Recently, NPR's Robert Smith reported about the debut of Leonardo da Vinci's harpsichord-viola in a concert in New York City. A partial sketch of the instrument appears in Leonardo's largest manuscript, the Codex Atlanticus. Leonardo3, an Italian collective dedicated to exploring and creating Leonardo's designs, built the harpsichord-viola and displayed it in the Discovery Times Square Exhibition Leonardo da Vinci's Workshop. Smith's story says it all. Take a listen.
December 10, 2009 - More than 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci designed a completely new musical instrument. But the harpsichord-viola was just a figment of the his imagination until now. Industrial designers from Italian firm Leonardo3 have reconstructed the instrument from sketches in Leonardo's notebooks. There's a slight problem, though: The mind of the great renaissance genius didn't count on how noisy the machine would sound. Keep reading...
A brief Discovery News video report by James Williams shows the harpsichord-viola in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiCaMAj2DD8 See? Everything has a purpose.
