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A History of the Ocarina: From Ancient Vessel Flutes to Budrio

Explore the fascinating 12,000-year history of the ocarina: Neolithic flutes like the Runik ocarina, Chinese xun, Mesoamerican clay instruments, and Giuseppe Donati's 1853 invention in Italy.

The ocarina is both one of humanity's newest concert woodwinds and one of our oldest musical companions. While the modern classical ocarina was created in 19th-century Italy, its direct ancestors date back over 12,000 years across ancient Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

Ancient origins: The world's first clay flutes

Unlike open-ended reed pipes or bone whistles, vessel flutes enclose a rounded air pocket. Archaeological excavations have uncovered pottery flutes in early civilizations worldwide:

The Runik Ocarina (~6000 BCE): Discovered in Kosovo, this 8,000-year-old Neolithic clay vessel flute is the earliest known musical instrument in the Balkans. It features fingerholes that still produce clear musical pitches today.
The Chinese Xun (塤): Known for over 6,000 years in Chinese traditional music, the egg-shaped clay xun is an ancient vessel flute blown across an edge, deeply entwined with imperial ceremonies and folk songs.
Mesoamerican Masterpieces: The Maya, Aztec, and Tairona cultures crafted intricate ceramic vessel flutes shaped like birds, animals, and mythological gods. When Spanish conquistadors encountered Aztec performers in the 1520s, they sent Aztec dancers and vessel-flute musicians to the Royal Court of Charles V in Spain, sparking widespread European fascination with clay flutes.

1853 in Budrio: Giuseppe Donati invents the modern ocarina

For centuries in Europe, clay vessel flutes existed primarily as rustic folk noisemakers or children's carnival toys that could only play two or three notes. That changed forever in 1853 in Budrio, a small town near Bologna, Italy.

A seventeen-year-old brickmaker and musician named Giuseppe Donati had a stroke of genius: he reshaped the primitive clay vessel into an elongated transverse shape with 10 tuned finger holes and an ergonomic mouthpiece spout. He named his creation ocarina, which means "little goose" (ucaréṅna) in the local Bolognese dialect, because its slender silhouette resembled a goose with its head extended.

Donati didn't stop with a single instrument. He built a full family of ocarinas in graduated sizes—soprano, alto, tenor, and contrabass—allowing groups to play complete polyphonic harmonies together. In 1865, he founded the famous Gruppo Ocarinistico Budriese (Budrio Ocarina Septet), which toured Europe's major concert halls to thunderous acclaim.

1964: John Taylor and the 4-hole English pendant

In 1964, British mathematician and musician John Taylor revolutionized the instrument once again. Taylor discovered that because pitch in a vessel flute depends on total hole area rather than position, four holes of mathematically graduated sizes (in binary powers: 1, 2, 4, 8) could produce all 12 chromatic semitones of a complete octave.

This compact system gave birth to the English pendant ocarina: a pocket-sized, lightweight instrument worn on a neckcord that can play virtually any standard folk melody or song.

The ocarina today

In the late 20th and 21st centuries, the ocarina gained worldwide fame through Nintendo's legendary 1998 video game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, introducing millions of young players to the magic of the instrument. Today, professional makers in Italy, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the Americas craft precision ceramic, wood, and metal ocarinas, uniting ancient tradition with modern musical performance.

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