The César Manrique Foundation (FCM) will offer next Friday, May 19, at 7:30 p.m., in the José Saramago room (La Plazuela, Arrecife), a conference with an illustrative concert, entitled "The hurdy-gurdy. A thousand years of history", by Germán Díaz.
The musician will take a tour of the history of this stringed instrument, from its medieval origins to contemporary compositions, through the vestiges preserved in Spanish sculpture, painting and literature, with particular reference to Iberian historical instruments, reports the The event will be broadcast live through the FCM website and its YouTube channel, the foundation reports.
"The hurdy-gurdy", an instrument with more than a thousand years of history, experienced its period of splendor in the Late Middle Ages. Its use gradually died out until, in the 18th century, it re-emerged as an instrument of the court. Later, the hurdy-gurdy was relegated to the blind and beggars, who used it as a basis to accompany romances and songs. It returned to Spain through the French Jacobean Route. But it will not be until the 70s when the instrument once again interests a more or less wide audience thanks to the development of new avenues of expression created by the iconoclastic artist Valentin Clastrier, who develops a contemporary language that helps its revitalization and interests other composers who are attracted by its complex timbre world, collects.
Germán Díaz is a musician specialized in Studies on Tradition and a classical philologist. He studied hurdy-gurdy with the great European masters. He belonged to the mythical Viellistic Orchestra, a hurdy-gurdy orchestra based in France. He has performed all over the world with projects as diverse as Tasto Solo, focused on the interpretation of repertoires for keyboard instruments from the 14th and 15th centuries, or jazz groups such as Baldo Martínez or Paolo Angeli. In 2004 he created his own record label, Producciones efímeras, together with Fernando Fuentes. He has collaborated in more than a hundred record recordings and edited numerous works as a soloist, in addition to having composed soundtracks for film, theater and television, they describe from the foundation.
