For dmckilli and electorprince

Ganked from groovy_hatefuck, this is Corvus Corax. I recognize some of the horns they're playing as replicas of some found in medieval Scandinavian graves. Not safe for americanstd; they use bagpipes and that always makes him want to strip naked, paint himself black, and attack the nearest Irish pub in the name of Odin:

They just need the Techno-Viking as their interpretive dancer.

More on Corvus Corax

They actually study medieval non-religious music and try to reproduce it based largely on the bitching of ecclesiastics about it. For example, if a cleric complained about horrible bray strings, they add bray strings. Their web site also describes the instruments they use and gives sound clips:

http://www.corvuscorax.de/start.php?lang=EN

Me, I think bray strings are the bomb, but I think everybody knows that about me by now.

Just one more before I head to bed

"Amoroso", played on a gothic harp:

http://www.asni.net/amoroso!.wav

To answer your question, yes, that is one single instrument. I've been mentioning bray strings; they're the vibrating strings providing the drone sound. The hurdy-gurdy gets its distinctive, bagpipe-like sound from them. The medievals thought it was great and so do I. During my abortive attempt to learn to play guitar, I found I liked the noise of strings buzzing against the frets, even though I later found out it was considered an "error" in playing.

Screw that! Bray strings have been described by musician Melissa the Loud (look her up) as the reason they didn't need electric guitars in the middle ages. Apparently even though gothic harps don't have loud voices due to their narrow soundboxes, they can be heard over other instruments because of the bray strings. Of course, if a harp's competition is a lute, that's not hard.