January tweets
Tag: Hurdy-gurdy
Musical objects found in the Damrak and Rokin Amstel-bed excavations
A treasure trove from the tunnel bores for Amsterdam’s controversial North-South metro line.
Mechanical musical instrument invented for the 1851 London Great Exhibition by Henry Mayhew
He also coined “flaxen Saxon.” With other absurdities.
Christmas carousels
Impossible automata for my street organ this holiday season. Featuring Georg Büchner, Ignaz Bruder, German Christmas pyramids, dancing Hasidim, Lieutenant Kijé as you’ve probably never seen it, Le Tigre, and a crustacean.
Unlucky organ-grinder-ballad-singers
Kasper Lutz in German (occasionally), nameless in French and English?
Noisy buskers used to drown out the sounds of murder
But were organ-grinders really complicit in the 1817 killing at Rodez of the French politician Fualdès, as the translation suggests, or were the vielles hurdy-gurdies, as you’d expect?
Revenge of the mechanical musical instruments
A version of Stravinsky’s Petrushka for street organ.