The Viola d'Amore: An Instrument Between Worlds

An Exploration of Cultural Exchange, Musical Innovation, and the Instrument That Defied Extinction

Some insomniac Baroque courtier grafted sympathetic strings onto a viol, carved a leering Cupid on the scroll, and called it the viola of love – then watched it seduce three continents, spawn a dozen offspring from Istanbul to Oslo, survive its own extinction, and utterly confound every scholar who tried to pin down where it actually came from.