Foolish man! I hear you cry, that’s not a hurdy-gurdy, it’s an organistrum! And – as ever – you’d be quite correct.
This giant, two-man hurdy-gurdy (aka organistrum, aka (wonderfully!) symphonia coelestis [heavenly music]) is what, apparently, was used in churches before the advent of the pipe organ, a fact borne out by the two gentlemen in the sculpture above, who appear in the stonework of Santiago de Compostela (the cathedral was completed in 1211).
As you can see, the instrument – like its later, smaller, one person cousin (i.e. the hurdy-gurdy) – uses a keyboard of some sort, but the ‘keys’ were pulled rather than pressed, which must have slowed the speed of execution considerably. Here’s a modern reconstruction of it:
… and here, for comparison (with the updated keyboard), is the modern instrument:
Then, sometime in the 13th century, some major, but unsung genius realised that the pressing rather than pulling of keys would make for a much more agile and efficient instrument. And, before long, there emerged the self-drive, Portative Organ:
While the portative instrument was easily transportable and required only one person to play it, its distinct disadvantage was that one hand was tied up in operating the bellows.
More unsung geniuses to the rescue, asking the inspired question: why not pump the bellows with your feet? The Regal was born.
It also differed from its predecessor in its tone quality – while the portative organ had a gentle flute-like sound, the Regal used reeds rather than fipples to produce its more nasal, oboe-like quality.
It was fairly inevitable, I suppose, that sooner or later someone would try to knock the two instruments together, thereby giving the player a choice of tone between reeds and flutes (but also increasing the number of pipes involved considerably). The Positive Organ did just that. Even more so than the Regal, it wasn’t an instrument you could trek from village to village, and also required some energetic young person in the background to pump the bellows. But its musical advantages easily outweighed these practical problems – the baroque organ had arrived.
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The Art of Listening 