Lift Up Your Hearts!

The lituus is not a test to determine the pH of a substance, although that's how I read it at first.  It's a musical instrument, and one of the last works written for it was J. S. Bach's O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht.  No modern listener has been able to hear Bach's motet as it was intended, however, because the instrument fell out of favor and became extinct.  No one today knows what it looked or sounded like. 

Until now.  Alistair Braden and Murray Campbell, from the University of Edinburgh, at the request of—ta da!—the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, applied to the problem software they had designed to improve modern brass instruments.

SCB gave the Edinburgh team their expert thoughts on what the Lituus may have been like in terms of the notes it produced, its tonal quality and how it might have been played....They also provided cross-section diagrams of instruments they believed to be similar to the Lituus.

"The software used this data to design an elegant, usable instrument with the required acoustic and tonal qualities," says Professor Campbell.  "The key was to ensure that the design we generated would not only sound right but look right as well."  He added: "Crucially, the final design produced by the software could have been made by a manufacturer in Bach's time without too much difficulty."

Using ths design, the Schola built two of instruments, which were then used in a performance of O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht earlier this year.  I urge you to read the entire BBC article, or at least click through to it so you can listen to a sample of the music.  It's not the best of all samples, and the performers had almost no time before the concert to practice this completely unknown and difficult instrument, but it will give you an idea of what may be to come.

It is an unwieldy instrument with a limited tonal range that is hard to play. But played well, it gives Johann Sebastian Bach's motet a haunting feel that couldn't be reproduced by modern instruments.

In case the link to the article breaks, as such links are wont to do, here is a picture of the instruments.  Those of you who attended a certain joyous celebration in Basel may recognize the other performer as one member of the alta capella band that led us from the church to the reception.