Throughout musical history, countless instruments have faced extinction, victims of changing tastes, industrialization, and ...

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A female voice of aching purity begins the song a capella, reverberating as if coming from a cathedral choir loft as it climbs an octave, announcing: “centuriones convenerunt, sicut magi sacris nigris ...

Joaquin Ayala of Winter Harp performs on a menagerie of strange musical instruments from medieval times, and none is more archaic than the monstrous organistrum. Grandfather of the hurdy-gurdy, with ...

If most of us had to list the 40 most important guitars throughout history on the spot, hastily conjured entries might include (jokingly or not) the Guitar Hero control and the air guitar. While both ...

Despite it being his first attempt at making a hurdy gurdy from scratch, Andrew Tan won the top prize at a competition recently, much to his own surprise. A hurdy gurdy is a medieval European ...

Since 1999, Belarusian music ensemble Stary Olsa (Стары Ольса) has been known for playing medieval folk music on traditional instruments, including the lyre, mandolin, flute, and gusli. That may seem ...

It’s a medieval torture device that was used – once upon a more primitive time – for publicly shaming bad musicians and other disturbers of the peace. The contraption, which is essentially a heavy ...