Ancient Celtic music

Deductions about the music of the ancient Celts of the La Tène period (and their Gallo-Roman and Romano-British descendants of Late Antiquity) rely primarily on Greek and Roman sources, as well as on archaeological finds and interpretations including the reconstruction of the Celts' ancient instruments. Most of the textual information centers on military conflicts and on maybe the most prominent Celtic instrument of its time, the carnyx.

In 54 BC Cicero wrote that he "did not fancy" there were any musically educated people on the British isle.Independent of the validity of Cicero's remark, the situation was different for the Gallic regions. By the time of Augustus, musical education had widely gained ground in Gaul, as Iulius Sacrovir used the erudite Gauls as a decoy, after Sacrovir and Iulius Florus had occupied the city of Augustodonum during the Gallic insurrection in 21 AD. The Gauls took great pride in their musical culture, which is shown by the remark of Gaius Iulius Vindex, the Gallic rebel and later senator under Claudius, who shortly before the arrival in Rome called emperor Nero a malus citharodeus ("bad cithara player") and reproached him with inscitia […] artis ("ignorance of the arts"). However, Celtic music culture was spread inhomogeneously over Europe: Maximinus Thrax, the Thracian-Roman emperor of Gothic descent, annoyed his fellow Romans because he was unable to appreciate a mimic stage song.

The carnyx (plural: carnyces; Greek: κάρνυξ—"karnyx"—or rarely: καρνον—"karnon") was a Celtic-Dacian variant of the Etruscan-Roman lituus and belongs to the family of brass instruments. It was an ſ-shaped valveless horn made of beaten bronze and consisted of a tube between one and two meters long, whereas the diameter of the tube is unknown. Archaeological finds date back to the Bronze Age, and the instrument itself is attested for in contemporary sources between ca. 300 BC and 200 AD. The carnyx was in widespread use in Britain, France, parts of Germany, eastward to Romania and beyond, even as far as India, where bands of Celtic mercenaries took it on their travels.

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