"You can make fun of me if you like:
one thing is certain that this music in this isolated place appears like the work of the devil.
It is too loud to be natural and it has such a sad and special manner that it could not be compared to any other music in Christendom."
George Sand about the music of the hurdy-gurdy.
In: Les Maitres Sonneurs 1853.
The Hurdy Gurdy
Italian: : lyra tedesca
French: vielle à roue
Classification and Etymology
The hurdy-gurdy (the translation of the French name Vielle à Roue = wheel fiddle describes the method by which sound is produced) is a mechanically bowed chordophone. It is the first stringed instrument to which the keyboard principle was applied. The bowing action of the fiddle is replaced by a wheel cranked by a handle. The outer rim of the wooden wheel is coated with resin. When the crank is spun, the wheel turns and the gut strings vibrate.
The history of the hurdy-gurdy
Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
The origin of the hurdy-gurdy remains unclear. Source material provides no specific proof that the instrument was used in the East before its appearance in Europe.
During the Gothic period a large ancestor of the hurdy-gurdy, the organistrum, was used in cloisters and monastic schools to teach music, perform religious polyphony and provide correct intonation for the congregational singing. The name "organistrum" was probably derived from the Latin "organum," meaning in its broadest sense an instrument on which several parts of the instrument's "body" are adapted to a certain function and working together analogous to the organ. Due to the size of the organistrum (between 1,5 and 2 metres long and fiddle-or guitar shaped), it must be played by two men, set horizontally across their laps. One man operated the tangents while the other turned the crank, making the three strings sound simultaneously. The pitches on an organistrum were set according to Pythagorean temperament. An early depiction of an organistrum is to be found in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela (Spain, 1168-1188) in a sculpture over the "Portico de la Gloria."
The most important role of the hurdy-gurdy was its function in secular music. During the early thirteenth century it had been completely transformed into a much smaller, portable device known as a chifonie (French) or symphonia (from Greek sym-phonos = harmonious sounds), played by a single musician. Numerous literary references from the Middle Ages show that the hurdy-gurdy was found among other string instruments, usually paired with the plucked varieties. Sometimes it was associated with bourdon instruments such as the vielle (the medieval fiddle).
The hurdy-gurdy was frequently used to accompany the chansons de geste with instrumental preludes and interludes and, when appropriate, to double the vocal line. Although the hurdy-gurdy found many supporters in secular life during the fifteenth century, there is evidence from various depictions that it was still popular in religious circles. One fine example is an illustration from the Italian manuscript, called the Sforza Book of Hours1 Milano, c. 1490) today housed in the British Library London (click here for images). A page with an Alleluya hymn shows as a decorative motif an angel playing an oval-shaped hurdy-gurdy, similar to the commonly known form, with seven or eight keys (some are hidden by the angel's hand), giving it a range of an octave.2
The hurdy-gurdy eventually left the cloister environment altogether and became firmly established as a minstrel instrument. Its spread was facilitated by wandering minstrels and troubadours, who found employment in increasing numbers at the flourishing courts and towns. Gradually, the church began to accept their participation in religious processions and similar events. In this way the hurdy-gurdy insinuated itself into every social level of Western society, from the nobility to simple village peasants. One could hear it as an accompaniment to dance music as well as in the orchestra at the popular mystery plays.
The reputation of the hurdy-gurdy began to slowly decline as increasing numbers of poor took it up in order to eek out a meager living although some had hoped to aspire to the status of the troubadours who received generous compensation ("laden with gifts"). However, due the swelling numbers of hurdy-gurdy players and the shift in musical taste which demanded greater polyphonic capabilities than the hurdy-gurdy could offer, the instrument fell out of favor amongst the nobility and was relegated to the very lowest social classes composed of peasants, beggars and blind musicians.3
Michael Praetorius' Syntagma Musicum
(Leipzig 1619). Plate XVII.
As a result of its decline in prestige the hurdy-gurdy was tagged with names like the German Bauernleier (peasant's lyre) or Bettlerleier (beggar's lyre). While Michael Praetorius in his Syntagma Musicum (1619) called it the Bawren vnnd vmblauffenden Weiber Leyre ("a lyre for peasants and traipsing women"), Marin Mersenne in his Harmonie universelle (1636) specifically calls it a blind beggar's instrument, "played only by the poor, and particularly by the blind who earn a living with the instrument."4
The loss of the hurdy-gurdy's respectability is evident in almost all paintings of the time showing a hurdy-gurdy player. A decree from 1651 had already instructed the public order official to make sure that travelling musicians had proper licenses: "The hurdygurdyists, both men and women should be removed completely so that we no longer need to see their vulgar and disorderly talk and gestures which the traveling musicians delight in cultivating together with other impertinances." Paintings by Brueghel and Bosch also reflect the negative symbolic value imputed to the hurdy-gurdy by emphasizing a supposed connection between physical and moral blindness (see also below: Kahren Jones Hellerstedt).
David Vinckboons (1572-1632)
The hurdy-gurdies represented in Dutch/Flemish seventeenth century paintings generally refer to the Renaissance form as it appears in Michael Praetorius' Syntagma Musicum (Leipzig 1619). These were universally playable instruments adapted for Renaissance and early Baroque dance music and for the accompaniment of ballads.
In the late seventeenth century, the hurdy-gurdy enjoyed a rebirth at the French court since it appeared to evoke the nostalgia of rustic past. During the reign of Louis XIV the Arcadian ideal of the tranquility of a country life in accordance with nature, gained great favor at the court. The king frivolously indulged in every kind of rural pastime, and the whole court followed. About 1720 the great Versailles luthier Henri Bâton developed the classic lute and guitar shapes used for hurdy-gurdies to the present day. He also improved its harsh, rasping sound, making it more suitable for chamber music. His son Charles wrote numerous suites and sonatas for one or two hurdy-gurdies with and without continuo as well as chamber concertos for the hurdy-gurdy together with other instruments. Other builders such as Pierre and Jean Louvet (middle eighteenth century) or Jean-Nicolas Lambert sought to improve the capabilities of the instrument. Their instruments possess a remarkable beauty, inlaid with pearl and surmounted by a carved head at the end of the pegbox.
A lute-form hurdy-gurdy. The large body gives the drones a large base. The curved shell gives the melody and the 'trumpet' gives the necessary carrying power.
During the eighteenth century the hurdy-gurdy shared its repertory with the small bagpipe, the musette or "musette de cour" (see The Bagpipe). However, since the encompasses of the two instruments were different, their repertories, though overlapping, were not interchangeable. Furthermore, while the hurdy-gurdy remained largely an amateur instrument, the musette gained a permanent place in the opera orchestra, especially for the popular pastoral plays of the time. Numerous composers, such as Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, or the aforementioned Charles Bâton, and even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Vivaldi wrote music for the hurdy-gurdy.
By 1760, the hurdy-gurdy had begun to decline as a salon instrument, but it continued to be used for playing arrangements of popular tunes, especially by street musicians. The tradition of the Savoyards,5 who had fled the poverty of their homeland to make their living on the streets playing the hurdy-gurdy, provided stories for many musical stage works. In the nineteenth century, the hurdy-gurdy was found throughout central France and in parts of Brittany, northern France and Belgium. It was frequently played with bagpipes for public dances and at weddings where the repertory consisted of waltzes, mazurkas, bransles and bourrées.
By the twentieth century the hurdy-gurdy began to die out, but in the revival of folk traditions in the 1960s it arose again and led to the foundation of festivals (above all in Saint Chartier, Indre départment, central France) and even a hurdy-gurdy museum at Montluçon (Auvergne, France) which possesses one of the largest collections of its kind, now serving as center for studies. Today the hurdy-gurdy is occasionaly employed by rock and jazz musicians.