Software Enables Re-Creation of 'Lost' Instrument

Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that the Lituus, a 2.4m (8ft) -long trumpet-like instrument, was played in Ancient Rome but fell out of use some 300 years ago. Bach even composed a motet (a choral musical composition) for the Lituus, one of the last pieces of music written for the instrument.. But until now, no one had a clear idea of what this instrument looked or sounded like until researchers at Edinburgh University developed software that enabled them to design the Lituus even though no one alive today has heard, played or even seen a picture of this forgotten instrument." (Continues below.) The team started with cross-section diagrams of instruments they believed to be similar to the Lituus and the range of notes it played. 'The software used this data to design an elegant, usable instrument with the required acoustic and tonal qualities. The key was to ensure that the design we generated would not only sound right but look right as well,' says Professor Murray Campbell. 'Crucially, the final design produced by the software could have been made by a manufacturer in Bach's time without too much difficulty.' Performed by the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (SCB) the Lituus produced a piercing trumpet-like sound interleaving with the vocals in an experimental performance of Bach's 'O Jesu Christ, meins lebens licht' in Switzerland earlier this year, giving the music a haunting feel that can't be reproduced by modern instruments. The software opens up the possibility that brass instruments could be customized more closely to the needs of individual players in the future — catering more closely to the differing needs of jazz, classical and other players all over the world. 'Sophisticated computer modelling software has a huge role to play in the way we make music in the future.'"

Comments

Let sleeping dogs lie

[OpenSourced]

To hear the sounds generated by this re-created instrument, reinforced me in my belief that extinct instruments are extinct with very good reasons. It's like when I hear that they will publish some "previously unreleased" songs from The Beatles, or whoever. I mean, if they didn't release them then, it was probably because they weren't good enough.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[Zenne]

The article didn't give a timeline - but to me it sounded more like people who haven't put in years of practice on that particular instrument. Understandable, considering the whole 'long-lost' bit.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[Takichi]

By that logic, we shouldn't study past civilizations or organisms because they obviously weren't good enough to survive. Maybe the sound it produced or the music that was written for it wasn't to your liking, but it still uncovered information we didn't previously have. I personally applaud any work into historical sound since we've only had the technology to preserve them for about a century. It's not like we can dig up some soil to listen to things in the past.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[jellomizer]

The instrument sounded Ok, They players themselves were off. It was basically having a professional choir/orchestra with some good high schoolers musicians playing the instrument. But these people haven't put their life into learning these instruments they probably were brass players winging it on the instrument, which has a different response and a different delay before it leaves the instrument.

As for the sound it makes it is actually kinda pretty. Kinda a mix between a trumpet and a french horn.
There are a lot of factors why instruments go extinct, and it has little to do about the actual instrument but the styles/forces of the times. I think the reason why that instrument went extinct is because of the political forces of the time. Rome being sacked, people on the move. There was little permanency in Europe during this time. This instrument was too clumsy to move around/got easily broken. Thus gave way for the modern Brass instruments which are bent to allow a similar effect but in a smaller size. They used the instrument for centuries before so it wasn't like a quick fad that died.

As for some of the unreleased songs a lot of them don't get published because of the quality. Sometimes they get left out because they didn't fit on the record and that song didn't go with the others on that album. The song covered something that was politically incorrect at the time or just in bad taste (say publishing an Anti-American song right after 9-11). Music that didn't go with your perceived style.

You view on music extinction seems like bad understanding of evolution and extinction in biology that a lot of people make. Animal X became extinct while Animal Y survived so Animal Y is superior. Which isn't the case. Animal Y could be inferior to X in all ways but one. And that one fact allowed it to survive by chance. Say the Animal X cannot survive in presence of excess UV rays while Animal Y can. Well animal H somehow put a hole in the ozone layer and killed of X.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[maxume]

They were replaced by instruments that are easier to play, or at least, that can generate a wider range of tones (a valved trumpet can play a full scale...). So they are replaced by more capable or more fashionable instruments, not necessarily because of how they sound.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[mabhatter654]

You are exactly correct. Hand made "impractical" instruments fell out of fashion in the mid 1700's en masse for the beginnings of mass manufactured instruments. People would have replaced this with trumpets or coronets. Which were newer and more standard. What you see is a trend from 4-6 piece "chamber" or "folk" music to something that looks like the modern orchestra. In folk music handmade instruments and the "flaws" of instrument and player are features that make live performances better. In large groups you want to minimize individual players to have the group play as one "instrument".

I'm getting into middle ages instruments [a good guide is here: http://www.music.iastate.edu/antiqua/instrumt.html%5D And most of the list is woodwind or string. You can see the take over of strings because they are compact, portable (like another poster below mentions) and they are easily tuned to match each other. About the time the time lituus was lost brass instruments became affordable to produce nearly identical copies of and could be played in tune like Trombones, or tuned with sliders like trumpets and tubas. Why keep a single purpose non-tunable horn?

There's nothing like hearing music played on the instruments it was written to be played on. When listening to old music it helps put you in the mood the people then would have been in. It may not be the best thing now, but it was the best they had then.

Of course, the most popular music now is the 4-6 piece "rock" band. Drums, keyboard, and some number of guitars is the "standard" pop music right now. [much like violin, viola, cello, and bass in the 1600's] The core needed instruments of even the Rolling Stones fit in the back of Mom's minivan. We (ok not slashdotters, but other we) go to rock concerts because they play to the audience, even though their CDs are technically better and more polished we like to be there to watch and the artists do different things depending on the crowd.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[nametaken]

It really, really sounds like a trumpet being played by someone who can't manage notes that high. It's hard to acclimate to a mouthpiece and develop the ambrochure necessary to play a horn properly.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[spauldo]

I dunno, if it was played by the Romans during the Roman empire, that would have it being produced and used sometime before around 400AD or so. Bach lived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

I doubt if the instrument was as horrible as you say it would have lasted (at least) 1200 years, or that someone of Bach's status would have bothered writing a piece for it.

Other rare/disused musical instruments:

• 
  The lute - a very pretty sounding stringed instrument that almost no one plays anymore due to the popularity of the guitar.
• 
  The harp - extremely versatile instrument that also happens to be very expensive and difficult to learn
• 
  The mandola - you never see these outside folk (think celtic, not John Denver) music or the occasional bluegrass band
• 
  The banjo - this used to be the number one selling instrument in America. How many people do you know personally who can play one today?

Granted, the harp probably won't completely disappear for quite some time, but it was once considered a mainstream instrument whereas now it's an oddity. I doubt the banjo will be around for another century - fewer and fewer people listen to bluegrass music as time goes on (pity, but there ya go). The lute is pretty much already gone outside of ren faires and SCA events, and the mandola will probably share the same fate eventually.

Re:Let sleeping dogs lie

[jc42]

No, I'm sorry, the world doesn't work that way. Things completely vanish if they SUCK. This thing probably did NOT sound "pretty", or there would still be a few around.

Well, that's often true, but there are a number of other reasons. One that keeps biting us is a peculiar logical failure in the human mind: the idea that advances or improvement require augmenting an object. This is a recognized problem with software, which we know as the usual development of "bloat" with time as new features are added and bugs are fixed. But the same thing happened in the 18th century, when the recorder died out and was hardly played except by a few academics until the Baroque revival in the mid-20th century.

The main problem with the recorder was that, unlike the closely-related transverse flute, it had a limited range (2 octaves), a very limited dynamic range (playing quietly makes it go flat, while paying louder makes it go sharp), not to mention an insanely complex fingering system. Many experiments were done, including the use of the newfangled key systems to simplify the fingering. But the limited dynamic range couldn't be fixed. So it was abandoned in favor of the transverse flute, which can easily be played quietly or loudly, and the player can make fine adjustments of the pitch to correct for the flute's tendency to go sharp when played louder. Flute makers also extended the range to 3 octaves.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the Japanese were playing the shakuhachi, which is nearly identical to the European recorder, except for being made of bamboo. It had a 3-octave range, simple fingerings, and could be played quietly or loudly without going out of tune. The Europeans didn't know about it, because such a primitive "folk" instrument of an inferior culture was beneath their notice.

So why could the Japanese solve the instrument's intonation problem when the Europeans couldn't? Simple: The shakuhachi didn't have the "air guide", the short tube that the player blows into, which shapes the airstream as it hits the sharp edge that makes the noise. The shakuhachi just has a simple opening with an edge, and the player forms the airstream with their lips. As with the European flute, this takes a bit more learning at the start, since the instrument doesn't form the airstream for you. But the Japanese form, like the European flute, gives the player 3 octaves, dynamic range, and fine tuning of individual notes. I know flute players who never bother tuning; they just listen to the other instrument(s), and use their embouchure to adjust the flute's pitch appropriately. (The shakuhachi isn't tunable, so that's what they always do.)

The reason the Europeans couldn't fix the recorder's intonation was simple: Doing so required removing part of the instrument, that short little air guide at the top. They even had the example of the transverse flute, which lacks the air guide, and the instrument makers still couldn't solve the problem. The recorder had an air guide tube, it was part of the instrument, and it apparently didn't occur to anyone to just remove it and see how the instrument played.

Of course, the instrument was revived with the air guide. This presents us with the other major problem with the instrument: A total novice can easily get sound out of it. So it's used in schools as kids' first instrument, it's played by zillions of novices who insist on minimally learning what is really the most difficult woodwind instrument and then inflicting their playing on the public (unlike novice fiddlers, who usually have the sense to know that they should play in private for several years until they no longer cause listeners to cover their ears). Removing that silly air guide would have solved this problem too, since novices and kids would pick one up, blow into it a few times, get no sound at all, and decide that it's not the instrument for them.

Now if there were only a good design solution that would discourage novice guitar players from playing in public ...

(Maybe removing the strings would work. ;-)

Re:re-creation? ITS A GUESS

[interkin3tic]

they keep saying re-creation, and it sounds unique and what not -- sounds like a million squeaky horns i've heard before.

We'll know when the inevitable "Oh, we've had one of those in our family for generations, didn't realize they were supposedly extinct. Sounds kind of like it but not quite" comes forward.

yea right.

[mustafap]

>even though no one alive today has heard, played or even seen a picture of this forgotten instrument."

So in fact he could make it sound like any old shit, and who is to disagree with him? :)

Re:re-creation? ITS A GUESS

[djsmiley]

I was thinking something along these lines too - H2G2 Has something about making predictions of the future - one nice tip - Predict something that can never be proven wrong (or at least is very unlikely to be proven wrong).

Isn't this what these guys have done, but instead taken a bit of the past, and proven it, without it being unprovable? Also if one of these horns was now found in original condition, they could simply go "well thats not the right horn, this : (insert newly created horn) is the one we remade, that must be some other type of horn!".

And its likely some students passed their courses via this too. I mean, they have created some impressive technology, the ability to create usable, realistic instruments... but dont claim its solving some unsolvable problem. To solve that problem it must come up with ONE and ONLY ONE solution, and im sure you could do lots of with the horn and still get something which sounds close enough to be concidered the "correct" one.

Re:great research

[Daimanta]

Well, if you make a piece of Bach sound awful, you know you have failed in your task.

Re:400 years from now...

[bertoelcon]

Your entire post is wrong.

Does that include the quote, which would cause a paradox of incorrectness?

Re:re-creation? ITS A GUESS

[Chysn]

To solve that problem it must come up with ONE and ONLY ONE solution, and im sure you could do lots of with the horn and still get something which sounds close enough to be concidered the "correct" one.

And "close enough" is important here, because there never was a One True Lituus. Modern acoustic musical instruments exhibit a great deal of variety in dimensions, materials, shape, and even UI (for example, number of keys or valves), and still go by the same name. It's always been that way.

So they know the instrument's range and typical length. They know what materials were available in the past. It's an interesting exercise to have a computer reproduce it, but hardly necessary, given the skill of the makers. What they have here can almost certainly be called a Lituus.

Re:great research

[mabhatter654]

CAN the instrument do it, or can they play it? It sounds like these were built strictly to the plans provided by the computer and not "polished" by a craftsman. A few revisions from practiced craftsmen would probably improve the scale and playability of the horn without changing its sound too much. I'd think that would be an interesting lesson in polishing their software with how real-world craftsmen tweak and build instruments.

Re:re-creation? ITS A GUESS

[Anonymous Coward]

and you down for being useless

Re:re-creation? ITS A GUESS

[Phoghat]

Take the violin. Millions made but why is it that a Stradivarius sounds better than all of them? Back then there was no one big musical instrument maker to make a standard to adhere to. Even today the sound of an old Gibson Les Paul or Fender Strat is something a manufacturer might strive for but not quit achieve.