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The word ''lituus'' originally meant a curved augural staff, or a curved war-trumpet in the ancient
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
language. This Latin word continued in use through the 18th century as an alternative to the vernacular names of various musical instruments.


Roman ritual wand

The ''lituus'' was a crooked wand (similar in shape to the top part of some Western European crosiers) used as a cult instrument in
ancient Roman religion Religion in ancient Rome consisted of varying imperial and provincial religious practices, which were followed both by the people of Rome as well as those who were brought under its rule. The Romans thought of themselves as highly religious, ...
by
augur An augur was a priest and official in the classical Roman world. His main role was the practice of augury, the interpretation of the will of the gods by studying the flight of birds. Determinations were based upon whether they were flying ...
s to mark out a ritual space in the sky (a ''
templum The vocabulary of ancient Roman religion was highly specialized. Its study affords important information about the religion, traditions and beliefs of the ancient Romans. This legacy is conspicuous in European cultural history in its influence on ...
''). The passage of birds through this ''templum'' indicated divine favor or disfavor for a given undertaking. The ''lituus'' was also used as a symbol of office for the college of the augurs to mark them out as a priestly group.


Music instrument


Antiquity

The ancient ''lituus'' was an Etruscan high-pitched
brass instrument A brass instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips. Brass instruments are also called labrosones or labrophones, from Latin a ...
, which was straight but bent at the end, in the shape of a letter J, similar to the Gallic carnyx. It was later used by the Romans, especially for processional music and as a signalling horn in the army. For the Roman military it may have been particular to the cavalry, and both the Etruscan and Roman versions were always used in pairs, like the prehistoric
lur A lur, also lure or lurr, is a long natural blowing horn without finger holes that is played with a brass-type embouchure. Lurs can be straight or curved in various shapes. The purpose of the curves was to make long instruments easier to car ...
er. Unlike the Roman ''litui'', the Etruscan instruments had detachable mouthpieces and in general appear to have been longer. The name ''lituus'' is Latin, thought to have been derived from an Etruscan cultic word describing a soothsayer's wand modelled on a shepherd's crook and associated with sacrifice and favourable omens. Earlier Roman and Etruscan depictions show the instrument used in processions, especially funeral processions. Players of the lituus were called ''liticines'', though the name of the instrument appears to have been loosely used (by poets, not likely by soldiers) to describe other military brass instruments, such as the '' tuba'' or the '' buccina''. In 17th-century Germany a variant of the bent ancient ''lituus'' was still used as a signalling horn by nightwatchmen.


Medieval period

From the end of the 10th through the 13th centuries, chroniclers of the
Crusades The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were ...
used the word ''lituus'' vaguely—along with the Classical Latin names for other Roman military Trumpets and horns, such as the '' tuba'', '' cornu'', and '' buccina'' and the more up-to-date French term ''trompe''—to describe various instruments employed in the Christian armies. However, it is impossible to determine just what sort of instrument might have been meant, and it is unlikely their litui were the same as the Etrusco-Roman instrument. In the early 15th century,
Jean de Gerson Jean Charlier de Gerson (13 December 1363 – 12 July 1429) was a French scholar, educator, reformer, and poet, Chancellor of the University of Paris, a guiding light of the conciliar movement and one of the most prominent theologians at the Co ...
listed the lituus among those
string instrument String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner. Musicians play some string instruments by plucking the s ...
s that were sounded by beating or striking, either with the fingernails, a plectrum, or a stick. Other instruments Gerson names in this category are the ''
cythara The cythara is a wide group of stringed instruments of medieval and Renaissance Europe, including not only the lyre and harp but also necked, string instruments. In fact, unless a medieval document gives an indication that it meant a necked ins ...
'', '' guiterna'', '' psalterium'', ''timpanum'', and ''campanula''.


Modern era

Throughout the postclassical era the name ''lituus'' continued to be used when discussing ancient and Biblical instruments, but with reference to contemporary musical practice in the Renaissance it usually referred to "bent horns" made of wood, particularly the crumhorn and the cornett. The crumhorn was especially associated with the lituus because of the similarity of its shape. The equation of the crumhorn with the lituus was especially strong among German writers. A 1585 English translation of
Hadrianus Junius Hadrianus Junius (1511–1575), also known as Adriaen de Jonghe, was a Dutch physician, classical scholar, translator, lexicographer, antiquarian, historiographer, emblematist, school rector, and Latin poet. He is not to be confused with several ...
's ''Nomenclator'' defines ''lituus'' as "a writhen or crooked trumpet winding in and out; a shaulme" (i.e.,
shawm The shawm () is a conical bore, double-reed woodwind instrument made in Europe from the 12th century to the present day. It achieved its peak of popularity during the medieval and Renaissance periods, after which it was gradually eclipsed by th ...
), but a polyglot edition of the same book published in 1606 demonstrates how differently the term might have been understood in various languages at that time: German ''Schalmey'', ''Krumme Trommeten'', ''Krumhorn''; Dutch ''Schalmeye''; French ''Claron, ou cleron''; Italian ''Trombetta bastarda''; Spanish ''Trompeta curua, ò bastarda''. The early Baroque composer and author Michael Praetorius used the word as a Latin equivalent of the German "Schallmeye" (shawm) or for the "Krumbhoerner" ( crumhorns)—in the latter case also offering the Italian translations ''storti'', and ''cornamuti torti''. A more particular term, ''lituus alpinus'', was used in 1555 by the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner when he published the earliest detailed description of the
Alphorn The alphorn or alpenhorn or alpine horn is a labrophone, consisting of a straight several-meter-long wooden natural horn of conical bore, with a wooden cup-shaped mouthpiece. Traditionally the Alphorn was made of one single piece, or two par ...
: "nearly eleven feet long, made from two pieces of wood slightly curved and hollowed out, fitted together and skillfully bound with osiers". A study made of Swedish dictionaries found that during the seventeenth century ''lituus'' was variously translated as ''sinka'' (= German ''Zink'', cornett), ''krumhorn'', ''krum trometa'' (curved trumpet), '' claret'', or ''horn''. In the eighteenth century the word once again came to describe contemporary brass instruments, such as in a 1706 inventory from the Ossegg monastery in Bohemia, which equates it with the hunting horn: "litui vulgo Waldhörner duo ex tono G". Nevertheless, in 1732 Johann Gottfried Walther referred back to Renaissance and Medieval definitions, defining ''lituus'' as "a cornett, formerly it also signified a shawm or, in Italian ''tubam curvam'', a HeerHorn". (''Heerhorn'' or ''Herhorn'' was a Middle High German name for a metal, slightly curved military signal horn, approximately five feet long, played with the bell turned upward.) In 1738, the well-known horn player Anton Joseph Hampel served as a godfather at the baptism of a daughter of the renowned Dresden lutenist Silvius Leopold Weiss. In the baptismal register he was described as "Lituista Regius"—"royal lituus player". In the second half of the 18th century the lituus was described in one source as a Latin name for the
trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...
or horn. A number of musical compositions from the Baroque era specify an instrument by the Latin name ''lituus'', including Bach's
motet In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Ma ...
''O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht'' (BWV 118), a partita attributed to Jan Josef Ignác Brentner, as well as several masses and concertos by Johann Valentin Rathgeber. Scientists from Edinburgh University tried to recreate the lituus used by Bach in May 2009, in the form of a long wooden trumpet, assuming the word does not refer to the horn and the instrument had been out of use for 300 years.Archived a
Ghostarchive
and th
Wayback Machine


References


Further reading

* * Gessner, Conrad. 1555. "Descriptio Montis Fracti iuxta Lvcernam, et primum Chorographica, praefertim quod ad paludem Pilati in eo memorabilem". In his
De raris et admirandis herbis qvae sive qvod noctv luceant, siue alias ob causas, lunariae nominantur, commentariolus : & obiter de alijs etiam rebus quæ in tenebris lucent : inferunter & icones quedam herbarum nove: eivsdem descriptio Montis Fracti, siue Montis Pilati, iuxta Lucernam in Heluetia: his accedvnt Io. Dv Chovl G.F. Lugdunensis, Pilati Montis in Gallia descriptio: Io Rhellicani Stockhornias, qua Stockhornus mons altissimus in Bernensium Heluetiorum agro, versibus heroicis describitur
', 45–67. Tigvri
urich Urich may refer to *Urich, Missouri Urich is a city in Henry County, Missouri, United States. The population was 505 at the 2010 census. History Urich was platted in 1871. The city was named for General Uhrich, a figure in the Siege of Strasbo ...
Apud Andream Gesnerum F. & Iacobvm Gesnerum, frates. * Meucci, Renato. 1989. "Roman Military Instruments and the Lituus". ''The Galpin Society Journal'' 42 (August): 85–97. * Szadrowsky, H. 1867–68.
Die Musik und die tonerzeugende Instrumente der Alpenbewohner: Eine kulturhistorische Skizze
. ''Jahrbuch des schweizer Alpenclubs'' 4:275–352. {{Natural horns Ancient Roman religion Ancient Roman musical instruments Natural horns and trumpets hu:Lituus (egyértelműsítő lap)