A kind of bagpipe invented about 1515 by Afranio degli Albonesi of Pavia, in an unsuccessful attempt to improve the popular bagpipe of Pannonia (where he was living, now in Serbia) with its double chanter and no drones. Later, in Italy, Afranio perfected the phagotum with the help of Giovanni Battista Ravilio of Ferrara, playing a solo on it at a feast given in Mantua by the Duke of Ferrara in 1532. In 1539 Afranio's nephew Teseo Ambrosio, professor of Syriac at the University of Bologna, described and illustrated the instrument in his book Introductio in Chaldaicam linguam, Syriacam atque Armenaicam at decem alias linguas. In 1565 Teseo gave a sheet of instructions for playing the instrument to a friend, to whom he had presented ‘uno de suoi fagoti’. Apparently a number of examples of the phagotum were made. Mersenne briefly discussed the instrument in Harmonicorum libri, xii (1636) and Harmonie universelle (1636–7), but it is not mentioned by Agricola, Zacconi, Praetorius or other Renaissance writers.
As the illustration shows, the phagotum consisted of two connected pillars, about 45 to 55 cm in height, with a purely ornamental pillar on the front and a shorter pillar at the back through which the air from the bellows was conveyed to the instrument. The two main pillars were each divided into an upper and a lower part: the upper part was bored with two parallel cylindrical tubes united at the top, forming one continuous doubled-back bore pierced with holes for the fingers and keys; the lower part contained a single metal reed. The left-hand pillar, with a reed of silver, provided a diatonic scale of ten notes from c upwards, while the right-hand pillar was fitted with a reed of brass and had a compass of ten notes from G to b. By cross-fingering, chromatic notes could be obtained, and either pillar could be silenced or sounded at will by a special key. From the back of the instrument, which was rested on the knees during performance, a flexible pipe passed to a bag held under the left arm; this formed an air reservoir, supplied with wind from bellows fastened under and actuated by the right arm, as in the Irish (‘uilleann’) and Northumbrian bagpipes.
The phagotum was used by Afranio not for ‘vain and amatory melodies’ but for ‘divine songs and hymns’. The music could be played either in one or two parts, and Teseo in his instructions said that he had seen a phagotum with three large pillars or sets of tubes.
The name ‘phagotum’, like the Italian form ‘fagoto’ in the description of the 1532 feast and the manuscript instructions, probably arose because the instrument resembled ‘a bundle of sticks’ (a faggot). However, although the name ‘fagotto’ was subsequently applied to the bassoon (because its bore, like that of the phagotum, was doubled back within the instrument), the two instruments were not otherwise related. While essentially a curiosity of limited distribution, Afranio's phagotum is historically significant as the earliest known use of the doubled-back bore, and in its use of an elaborate key mechanism.
F.W. Galpin: ‘The Romance of the Phagotum’, PMA, lxvii (1940–41), 57–72
W.A. Cocks: ‘The Phagotum: an Attempt at Reconstruction’, GSJ, xii (1959), 57–9
H.M. Brown: ‘A Cook's Tour of Ferrara in 1529’, RIM, x (1975), 216–41
FRANCIS W. GALPIN/GUY OLDHAM/BARRA R. BOYDELL