Software Enables Re-Creation of 'Lost' Instrument 136
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that the Lituus, a 2.4m (8ft) -long trumpet-like instrument, was played in Ancient Rome but fell out of use some 300 years ago. Bach even composed a motet (a choral musical composition) for the Lituus, one of the last pieces of music written for the instrument.. But until now, no one had a clear idea of what this instrument looked or sounded like until researchers at Edinburgh University developed software that enabled them to design the Lituus even though no one alive today has heard, played or even seen a picture of this forgotten instrument." (Continues below.)
The team started with cross-section diagrams of instruments they believed to be similar to the Lituus and the range of notes it played. 'The software used this data to design an elegant, usable instrument with the required acoustic and tonal qualities. The key was to ensure that the design we generated would not only sound right but look right as well,' says Professor Murray Campbell. 'Crucially, the final design produced by the software could have been made by a manufacturer in Bach's time without too much difficulty.' Performed by the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (SCB) the Lituus produced a piercing trumpet-like sound interleaving with the vocals in an experimental performance of Bach's 'O Jesu Christ, meins lebens licht' in Switzerland earlier this year, giving the music a haunting feel that can't be reproduced by modern instruments. The software opens up the possibility that brass instruments could be customized more closely to the needs of individual players in the future — catering more closely to the differing needs of jazz, classical and other players all over the world. 'Sophisticated computer modelling software has a huge role to play in the way we make music in the future.'"
Re:Reverse PM? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, brute-forcing a game of chess IS trivial. Computationally intensive, but it is not a complicated algorithm.
The computer considers a move (Say, Knight pawn e5)
The computer computes all possible states of the board X moves after the move it is considering (upperbound 16^x, should usually be around 10^x or less).
Assign each of these possible states a desirability value. This can be computed based on any set of strategic criteria. The simplest is material value, more complicated ones will consider control of the center, pins, forks, open files, etc.
Average the values together.
Repeat for each of the computer's possible moves.
Choose the move with the highest value.
Most immediate way to improve this is to add a dynamic weighting to the average as the computer moves down the tree of possible moves. Some moves an opponent is just not likely to make, so outcomes proceeding from those moves should be weighted less (this is just an expansion of the rule-awareness of the computer, for example the computer should be assigning zero weight to any moves that cause the opponent to put their own king in check, capture their own pieces, etc.--basically this is adding soft-rules, not likely in addition to impossible).
Computer chess AI was only noteworthy back in the day because of the power needed to do it, not because programming the AI is an inherently difficult task. Building the computers that could do all the calculations in a timely fashion was the real problem of a chess computer. Sure, Babbage's machine could have done it, but you would have died of old age waiting for the computer to respond to your spanish opening.
Not lost... (Score:5, Informative)
Not sure why this study and article claims the instrument was "lost", and that no one knows what it looks like â" there are -countless- details and elaborate accounts on the various Lituus in musical history. Furthermore, the "long horn" type of instrument shown as being the recreation of the "lost Lituus nobody has ever seen" is not a Lituus at all â" it's nothing short a very common design of long horn from the european medievals.
Re:great research (Score:2, Informative)
> Depends on your taste of music. Bach is something for the mathematicians of the music students. So something that real existing people with a real
> life enjoy.
Only if by 'real people' with a 'real life' excludes pretty much any serious classical composer from the last couple of hundred years (as well as lot of jazz, rock etc musicians). You'll have to look pretty hard to find any composer or performer who doesn't appreciate what Bach did.
Re:Reverse PM? (Score:2, Informative)
> Actually, brute-forcing a game of chess IS trivial. Computationally intensive, but it is not a complicated algorithm.
It's not trivial because the sun will burn out before you get the answer to the very first move of the game. I agree that if your solution doesn't have to work then the solution is indeed trivial, but if the solution doesn't have to work then an even simpler one is to just resign the game immediately, move a random piece, etc, for all the difference it will make.
Re:...ahem... (Score:5, Informative)
But of course going to Switzerland, comparing notes would have BEEN TOO EASY...
From TFA:
But Dr Braden and his supervisor Professor Murray Campbell, were approached by a Swiss-based music conservatoire specialising in early music , the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, to help them recreate the Lituus - even though no one alive today has heard, played or even seen a picture of this forgotten instrument.
Re:Um.. Nobody has heard, seen or played it (Score:5, Informative)
The PhD thesis was the horn profiling software. It's quite a technological advance in music. We went from hand made horns individuals figured out to play, to mass produced horns designed to a specification of brass and wood everybody learned to play exactly the same way. Now we've come full circle, the purpose of the software was to aid manufacturing of an individual instrument to their style of play. and physical ability.. that's actually a huge accomplishment in the history of music. It's the same type of advance made in sports so Tiger Woods can be digitally analyzed and have golf clubs made specifically for the mechanics of his swing based on scientific data.
I think the lituus was sort of a "parlor trick" use of the software. They had a piece of music, so sound patterns it was supposed to play, and they had written accounts of it's length, material, and basic appearance. They were able to plug that in and get a pattern for a real instrument out.
To complete the technology circle, these plans need to be given to real antique instrument re-creators to improve the playability and quality of the horn. Building a horn to a computer spec is way different than a craftsman building one by hand. They could improve their software if they had a craftsman "fix" their design to smooth out the rough patches and properly match the technology of the time, which would introduce "errors" that make the instrument more unique than one made by CNC machine.
Re:We still have them in some parts of Romania (Score:3, Informative)
That Bucium does does indeed look like the lituus and various sorts of alphorn.
Per the wiki article, there's some suspicion of a direct relation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpenhorn [wikipedia.org]
Yes, I am a musicologist, and it's bogus (Score:5, Informative)
Please read the second link in the summary. It's completely bonkers to think that an ancient Roman instrument just happened to survive into Bach's time, and then disappeared without a trace. We have descriptions of instruments and musical practice from Bach's time, and there is no lituus. We also have descriptions of ancient Roman (and Greek and Biblical) instruments from Bach's time, stuff that Bach would have known, and there are Litui in there. Bach took the name of an ancient Roman instrument because for some reason, probably having to do with the original purpose of that particular "cantata" (more likely it was a funeral motet), a fancy Latin name was more appropriate. The instrument itself would have been a horn or, less likely, a trumpet pitched in Bb. The difference between a Baroque horn and Baroque trumpet of that pitch would have been only the exact shape of the bore and the configuration of the mouthpiece.
Sorry, but the only evidence for the existence of the ancient Lituus in Bach's time is the occasional use of a Latin term in place of a German or Italian or some other vernacular term. That adds up to exactly zero evidence.
That said, the modelling software is pretty neat.
---
I am a musicologist, but I am not your musicologist, and this message does not constitute musicological advice. (In most juristictions.)