Nail violin

Nail violin (Fr.: violon de fer; Ger.: Nagelgeige; It.: violino di ferro), bowed friction idiophone invented by Johann Wilde of St. Petersburg ca. 1740, consisting of a circular, flat wooden resonator with a set of nails or iron pins driven into its sides. The nails were tuned by driving them more or less deeply into the wood (the shorter the nail, the higher its pitch). Originally the instr. had 12, 18, or 24 nails. It was held in the left hand by a handhole underneath and bowed with a violin…