Students of music as well as Festival visitors have the opportunity to hear a number of the world's musical instruments performed here, many of which will be new to them. Of particular interest is the wide variety of stringed instruments. As a group they are called chordophones (from the Greek words for string and sound) to distinguish them from other principal divisions of musical instruments: membranophones (drums with skin heads), idiophones (most other percussion), aerophones (winds and reeds), and electrophones (electronic instruments).

By definition, a chordophone has at least one and usually several strings stretched parallel to each ...