Leonardo da Vinci designed the viola organista, a keyboard instrument combining bowed strings with a mechanism similar to a piano.
Leonardo’s notebooks contain several versions of the concept, developed during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Pressing keys would select strings, while rotating wheels or a continuous bowing mechanism would make the strings vibrate. This aimed to produce sustained tones without requiring a musician to bow each string by hand.
The name refers to the instrument’s hybrid character: it had a keyboard like an organ or keyboard instrument, but its sound was intended to come from strings rubbed by rotating surfaces. It is not the same as a conventional piano, whose hammers strike strings, and it is not simply a hurdy-gurdy, whose wheel is turned directly by the performer while keys stop the strings.
Leonardo never produced a surviving original instrument. Modern builders have made reconstructions from his drawings, including a 2013 version by the Polish musician Sławomir Zubrzycki. The instrument illustrates how Leonardo treated musical technology as a problem in mechanics, friction, and continuous motion.