Author: James Chow

Ireland is richer by far in surviving musical instruments from the Bronze and Iron Ages than any other European nation. The Loughnashade horn held by Carnyx & Co is a reconstruction by John Creed of one of four discovered in 1794 during the draining of a peat bog in Armagh. That bog was once the lake of Loughnashade, a short distance from Navan Fort, or Emain Macha, one of the ancient royal sites of Iron Age Ireland.

The horns were part of a hoard which also included a collection of human skulls. Sadly, only one of the horns survived, dating from the first century BC. It is crafted sheets of hammered bronze, made into hermetically sealed tubes by lapping the sheets and securing them with over 1,000 rivets, beneath a conduit which runs the entire length of the instrument. It has four main components: the two long cylindrical tubes with a narrow aperture to take a mouthpiece at one end and a wider bell section on the other end; a biconical ring to hold the two pieces together; and the final and most exquisite piece, a decorated disc attached to the terminal cone of the horn.

The decoration of the bell disc is by far the most eye-catching aspect of the Loughnashade horn. Hammered in high relief and mirrored on each quadrant of the ring, it features long, curving tendrils ending in spiral motifs based on a classical lotus-bud design, and is a testament to the impressive skill of Iron Age craftsmen. It is a magnificent example of so-called La Tène decoration, a style that would dominate the Celtic world for many centuries to come. Acoustic testing as well as live performance have demonstrated that this bell disc has both an amplifying and focusing effect on the tone of the instrument.

The pioneer of the Lochnashade Horn, and of the reconstruction and performance

of all Ireland’s Bronze and Iron Age lip reed instruments, is the great scholar-musician,

Simon O’Dwyer, who commissioned John Creed to make the first modern reconstruction

for performance. Since we have no surviving name from antiquity, Simon denotes this

instrument by the Irish name trumpa créda, (which can be translated as both bronze trumpet and earth trumpet) and his publications and many fine recordings can be found at the Ancient Music Ireland website: www.ancientmusicireland.com.

Carnyx & Co is grateful to John Creed for the permanent loan his third Lochnashade reconstruction. As no mouthpiece was discovered in 1794, and as the terminal tube aperture is almost identical in diameter to that of the carnyx, Simon O’Dwyer adopted the form of mouthpiece developed for the Deskford carnyx; the musicians and researchers of Ancient Music Ireland and Carnyx & Co have enjoyed a long and fruitful collaborative relationship. The original instrument can be seen, with the first modern reconstruction, at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin.

Until 2004, fragments of only five carnyces had been preserved, from Scotland, France, Germany, Romania, and Switzerland. However, in 2004 archaeologists led by Christophe Maniquet discovered a first century-BC deposit of seven more of these extraordinary instruments along with over five hundred fragments of iron and bronze objects, under a Gallo-Roman fanum at Tintignac in the Corrèze region of southern France. The archaeologists discovered traces of dense occupation and activity around this sanctuary. Although all seven were ritually dismembered, one was almost complete. Six of these carnyces had boar’s heads, but the seventh was a serpent-like fantasy beast. The find appears to represent a ritual deposit dating to soon after the Roman conquest of Gaul. The Tintignac finds enabled some fragments found decades before at Sanzeno in northern Italy to be identified as coming from two carnyces.

The items found along with the carnyces included unique military and religious objects, which are still the subject of study by Christophe Maniquet’s team, along with conservation and restoration by Materia Viva laboratory in Toulouse. Jean Boisserie, the preeminent dinandier (artist-artisan in beaten metals) in France, has meticulously reconstructed the Tintignac Carnyx using materials and techniques as close to the original as possible.

It is clear from our work in Scotland, France, and Italy that people of Celtic culture all over ancient Europe were fascinated by lip reed instruments and made great horns and trumpets in many forms. The lower parts of the Deskford Carnyx were modelled upon the images of the Gundestrup Cauldron, where we see three men playing the instrument vertically. The structure of the Deskford head makes this interpretation logical – but the Tintignac Carnyx is clearly a different beast. The lower tubes are completely straight, terminating in a fixed, integral mouthpiece. This makes it impossible to play vertically, thus although its head looks like the Gundestrup instruments, it must have been played at an angle closer to horizontal. The magnificent head of the Tintignac features gaping jaws and huge, delicate ears – and yet the structure is far less complex than the Deskford head, with its hinged jaw, sprung tongue, soft palette, and brain cavity. Jean Boisserie’s Tintignac Carnyx reconstruction is made entirely of hand hammered bronze, highly polished to a mirror finish. It is a vibrant, living musical instrument. Both instruments enable a range of almost five octaves, capable of producing volume from a delicate whisper to terrifying roar.

The Deskford Carnyx was discovered at the farm of Leitchestown, Deskford, Banffshire, Scotland in 1816. Only the boar’s head was found by farm workers who were draining a peat bog, which had once been a small lake, 2,000 years earlier. The head was donated to Banff Museum and is now on loan to the National Museum of Scotland.

Until recently the Deskford Carnyx had been the most substantial part of a carnyx discovered anywhere in Europe. However, in 2004 an almost complete carnyx, of a distinctive design, was discovered at Tintignac in southern France. Both instruments are made of beaten bronze, extraordinarily complex in structure and requiring an extremely high level of craftsmanship, as well as an understanding of what we now think of as musical acoustics. Each exhibits local design elements, which suggest a much more complex function than the previously widely accepted designation as simply a “war horn.” The “bell” of the Deskford Carnyx is in the form of a wild boar’s head, comprising a resonating chamber in the upper cranium, separated from the mouth and throat by a ridged “soft palette.” A wooden tongue is mounted on a bronze leaf spring in the throat, and the lower jaw is hinged. This head was complete on discovery, but the lower tubes were modelled on the Gundestrup Cauldron image, enabling the instrument to be held aloft and played vertically.

The lower tubes and mouthpiece were necessarily conjectural and the subject of two years experimentation and research. John Kenny’s design for this was simply a bronze ring, or cushion, of the same diameter as the terminal tube to protect the player’s lips, without the cup and back-bore form seen on all other ancient and modern European instruments. This proved highly effective but remained controversial until the discovery of a mouthpiece with the Tintignac Carnyx, which was of exactly the form adopted 20 years earlier by the Deskford team. This mouthpiece structure is unique to the carnyx family but has also been adapted successfully to reconstructions of Irish Iron Age instruments which no mouthpiece has so far been discovered.

The Deskford carnyx reconstruction project was launched in 1992 directed by Dr John Purser with a team comprising archaeologist Fraser Hunter, John Kenny, acoustician Murray Campbell, blacksmith/silversmith John Creed, and Peter Holmes an expert in ancient brass instruments. A Glenfiddich Living Scotland Award and the National Museum of Scotland jointly funded this project. The craftsmanship of the original is superb, both the materials and the techniques of construction have been painstakingly researched and replicated by John Creed. By using materials and techniques as close as possible to the original he has made three reconstructions. The first reconstruction is now on permanent display in the Early Peoples Gallery of the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. Two more reconstructions, one funded by the Hope Scott Trust, and the other by the William Grant Foundation, are in the keeping of Carnyx & Co. Both used by John and Patrick Kenny for performances, lectures, and research.