The main characters in this series are the tools used to make music: the instruments. Listeners can get to know them through authentic live music and the help of the musicians who play it. This semester, the instruments familiar from Hungarian folk traditions will again be introducing themselves. The body of the gardon is carved out of a piece of maple, poplar or willow in the shape of a tortoise shell. It is played with a stick made from a branch of hardwood as wide as a broomstick and 40 centimetres long. The gardon has three, and occasionally four, strings, of which three are thick, and the fourth, outermost, string (coming down along the player's left hand) is thinner. The gardon is the property of the male violinist – usually a Gypsy musician – who teaches his wife or another close relative to play it, or perhaps takes on somebody to accompany him at important dances. No bow is used to play the gardon. The musician, holding the stick in his or her right hand, hits the strings while picking the plucking string with his or her left hand, raising it slightly and letting it hit the fingerboard, which has led to the gardon's humorous Hungarian nickname, “csipisüti”, which translates to something like “pluck it and hit it”. (paraphrased from Bálint Sárosi)

Age: 8-12 year

Presented by: Müpa Budapest