Music Archaeology
Vikings: Making Brass from Wood - Part 1
Part 1 of 3
Despite their reputation for rape and pillage and the signs of their presence over much of Europe, the evidence for the Viking horns or trumpets comes from their heartland in the western Baltic. It was their settled life as farmers and people just getting on with things which bequeathed us their heritage of wooden instruments: their ancient wooden trumpets. It may seem unfair to saddle these instruments with the prefix ‘wooden’ as the term ‘lur’ was theirs, having first appeared in the Icelandic Sagas. Nevertheless, the term ‘lur’ was taken over by their Bronze-Age predecessors when the archaeologist C. J. Thomsen took over the term luđr from the Sagas. In these tales the lur is frequently mentioned as the instrument by which the warriors are called to battle and the connection of the name to the Bronze-Age instruments must have appeared logical at the time. In the Baltic and Scandinavia, the term also refers to a folk instrument made of wood which was sometimes wrapped with bark and one author, Broholm suggests that the term may originally have referred to a hollow log and, hence to the trumpet . In the town of Ystad the old tradition of the night-watchman’s horn is still carried out in which the town’s night-watchman blows a copper horn which is referred to locally as the kopparlur. In Denmark, in the Jutland dialect, luj is used to describe a shepherd’s instrument made of wooden staves and that children in parts of Jutland make a willow-bark trumpet in the spring which they refer to as a lur. A detailed look at the Viking wooden lur reveals their considerable variety in design, something not seen on the Bronze-Age instruments. The one thing which was consistent on the Vikining instruments was their manufacture by the split/hollow/reseal technique. This involved splitting a piece of wood before hollowing out the interior and then resealing the two halves, securing them mechanically with some binding material. A number of different timbers were used to create these wooden lurs, including willow and hazel. This use of a variety of softwoods contrasts strongly with the Irish practice of around this time and earlier when only Yew was used to create instruments by the split/hollow/reseal method. The bindings were of organic materials, again unlike the Irish horns and trumpets which were bound using bronze strips pinned into the timber of the tubes. Although the binding materials of the Viking wooden lurs were organic, sufficient of these have survived to allow us to identify what they were made of.
Music Archaeology: the Early Days
Music Archaeology: the Early Days
Music archaeology didn’t burst upon the scene. It didn’t even come from one single time or place. Instead it developed over many years, gradually building up to become the multi-faceted study that it is today. While the term music archaeology has been around some time, it was only generally adopted relatively recently but that doesn’t detract from the fact the study of music archaeology has been around for many years before any of its modern adherents were born.
Early Music Archaeology in Ireland and the UK
Early Music Archaeology in Ireland and the UK
The modern story of the Irish Horns started in 1726 with a second edition of Gerard Boate’s book. In this, a section written by Sir Thomas Molyneux was added in which he told of a find where feveral Danifh trumpets of brafs were found buried in the earth, fuch as they ufed in war in thofe times, of a peculiar odd make. Most of the writing of this time and some time later referred to these instruments as war trumpets and of their being of Danish (Viking) origin. He provided dimensioned diagrams of these instruments enabling his readers to get a good idea of the size of these instruments.
Music Archaeology in Scandinavia and the Baltic
Early Music Archaeology in Scandinavia and the Baltic Region
The reported modern story of the bronze lurs begins in Brudevaelte, Denmark in 1797 when a letter dated June 19th 1797, was penned to accompany the first find of lurs on their journey to the Royal Exchequer. Significantly, the six Brudevaelte Lurs were transferred in 1807 to the Royal Art Collection and thence to the newly-established Museum of Antiquities. Thus, from the very beginning, in Denmark, lurs were seen as items to report, treasure and study.
Music Archaeology of the Palaeolithic/Mesolithic/Neolithic
Sounds from Silence: Music Archaeology of the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic
Music Archaeology of the Mediterranean and Middle East
Music Emerging from the Texts
While musical archaeology studies in the Mediterranean area and the Middle East have examined the physical evidence and iconography, written sources have always also played a key role. This was brought into the spotlight when, in the 1970s, Anne Kilmer, an Assyriologist at Berkeley, California deciphered a cuneiform document in the Hurrian language which had been excavated from Ugarit. This she identified as a Bronze-Age hymn which provided evidence of notation based upon a Mesopotamian notation system. Once presented in western notation, this musical excerpt could be heard by modern ears.
Music Archaeology up to the 1960s
Music Archaeology up to the 1960s
Brass instruments underwent monumental changes in the mid nineteenth century with the adoption of valves and one of the workers in the field at the time was Victor-Charles Mahillon, a Belgian musician, instrument builder and writer on musical topics. Coming from a family of instrument makers, he went on to develop many instruments but also created analogues of ancient ones such as the cornua found in Pompeii. He founded and curated the Musée instrumental du Conservatoire Royal de Musique which went on to become the Musical Instrument Museum in Brussels. Such workers added progressively to the knowledge of instruments and were key players in the formation of the discipline known today as music archaeology.
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