Here’s a story to bring music to your ears. Computer scientists in the UK have allowed instrument makers to build a horn specified by Bach to be played in a particular ditty of his, but an instrument that has since never been heard of.

The work, supported by the UK’s engineering and physical sciences research council (EPSRC) has allowed the lituus to be made. This is a long, thin horn that Bach specified for one particular cantata, ‘O Jesu Christ, meins lebens licht’ (BWV 118)’ written in 1736-37. Swiss conservatoire, Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, contacted Murray Campbell from the acoustics & fluids group, in the University of Edinburgh’s school of physics and astronomy with the hope that he could remodel the lost instrument

“It’s called ‘Bach’s forgotten horn’ because Bach specified this in this particular cantata but nobody knows what he meant. There were no instruments known to have been around in Leipzig in Bach’s time which were called lituuses, no lituus player appear on any rolls of musicians, no one knows what exactly he meant,” says Campbell.

Campbell’s PhD student Alistair Braden did the modelling based on fragments of information from the Swiss musicians about what the lituus might have sounded like, or looked like. Braden used optimisation software that he developed to get to the final design, a blueprint to give to the instrument makers.

The result was a long, wooden horn that is apparently difficult to play.

The BBC has a story with an audio clip of the whole piece, lituus and all.

Image: EPSRC