Hurdy gurdy: Czech Republic musical instrument

The hurdy gurdy is a stringed musical instrument that gives out sound by a crank-turned rosined wheel scraping against the strings of the instrument. The wheels work much like the violin bow and single notes that are performed on the musical instrument are analogous to that of the violin. Melodies are performed on the keyboard that presses tangents against one or two of the strings to alter their pitch. Just like most other acoustic stringed musical instruments, this one has a soundboard to make the vibration of the strings loud.

source: music.vt.edu

Most hurdy gurdies possess many drone strings that give a stable pitch accompaniment to the melody, thereby giving out an analogous sound to that of the bagpipes. For this fact, this musical instrument can be replaced with a bagpipe instrument or better still, it can be played alongside the bagpipe instrument, especially in the French and modern day Hungarian and Galician folk music.

Several folk music festivals in Europe features music ensembles with this musical instrument players, with the most popular yearly festival occurring at Saint-Chartier, in the ‘Indre Departement’, in central France during the week closest July 14.

The hurdy gurdy is widely thought to have come out from fiddles instruments family in either Western Europe or the Middle East some time before the 11^th century A.D. the first recorded note to fiddles in Europe was in the 9^th century, done by the Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih describing the lira as a specific instrument within the Byzantine Empire. One of the earliest forms of this musical instrument was the ‘organistrum’; a large musical instrument that has the shape of a guitar and a long neck that the keys were set to cover one diatonic octave. The organistrum had a single melody string together with double drone strings that ran over a common bridge and relatively small wheel. Because of the size of the instrument, the organistrum was performed by two players; one of whom turned the crank while the second player will pull the keys upward. Pulling the keys upward is an awkward playing style and as a result, only slow tunes could be played on this musical instrument. The pitches on the organistrum were set by the Pythagorean temperament and the musical instrument was mainly used in monastery and church settings to follow choral music.

Later on, the size of the organistrum was reduced to permit a single player to not only turn the crank, but also to manipulate the keys of the instrument. The solo organistrum was popular from France and Spain, although it was largely substituted by symphonia, which is a small box-shaped series of the hurdy gurdy with three strings as well as a diatonic keyboard. At almost the same time the symphonia was developed, a new configuration of key that is pressed from the beneath of the instrument was built. These keys were very much more operative in faster music and a bit easier manipulate and eventually it completely replaced the keys that are pulled up from the above.

During the renaissance, thehurdy gurdy was very much a well-known musical instrument, together with the bagpipe and a distinctive form with a short neck as well as a cramped body that has a curved tail extreme developed. It was around this period that the buzzing bridges first showed up in portrayals of the musical instrument. The buzzing bridges of the instrument is a lopsided bridge that sleeps under the a drone string on the sound board of the musical instrument. When the wheel is moving, one foot of the bridge kicks from the soundboard and vibrates, thereby producing the buzzing sound. The buzzing sound is believed to have been borrowed from the tromba marina; a bowed string musical instrument.

During the late renaissance, two distinctive shapes of the musical instrument were developed. The first of them was the one that has the shape of a guitar and the second of them had a rounded lute-type body that is produced from the staves. The lute body of the instrument was specifically distinctive of French instruments.

By the end of the 17^th century, changing the tastes of music that demanded for greater polyphonic proficiency than the hurdy gurdy could offer had dragged the instrument to the lowest social classes; because of this, it took names like the German Bauernleier peasant’s lyre as well as the Betterleier begger’s lyre. In the 18^th century, French Rococo tastes for rustic diversion reinstated the musical instrument back to the attention of the upper classes and the musical instrument received an incredible popularity among the nobility and with the famous composers started writing music and works for the hurdy gurdy. At this period, the most common pattern of the instrument developed the six-string vielle à roué. The instrument can be performed in multiple keys and the musical instrument has two melody strings and four drones that are tuned such that by turning the drones on or off.

During this time, this musical instrument also spread further east where further version of the instrument developed in the western Salvic countries, German-speaking regions and the Hungary. Most version of the instrument was importantly extinct by the early part of the 20^th century, although a few of them survived. The best known among them were the vielle à roué, the Hungarian tekerőlant, and the Spanish zanfona. In Ukraine, a version of the instrument known as lira was generally used by blind musicians of the street, most of who were eliminated by Stalin in the 1930s. In the modern days, the tradition has been brought up again. Restoration have been going on for several years and in Sweden, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, Italy, Spain and Portugal. The revival of the hurdy gurdy has made the instrument to be used in many styles of music, including the modern Day forms not typically linked with musical instrument.

The hurdy gurdy show up to be the instrument that was [performed by Der Leiermann; the melancholy last song of Schubert's Winterreise. The musical instrument also featured and performed conspicuously in the film Captains Courageous (1937) as the instrument that belongs to the character Manuel, acted by Spencer Tracy.