Founded by Ian Ritchie and John Kenny in 1997, Carnyx & Co. is a charitable company which provides a unique interface between musical archaeology and the world of contemporary performance and recording.
After the initial carnyx reconstruction project, based at the National Museum of Scotland and directed by Dr John Purser it rapidly became clear that there was huge potential for on-going research development in the field of Music Archaeology. With the support and encouragement from a variety of sources, including Fraser Hunter and his colleagues in the Department of Archaeology at the National Museums of Scotland, Mark Jones, Director of the National Museum, Professor Murray Campbell of Edinburgh University, David Clough of Kilmartin House Museum, John Creed, and John Purser himself, Carnyx & Co was founded by John Kenny and Ian Ritchie, and registered as a Scottish charitable company limited by guarantee on September 17th 1997.
Our work continues to combine reconstructive music archaeology with contemporary artistic creativity, the promotion of live and recorded performance, the commissioning of new work, education, and the development of assistive music technologies.
Since 2000 Carnyx & Co has become the parent organisation for several exciting ensembles and collaborative projects generating new work in the fields of contemporary and ancient music, film, and theatre. It also seeks to level the playing field between able bodied and disabled musicians through Headspace.
In 2013 Carnyx & Co started working in partnership with the European Music Archaeology Project (EMAP) on the reconstruction of the Tintignac Carnyx from France, and the Etruscan litus and cornu. The reconstruction of the iconic Celtic instrument, the carnyx, has become the catalyst for a wave of contemporary artistic expression. Carnyx & Co has commissioned new works featuring not only the Deskford Carnyx, but also the Tintignac Carnyx and Lochnashade Horn, documented on CDs, film soundtracks, live performances, and lectures world-wide.
A twenty-year association with Ancient Music Ireland has enabled us to participate in the study and performance of the most varied assemblage of Iron Age musical instruments found anywhere in Europe. These European Iron Age masterpieces are now all fully functional and finding their 21st Century voices.
Carnyx & Co continues to reach audiences of all ages and cultural backgrounds, telling the on-going story of the fabulous carnyx, and the evolution of the great family of lip reed instruments.
The Carnyx
The carnyx is a large Celtic lip-reed instrument, an ancestor of our modern brass instruments. It was played throughout Celtic Europe from about the 4th century BC to approximately 300AD. The word ‘carnyx’ appears in various classical texts: carnyces are described as being present at the Celtic attack on the Delphi in 279 BC, as well as from Julius Caesar’s campaign in Gaul and Claudius’ invasion of Britain.
Diodorus Siculus around 60-30 BC wrote:
“Their trumpets again are of a peculiar barbarian kind; they blow into them and produce a harsh sound which suits the tumult of war.“
The carnyx is widely depicted on coins found in Britain, Gaul, the Lowlands, and Germany as well as on Roman triumphal arches and columns.
However, the most celebrated image of purely Celtic origin can be seen on the Gundestrup Cauldron, a huge ceremonial silver vessel housed in the National Museum of Denmark.
The Gundestrup cauldron is a richly decorated silver vessel, thought to date from between 200 BC and 300 AD. This places it within the late La T’ne period of Celtic culture, and it is the largest known example of European Iron Age silver work (diameter: 69 cm, height: 42 cm). Both its interior and exterior surfaces are heavily decorated with repouss’ work, hammered from beneath to push out the silver, as well as extensive gilding and some use of inlaid pieces of glass for the eyes of figures. The cauldron was found in Denmark, not made there or nearby; it includes elements of Gaulish and Thracian origin in the workmanship. The cauldron’s imagery is a mysterious blend of Celtic pantheon, and Celtic mythology with iconography which seems to be derived from the art of the ancient Near East, and there are intriguing parallels with ancient India and later Hindu deities and their stories. However, among the most specific details that are clearly Celtic are the group of three carnyx players, and this image was crucial to the reconstruction of the Deskford Carnyx, and the starting point of our understand of how it might be held and played.
In the Gundestrup image a line of warriors bearing spears and shields march to the left towards a giant horn headed figure, followed by a warrior with no shield, bearing a sword, and wearing a boar-crested helmet. Behind him are three carnyx players and in front of this group a dog leaps up, perhaps holding them back. The horned giant holds a man upside down, apparently with ease, and is about to immerse him in a barrel or cauldron. Above this ceremonial procession a tree lies horizontal, and above this, perhaps symbolically in another world, warriors on horseback with crested helmets and spears ride away to the right, led by a horned serpent. Significantly, the heads of the carnyx are above the tree which separates the lower and upper worlds. This is not a scene of battle, but a ritual in which fallen warriors are dipped into a cauldron to be reborn into their next life, or afterlife.
The instrument is clearly designed to be visually arresting, and in vertical position the sound would be projected from approximately four meters above the ground.
With the generous support of the William Grant Foundation, Carnyx & Co was able to commission the Purser’s music and poetry for Gundestrup Rituals, animating those mysterious and compelling images with three carnyces for the first time in 2,000 years.
It is to the remarkable composer, musicologist, broadcaster, poet, and playwright John Purser that we owe the rebirth of the Carnyx. In 1992, following his 30 episode BBC documentary series ‘Scotland’s Music – Purser assembled a team based at the National Museum of Scotland. This team included the archaeologist Fraser Hunter, acoustician Murray Campbell, craftsman John Creed and musician John Kenny. Following two years of research and experiment they reconstructed the first playable carnyx in the modern world.
The Deskford and Tintignac each have a distinctive tone quality, related to contemporary brass instruments yet strikingly different and both are now constantly in use for performance and recording of music in a wide variety of styles and settings. Carnyx & Co.’s mission is the exploration of the acoustic and expressive capabilities of these magnificent beasts: to give the Carnyx a voice!
John Kenny
Trombonist, composer, improviser, musical archaeologist and actor John Kenny has performed and broadcast solo productions in over 40 nations as an interpreter of contemporary, jazz, improvised and early music.
John Kenny was also a founding member of the European Music Archaeology and in 1993, he became the first person in 2000 years to play the large Celtic war horn known as the Deskford Carnyx discovered in northern Scotland. Since then, he has developed a unique repertoire that can be heard on eight CDs, film soundtracks, live performances, and on the video game Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’. In 2011, he was the first to play the Tintignac Carnyx, discovered in southern France and in 2014 the Etruscan Litus and Cornuso.
In 1997 along with Ian Ritchie he founded, Carnyx & Co. a charitable company providing a unique interface between musical archaeology, the world of contemporary performance and recording.
Since 1983, he has been musical director of the TNT theatre company, which is currently based in Munich, and of the American Drama Group Europe, composing and performing in productions that have toured the world for 40 years, and collaborating on productions that have toured Europe, Asia and the USA.
In 2017, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Trombone Association in Los Angeles one of only two British musicians to have received this distinction.
He teaches at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, St Mary’s School of Music in Edinburgh and at the San Marino New Music Project. He is regularly invited to give masterclasses and lectures at conservatories and universities in Europe, the USA and Asia.
Ian Ritchie
Singer, festival director, arts administrator, and interdisciplinary curator, co-founder Ian Ritchie has been involved in Carnyx & Co since its inception nearly 30 years ago.
Following studies at the Royal College of Music (where he won the Mario Grisi Prize in 1972), Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, he has spent more than 45 years leading several award-winning British music organisations. These include the City of London Sinfonia, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Opera North, and has directed several local and international arts Festivals, including the St Magnus Festival (Orkney) and many editions of the City of London Festival.
In 2010 Ian Ritchie set up the Setubal Music Festival (Portugal), which he masterminded for nine years, and in 2024 created and curated the new City Festival of Music, Invention & Knowledge (London).
Dividing his time between London and Orkney, he continues to work for several music charities, advise various festivals, curate interdisciplinary projects, and perform occasionally as a solo baritone.
Professor Allyson Pollock
is clinical professor of public health at Newcastle University and honorary professor at University College London (UCL). She was director of Newcastle’s Institute of Health & Society and at Queen Mary University of London and the University of Edinburgh set up and directed research along with teaching units, establishing some of the UK’s leading undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in global health. Prior to that she was Head of the Public Health Policy Unit at UCL and Director of Research & Development at UCL Hospitals NHS Trust.
Allyson trained in medicine in Scotland and became a consultant in public health medicine in 1991. Her research interests include regulatory science, rational medicines use, access to medicines, health service reorganisation, marketisation, PFI / PPPs, childhood injuries, and the epidemiology of trauma.
She is the author of NHS plc and Tackling rugby, and co-author of The New NHS: a guide
Latest articles and publications can be found at:
David Eustace
At the age of 19 David served in the Royal Naval Reserve and two years later became a Prison Officer at HMP Barlinnie.
Aged 28 he decided to return to full-time education, graduating from Edinburgh Napier University in 1991 with a BA Distinction in Photographic Studies. Later he became the University Chancellor creating the Chancellor Talks and Chancellor Dinners, connecting art, commerce, and education with internationally respected figures. In 2011 Edinburgh Napier University awarded David with an Honorary Doctor of Arts in recognition of his contribution to photography.
David has travelled extensively, lived and worked in London and New York City. Over the years he has contributed, conceived, created, and collaborated on many projects. These include; contributing editor for Cond’ Nast titles GQ and Vogue, created campaigns for major global brands in new York City, Panasonic based their international Lumix campaign around his work, created a film for the digital season of Scottish Ballet, curated a multimedia exhibition at The Signet Library in Edinburgh. His work is held in national and private collections. Recently he presented his first live performance work at Dalkeith Palace, titled Reserved.
He has served as a creative consultant to both public and private sectors and enjoys speaking on the importance of ‘daft ideas’
Our Patron – Sir James Macmillan
James MacMillan is the pre-eminent Scottish composer of his generation. He first attracted attention with the acclaimed BBC Proms premiere of The Confession of Isobel Gowdie (1990). His percussion concerto Veni, Veni Emmanuel (1992) has received over 500 performances worldwide by orchestras including London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics and Cleveland Orchestra. Other major works include the cantata Seven Last Words from the Cross (1993), Quickening (1998) for soloists, children’s choir, mixed choir and orchestra, the operas In’s de Castro (2001) and The Sacrifice (2005-06), St John Passion (2007), St Luke Passion (2013) and Symphony No.5: ‘Le grand Inconnu’ (2018).
He was featured composer at Edinburgh Festival (1993, 2019), Southbank Centre (1997), BBC’s Barbican Composer Weekend (2005) and Grafenegg Festival (2012). His interpreters include soloists Evelyn Glennie, Colin Currie, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Vadim Repin, conductors Leonard Slatkin, Sir Andrew Davis, Marin Alsop and Sir Donald Runnicles, choreographer Christopher Wheeldon and stage director Katie Mitchell. His recordings can be found on BMG/RCA Red Seal, BIS, Chandos, Naxos, Hyperion, Coro, Linn and Challenge Classics.
Recent highlights include MacMillan’s Stabat Mater for The Sixteen streamed from the Sistine Chapel and premieres of the 40-voice motet Vidi aquam, Christmas Oratorio streamed in 2021 by NTR Dutch Radio from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, and the anthem Who Shall Separate Us – commissioned for the funeral of HM Queen Elizabeth II in 2022. The annual Cumnock Tryst festival was founded by the composer in 2014 in his childhood town in Scotland.
Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes
