In a stunning bookending, the Orpheus myth, which kicked off the genre of opera, and the Pan and Syrinx myth, which expanded mythologically-themed instrumental music three centuries later, both rely on diegetic music within their plots. For composers to depict the Pan and Syrinx myth, they are practically forced to imagine for themselves what Pan’s piped lament would sound like. And with professional panflutists being few and far between in early 20th-century France, that role — luckily for my colleagues and me — fell to the flute.

Pan entered the classical music consciousness before Syrinx did. Inspired by the success of Debussy’s orchestral work Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894), inspired by a symbolist poem by Mallarmé, a surge of compositions on pastoral themes appeared in the early years of the 20th century. Pastoral settings, including Arcadia, the home of Pan, formed an ideal location to explore the lush but murky aesthetics of Symbolism and Impressionism that dominated France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune dwells solely on Pan and his pipes, because the action of the Pan and Syrinx myth has already taken place; the pipes are what remains of her body.

The introduction of Syrinx’s story into classical-music retellings of Pan’s exploits began when the Russian ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev commissioned the French composer Maurice Ravel for a ballet. Ravel, working together with dancer Michel Fokine, created a series of scenes based on Longus’s romance Daphnis and Chloe, the tale of sexual awakening between two shepherd children who, not understanding their mutual attraction, are educated in the ways of love by the wise Philetas and local woman Lycaenion. When Chloe is abducted, Pan intervenes to save her; Daphnis, too, is kidnapped by pirates, but the lovers are reunited and marry, living out the rest of their lives in the countryside.

The ballet music, lasting over an hour, is full of natural imagery and imitations of human sounds, such as war cries and a concluding bacchanal. But in the third section of the ballet, one scene stands out for its focus almost exclusively on the flute: Ravel’s depiction of Daphnis and Chloe’s playacting scene, in which they mime the story of Pan and Syrinx. Daphnis plays the part of Pan, imitating the god’s cloven feet as he pursues Chloe, who impersonates Syrinx and hides in the forest. Daphnis uses Philetas’s pipe, playing a “mournful strain,” a “passionate air,” and a “strain of recall.” Philetas is so overcome by Daphnis’s performance that he gives Daphnis his pipe as a gift, while Chloe and Daphnis joyfully reunite.

Fokine indicates stage directions that summarize Longus’s plot and appear periodically within the score, summarizing the action of this section. These retain the pantomime of Pan’s pursuit of Syrinx, but replace Philetas’s gift of the pipe with Daphnis’s creation of a pipe out of reed stalks and add that Chloé “interprets through her dance the phrasing of his flute.” Interestingly, the flute solo does not begin in Ravel’s score until after the latter indication. Daphnis’s music, and Chloe’s dance, appear in one fell swoop within the action of the ballet. And in this moment, Ravel’s brushstrokes of musical tone-painting transform from accompaniment for the protagonists’ flirtatious game to a flute solo that is intrinsic to the onstage action. The presence of flute music itself becomes a plot device, and a symbol of their desire.

One crucial detail in this stage direction is that for the entirety of the flute solo (ostensibly played by Daphnis acting as Pan), the stage direction highlights Chloe’s actions, not her companion’s, and emphasizes her dance, not his playing. In Fokine’s adaptation of Longus’s romance, the character of Philetas is done away with for the sake of a less complex plot, and Chloe’s receptive dance to Daphnis’s performance stands as a proxy for Philetas’s admiration of Pan’s musicality. Chloe’s dance, a reciprocal act of courtship-playacting in Fokine’s scenario, diverges from the realities of Longus’s record of the Pan and Syrinx myth, which dictate that the female (Syrinx) must no longer be able to interact in her original form with the male while the male performs on the flute; she is necessarily transformed into reeds and cut down in order for the instrument to exist.

In Fokine’s divergence from Longus’s retelling of the Pan and Syrinx myth, Chloe, in the fantasy of exploring her newfound sexuality and attraction to Daphnis, reacts to his musical performance with a dance performance of her own. Their seduction is a two-way street — indeed, it is Chloe who first experiences sexual desire for Daphnis earlier in the narrative — and Chloe acts out of her own agency in stark contrast with the tragic fate of Syrinx.

The flute solo itself is described by Longus as “mournful,” then “passionate,” then as “a strain of recall.” Fokine boils this down to “a melancholy tune.” While I would argue that the structure of the solo actually parallels Longus’s progressive description quite fittingly, the semiotic devices for melancholy and desire are extremely similar — and abundant in this solo. The overarching expression here is one of longing on the part of Daphnis (as Pan) to Chloe (as Syrinx), and Fokine changes Chloe’s reaction to return that musical longing with her own expression of longing through dance.

Musical symbols of longing are often conflated with suggestions of Orientalism and Exoticism; however, the exoticism of Daphnis et Chloé lies in the “othering” of an “Eastern” culture (Lesbos, from a French perspective in 1912) and a story recorded and set 17 centuries prior. Chloe, Longus records, has golden hair (1.17); Syrinx, whom she imitates, is said by Ovid to be mistakeable for Artemis. The sensuality of the music that depicts these women is not a product of the sexualization of their appearance, including their racial identity, but rather of Chloe’s participation in the roleplaying ritual into which she and Daphnis embark.

Chloe’s choice, within Fokine’s scenario and Ravel’s ballet, gives the flute a new symbolic role within the orchestra. With writing that was almost unprecedentedly sensual and erotically-charged, Ravel creates a musical backdrop for a young woman to express reciprocal sexual interest to her partner. The flute’s expressive palette expands to suggest, entice, and accompany female sexual expression. Yet this is all accomplished through a backdrop of abuse and silencing of women, in the myth of Pan and Syrinx itself.

One year after the composition and premiere of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, Debussy composed a short piece for solo flute, intended as incidental music for a drama by Gabriel Mourey entitled Psyché. Originally entitled “La flûte de Pan,” its title was changed to Syrinx by the time of publication. The first scene of the third act of Mourey’s melodramatic text, intended to be performed intermittently and simultaneously with Debussy’s solo flute music, depicts the dialogue of an oread (a wood nymph) and a naiad (a water nymph); the naiad, knowing what Pan had done to Syrinx, afraid of him, and the Oread, rejecting the naiad’s evidence, enamored and “intoxicated” by his music.

As in Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, the extended flute solo within Mourey and Debussy’s scene takes place following the death of Syrinx; the diegetic music the flute solo represents is performed on the remains of her metamorphosed body. The flute part represents the cycle of victimization of women. In Mourey’s retelling, the oread is an unreliable storyteller and depicts the myth of Syrinx and Pan’s ongoing behavior through rose-tinted glasses. The oread’s intoxication with the idea of Pan’s affections, it is implied throughout the scene, grows as she continues to listen to his performance. Mourey’s modern addition to the story of Pan and Syrinx is, therefore, a horrifying realization that Syrinx’s victimization continues well past her pursuit and metamorphosis. She unconsentingly plays a crucial role in Pan’s ability to further victimize nymphs by becoming the instrument through which he charms and seduces them — a tragic continuation of her lot in life, which was to defend herself against unwanted advances from satyrs and other demigods enamoured by her beauty and resemblance to Artemis.

The final title of the solo flute work, Syrinx, refers to both Syrinx the instrument and Syrinx the nymph. While they are physically one and the same, these two identities form a current of tension that flows throughout the scene, making Debussy’s solo flute piece so rich with tension. Syrinx, the instrument, is the metaphorical honeypot by which Pan lures nymphs by disarming them to such a point that they might give themselves over to him. Syrinx, the nymph, is the cautionary tale that would help to keep nymphs away from Pan, if only they were not so intoxicated by, ironically, the sounds of the flute into which Pan made Syrinx. Syrinx, as an entity unto herself, becomes two opposing forces: the trapped feminine, which has been brutalized and held captive by her abuser, and the seductive feminine, a tool used by her abuser to continue a cycle of violence.

Within the space of a year, the French composers Ravel and Debussy made two enduring contributions to the flute’s orchestral and solo repertoire, which stand today among some of the greatest music ever written for the instrument. Their most stunning accomplishment — and, I would suggest, the heart of what makes them successful works — is the tension they each embody regarding the origins of the Pan and Syrinx myth and their deviations from it. The flute in Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé pantomime scene is the source of a teenage reciprocal flirtation, the mode by which Chloe prolongs the fantasy she engages into with Daphnis. In Debussy’s Syrinx (within Mourey’s Psyché), the flute embodies the tragic irony that what remains of Syrinx’s body is forced to be complicit in the cycle of Pan’s sexual violence, of which she herself is a victim. The flute, as an instrument, exploded with the possibilities opened by these two works, which paint its role as the instrument of feminine sexuality in all its forms.

A composer who has more recently taken up this mantle is Brian Ferneyhough, whose 1970 work Cassandra’s Dream Song continues this exploration of perspectives of women in classical mythology through solos for the flute. The flute’s involvement expands here past the realm of diegesis and into a proxy for Cassandra’s voice itself, echoing her “vain prophetic cries of woe” (1150–52) with Ferneyhough’s own style of intensely avant-garde and non-melodic instrumental writing. By choosing an instrumental medium, Ferneyhough makes no subjective statement on Cassandra’s predicament; he neither chastises her for reneging on her agreement, nor does he express pity for her fate. He certainly does not dwell on her sexuality as Ravel and Debussy did the women they depicted. But his visceral representation of Cassandra’s attempts to prophesy breaks new ground in the relationship between women in mythology and their depictions in flute music: Chloe reacted to music, and Syrinx was the instrument used to make it, but here, Cassandra sings for herself.

As a flutist, the imagination and tension with which classical composers have set moments from classical mythology in their writing for my instrument is a source of endless fascination and exploration. As a flutist who is a woman, the complexity with which these works address the agency, fates, and emotions of the women of these myths enriches the performance experience much further. The flute’s transformation from an instrument symbolizing innocence to an instrument entwined with the fullness of women’s sexual expression changed our instrumental repertoire for the richer.

As much as Debussy and Ravel reinvigorated the range of stories and expressions a flutist could depict, the image of acceptable female sexuality that they depicted through the flute belonged to white, virginal women, with enthusiastic consent being optional at best. The revolution of image inspired by figures like Lizzo is so powerful in part because of a conscious choice to promote sexual liberation and the perspectives and issues that Black women and women of color bring to the table. The importance of Lizzo’s visibility as a Black queer flutist cannot be underestimated; she is actively challenging and changing popular stereotypes about who can play the flute, and the kind of self-actualized sexuality that flute playing can portray.

On the classical side of the music scene, with women of color such as Undine Smith Moore, Gabriela Montero, and flutist Valerie Coleman having emerged as composers since the height of Debussy’s and Ravel’s careers, the future of centering the music of non-white women and the stories that affect them seems brighter and brighter. And that’s Good as Hell.

Phoebe Grace Robertson is a doctoral student at the Manhattan School of Music. She has appeared as a soloist and orchestral musician across North America and Europe and has given papers and lecture-recitals for the College Music Society and throughout her native Canada. Born into a family of academics, she inherited a love of Classics and of cycling from her dad and a love of French and sewing from her mom.

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