The hurdy-gurdy is one of Europe's oldest musical instruments. A kind of mechanical violin, it uses keys and a crank, along with melody and drone strings. Some call it the medieval synthesizer, and a ...

Today's Beautiful Music is an introduction to the hurdy-gurdy. The unusual string instrument is played with a hand crank, and its ancestor -- the organistrum -- dates back at least to the 12th century ...

An error has occurred. Please try again. With a The Portland Press Herald subscription, you can gift 5 articles each month. It looks like you do not have any active ...

Christmas concerts are God’s gift to early music groups such as Piffaro (Philadelphia’s Renaissance wind band). Audience love taking refuge in holiday exuberance from what we imagine as a better, ...

Twenty-seven years ago, in search of a hurdy-gurdy master, Donald Heller wandered into a music shop in Budapest. There, he saw a beautiful maiden, an ancient-looking stringed instrument in her lap, ...

Something for nearly every taste can be heard in the coming days, from the hurdy-gurdy to the organ to the bagpipes to Gershwin. Musica Sacra: Soprano Linda Tsatsanis and lutist John Lenti perform ...

Ask Idahoans today what a hurdy-gurdy is, and most will have no idea. A few will probably know that a hurdy-gurdy was a kind of hand-cranked musical instrument popular in the 19th century. But if you ...

The city clerk has not had an application yet this year.” To be precise, the instrument carried about by these Italians—and ...

It never hurts to iterate the phrase “Op-Ed” at the beginning of articles in this section. It may help us (in this case, I) remember that the writer is not an encyclopedia or – to be more current – ...