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The Hendrix of the Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci, pop star

His first gig at the Milan court was not to paint but to play his skull-shaped violin. A new project explores a lesser known side of Leonardo – his music

Just when you think you’ve got the measure of Leonardo da Vinci – painter, anatomist, pioneer of flight, animal-rights prophet – he turns out to have one more talent up his sleeve. On the 500th anniversary of his death on 2 May, art historian Martin Kemp has collaborated with early music singers I Fagiolini to create a tour and album centred on an aspect of Leonardo’s polymathy we can’t directly know – his musicianship.

Leonardo himself hinted why his talent as a musician would end up being the least-known of his abilities, point out Kemp and I Fagiolini’s director Robert Hollingworth, during a rehearsal at the Barbican. The trouble with music, he said in his notebooks, is that it is ephemeral – a fleeting beauty. Not even Leonardo dreamed recorded music could exist. He played a kind of fat violin called the lira da braccio, for which there were not even written scores. Playing it “was the Renaissance version of playing the blues”, says Hollingworth. You improvised on its deep acoustics while singing melancholy verses.

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from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2V1Q9PH
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