A feast for the eyes

When I tried to find hurdy-gurdy music on YouTube, I first had to wade through innumerable versions of Donovan's lame '60s song, which doesn't even have a hurdy-gurdy in it. I vagely remembered Allen Ginsberg reciting his poetry (Howl, perhaps?) while cranking one of these.


I could not figure it out: it had a sound kind of like Highland bagpipes, but it could also sound very Middle Eastern. It had a drone in the background with a "chanter" playing a repetitive tune, perhaps due to the restriction in range. It was fingered, not blown, but wind instruments are fingered too, aren't they? I had to turn to Wiki, and they told me this:

The hurdy gurdy or hurdy-gurdy (also known as a wheel fiddle) is a stringed musical instrument that produces sound by a crank-turned rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar to a violin. Melodies are played on a keyboard that presses tangents (small wedges, usually made of wood) against one or more of the strings to change their pitch. Like most other acoustic stringed instruments, it has a sound board to make the vibration of the strings audible.



Most hurdy gurdies have multiple 'drone strings,' which provide a constant pitch accompaniment to the melody, resulting in a sound similar to that of bagpipes. For this reason, the hurdy gurdy is often used interchangeably with or along with bagpipes, particularly in French and contemporary Hungarian folk music.

So I was partially right. A stringed instrument that plays bagpipe music. Unfortunately I could follow this path all day (and for months) and collect more and more odd-looking, odd-sounding videos of rare or antique/obsolete instruments. I posted this mainly because the hurdy-gurdy looks so gorgeous, and at least appears to be ancient. The musical performance is minimal.

Help me, I'm lost! I need to get on with my work, and all this stuff keeps on intruding.