Tír Na HiFi

494 years after Leonardo da Vinci’s death, we now have the chance to see, and more importantly hear, the viola organista, an elaborate musical instrument that had previously only existed in da Vinci's notebooks.

We owe this thrill not just to Leonardo himself, who left behind detailed plans for the (to him, purely theoretical) construction of such devices as this behind, but to a reported 5000 hours of physical effort by Polish concert pianist Slawomir Zubrzycki, who actually put the thing together. You can read more at the Sydney Morning Herald, whose article (on “Leonardo Da Vinci’s wacky piano“) quotes Zubrzycki: “This instrument has the characteristics of three we know: the harpsichord, the organ and the viola da gamba,” and playing it, which involves hitting keys connected to “spinning wheels wrapped in horse-tail hair,” and turning those wheels by pumping a pedal below the keyboard, produces exciting unusual waves of cello-like sounds. You can watch ten minutes of Zubrzycki debuting the instrument at Krakow’s Academy of Music above. Depending upon your inclination toward music, very old technology, or very old music technology, you may also want to glance at the related Metafilter debate about what place the viola organista could have in music today.