The flutes of the Middle Ages were blown at the end, like the flageolet. Of the _syrinx_ there are extant some illustrations of the ninth and tenth centuries, which exhibit the instrument with a number of tubes tied together, just like the Pandean pipe still in use. In one specimen,[6] from a manuscript of the eleventh century, the tubes were inserted into a bowl-shaped box. This is probably the _frestele_, _fretel_, or _fretian_, which in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was in favour with the French ménétriers.
Some large Anglo-Saxon trumpets may be seen in a manuscript of the eighth century in the British Museum. The largest kind of trumpet was placed on a stand when blown. Of the _oliphant_, or hunting horn, some fine specimens are in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection. The _sackbut_ (Fig. 32), probably made of metal, could be drawn out to alter the pitch of sound. The sackbut of the ninth century had, however, a very different shape to that in use about three centuries ago, and much more resembled the present _trombone_. The name _sackbut_ is supposed to be a corruption of _sambuca_. The French, about the fifteenth century, called it _sacqueboute_ and _saquebutte_.
The most important wind instrument――in fact, the king of all the musical instruments――is the organ.
[Illustration: FIG. 33.――ORGAN. From a 12th century psalter in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.]
The _pneumatic organ_ is sculptured on the base of an obelisk which was erected in Constantinople under Theodosius the Great towards the end of the fourth century. The bellows were pressed by men standing on them. This interesting monument also exhibits performers on the double flute. The _hydraulic organ_, which is recorded to have been already known about two hundred years before the Christian era, was according to some statements occasionally employed in churches during the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages. Probably it was more frequently heard in secular entertainments, for which it was more suitable; and at the beginning of the fourteenth century it appears to have been entirely supplanted by the pneumatic organ. The earliest organs had only about a dozen pipes. The largest, which were made about nine hundred years ago, had only three octaves, in which the chromatic intervals did not occur. Some progress in the construction of the organ is shewn in a psalter of Eadwine, in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge (Fig. 33). The instrument has ten pipes, or perhaps fourteen, as four of them appear to be double pipes. It required four men exerting all their power to produce the necessary wind, and two men to play the instrument. Moreover, both players seem also to be busily engaged in directing the blowers about the proper supply of wind. Six men and only fourteen pipes!