Instruments
Pan Flute
The pan flute (or, more commonly and colloquially, "panpipes") consists of a group of wooden (or bamboo) pipes of graduated lengths, lashed together or otherwise held in place to form a horizontal unit. The player, blowing across the tops of the pipes, can produce legato melodies and glissandi. Pan flutes are widely distributed around the world. In Europe, as the name indicates (Pan is the Greek god of woods and fields), they are identified with pastoral themes. A famous use of the pan flute in an operatic context occurs in Mozart's The Magic Flute, where the character Papageno plays the instrument to attract birds. Remarkably, a pan flute player rooted in Wallachian folk tradition in Romania, Zamfir, rose to international stardom in the 1980s, composing new solo pieces and even concertos for the instrument. Pan flutes also occur around much of the Pacific Rim. They are heard prominently in the Andean folk traditions of South America that have achieved international distribution.