What was Leonardo da Vinci’s viola organista designed to combine?

Leonardo da Vinci’s viola organista was designed to combine a keyboard and bowed strings.

The viola organista was an experimental musical instrument described in Leonardo’s notebooks. Its keyboard controlled mechanisms that brought rotating, rosined wheels or bowing elements into contact with strings. Pressing keys would therefore select pitches while the mechanical system supplied continuous friction, producing a sound related to bowed string instruments.

The instrument was not simply a piano. A piano strikes strings with hammers, while the viola organista was intended to make strings vibrate through bowing. Nor was it a conventional organ, because its sound came from strings rather than pipes.

Leonardo left several versions and studies rather than a confirmed surviving instrument made by him. Modern builders have constructed working interpretations from the drawings, helping listeners explore the sound of an idea that remained largely experimental during the Renaissance.