Bronze instrument common among the ancient Celts. It is one of a number of Celtic lip-vibrated aerophones (see Aerophone), but the only one for which a name is known from classical authors. A product of the Celtic iron age (not bronze, as Sachs assumed), it was normally made in sections by hammering bronze ingots into thin sheets which were then shaped into tubes and sealed along the joint with solder or by riveting a sealing strip over the join. Sachs believed that the carnyx had a more ancient predecessor consisting of two parts, a straight cane or wooden tube joined to a curved animal's horn, but this view, though plausible, will remain conjectural. His opinion that the Etruscan-Roman lituus was derived from the carnyx cannot be ruled out, however, since recent research into the Cisalpine Celts has revealed considerable interaction not only between Celts and Romans but also between Celts and Etruscans.
Two basic forms of the carnyx are found. The first, approximately ‘J'-shaped (roughly corresponding to the Lituus), is found in the central Celtic areas, including France, Germany, Bohemia and Britain; this type is frequently depicted on Roman coins and monumental sculpture showing victories over the Celts, particularly on Trajan's Column (celebrating the Dacian campaign), and its distinctive curved speaking end representing a fierce animal’s head may have influenced the decoration of some medieval and Renaissance instruments. The second type, with curved tubing and shaped like a large ‘C’, was produced in the peripheral regions, including Ireland, the Iberian peninsula, Cisalpine Italy and as far east as Galatia; depictions are found on the Pergamum monuments, including the ‘Dying Gaul’ (Museo Capitolino, Rome), but there are important surviving examples in bronze, the Irish Ardbrin and Loughnashade horns (National Museum, Dublin; see, respectively, Raftery, 1994, pp.153–5, and 1987), and an Irish carnyx made of wood. The instrument found by the River Witham in Lincolnshire in 1768, originally thought to have been a lituus remaining in Britain from Roman times but later accepted as a carnyx, did not survive attempts to analyse its metal (see Kruta, 645–7). Pottery examples of both forms survive in Spain.
C. Sachs: Real-Lexikon der Musikinstrumente (Berlin, 1913/R, enlarged 2/1964)
F. Behn: Musikleben im Altertum und frühen Mittelalter (Stuttgart, 1954)
B. Raftery: ‘The Loughnashade Horns’, Emania, ii (1987), 21–4
G. Wille: Musica romana (Amsterdam, 1967)
V. Kruta and others, eds.: The Celts (London, 1991)
P. Downey: ‘Lip-Blown Instruments of Ireland before the Norman Invasion’, HBSJ, v (1993), 75–91
B. Raftery: Pagan Celtic Ireland: the Enigma of the Irish Iron Age (London, 1994)
JAMES W. McKINNON, PETER DOWNEY