Talk:Viola organista

Passage
This is just nitpicking of the most insignificant kind, but the following passage felt just a bit awkward to me:

In one design, the strings were fretted with tangents, so that there were more keys than strings (several notes, for example C, C#, D, and D#, would all be played on one string).

The bracketed text is of course just an example, but I have some doubts that a note such as C# was really used at all during the lifetime of Leonardo da Vinci. Someone else might be able to confirm or dismiss my suspicions. In the meantime I'm changing it to mention only C and C#, because, at least in my mind, C and D# (and thus C and Eb) sharing the same string is ridiculously inconvenient. --EldKatt 16:04, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Leonardo has several drawings of a prototype viola organista. In one, there are five to nine tangents per string, i.e. five to nine notes would be played on a single string; in another, there is one string per note.  There is no exact assignation of notes to strings in the former case.


 * Regarding your other comment, yes, the chromatic notes were most certainly in use during Leonardo's time. You can find examples of C# often when there is a cadence on a D.  D# is a bit less commonly found than C#, and the chromatic notes in general are more likely to be found in keyboard figuration (the Harvard Anthology of Music has some good examples).  Hope this helps.  Antandrus  (talk)  16:43, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * In light of your comments, I resolutely take back everything I said. Leonardo's drawings are of course inarguable evidence, and I quite simply don't know what possessed me to be so doubtful of the use of chromatic notes in that time when I should've known better. Thanks for setting me straight. --EldKatt 14:42, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I read it as meaning "C & C#, D & D#", not that all four would be using the same string....

duncanrmi (talk) 15:29, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

"first bowed keyboard instrument"
Isn't the Hurdy Gurdy an earlier bowed keyboard instrument?69.204.245.4 (talk) 14:30, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Viola organista made by Sławomir Zubrzycki
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv3py3Ap8_Y#t=70

http://tygodnik.onet.pl/zmysly/the-da-vinci-tone-in-english/qw5s9

I thought this was note worthy for this article

--OxAO (talk) 06:26, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * And NPR talkin' about it should count as a pretty good source. www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=247543086 Punkonjunk (talk) 14:23, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Some more detail, please
In most articles about individual musical instruments, certain standard details regularly appear which are missing from this article: size; shape; range; number of strings; number of keys; mode of playing and/or activation of the moving parts, etc.

We aren't told, for example, whether this thing is shaped like a piano, like a violin, or like a kazoo. We aren't told whether it's the size of a breadbox or a 1958 Ford Thunderbird. We don't know whether it has a dozen strings or a hundred; whether they were in single or multiple-string courses; whether it has 8 keys or 88; and whether it has the range of a pipe organ or P.D.Q.Bach's slide music stand. How were the belts/bows/wheels turned? By foot-pedals? Slaves turning cranks? Gerbils? Was any significant music written for it? (There has, after all, been music written for theoretical instruments -- Scriabin's Prometheus, for example.)

Anyway, you get the idea. Right now the article is bare bones, and not even a complete skeleton. It needs the rest of the structure, and perhaps a little flesh to fill it out. :) 67.206.183.143 (talk) 04:47, 12 June 2015 (UTC)


 * agreed- it would be lovely if mr zubrzycki could take some time to document his build- which bits of the alleged da vinci design he used as inspiriation & so forth. I 'm guessing, since you can't see in the clip, that his instrument is either purring like a mellotron or else he's pedalling furiously beneath the keyboard, as with a harmonium.


 * this clip shows him pedalling quite gently- flywheels? & the string-lowering action can also be seen. hooray for youtube.


 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS9c76V4RDE


 * duncanrmi (talk) 15:33, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Experimental?
I question the inclusion of this article in the Experimental Musical Instruments category. Just because an instrument is rare doesn't necessarily qualify it as "experimental". Examples of this instrument have been being constructed and played for almost 500 years. While it may have been "experimental" in Leonardo's day, so was the violin -- but no longer.

74.95.43.249 (talk) 21:54, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Number of players
The article says that Hans Heyden's Geigenwerk required two players, one to turn the crank to put the rosined wheels in motion, and the other to work the keys. This is (insufficiently) referenced with a book by Emanuel Winternitz about da Vinci, not Heyden. The illustration from Praetorius’ Syntagma musicum clearly shows a foot pedal (very similar to those used to drive lathes at the time), operated by the keyboard player, to set the wheels in motion, not a crank. --Jossi (talk) 21:10, 28 January 2023 (UTC)