The hurdy-hurdy is a very complex instrument. According to Wiscasset’s Laurie Rousseau, a hurdy-gurdy performer, it has components of the violin, guitar, piano, and bagpipe.
Rousseau had been playing early music for almost two decades when she first heard the hurdy-gurdy while listening to some recorded early music. Through a process of elimination, she determined that the unfamiliar sound was a hurdy-gurdy. Fascinated by its history dating back to the 14th century, and popular in the 18thcentury court of Louis XV, she ordered an Elizabethan model for herself.
All hurdy-gurdys are custom made, as was Rousseau’s concert model. “It came with no instructions,” she said. Nor are there hurdy-gurdy repair services. So, Rousseau taught herself to play, to tune, and to repair.
The hurdy-gurdy, meant to be a melody instrument, has four drone strings, said Rousseau, which play a single note similarly to a bagpipe. There are two melody strings, and the musician can play chords, sharps, and flats. The instrument has a neck and pegs like a guitar, and a keyboard like a piano. There’s also something rubbing the strings, like a violin, but in the case of a hurdy-gurdy, it’s a hand-cranked wheel instead of a bow.
In addition to putting all these components together to create music, another challenge for the hurdy-gurdy musician is tuning. According to Rousseau, it can take up to one and a half hours to tune before a performance and must be tuned during performance as well. The instrument is also sensitive to changes in weather.
From about 1992 to 2012, Rousseau played hurdy-gurdy at Renaissance Fairs and at Celtic music events with The Roses, an early and traditional music band specializing in instrumental music of the 16th century. “The hurdy-gurdy added a new dimension,” she said. She’s also played with a Baroque quartet in Nova Scotia and had a regular gig at a house museum there. The hurdy-gurdy “is very suited to Breton music,” she said.
And now, in her new community of Wiscasset, which has welcomed Rousseau with its neighborliness, she is performing during each of the four Wiscasset Art Walks of the 2024 season. “I’m so happy to be a hurdy-gurdy player,” said Rousseau; “it’s very enjoyable to share the experience of discovery when people hear it for the first time.”
