Twelve Nasca Panpipes: A Study

Abstract

aithful production of sound, as originally intended, is achieved with instruments that have not undergone any significant change since their construction. Instruments made of clay or stone meet this requirement of preservation over long periods. The dry climate prevalent on the Peruvian coast has preserved fragile textiles and also musical instruments (found among the contents of graves). Museum and private collections retain such artifacts, and panpipes made by craftsmen of the Nasca culture have been preserved in sufficient numbers for comparative studies. Studies covering Nasca panpipes were reviewed by Stevenson (1968:245-255). The pentatonic scale originally postulated for the Precolumbian period in what today is Peru has recently been questioned. About one-third of the samples covered in two investigations were labeled twins, or pairs, such as those on Moche vase paintings from the North Coast, which frequently show two panpipes linked by a cord. Dawson (1964) demonstrated slip casting to be the technique used by craftsmen of the Paracas and Nasca cultures of the Peruvian South Coast for producing pipes for panpipes. Essentially all the published pitch data pertaining to Nasca panpipes are expressed in Western notation with plus and minus signs to denote deviation from the written pitches. It was intended that the present study would use this information to determine the scale system used for the tuning of these instruments, but this plan was abandoned when results differing from the ones using frequency measurements were arrived at by using Western notation for the instruments to be described below. The purpose of this study is to describe twelve Nasca panpipes, to present tonometric measurements, and to analyze the determined frequency intervals in order to establish the scale system intended for the tuning of these panpipes.