Meet a Musician: Robert Green, Musicologist

Bloomington, Indiana, is a special city for musicians—visitor or resident, foreign or domestic, famous or little-known. It also happens to be a city with a large university and a large school of music, a meeting place for all kinds of performers, educators, and researchers. This post is part of a photo series that looks at the many people in Bloomington who call themselves a musician.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernardgordillo/4622866224/

Robert Green is a performer and an authority on the French baroque hurdy-gurdy (vielle à roue), the instrument for which he wrote a history entitled “The Hurdy-Gurdy in Eighteenth-Century France.”

For twenty-five years, Bob was a professor of music history at Northern Illinois University (near Chicago) until his retirement. He then moved to Bloomington and has since been a part-time visiting professor at the School of Music.

Bob took part in Harmonia’s “questions for” blog series many months ago, where he shared a little bit about the mechanics and history of the hurdy-gurdy and how he came to play it.

The instrument has a fascinating story and an alluring sound.

Listen to Bob perform an anonymous 18th-century arrangement of François Couperin‘s Le Carillon de Cythére:

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