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# After 500 Years, Leonardo da Vinci's Piano Machine Comes Alive
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/after-500-years-leonardo-da-vincis-piano-machine-comes-alive/
- Published: 2013-11-19T18:57:41.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:34:15.000Z
- Description: Leonardo da Vinci had a lot of wild schemes for inventions, like a robot knight and elaborate flying machines that gave humans wings, but one he never got to experience himself has finally been realized by a crafty Polish pianist.
- Author: Allison Meier
- Tags: Art, Leonardo da Vinci, Music, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:59 (2012, 2013, part 2)

![The reconstructed Leonardo da Vinci viola organista (via zubrzycki.art.pl)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/11/davincipiano.jpg)

The reconstructed Leonardo da Vinci viola organista (via zubrzycki.art.pl)

Leonardo da Vinci had a lot of wild schemes for inventions, like [a robot knight](http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/environmental-news/news-would-leonardo-da-vincis-robot-have-been-environmental-green-demon?ref=hyperallergic.com) and elaborate flying machines that gave humans wings, but one he never got to experience himself has finally been realized by a crafty Polish pianist.

![Da Vincis design for the viola organista (via Wikimedia)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/11/violaorganista.jpg)

Leonardo’s design for the viola organista (via Wikimedia)

[Slawomir Zubrzycki](http://www.zubrzycki.art.pl/?ref=hyperallergic.com) spent from 2009 to 2012 reconstructing Leonardo’s viola organista based on an illustration in the [*Codex*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex%5FAtlanticus?ref=hyperallergic.com)[ *Atlanticus*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex%5FAtlanticus?ref=hyperallergic.com),a 12-volume collection of the artist and inventor’s ideas on topics that range from botany to weapons to music. As the [*Sydney Morning Herald* reported](http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/leonardo-da-vincis-wacky-piano-is-heard-for-the-first-time-after-500-years-20131118-2xpqs.html?ref=hyperallergic.com), the instrument appears much like a piano, but its mechanics are quite different, which is why you might look twice if you see someone playing what seems like a standard piano while the sounds are that of a stringed instrument.

Leonardo himself was a musician, apparently able to play anything he picked up as well as compose music — as if being a genius artist, inventor, and mathematician weren’t enough to likely give all of his Italian Renaissance compatriots an inferiority complex. As Zubrzycki interpreted from Leonardo’s 15th-century design, the sound of the viola organista comes from the musician powering a pedal located under the keys that causes four wheels inside to turn. These wheels are coated in hair from a horse’s tail, just like many string instrument bows, so that when you press the keys, one of 61 steel rings hits the cushioned wheels, rather than the hard contact of a hammer against a steel string like in an ordinary piano.

The sound, which you can hear below in a video of Zubrzycki’s October 21 concert in Krakow, is vaguely like a cello dreaming of being a harpsichord, with the sustained tones of a string instrument combined with the quick change notes of a piano. People seem to regularly take joy in bringing to life some of Leonardo’s most fantastic creations, such as a [mechanical lion](http://dangerousminds.net/comments/leonardo%5Fda%5Fvincis%5Fincredible%5Fmechanical%5Flion?ref=hyperallergic.com) and the massive [Colossus horse](http://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/18/nyregion/a-horse-of-another-century-building-leonardo-s-colossus.html?ref=hyperallergic.com), and although the artist himself never got to hear his viola organista, he surely would have loved the challenges to the perception of what a piano can be and sound like. Now maybe we can have that [Ideal City](http://www.museoscienza.org/english/leonardo/models/macchina-leo.asp?id%5Fmacchina=108&ref=hyperallergic.com)?

*There are some other images over at* [*Colossal*](http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/11/viola-organista/?ref=hyperallergic.com)*.*