the.com/hurdy gurdy
A medieval crank-powered violin that sounds like bagpipes and a cello had a baby.
means A stringed musical instrument played by turning a crank that rotates a rosined wheel against the strings, with keys pressed to change pitch, producing a continuous droning, fiddle-like sound.
from An 18th-century English word, almost certainly imitative — a sing-song rhyming reduplication that mimics the droning, grinding hum of the instrument itself, in the same playful family as 'hurly-burly' and 'helter-skelter.' One popular guess links 'hurdy' to a Scots word for an uproar or to 'gurdy' as a turning crank, but these are likely after-the-fact tidiness; the honest answer is that the name was probably born from the noise the thing makes.
- Crank power
- A turning wheel bows all strings at once
- Drone strings
- Built-in bagpipe-style buzz never stops
- Keyboard fingers
- Pressing keys, not strings, sets the pitch
- The buzzing bridge
- A dog called the chien adds rhythmic snarl
- Ancient roots
- Played in Europe since the 11th century
street musicians of paris — french buskers performing with hand-cranked violin instruments on metro stations and streets since the 19th century
lancashire cotton mills — 19th century english mills used mechanical hurdy-gurdies to play music for workers during shifts