WELSH CRWTH , ONE OF THE MOST BEATIFUL INSTRUMENTS OF THE STORY

I believe that the most beautiful things were created in ancient times.Bards of another age,they told stories,let the music speak for them and thus enchanted whole villages.One of the Celtic instruments that have been preserved since ancient times is the Welsh crwth.Also called crowd, cruit or crouth.This instrument was first written about in the 12th century.The name comes from the proto-Celtic krutto (round object) and in Gaelic croit means hump.In the courts of the nobles the crwth entertained with its sound mixed with laughter,legends and the singing of harps and flutes.The traditional way to play the crwth is by plucking the strings,but over time a bow began to be used.The crwth is made of a single block of sycamore or maple wood and the bridge of cherry wood,the size of a violin,with 4 strings that later became 6 (in the 15th century) including a fingerboard.The strings in medieval times were made of gut,but there is also the baroque stringing by winding wire on the thicker strings.The two strings outside the fingerboard are played directly with the thumb of the hand holding the bow,and the buzzing of some strings can be heard perfectly between the melody of the high-pitched strings.The bow is made of wood with horsehair.The violin made the use of the crwth to be forgotten,but recently the tradition has been recovered.Only 3 originals crwth are preserved and one of them had a hidden opening under the fingerboard,working as a sound amplifier,apart from the two holes in the soundboard.That is one of its mysteries,the other is that no writing has been found explaining how to tune it. Therein lies its beauty, in what it still hides....Pic by @kjellbraaten

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