(It.; Fr. vielle organisée).
A Hurdy-gurdywith one or two ranks of organ pipes and bellows housed in its body. On some instruments a crank operates both the wheel that activates the strings and the bellows that makes the pipes sound; on others there is a separate mechanism for the bellows worked by the foot. On most instruments a mechanism permitted the player to engage either the strings or the pipes, or both together. Some instruments are guitar-shaped while others (for example, one in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London) are larger and in box shape.
The instrument seems already to have existed in the middle of the 18th century in France. It reached a peak of popularity about 1780, but its vogue did not last long. It was the favourite instrument of Ferdinand IV, King of Naples, who had learned to play it from Norbert Hadrava, the Austrian Legations Secretary. Hadrava, who had probably heard such instruments in Paris or Berlin, devised some improvements for it, and he and Ferdinand commissioned works for it from Adalbert Gyrowetz, Ignace Pleyel, Johann Sterkel and Haydn, who composed five concertos for two lire organizzate and orchestra (hVIIh:1–5), and eight Notturnos for two lire organizzate and other instruments (hII:25–32).
M. Ohmiya, ed.: Joseph Haydn Werke VI: Concerti mit Orgelleiern (Munich, 1976)
H. Czakler: ‘Zum Problem der Lira organizzata’, Joseph Haydn: Vienna 1982, 76–81
C. Flagel: ‘La vielle organisée’, Cahiers des Alpes-Maritimes, no.9 (1991), 28–35
J.A. Rice: ‘Stein’s “Favorite Instrument”: a Vis-à-vis Piano – Harpsichord in Naples’, JAMIS, xxi (1995), 30–64
HOWARD MAYER BROWN/R