The instruments most people think of as "traditional Dutch" are not the ones you would find in a conservatory. They are the barrel-playing street organ on a market square, the carillon ringing from a church tower, the long wooden midwinter horn blown across the fields of Twente in December, the grunting rommelpot that children carried from door to door, and the humble hommel, a table zither once found in farmhouses. Each one tells you something about how ordinary Dutch people made music in public and at home.
This guide covers six of them: what they are, how they work, where they come from and where you can still hear them. If you want the songs that were played on them, start with our guide to famous Dutch folk songs; for the wider story, see Dutch folk music's hidden tradition.
1. The street organ (draaiorgel or pierement)
No sound is more recognisably Dutch than a large street organ grinding out a waltz while the organ man rattles a collecting tin. In Dutch it is a draaiorgel ("turning organ"), and the big street version is affectionately called a pierement.
Technically it is an automatic pipe organ. Turning the handle (or a motor) works the bellows and moves the music through the instrument. The earliest street organs read their tunes from wooden barrels studded with pins; later organs use folded cardboard "books" with punched holes, which made it far easier to add new songs.
The instrument itself was not invented in the Netherlands. Small street organs were made by Italian and French builders, and Ludovico Gavioli, who started building them in Paris around 1850, is often called the father of the modern organ. What made the Dutch street organ different was the business around it. In 1875 the Belgian Léon Warnies opened the first organ-hire company in Amsterdam, renting instruments to organ men; his descendants are still active in the Amsterdam organ trade today. In the 1920s the German builder Carl Frei settled in Breda and rebuilt many older French organs, replacing their reed stops with his own flute registers such as the Bourdon Céleste. That warm, singing tone became the signature of the Dutch street organ.
Elsewhere in Europe and in the United States, organ grinders were often treated as beggars, and New York banned them in 1935. In the Netherlands, hire companies took pride in the sound and repertoire of their organs, and the public came to accept the orgelman as part of street life. In 2019 Dutch street organ culture (draaiorgelcultuur) was added to the national inventory of intangible cultural heritage.
2. The carillon (beiaard)
A carillon is a set of tuned bronze bells, usually at least 23, played from a keyboard of wooden batons and pedals high in a tower. The Low Countries are its heartland, and the Netherlands played a key role in turning it from a set of signal bells into a real musical instrument.
The breakthrough came from two bell founders from Levécourt in north-eastern France, François and Pieter Hemony, working with the blind Utrecht musician Jacob van Eyck, who could pick out the overtones of a bell by whistling at it. Van Eyck's ear and the Hemonys' foundry work produced the world's first tuned carillon, installed in the Wijnhuistoren in Zutphen in 1644. The brothers shaped and thinned their bells so that the main partials sounded in tune, which meant the bells could finally play harmony together. François later moved to Amsterdam at the city's invitation and cast around twenty carillons there. (Van Eyck is better known today as a recorder composer; we cover him in our piece on Dutch baroque and Renaissance music.)
Many Dutch town halls and church towers still have carillons, and a city carillonneur plays live recitals on market days and holidays, while an automatic drum plays short tunes on the quarter hours in between. Dutch carillon culture (beiaardcultuur) is also on the national inventory of intangible heritage.
3. The midwinter horn (midwinterhoorn)
If you are in the eastern Netherlands between late November and early January, you may hear a long, mournful call drifting across the fields at dusk. That is the midwinterhoorn, a wooden natural horn about 1.3 metres long.
It is made from a slightly curved piece of alder, birch or willow that is split lengthwise, hollowed out until the walls are about a centimetre thick, and joined back together. A mouthpiece, usually of elder wood, is fitted at an angle. Before playing, horn blowers pour water into the tube to seal any cracks, and they traditionally play while standing over a well or other water. A horn produces only around eight natural notes, and because each one is slightly different, players do not blow in unison: they call to each other one after another, from farm to farm.
The custom is shared with neighbouring parts of Germany, such as the County of Bentheim. Today the horns are sounded from the start of Advent until Epiphany on 6 January, and many villages in Twente and the Achterhoek have their own groups. The tradition in Gelderland and Overijssel is on the national intangible heritage inventory, and the Netherlands Open Air Museum in Arnhem has shown how the horns are made.
4. The rommelpot
The rommelpot (in some regions foekepot) is a friction drum, one of the oldest homemade instruments in Dutch folk life. A pot or jar is covered with a membrane, traditionally a pig's bladder, with a reed or stick fixed in the middle. Rubbing the stick up and down with a wet hand makes the membrane vibrate with a low, rhythmic grunt.
It belonged to the street and to children. Around Vastenavond, the last evening before Lent, children went from house to house with their rommelpot, singing short rhymes and asking for a coin or a treat. The custom survived longest in Brabant and other southern regions, and some carnival enthusiasts there would like to see it return.
It is also one of the best-documented folk instruments of the Dutch Golden Age, because painters loved it. A boy playing a rommelpot appears in Jan Miense Molenaer's Two Boys and a Girl Making Music (1629, National Gallery, London), and the instrument turns up in Pieter Bruegel's The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (1559). The English composer Orlando Gibbons even quoted a Dutch tune called De Rommelpot in a keyboard fantasia.
5. The hommel (noordse balk)
The hommel is a long, narrow box zither related to the Norwegian langeleik. It has one or more melody strings over a fretboard and a set of drone strings, and it is laid on a table, which acts as a soundboard. The player stops the melody strings with a stick or fingers and strums with a plectrum, so the tune rides over a constant drone, a little like a quiet bagpipe.
The instrument was common in the Netherlands, Flanders, northern Germany and Denmark in the 18th century. In the northern Netherlands it was often called the noordse balk ("northern beam"), a name still associated with Friesland. It was cheap, often homemade and widely played by women at home, which is exactly why it was looked down on as a "peasant" instrument in the 19th century and nearly disappeared. The folk revival of the 1970s brought it back, and it still has a small, devoted following among folk players. If the Frisian side of this story interests you, read our piece on Frisian music culture.
6. Bagpipes, hurdy-gurdies and fiddles
Several instruments that we now link with other countries were once ordinary in the Low Countries. The doedelzak (bagpipe) is everywhere in Flemish and Dutch painting; two bagpipers lead the music in Bruegel's Peasant Wedding (c. 1567). The draailier (hurdy-gurdy), with its wheel-bowed strings and drones, and the fiddle were the backbone of village dance music. These instruments faded as the accordion arrived in the 19th century, but revival bands in the Netherlands and Flanders play them again, often alongside the hommel.
What these instruments have in common
Almost all of them are public, seasonal or homemade. The street organ and carillon were music for everyone in the square, paid for by coins or by the town. The midwinter horn and rommelpot were tied to the calendar: Advent, Christmas and the days before Lent. The hommel and rommelpot could be made at home with simple materials. Unlike the courtly traditions we cover in our guide to the history of the oud, Dutch folk instruments were shaped less by professional players than by neighbourhoods, festivals and families.
Where to hear them today
Street organs: look for them at weekly markets and busy shopping streets in Amsterdam and other cities, and at organ festivals. The Museum Speelklok in Utrecht specialises in self-playing instruments and has several large organs.
Carillons: check the local tower's recital schedule; many cities publish times for their carillonneur. Our Amsterdam music venues guide covers the city's indoor venues if you want to plan a whole music day.
Midwinter horns: the season starts with Advent. Local tourist offices in Twente and the Achterhoek list walks and evenings where groups play.
Rommelpot and hommel: folk festivals, folk dance clubs and carnival in the south are your best chance.
FAQ
What is the national instrument of the Netherlands?
The Netherlands has no official national instrument. The street organ and the carillon are the instruments most often described as typically Dutch, and both are on the national inventory of intangible heritage.
Is the street organ a Dutch invention?
No. Street organs were first built by Italian and French makers. The Netherlands is special because organ-hire companies, builders such as Carl Frei and a loyal public kept the large street organ alive there long after it vanished from most other countries.
When can you hear a midwinter horn?
Traditionally from the first Sunday of Advent until Epiphany on 6 January, mainly in Twente, the Achterhoek and across the border in Germany.
Sources: Wikipedia articles on the street organ, draaiorgel, Hemony brothers, midwinter horn, friction drum and hummel; NOS, "Draaiorgelcultuur erkend als immaterieel erfgoed" (2019); Kenniscentrum Immaterieel Erfgoed Nederland, Beiaardcultuur; Brabant in Beelden, Rommelpotterij; Museum Vosbergen, Hommel (consulted October 2026).