Throughout musical history, countless instruments have faced extinction, victims of changing tastes, industrialization, and the passage of time. While some vanished completely, others survived by the ...

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 ...

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 ...

"It was mesmerizing. The sounds that came out of [the hurdy gurdy] - there was no way I couldn't not play this instrument" For Ryan Kurczak, the path to playing the hurdy gurdy started with an unusual ...

We get a lot of Kickstarter pitches in our email, but this one is different. First of all, it’s over. No biggie there. Secondly, it’s a laser-cut hurdy gurdy. What’s a hurdy gurdy? It’s a musical ...