Viola organista
The viola organista was an experimental Instrument
instrument invented by Leonardo da Vinci. It was the first bowed
keyboard instrument (of which any record has survived) ever to be devised.
Leonardo's original idea, as preserved in his notebooks of 1488-1489
and in the drawings in the Codex Atlanticus, was to use one or more wheels,
continuously rotating, each of which pulled a looping bow, rather like a
fanbelt in an automobile engine, and perpendicular to the instrument's strings.
The strings would be pushed downward into the bow by the action of the keys,
causing the moving bow to sound the pitch of the string. In one design, the
strings were fretted with tangents, so that there were more keys than strings
(several notes, for example C and C#, would all be played on one string). In
another design each note had its own string.
Apparently Leonardo did not build his instrument. The first
similar instrument actually to be constructed was the Geigenwerk of 1575 by
Hans Haiden, a German instrument inventor.
A modern reconstruction of the viola organista by Akio
Obuchi was used in a concert in Genoa, Italy in 2004. The picture above is one
of his instruments. In the external link there is a lot of information about
his Viola Organistas.
External links
Go to list of experimental instruments
built by other inventors
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