Dutchman Masters the Art of Singing Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” Backwards

in Music, Random | November 22nd, 2013

This has “viral video” writ­ten all over it. The only prob­lem is that it was filmed and released back in 2003, just two years before YouTube changed our world. But who knows, maybe with your help, the video could enjoy some posthu­mous viral­ness. Or is it viral­i­ty or viralos­i­ty?

The clip above fea­tures Jeroen Offer­man, a Dutch visu­al artist who, a decade ago, spent three months learn­ing to sing Led Zep­pelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en” entire­ly back­wards. He filmed him­self singing the song in reverse, while stand­ing in front of Saint Paul’s Cathe­dral in Lon­don, then flipped the direc­tion of the video (hence the pedes­tri­ans walk back­wards), all in order to show how well he mas­tered the art of singing Zep­pelin in reverse.

On his web­site he explains

St******@St.html











“>the project in greater detail, writ­ing:

“The Stair­way at St.Paul’s” is based on the hys­te­ria that sur­round­ed cer­tain music-record­ings of the 60’s and the 70’s. Some rock bands, like the Bea­t­les, Judas Priest and Led Zep­pelin were sup­posed to have put hid­den mes­sages in their records that could only be heard when played back­wards. These mes­sages though, would sub­con­scious­ly be picked up by the lis­ten­er who would then react in response to them.

In this way the band Judas Priest end­ed up in a court case because their records had ‘induced’ chil­dren to com­mit sui­cide. Also, the Bea­t­les were sup­posed to sug­gest through their records that Paul McCart­ney, one of their main band mem­bers, had died in a car crash and was replaced by a look-a-like.

The most famous exam­ple though, is Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stair­way to Heav­en’, a song about a woman buy­ing her­self a way in to heav­en. The mys­tic lyrics seem to urge us to fol­low the right path in life. But, as one line in the song already says, “some­times words have two mean­ings”, and so, when played back­wards, this song is sup­posed to urge us to wor­ship evil.

It’s time to dive in to your record-col­lec­tion and find out if it was all true. But first let us watch this video. So turn up the vol­ume and remem­ber the first time you smoked a cig­a­rette…

Things get pret­ty great around the 6:07 mark.

I’m pray­ing that this isn’t all a goof.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pak­istani Immi­grant Goes to a Led Zep­pelin Con­cert, Gets Inspired to Become a Musi­cian & Then Sells 30 Mil­lion Albums

Hear Led Zeppelin’s First Record­ed Con­cert Ever (1968)

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

 

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November 22, 1963: Watch Errol Morris’ Short Documentary About the Kennedy Assassination

in History, Photography | November 22nd, 2013

We live in a fine time for con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists, in at least a cou­ple of sens­es. First and more broad­ly, giv­en the pow­er of the inter­net, they’ve nev­er had clos­er at hand the semi-incrim­i­nat­ing, half-hid­den pieces of infor­ma­tion on which they build and with which they bol­ster their sus­pi­cions. Nor have they ever had a more effec­tive means of gath­er­ing and dis­cussing their find­ings. Sec­ond and more specif­i­cal­ly, the 50th anniver­sary of the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy has come upon us. This has set all those fas­ci­nat­ed by that grim his­tor­i­cal event, from the sober­est of skep­tics to the sheer­est para­noiacs, eval­u­at­ing and re-eval­u­at­ing it even more thor­ough­ly than usu­al. Above you’ll find the short Novem­ber 22, 1963 by Errol Mor­ris, a clear-eyed doc­u­men­tar­i­an and inter­view­er fas­ci­nat­ed not only with those who con­spire and those who the­o­rize about such con­spir­a­cies, but also with the grander implic­it ques­tions about what we know and what we don’t, what we can know and what we can’t, and whether we even know what we can and can’t know in the first place. (The title of his new fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary about Don­ald Rums­feld: The Unknown Known.)

“The more you inves­ti­gate a crime, the more it becomes crys­tal-clear what hap­pened,” says Josi­ah “Tink” Thomp­son, schol­ar of Søren Kierkegaard, pri­vate detec­tive, and author of Six Sec­onds in Dal­las: A Micro-Study of the Kennedy Assas­si­na­tion (a book with which any­one who has seen Richard Lin­klater’s Slack­er will already feel some famil­iar­i­ty). “I don’t think any oth­er crime I know of in his­to­ry has been inves­ti­gat­ed with the kind of inten­si­ty that this has. And yet I don’t think we get any clos­er to know­ing what hap­pened now than we were 40, 45 years ago.” This opens a dis­cus­sion of how all the pho­to­graph­ic evi­dence of 11/22/63, up to and includ­ing the awe­some­ly scru­ti­nized Zaprud­er film, bears on the mat­ter. “Is there a les­son to be learned?” Mor­ris asks. “Yes, to nev­er give up try­ing to uncov­er the truth. Despite all the dif­fi­cul­ties, what hap­pened in Dal­las hap­pened in one way rather than anoth­er. It may have been hope­less­ly obscured, but it was not oblit­er­at­ed.” And just as Novem­ber 22, 1963 fol­lows up The Umbrel­la Man, Mor­ris’ pre­vi­ous piece with Thomp­son, Thomp­son has a sequel of his own in the works: a book called Last Sec­onds in Dal­las. JFK assas­si­na­tion nuts — and I mean that in the nicest way — have their read­ing ahead of them.

Novem­ber 22, 1963 will be added to the Doc­u­men­tary sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 600 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Revis­it­ing JFK on YouTube

Who Killed JFK? Two New Stud­ies

Film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris Gives Us “11 Excel­lent Rea­sons Not to Vote?”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Actress Grace Kelly Reflects on the Life & Legacy of JFK in an Artfully Animated Video

in Animation, History | November 21st, 2013

On the eve of the 50th anniver­sary of the John F. Kennedy Assas­si­na­tion, Blank on Blank has released anoth­er one of its dis­tinc­tive ani­mat­ed videos. This one fea­tures Grace Kel­ly, the glam­orous Amer­i­can actress and Princess of Mona­co, con­tem­plat­ing her per­son­al encoun­ters with JFK, the heady days of Camelot, and the lega­cy of Amer­i­ca’s 35th pres­i­dent. When asked whether the pres­i­dent died in vain on that day in Dal­las, she offered these elo­quent words:

Well, it might not seem so today, but I, for one, can­not believe that a man of Mr. Kennedy’s stature and achieve­ments was put upon this earth for no oth­er pur­pose than to stop an assassin’s bul­let, or that the les­son will be whol­ly lost. It is only since the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry that the majesty of Abra­ham Lin­coln has been appre­ci­at­ed. I believe that God allows these cer­tain tragedies to hap­pen in order to empha­size the man and his achieve­ments and to inspire those who fol­low to have the strength and the will to accom­plish his unful­filled dreams.

This inter­view was record­ed on June 19, 1965, as part of an oral his­to­ry project designed to pre­serve the mem­o­ry of the late pres­i­dent. The project record­ed inter­views with peo­ple from all walks of life–from bus dri­vers to Leonard Bernstein–but, as David Ger­lach, founder of Blank on Blank explains to us, few peo­ple have heard these record­ings over the years. Now, how­ev­er, a Boston-based radio project has turned them into an hour­long radio doc­u­men­tary called We Knew JFK: Unheard Sto­ries, and it’s avail­able online here.

You can read a tran­script of the Grace Kel­ly inter­view cour­tesy of the John F. Kennedy Pres­i­den­tial Library & Muse­um.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut to John F. Kennedy: ‘On Occa­sion, I Write Pret­ty Well’

Watch Janis Joplin’s Final Inter­view Reborn as an Ani­mat­ed Car­toon

Mar­shall McLuhan on the Stu­pid­est Debate in the His­to­ry of Debat­ing (Nixon v JFK)

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Read Rejection Letters Sent to Three Famous Artists: Sylvia Plath, Kurt Vonnegut & Andy Warhol

in Art, Letters, Literature | November 21st, 2013

PlathRejection

Every suc­cess­ful artist must mas­ter the art of accept­ing rejec­tion. “Fail bet­ter,” said Beck­ett in his grim euphemism for per­se­ver­ance. “I love my rejec­tion slips,” wrote Sylvia Plath in every hope­ful poet’s favorite quote. “They show me I try.” Plath—who also wrote “I am made, crude­ly, for success”—collected scores of rejec­tion let­ters, receiv­ing them even after the con­sid­er­able suc­cess of 1960’s The Colos­sus and Oth­er Poems. The 1962 let­ter above (click here to view in a larg­er for­mat), from The New York­er, doesn’t exact­ly reject a Plath sub­mis­sion, but it does rec­om­mend cut­ting the entire first sec­tion of “Amne­si­ac” and resub­mit­ting “the sec­ond sec­tion alone under that title.” “Per­haps we’re being dense,” demurs edi­tor Howard Moss.

The rejec­tion must have been all the more painful since Plath was under a con­tract with the mag­a­zine, which enti­tled her to “an annu­al sum for the priv­i­lege of hav­ing a ‘first read­ing’ plus sub­se­quent pub­lish­ing rights to her new poet­ry,” Plath schol­ars tell us. And yet “much to her dis­tress she main­ly received rejec­tions dur­ing Novem­ber and Decem­ber 1962.” The poem was even­tu­al­ly bro­ken in two, with the first half pub­lished as “Lyon­nesse,” but not by Plath her­self but by pub­lish­ers after her death. Hear Plath read the full poem as she intend­ed it in her edi­tion of Ariel, above.

VonnegutRejection

Kurt Von­negut received an imper­son­al, and it would seem, long-over­due rejec­tion let­ter from edi­tor of The Atlantic Edward Weeks in 1949. Weeks writes breezi­ly that he found Vonnegut’s “sam­ples” dur­ing the “usu­al sum­mer house-clean­ing,” announc­ing its slush-pile sta­tus. Weeks does at least give the impres­sion that some­one, if not him, had read Vonnegut’s sub­mis­sions. The aspir­ing writer was 27 years old, strik­ing out “just a few years after sur­viv­ing the bomb­ing of Dres­den as a POW,” Let­ters of Note informs us, and still twen­ty years away from pub­lish­ing his ground­break­ing nov­el Slaugh­ter­house Five. Let­ters of Note also pro­vides us with the tran­script below for the bad­ly fad­ed type­script.

The Atlantic Month­ly

August 29, 1949

Dear Mr. Von­negut:

We have been car­ry­ing out our usu­al sum­mer house-clean­ing of the man­u­scripts on our anx­ious bench and in the file, and among them I find the three papers which you have shown me as sam­ples of your work. I am sin­cere­ly sor­ry that no one of them seems to us well adapt­ed to for our pur­pose. Both the account of the bomb­ing of Dres­den and your arti­cle, “What’s a Fair Price for Gold­en Eggs?” have drawn com­men­da­tion although nei­ther one is quite com­pelling enough for final accep­tance.

Our staff con­tin­ues ful­ly manned so I can­not hold out the hope of an edi­to­r­i­al assign­ment, but I shall be glad to know that you have found a promis­ing open­ing else­where.

Faith­ful­ly yours,

(Signed, ‘Edward Weeks’)

WarholRejection

Of course visu­al artists are not immune. Andy Warhol received the above rejec­tion let­ter from New York’s Muse­um of Mod­ern Art when he attempt­ed to donate a draw­ing in 1956. To its lat­er cha­grin, the muse­um wouldn’t let him give his work away:

Last week our Com­mit­tee on the Muse­um Col­lec­tions held its first meet­ing of the fall sea­son and had a chance to study your draw­ing enti­tled Shoe which you so gen­er­ous­ly offered as a gift to the Muse­um.

I regret that I must report to you that the Com­mit­tee decid­ed, after care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, that they ought not to accept it for our Col­lec­tion.

The Warhol rejec­tion cir­cu­lat­ed a few years ago after the MoMA tweet­ed Let­ters of Note’s post on it (read the full tran­script there). Its most galling fea­ture: a post­script that reads, with dis­mis­sive cour­tesy, “The draw­ing may be picked up from the muse­um at your con­ve­nience.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gertrude Stein Gets a Snarky Rejec­tion Let­ter from Pub­lish­er (1912)

No Women Need Apply: A Dis­heart­en­ing 1938 Rejec­tion Let­ter from Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion

New York­er Car­toon Edi­tor Bob Mankoff Reveals the Secret of a Suc­cess­ful New York­er Car­toon

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A Young Björk Deconstructs (Physically & Theoretically) a Television in a Delightful Retro Video

in Media, Music, Television | November 21st, 2013

Björk’s first inter­na­tion­al hit, “Human Behav­iour” (1993) received scant radio play in North Amer­i­ca. Rather, the Ice­landic singer’s fame only grew as a result of MTV’s heavy rota­tion of the sur­re­al­ist music video that accom­pa­nied the song, direct­ed by Acad­e­my Award win­ner Michel Gondry. Despite the debt of celebri­ty she owed to tele­vi­sion, Björk was not always a fan.

In the undat­ed video above, Björk expounds on her Christ­mas­time TV-watch­ing habits.  Imme­di­ate­ly, the video takes an odd—or, I sup­pose, char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly Björk-esque—turn when the young singer decides to take her TV apart:

But now I’m curi­ous. I’ve switched the TV off and now I want to see how it oper­ates. How it can make, put me into all those weird sit­u­a­tions. So… It’s about time.

The var­i­ous com­po­nents prove fas­ci­nat­ing, and Björk pro­ceeds to describe the television’s hard­ware in her whim­si­cal, oth­er­world­ly man­ner:

This is what it looks like. Look at this. This looks like a city. Like a lit­tle mod­el of a city. The hous­es, which are here, and streets. This is maybe an ele­va­tor to go up there. And here are all the wires. These wires, they real­ly take care of all the elec­trons when they come through there. They take care that they are pow­er­ful enough to get all the way through to here. I read that in a Dan­ish book. This morn­ing.

The most puz­zling part of the video comes when Björk men­tions that her cav­a­lier approach to tele­vi­sion is rel­a­tive­ly new. Until recent­ly, she had been guard­ed about her view­ing habits:

I remem­ber being very scared because an Ice­landic poet told me that not like in cin­e­mas, where the thing that throws the pic­ture from it just sends light on the screen, but this is dif­fer­ent. This is mil­lions and mil­lions of lit­tle screens that send light, some sort of elec­tric light, I’m not real­ly sure… Your head is very busy all the time to cal­cu­late and put it all togeth­er into one pic­ture. And then because you’re so busy doing that, you don’t watch very care­ful­ly what the pro­gram you are watch­ing is real­ly about. So you become hyp­no­tized.

Thanks to the wis­dom con­tained with­in an unnamed Dan­ish book, how­ev­er, Björk has grown more at ease with the poten­tial of television’s being used for mind con­trol and hyp­no­sis. At the end of the clip, she offers a final pearl of wis­dom:

You should­n’t let poets lie to you.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Björk and Sir David Atten­bor­ough Team Up in a New Doc­u­men­tary About Music and Tech­nol­o­gy

Ice­land in the Mid­night Sun

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

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Two Viral Videos Push Against Stereotypical Messages Girls Get From the Media (Mildly NSFW)

in Comedy, Creativity, Current Affairs, Television | November 21st, 2013

The first of two videos cir­cu­lat­ing on the inter­net, “Girls Who Read” by UK poet and “Rogue Teacher” Mark Grist (above) hits back at the lad cul­ture that objec­ti­fies women accord­ing to cer­tain “bits” named above in some mild­ly NSFW lan­guage. In his video per­for­mance piece above, Grist, asked which bits he prefers by a lad in a pub, and faced with a loom­ing cadre of both male and female peers putting on the pres­sure, answers halt­ing­ly, “I like a girl… who … reads.” Then, his con­fi­dence up, he elab­o­rates:

I like a girl who reads,
Who needs the writ­ten word
And who uses the added vocab­u­lary
She gleans from nov­els and poet­ry
To hold live­ly con­ver­sa­tion
In a range of social sit­u­a­tions

The ide­al girl close to Grist’s heart “ties back her hair as she’s read­ing Jane Eyre” and “feeds her addic­tion for fic­tion with unusu­al poems and plays.” In his infec­tious slam cadences, Grist’s impas­sioned paean to female read­ers offers a charm­ing alter­na­tive to the lad­mag gaze, though one might argue that he still does a lit­tle bit of pro­ject­ing his fan­tasies onto an unsus­pect­ing lone female at the bar (who turns out to be not so alone). Maybe “Girl Who Reads” is a trope, like “Man­ic Pix­ie Dream Girl,” an ide­al­iza­tion that says more about Grist’s desires than about any par­tic­u­lar, actu­al girl, but it’s still a refresh­ing chal­lenge to the leer­ing of his pub­mates, one that com­mu­ni­cates to girls that there are men out there, even in the pubs, who val­ue women for their minds.

The video above, for a new line of toys called GoldiBlox, designed by Stan­ford-edu­cat­ed engi­neer Deb­bie Ster­ling, upends anoth­er ado­les­cent male cul­tur­al touchstone—this time a by-now clas­sic Amer­i­can one—the Beast­ie Boys glee­ful­ly misog­y­nis­tic anthem “Girls.” While the orig­i­nal still like­ly scores many a frat par­ty, it now must com­pete with the rewrite per­formed by “Raven.” The re-appro­pri­at­ed “Girls” plays over video of a trio of young girls, bored to death with stereo­typ­i­cal pink tea sets and the like, who build a com­pli­cat­ed Rube Gold­berg machine from Goldiblox, which resem­ble plas­tic tin­ker toys. I fore­see snip­pets of the updat­ed lyrics (below) mak­ing their way onto play­grounds around the coun­try. Hear the orig­i­nal Beast­ie Boys song, with lyrics, below.

Girls.
You think you know what we want, girls.
Pink and pret­ty it’s girls.
Just like the 50’s it’s girls.

You like to buy us pink toys
and every­thing else is for boys
and you can always get us dolls
and we’ll grow up like them… false.

It’s time to change.
We deserve to see a range.
‘Cause all our toys look just the same
and we would like to use our brains.

We are all more than princess maids.

Girls to build the space­ship,
Girls to code the new app,
Girls to grow up know­ing
they can engi­neer that.



Girls.

That’s all we real­ly need is Girls.
To bring us up to speed it’s Girls.
Our oppor­tu­ni­ty is Girls.
Don’t under­es­ti­mate Girls.

As with all kids adver­tis­ing, this is aimed as much at parents—who remem­ber the Beast­ie Boys’ song—as their kids, who could­n’t pos­si­bly. And unlike Grist’s video, which only sells, per­haps, him­self, the Goldiblox video aims to get kids hooked on plas­tic toys as much as any of the ads for prod­ucts it dis­places. Nonethe­less, I’ll play it for my daugh­ter in a few years, because lines like “we are all more than princess maids” con­sti­tute the per­fect retort to the seem­ing­ly end­less cul­tur­al slot­ting of girls into ridicu­lous­ly sub­servient and fan­ta­sy roles.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Sci­ence: It’s a Girl Thing!” OMG, Seri­ous­ly?! The Botched Video by the EU

Christo­pher Hitchens Cre­ates a Read­ing List for Eight-Year-Old Girl

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Gives Teenage Girls Endear­ing Advice About Boys (And Much More)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The 10 Hidden Cuts in Rope (1948), Alfred Hitchcock’s Famous “One-Shot” Feature Film

in Film | November 21st, 2013

Among his many accom­plish­ments at the inter­sec­tion of show­man­ship and pure cin­e­ma, Alfred Hitch­cock man­aged, in 1948, to make a fea­ture film with­out any cuts — or rather, more impres­sive­ly, he made a fea­ture film peo­ple believed had no cuts. Though cinephiles will know sev­er­al fine exam­ples of no-cut or few-cut movies from recent years (I’ve enjoyed Mike Fig­gis’ four-screen Time Code since it came out in the nineties, and I often rec­om­mend Il-gon Song’s more recent but rar­er one-cut Magi­cians), they’ll also know that, due to phys­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions in the film tech­nol­o­gy of Hitch­cock­’s day, nobody — not even Hitch­cock — could pos­si­bly have made a film longer than ten min­utes out of a sin­gle, unbro­ken shot.

So how did Rope, one of Hitch­cock­’s less­er-cel­e­brat­ed but still thor­ough­ly fas­ci­nat­ing projects, con­vinc­ing­ly fake its own form? Edi­tor Vashi Nedo­man­sky shows us in the three-minute video above. “On fur­ther exam­i­na­tion,” Nedo­man­sky writes on his blog, “Hitchcock’s gem actu­al­ly con­tains ten edits. Five of them are hid­den as the cam­era lens is filled by fore­ground objects. The oth­er five edits are reg­u­lar hard cuts that not many peo­ple either real­ize or acknowl­edge.”

Nofilm­school offers a post that goes into greater depth on Rope and edit­ing: “Even though there is edit­ing, it’s often described as a film that plays out in real time. Why? Prob­a­bly because it’s such an immer­sive piece of film­mak­ing; the hid­den edits and use of hand­held cam­eras fol­low and track its char­ac­ters, allow­ing audi­ences to expe­ri­ence and react to each sit­u­a­tion at the same moment the actors do — right in the thick of the action.” You can find a more the­o­ret­i­cal take from Peter J. Del­lo­lio at Flick­head, who describes Rope as a pic­ture explor­ing “some of the fun­da­men­tal char­ac­ter­is­tics of the cin­e­mat­ic abstrac­tion of time and space by using the mobile cam­era as an agent that gives plas­tic real­i­ty to sub­jec­tive mate­r­i­al” whose “syn­the­sis of real time and filmic space forces the view­er to absorb nar­ra­tive infor­ma­tion on mul­ti­ple, often dis­taste­ful­ly iron­ic lev­els.” For a dif­fer­ent fram­ing, pre­sen­ta­tion, and analy­sis of Rope’s cuts, see also the short video essay “Skip­ping Rope.” Hitch­cock may not have had the abil­i­ty to real­ly make the movie in one shot, but he cer­tain­ly had the abil­i­ty to keep us all tak­ing about it these 65 years.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

21 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

Who Cre­at­ed the Famous Show­er Scene in Psy­cho? Alfred Hitch­cock or the Leg­endary Design­er Saul Bass?

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch Leonardo da Vinci’s Musical Invention, the Viola Organista, Being Played for the Very First Time

in History, Music | November 20th, 2013

Just yes­ter­day, we made ref­er­ence to Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s con­tri­bu­tion to ear­ly con­cepts of mechan­i­cal cal­cu­la­tion. But if that sub­set of his achieve­ments does­n’t inter­est you, may we sug­gest you look into his oth­er work in paint­ing, sculp­ture, archi­tec­ture, math­e­mat­ics, engi­neer­ing, anato­my, geol­o­gy, car­tog­ra­phy, botany, and let­ters? Then again, you might find this a par­tic­u­lar­ly oppor­tune time to learn more about Leonar­do da Vin­ci the musi­cian. As the arche­typ­al exam­ple of the poly­math­ic, intel­lec­tu­al­ly omniv­o­rous “Renais­sance man,” he not only attained mas­tery of a wide range of dis­ci­plines, but did his most impres­sive work in the spaces between them. Giv­en the volu­mi­nous­ness of his out­put (not to men­tion the tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tions of fif­teenth-cen­tu­ry Europe), many of his mul­ti­ple domain-span­ning ideas and inven­tions nev­er became a real­i­ty dur­ing his life­time. How­ev­er, just this year, 494 years after Leonar­do’s death, we now have the chance to see, and more impor­tant­ly hear, one of them: the vio­la organ­ista, an elab­o­rate musi­cal instru­ment that had pre­vi­ous­ly only exist­ed in his note­books.

We owe this thrill not just to Leonar­do him­self, who left behind detailed plans for the (to him, pure­ly the­o­ret­i­cal) con­struc­tion of such devices as this behind, but to a report­ed 5000 hours of phys­i­cal effort by Pol­ish con­cert pianist Sla­womir Zubrzy­c­ki, who actu­al­ly put the thing togeth­er. You can read more at the Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald, whose arti­cle (on “Leonar­do Da Vin­ci’s wacky piano”) quotes Zubrzy­c­ki: “This instru­ment has the char­ac­ter­is­tics of three we know: the harp­si­chord, the organ and the vio­la da gam­ba,” and play­ing it, which involves hit­ting keys con­nect­ed to “spin­ning wheels wrapped in horse-tail hair,” and turn­ing those wheels by pump­ing a ped­al below the key­board, pro­duces excit­ing unusu­al waves of cel­lo-like sounds. You can watch ten min­utes of Zubrzy­c­ki debut­ing the instru­ment at Krakow’s Acad­e­my of Music above. Depend­ing upon your incli­na­tion toward music, very old tech­nol­o­gy, or very old music tech­nol­o­gy, you may also want to glance at the relat­ed Metafil­ter debate about what place the vio­la organ­ista could have in music today.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Anatom­i­cal Draw­ings of Renais­sance Man, Leonar­do da Vin­ci

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry Of Avi­a­tion: From da Vinci’s Sketch­es to Apol­lo 11

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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