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Most of the information on ancient Celtic music centers on military conflicts and on maybe the most prominent Celtic instrument of its time, the ''carnyx''. </onlyinclude> | Most of the information on ancient Celtic music centers on military conflicts and on maybe the most prominent Celtic instrument of its time, the ''carnyx''. </onlyinclude> | ||
Revision as of 16:40, 19 June 2009
The ancient Celts had a distinct culture, which is shown by their very sophisticated art work. The Hallstatt culture and especially the later La Tène culture are characterized by a high aesthetic level, which must have also left traces in Celtic music and musical practices. Music will surely have been an integral part of this ancient cross-European culture, but with only very few exceptions its characteristics have been lost to us. Deductions rely primarily on Greek and Roman sources as well as on archaeological finds and interpretations including the reconstruction of the Celts' ancient instruments.
In 54 BC Cicero wrote that there were no musically educated people on the British isle.[1] Independent of the validity of Cicero's remark[2] the situation was different for the Gallic regions. By the time of Augustus, musical education must have widely gained ground in Gaul, otherwise Iulius Sacrovir couldn't have 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.ref>Tacitus, Annals 3.43</ref> 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").[3] 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.[4]
Most of the information on ancient Celtic music centers on military conflicts and on maybe the most prominent Celtic instrument of its time, the carnyx.
- ↑ Marcus Tullius Cicero, Letters to Atticus 4.17.6.
- ↑ Cicero is known for his narrowmindedness, which sometimes surfaced in the form of xenophobic polemics, as his remark on Judaism shows, which he called a "foreign superstition" (barbara superstitio; Cicero, For Flaccus 67–69) despite the common Graeco-Roman-Jewish practice of identifying Iuppiter and Zeus as Yahweh and vice versa since Phoenician times.
- ↑ Suetonius, Nero 41.1; Cassius Dio, Roman History 63.22.4–6. Nero however was himself so proud and self-absorbed that such criticism didn't bother him anymore.
- ↑ Historia Augusta: "The Two Maximi", 9.5