"hurdy gurdy" aka barrel piano-- facts

[D.L. Bullock]

The item you saw is sometimes called a hurdy gurdy, however the true meaning
of that term is the reiterating lute-type device from medieval times that
Sting has been known to play in some of his recent hit songs.

You have a barrel piano.  We have restored several of these.  I have one
small one.  They go from a couple of feet tall up to over 8 feet tall and
wider than an upright piano.  They often will have triangle, bass drum,
snare drum, wood block, or cymbal playing along.  Often a solo instrument of
orchestra bells or a set of piano unisons with four or more strings for
louder sound.  Some have reiterating mechanisms to repeat solo notes really
fast like a mandolin or balalaika.  You will find them on Ebay.  Faventia is
one of the more prominent brands.  They sell from a few hundred to several
thousand dollars.  The very large ones may sell for tens of thousands while
some are over $100K.  They were built in France, Belgium, Germany, Austria,
England and first showed up in the 1600's.

For technicians who run into them.  They are seldom chromatic.  They will be
designed for playing in usually only one key.  That means there are certain
notes missing.  You will notice that the name of the note is metal-stamped
into the wood pin block or printed in India Ink.  In the bass end there are
even more notes missing.  This is so that the bass can play only the
ooom-pah in the key around which the instrument is based.  This worked well
since there was no keyboard, and the barrels were not interchangeable.  Very
few have extra barrels.  There are people who have written computer programs
that can repin or pin newly made barrels from MIDI files.

Barrels play from three to 12 tunes.  The barrel shifts over for the next
tune.  Some of them must be changed by manually shifting the barrel but some
are designed to spiral over from start to finish, thereby not repeating a
song until all the others have been played.  Some songs on this kind may be
more than one rotation of the barrel while normally one song is one rotation
of the barrel.  There were automatic organs that worked just like these.
Some are called musical clocks when they play a tune at different times of
the day as they are triggered by the clock.

Beethoven wrote Wellington's victory for a huge version of this (built by
the Metronome inventor, Maelzel,) called the Pan Harmonicon which included
gun fire from the percussions.

Mozart and Haydn wrote music for musical clock.

If you want to know more, google "MMD"  (Mechanical Music Digest) and ask
your questions.  There are thousands of automatic music folk on there to
answer your questions.  Join to get a daily digest or use the archive to see
if your questions have already been answered.

D.L. Bullock   www.thepianoworld.com



-----Original Message-----
From: J Patrick Draine [mailto:draine@comcast.net]
Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2004 6:06 PM
To: Pianotech
Subject: "hurdy gurdy"


I have a customer who has what he calls a hurdy gurdy. A quick Google
search of that term reveals something completely different, so allow me
to attempt a description, and hope for some enlightenment/direction
from y'all.
The thing has a strung back like a "birdcage" or "cottage piano", and
has a large cylinder which, when cranked, drives leather covered
hammers, producing a cacophonous din. It hadn't been tuned in many
decades, but with the aid of a SAT II with the oscillator-to-speaker
plugged in, I managed to chip it within 150 cents of 440.
The customer of course is sure it's priceless, and is looking to sell
it for big bucks!
Anyone have a more precise name for this thing, or a website somewhere
out there with further information?

Patrick