ts association with every form
of licence and moral depravity--this instrument, sharing the common
fate, survived chiefly among itinerant musicians who carried it into
western Europe, where it was preserved from complete extinction. An
instrument of difficult technique requiring an advanced knowledge of
acoustics was not, however, likely to flourish or even to be understood
among nations whose culture was as yet in its infancy.

The tide of culture from the Byzantine empire filtered through to the
south and west, leaving many traces; a fresh impetus was received from
the east through the Arabs; and later, as a result of the Crusades, the
prototype of the clarinet, together with the practical knowledge
necessary for making the instrument and playing upon it, may have been
re-introduced through any one or all of these sources. However this may
be, the instrument was during the Carolingian period identified with the
tibia of the Romans until such time as the new western civilization
ceased to be content to go back to classical Rome for its models, and
began to express itself, at first naively and awkwardly, as the 11th
century dawned. The name then changed to the derivatives of the Greek
_kalamos_, assuming an almost bewildering variety of forms, of which the
commonest are chalemie, chalumeau, schalmey, scalmeye, shawm, calemel,
kalemele.[13] The derivation of the name seems to point to a Byzantine
rather than an Arab source for the revival of the instruments which
formed the prototype of both oboe and clarinet, but it must not be
forgotten that the instruments with a conical bore--more especially
those played by a reed--are primarily of Asiatic origin. At the
beginning of the 13th century in France, where the instrument remained
a special favourite until it was displaced by the clarinet, the
chalumeau is mentioned in some of the early romances:--"Tabars et
chalemiaux et estrumens sonner" (_Aye d'Avignon_, v. 4137); "Grelles et
chelimiaus et buisines bruians" (_Gui de Bourgogne_, v. 1374), &c. By
the end of the 13th century, the German equivalent _Schalmey_ appears in
the literature of that country,--"Pusunen und Schalmeyen schal moht
niemen da gehoeren wal" (_Frauendienst_, 492, fol. 5, Ulrich von
Lichtenstein). The schalmey or shawm is frequently represented in
miniatures from the 13th century, but it must have been known long
before, since it was at that period in use as the chaunter of the
bag-pipe (q.v.), a fully-deve