NAIL

See also:

• VIOLIN

VIOLIN (Ger..Nagelgeige, Nagelharmonica)  , a musical curiosity invented by Johann Wilde, a musician in the imperial orchestra at St Petersburg . The nail violin or harmonica consists of a wooden soundboard about 11 ft. long and 1 ft. wide bent into a semicircle . In this soundboard are fixed a number of iron or brass nails of different lengths, tuned to give a chromatic scale . Sound is produced by friction with a strong bow, strung with black horsehair . An improved instrument, now in the collection of the Hochschule in Berlin, has two half-moon sound-chests of different sizes, one on the top of the other, forming terraces . In the rounded wall of the upper sound-chest are two rows of iron staples, the upper giving the diatonic scale, and the lower the intermediate chromatic semitones . History records the name of a single virtuoso on this instrument, which has a sweet bell-like tone but limited technical possibilities; he was a Bohemian musician called Senal, who travelled all over Germany with his instrument about 178o-1790 . (K .