Hurdy Gurdy: 'A cure for pandemic gloom' - The Times

Product Information

Specifically, Diggory recounts bits from one of Odo's great works, The Great Unhappened: Being a Record of the Yet Undone, which describes -- in terms appropriate to the times -- inventions and technological advances from our times, an amusing -- particularly in how things are described -- glimpse of our present in the distant past.

He is experienced -- perhaps in more ways than he would have liked -- but also knows that his future path lies outside the confines of the monastery, and he makes a life for himself beyond it (but still nearby), utilizing what he has learnt. The hurdy-gurdy tradition is well-developed particularly in Hungary, Poland, Belarus, Southeastern France and Ukraine. In Ukraine, it is known as the lira or relia. It was and still is played by professional, often blind, itinerant musicians known as lirnyky. Their repertoire has mostly para-religious themes. Most of it originated in the Baroque period. In Eastern Ukraine, the repertoire includes unique historic epics known as dumy and folk dances.

Building a Hurdy-gurdy

tekerőlant (Hungarian). Usually two drones (sometimes three) + one or two chromatic melody strings. The broad keybox is often carved or decorated extensively. Niněra (Czech). Guitar-shaped. Two forms: one has a standard drone-melody arrangement, while the other runs the drone strings between the melody strings in the keybox. Both diatonic and chromatic forms are found. Other mechanisms for adjusting the amount of "buzz" on the trompette string. On the Hungarian tekerő the same control is achieved by using a wedge called the recsegőék (control wedge, or literally "buzzer wedge") that pushes the drone string downward. In traditional tekerő playing, the buzzing bridge is controlled entirely by the wrist of the player and has a very different sound and rhythmic possibilities from those available on French instruments. Banshee in Avalon (2014-11-27). "A Hurdy Gurdy and MIDI controller". audiofanzine . Retrieved 2018-12-08.

Even much later, facing death again, Diggory is not so much resigned as agreeably accepting: "the secret is to die well. Confessed. Penitent. Absolved. Embracing the bigger, better, eternal life to come". The Hungarian name tekerőlant and the alternative forgólant both mean "turning lute". Another Hungarian name for the instrument is nyenyere, which is thought to be an onomatopoeic reference to the repetitive warble produced by a wheel that is not even. This term was considered derogatory in the Hungarian lowlands, but was the normal term for the instrument on Csepel island directly south of Budapest. [ citation needed] The equivalent names ninera and niněra are used in Slovakia and the Czech Republic respectively. In Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian the instrument is called "wheel lyre" ( колёсная лира, колісна ліра, колавая ліра). In Poland it is called "cranked lyre" (lira korbowa). Joseph Bodin Boismortier (1691-1755) – Divertissements de Campagne, Loisir du Bercail and Gentillesses. / Le ReboursDiggory is intelligent, and does consider the evidence around him in coming to his conclusions; regarding the mysterious illness, there's simply too little to sensibly go on -- it would seem. Most hurdy-gurdies have multiple drone strings, which give a constant pitch accompaniment to the melody, resulting in a sound similar to that of bagpipes. For this reason, the hurdy-gurdy is often used interchangeably or along with bagpipes. It is mostly used in Occitan, Aragonese, Cajun French, Asturian, Cantabrian, Galician, Hungarian, and Slavic folk music. It can also be seen in early music settings such as medieval, renaissance or baroque music. [1] One or more of the gut strings called 'trompette' usually passes over a buzzing bridge called the 'chien' that can be made to produce a distinctive percussive buzzing sound as the player turns the wheel.

Clearly it was time for a biography to be written about Donovan. And since nobody else was going to do it, Donovan had to shoulder that burden himself. Leier, lant, and related terms today are generally used to refer to members of the lute or lyre family, but historically had a broader range of meaning and were used for many types of stringed instruments. instrument, we'd like a series of pictures (we collect them, and we'd like to post them here). The shaft During the late Renaissance, two characteristic shapes of hurdy-gurdies developed. The first was guitar-shaped and the second had a rounded lute-type body made of staves. The lute-like body is especially characteristic of French instruments. Small-wheeled (wheel diameter less than 14cm, or about 5.5inches) instruments are traditionally found in Central and Eastern Europe. They feature a broad keybox and the drone strings run within the keybox. Because of the small size of the wheel these instruments most commonly have three strings: one melody string, one tenor drone, and one bass drone. They sometimes have up to five strings.

Tirant: a small peg set in the instrument's tailpiece that is used to control the sensitivity of the buzzing bridge niněra (Czech). Guitar-shaped. Two forms: one has a standard drone-melody arrangement, while the other runs the drone strings between the melody strings in the keybox. Both diatonic and chromatic forms are found. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) – Four minuets (K601) Four German Dances (K602) Country Dance (K611) available. Some people have good results with them, and some don't, somewhat dependent on the builder's expectations. One Folkoteka Galega: Traditional Galician music in PDF, XML and MIDI format, and the coolest thing is that you can transpose pieces on the fly, so if you like that Muiñeira but need it in D – you got it.

Although Diggory suffers a great deal of what can be considered tragedy along the way, his account almost always remains upbeat; certainly, he is able to leave tragedy and some of the outrageous things he is confronted with behind him quite well. Franz Montgomery, "The Etymology of the Phrase by Rote." Modern Language Notes 46/1 (Jan. 1931), 19–21. Zanfona (Spain). Typically guitar-shaped body, with three melody strings, and two drone strings. Some older examples had a diatonic keyboard, and most modern models have a chromatic keyboard. Zanfonas are usually tuned to the key of C major, with the melody strings tuned in unison to G above the middle C on the piano. The drones are: the bordonciño in G (one octave below the melody strings) and the bordón in C (two octaves below middle C). Sometimes, two of the melody strings are in unison, and the remaining string is tuned an octave lower, in unison with the bordonciño (this string was sometimes known as the human voice, because it sounds as if someone is humming the melody an octave lower). Hurdy Gurdy bubbles with a convivial, earthy humour and Brother Diggory is an amusing antihero. The prose is highly evocative, full of flesh and blood (.....) This is an entertaining and atmospheric picaresque -- though in the midst of our own pandemic, Wilson's satire of misguided churchmen and unscientific plague doctors feels somewhat quaint: our own leaders appear far more monstrous. Still, it is often ingenious and frequently hilarious." - Christopher Shrimpton, The Guardian

Classical composers

It's a measure of any book if you are sad to reach the end. I was. Highly recommended to ageing hippies everywhere. The reason we still care about Donovan is, of course, those deathless songs; he was a phenomenal melodicist with a clear, compelling voice. But even there, he focuses on the uninteresting parts, typing out the lyrics to even insipid ditties such as “There Is a Mountain” as though they were and remain deeply, soulfully meaningful to us. How did the lovely “Wear Your Love Like Heaven” happen? He doesn’t tell us. At best Donovan’s memoir captures the Zeitgeist of the sixties straight from the horse’s mouth, in his own clumsy yet earnest, somewhat-stream-of-consciousness style. Sure, his dialect is embarrassingly beatnik at times, but what else would you expect from the man who gave us Mellow Yellow? It feels like the genuine artifact; i.e., the gawkishness of the writing is evidence that it’s probably not ghostwritten. And the book offers many laughs—some deliberate, though more often they are the unintended byproducts of his God-given hubris and bad prose-poetry.