Posted on 11/23/2013 10:55:16 AM PST by Dysart
Leonardo da Vinci, in between doing stuff like painting the best-known piece of art in the world, apparently had time to sketch up a quick blueprint for an instrument: the "viola organista," a piano-violin hybrid that he never built. It looks just like a piano, and plays like one, too, but instead of the hammers that connect to strings and play notes, cranks wrapped with horse-hair like violin bows rub the strings. The resulting sound is familiar but strange, something like a church organ that's just a little on the tipsy side.
(Excerpt) Read more at popsci.com ...
Needs to be tuned.
Needs to be tuned.
Is there any sheet music form DaVinci’s time around?
It would be even more interesting to hear it playing period music from 500 years ago.
“Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” on the Glass Armonica
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQemvyyJ—g
Sounds very magical.
I loved the sound his instrument made. It is haunting.
Leonarda was a genius on a par with Einstein, Mendeleev, Bohr, and Mendel. He was a painter without equal.
He was an Engineer. He had worked out the basics of flight.
He also designed weapons of war and they were very effective.
One must think if he were alive today with our access to unlimited data and ideas via a computer, what could that great mind do?
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