The hurdy-gurdy is a fascinating instrument with a long history. It was developed, as Matthias Loibner says in this video, in the early Middle Ages, primarily as a means for unskilled monks to accurately play the chant tunes everyone had to learn. It was known as the organistrum and was intended for two players, one to turn the crank, and the other to play the tune.
It became smaller and more manageable over time, and assumed something like the form of what you see in the video by the 17th century. By that time, it had become a rustic instrument, fit for beggars and street performers. It had some popularity among the upper classes in Louis XV's France and other fashionable venues in 18th century Europe as a pastoral instrument, the trendy in those days, as now, wanting to play at being "natural." Marie Antoinette's status as a milkmaid was the last gasp of this fashion.
By the 19th century, it had become strictly a beggars' instrument, as the song, "Der Leiermann" from Schubert's "Die Winterreise" poignantly expresses. The last remaining blind hurdy-gurdy-playing beggars were eliminated when some 250-300 lirnyky were rounded up for an ethnographic conference and executed as a socially undesirable element in the new progressive contemporary Soviet society.
As someone interested in classical music, I am, of course, awaiting the Final Solution to the Orchestra Question. But sending them to firing squads at a music convention might be a bit over the top. Just letting them starve like Schubert's Leiermann is probably the most convenient method.
4 comments:
With a little work you could make the world's coolest pepper mill out of that thing.
wow, that was awesome.
The hurdy-gurdy is a fascinating instrument with a long history. It was developed, as Matthias Loibner says in this video, in the early Middle Ages, primarily as a means for unskilled monks to accurately play the chant tunes everyone had to learn. It was known as the organistrum and was intended for two players, one to turn the crank, and the other to play the tune.
It became smaller and more manageable over time, and assumed something like the form of what you see in the video by the 17th century. By that time, it had become a rustic instrument, fit for beggars and street performers. It had some popularity among the upper classes in Louis XV's France and other fashionable venues in 18th century Europe as a pastoral instrument, the trendy in those days, as now, wanting to play at being "natural." Marie Antoinette's status as a milkmaid was the last gasp of this fashion.
By the 19th century, it had become strictly a beggars' instrument, as the song, "Der Leiermann" from Schubert's "Die Winterreise" poignantly expresses. The last remaining blind hurdy-gurdy-playing beggars were eliminated when some 250-300 lirnyky were rounded up for an ethnographic conference and executed as a socially undesirable element in the new progressive contemporary Soviet society.
As someone interested in classical music, I am, of course, awaiting the Final Solution to the Orchestra Question. But sending them to firing squads at a music convention might be a bit over the top. Just letting them starve like Schubert's Leiermann is probably the most convenient method.
It probably goes without saying, but I should have mentioned the execution of the Russian hurdy-gurdy players took place in the 1930's under Stalin.
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