What Instrument Has a Wheel Instead of a Bow? A Violin You Crank

A wooden wheel is mounted so that its rim passes across several strings inside the body, and turning a crank rotates it continuously. The rim is coated with rosin exactly as a bow is, so it grips and releases each string it touches, which is the same mechanism a bowed instrument uses. Because the wheel turns steadily rather than reversing, the sound is continuous with no break at the end of a stroke, which gives the instrument its characteristic unbroken drone. Every string the wheel touches sounds at once, so the player cannot choose which strings sound by technique alone and instead lifts individual strings clear of the wheel to silence them.

Several features have no equivalent on other instruments:

• •A keyboard whose keys push wooden blades against the melody string to change its pitch
• •Drone strings sounding continuously at fixed pitches
• •A buzzing bridge, held down by string tension and designed to rattle when the crank accelerates
• •Cotton wadding wound onto each string where the wheel touches it
• •A crank whose speed controls volume and articulation
• •Levers to lift individual strings off the wheel

The most unusual feature is a small bridge under one string, resting so lightly that a sudden increase in string tension lifts one end and lets it slap against the soundboard. The player controls this entirely with the crank, since a brief acceleration of the wheel increases the drag on the string and triggers the buzz, and skilled players produce rhythmic patterns with it while the melody continues. That converts the crank hand into a percussion technique, so a single player supplies melody, drone and rhythm simultaneously. The sensitivity is adjustable with a peg and a thread, and setting it correctly is a fiddly business that determines whether the instrument is playable.

The technique divides between the two hands in a way that has no parallel on other instruments. The left hand operates the keys, which are pushed rather than pressed down, and which must be released promptly since a key left engaged keeps stopping the string. Tuning each note is done by adjusting the position of the individual blade, so the instrument is tuned note by note rather than by the strings alone, which takes a long time and has to be redone as conditions change. The right hand turns the crank at a speed that must stay even for a steady tone and be varied precisely for the buzz. Cotton on the strings has to be adjusted constantly to stop scratching, and players carry spares of everything.

The instrument has occupied every position on the social scale and the sequence is unusual. Medieval versions were large, required two players and were used in churches and monasteries. Smaller single-player forms became widespread in medieval and renaissance Europe. By the seventeenth century it was associated with beggars and itinerant musicians and had become an object of mockery. It then became briefly fashionable at the French court in the eighteenth century, with elaborate instruments made and music composed for it by serious composers. It declined again into rural folk use, survived in central France, Hungary and elsewhere, and has been revived substantially since the 1970s, appearing in folk, early music and several kinds of contemporary music.

A rosined wheel turned by a crank grips and releases the strings exactly as a bow does, and because it never reverses the sound is continuous. Keys push blades against the melody string while drones sound underneath. A lightly resting bridge buzzes when the crank accelerates, so one player supplies melody, drone and rhythm at once. The instrument has been ecclesiastical, mocked, fashionable at court and rural in turn.