Leonardo da Vinci designed the viola organista to create continuous bowed music from keyboard keys.
The instrument combined a keyboard with bowed strings. Pressing a key moved a string against a rotating wheel or wheels, producing a sustained tone similar in principle to that of a bowed string instrument. Leonardo explored several versions in his notebooks during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
Unlike a harpsichord, which plucks strings, the viola organista was intended to make sound through friction from a bowing mechanism. Unlike a pipe organ, it did not rely on air passing through pipes. The design was never produced as a standard Renaissance instrument.
Modern builders have constructed playable versions from Leonardo’s drawings, including a well-known instrument completed by Sławomir Zubrzycki in 2013. The viola organista shows Leonardo’s interest in combining familiar technologies into new musical systems.