Tuesday 19 November 2013

Buried In The Pages,

of Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous 15th century notebooks,


there are some drawings that do not stand out, unlike like his sketches of flying machines, parachutes, diving suits, and armored tanks that we have seen before, the page above is a good example of a page that not many have really studied, 



but Polish concert pianist Slawomir Zubrzycki did study the page as it had sketches of a viola organista, now after an estimated 5,000 hours of work over three years and nearly $10,000 invested in the project the instrument is finished, it is fully functional and Zubrzycki demonstrated it in public for the first time at the 5th International Royal Krakow Piano Festival a few weeks ago,


although it may look like a piano unlike a piano, it has no hammered dulcimers, instead, there are four spinning wheels wrapped in horse tail hair, like violin bows, to turn them, Zubrzycki pumps a peddle below the keyboard connected to a crankshaft, as the articale says, 'the effect is a sound that da Vinci dreamt of, but sadly never heard; there are no historical records suggesting he or anyone else of his time built the instrument he designed'.


to listen to the totally different sound the viola organista makes click on the picture above.


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