![Viola organista](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Viola_organista.jpg)
The viola organista is a
musical instrument
A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who pl ...
designed by
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...
. It uses a friction belt to vibrate individual strings (similar to how a violin produces sounds), with the strings selected by pressing keys on a keyboard (similar to an organ). Leonardo's design has intrigued instrument makers for more than 400 years, but though similar instruments have been built, no extant instrument constructed directly from Leonardo's incomplete designs is known. Sometimes it is mistakenly referred to as the
harpsichord viola, which is a different instrument.
Description
Leonardo designed many different and elaborate models of viola organista, as preserved in his notebooks of 1488–1489 and in the drawings in the
Codex Atlanticus
The Codex Atlanticus (Atlantic Codex) is a 12-volume, bound set of drawings and writings (in Italian) by Leonardo da Vinci, the largest single set. Its name indicates the large paper used to preserve original Leonardo notebook pages, which was us ...
and
Manuscript H.
[ Winternitz, Emanuel (1982). Leonardo Da Vinci As a Musician.]
![Geigenwerk Praetorius](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Geigenwerk_Praetorius.jpg)
The first known instrument actually constructed using Leonardo's concept, is Hans Heyden's
Geigenwerk of 1575. While the concept is the same, the design is very different; modern versions of the instrument have been more or less based on Heyden's design. An etching of the Geigenwerk from 1620 shows an instrument of about the stature and shape of a
harpsichord
A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecín; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism ...
(i.e., an piano-shape with flat sides and hard angles). The fully
chromatic
Diatonic and chromatic are terms in music theory that are most often used to characterize scales, and are also applied to musical instruments, intervals, chords, notes, musical styles, and kinds of harmony. They are very often used as a pair, ...
keyboard appears to have 44 keys, extending about three-and-a-half octaves from low E to a high B. (see illustration) This keyboard range is consistent with harpsichords of the day, although harpsichord keyboards more typically started on low C or low F. The number of strings can't be directly determined, but the design implies one string per key, or 44 strings.
[Preatorius, Michael; ''Oxford Early Music Series'': ''Syntagma Musicum'', Volume 3; Oxford University Press; London: 1620/2004. pg. 129.]
In the etching there appear to be five bow-wheels in the instrument, and a foot-pedal, presumably for turning the wheels. A scale given below the drawing has numbers from one to six; if it assumed these refer to ''feet'', then the instrument is a bit over 6 feet long, which again is a scale in keeping with harpsichords of the day. The actual tuning of the instrument is not specified, but given the number of keys and the size of the instrument, it probably extended from around E2 to B5. Variations on this design have been produced over the past four centuries, with varying range, number of keys, and number of bow-wheels.
Construction
It is not known if Leonardo ever built a working prototype of this instrument. The first similar instrument actually to be constructed was the ''Geigenwerk'' of 1575 by
Hans Heyden
Hans may refer to:
__NOTOC__ People
* Hans (name), a masculine given name
* Hans Raj Hans, Indian singer and politician
** Navraj Hans, Indian singer, actor, entrepreneur, cricket player and performer, son of Hans Raj Hans
** Yuvraj Hans, Punjabi ...
, a German instrument inventor. However, the ''Geigenwerk'' is not based on Leonardo's designs. It uses several friction wheels instead of a friction belt to vibrate the strings, and requires two people to play it: one to turn the crank to put the rosined wheels in motion, and the other to work the keys.
Georg Gandi, an organist in Ilmenau, constructed a similar instrument with some improvements in 1709 and called it the ''piano viol''. In 1741, two inventors – Le Voir in Paris and Hohlfeld in Berlin – independently constructed versions of a ''bowed piano'', similar to Heyden's design. In 1754, a horsehair covering was added to the wheels of the bowed piano, which was termed the ''
viola da gamba
The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitc ...
piano''. Other instrument makers continued to improve the design through the remainder of the 18th and into the early 19th centuries, though it never became widespread or common.
These instruments remained primarily museum curiosities until a few modern instrument builders began to take an interest in creating reconstructions of the ''Geigenwerk'', but calling them ''viola organista''. Akio Obuchi built several instruments as early as 1993.
In 2013, Polish musician Sławomir Zubrzycki completed the construction of another modern replica of the Geigenwerk called ''viola organista'' and played it in performance at the
Academy of Music in Kraków
The Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Kraków ( pl, Akademia Muzyczna im. Krzysztofa Pendereckiego w Krakowie) is a conservatory located in central Kraków, Poland. It is the '' alma mater'' of the renowned Polish contemporary composer Krz ...
. Zubrzycki's instrument contains four bow-wheels (spun by a foot-pedal operated by the player), 49 keys, and a range extending from F1 to F5. In 2015, the musician
Björk
Björk Guðmundsdóttir ( , ; born 21 November 1965), known mononymously as Björk, is an Icelandic singer, songwriter, composer, record producer, and actress. Noted for her distinct three-octave vocal range and eccentric persona, she has de ...
included this instrument – also played by Sławomir Zubrzycki – in a recording of the song "Black Lake" for the album ''
Vulnicura Strings
''Vulnicura Strings (The Acoustic Versions – Strings, Voice and Viola Organista Only)'', or simply ''Vulnicura Strings'', is an acoustic album released by Icelandic singer-songwriter Björk as a companion to her 2015 album, ''Vulnicura''. ''V ...
''.
Another modern instrument similar in concept, if not design, is the ''
wheelharp The wheelharp is a musical instrument with bowed strings controlled by a keyboard and foot-controlled motor, similar to Leonardo da Vinci's viola organista, a keyboard-operated string instrument for continuously sounding strings by rubbing the stri ...
'', created by Jon Jones and Mitchell Manger in 2013, and debuted at the NAMM Show that year, in Anaheim, California.
References
Further reading
* Carolyn W. Simons, "Sostenente piano", and Emanuel Winternitz and Laurence Libin, "Leonardo da Vinci," Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed April 2, 2005 at www.grovemusic.com)
(subscription access)
* "Sostenente piano", ''The New Harvard Dictionary of Music'', ed. Don Randel. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1986.
External links
as used in
Genoa
Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the List of cities in Italy, sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian ce ...
Viola organista made by Sławomir Zubrzycki
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Bowed string instruments
Experimental musical instruments
Italian inventions
Keyboard instruments
Leonardo da Vinci projects