Antiquity The ancient
lituus was an
Etruscan high-pitched brass instrument, 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
lurer. 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 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 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 listed the lituus among those
string instruments 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,
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's
Nomenclator defines
lituus as "a writhen or crooked trumpet winding in and out; a shaulme" (i.e.,
shawm), 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: "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 trumeta (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 or
horn. A number of musical compositions from the Baroque era specify an instrument by the Latin name
lituus, including
Bach's motet 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 did not refer to a modern horn but to an instrument that had been out of use for 300 years. ==References==