The most widely encountered system for classifying musical instruments started out as an introductory essay to a catalog of the instrument collections of the Royal Conservatory in Brussels, prepared by their curator Victor-Charles Mahillon and published in 1888. His work was expanded by Erich von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs in 1914 and remains in widespread use as the “Hornbostel-Sachs Classification.” A specialist group publishes occasional revisions to it. Here is the segment of the current hierarchy where zithers appear.
3 CHORDOPHONES One or more strings are stretched between fixed points
31 Simple chordophones or zithers The instrument consists solely of a string bearer, or of a string bearer with a resonator which is not integral and can be detached without destroying the sound-producing apparatus
314 Board zithers The string bearer is a board; the ground too, is to be counted as such
314.1 True board zithers The plane of the strings is parallel with that of the string bearer
314.12 With resonator
314.122 With resonator box (box zither) The resonator is made from slats. NB This is true of the early piano only; modern pianos have no bottom and are board zithers. Harpsichords and some clavichords are box zithers Qin, koto, zither, Hackbrett, pianoforte
Numerous authors have extended this informally, following their own conceptual and terminological preferences. Qualifiers such as “chord” and “fretless” are commonly employed, branching further into individually named mechanized forms. The autoharp fits neatly into this framework but its physical attributes don’t always provide a sufficient basis for differentiating subtypes. Such things as alternate placements of damping pads on otherwise identical instruments may also need consideration. A hypothetical addendum to Hornbostel-Sachs might be headed “Box zithers with variable damping mechanisms” with specific types of autoharps placed below it.
What has become the definitive autoharp configuration allocates a specified chord to an individual bar fitted with damping pads that mute all strings not belonging to that chord. However, there are also schemes which require the simultaneous action of more than one bar to produce a given chord, without any modification to the instrument beyond the arrangement of the pads. The “Prizim” and “Ultratonic” systems are perhaps the most familiar examples. Here is a performance on a 21-bar chromatic autoharp padded with an ultratonic variant.
Mahillon’s catalog is not the only document published in 1888 of relevance to the present discussion. In February of that year, the first of many patents was issued for what were alternatively labeled as autoharps or zithers, fitted with piano-type keys. Their lineage is discussed in detail in a previous post.
Such instruments normally have more or less complex mechanisms that connect each key in an octave segment of a piano keyboard to dampers resting against the corresponding strings. (A detail of an 1896 patent for an “Autoharp” serves as this post’s banner image.) The dampers are lifted when the keys are pressed, as on a piano. Playing a C major chord therefore requires the simultaneous action of the C, E, and G keys.
The musically relevant difference between this and the multi-bar chording systems just noted, is that the keyboard devices can produce any chord that can be managed by the five fingers of the hand operating it. The following video demonstrates this on a model widely encountered in Russia. It is commonly termed a keyboard gusli, half translating its native name.
Whatever it’s called, it is as much an autoharp as any of the other keyboard variants are. It might therefore seem purposeful to make a categorical distinction between keyboard and chord-bar autoharps. However, unless external appearance is all that counts, that dividing line is surprisingly blurry.
One alternative would be to differentiate by the effect of activating the mechanism; whether dampers are applied to the strings or lifted from them. These could be termed additive and subtractive damping systems and have the advantage of being based on a mechanical rather than optical attribute. But the boundary here is still diffuse, as illustrated by the two instruments described next.
A “Klaviatur-Zither” (keyboard zither) patented by Wilhelm Bestgen in Switzerland in 1892 (CH5809; also in Germany as DE75959) has 12 plain autoharp bars, each with damping pads arranged to isolate all instances of a named note rather than a complete chord. For example, pressing the C bar leaves all C strings free to vibrate but mutes the surrounding B♭, B♮, C♯, and D strings. The tandem action of three bars produces a major or minor chord.
This is no more distant from the single-chord-bar arrangement than is any other multi-bar system. The patent makes no reference to the autoharp. However, Bestgen had previously obtained a Swiss patent (CH121) for an overtly copycat seven-bar diatonic Pedal-Zither in 1889.
There is no mechanical difference between the action of these bars and the ones on his keyboard model. Several changes were made to the instrument’s appearance and the stringing is fully chromatic. The sole functional distinction otherwise, is the arrangement of the damping pads.
Muting two strings on either side of the ones left free to vibrate precludes the production of as basic a chord as a dominant seventh. As already noted, the subtractive damping devices considered thus far permit any chord sustained by an octave segment of a piano keyboard. The same facility is provided by an unfamiliar design of unknown date and provenance, brought to light in a query posed by the Scottish piano technician and collector Alasdair Mclean, in the Autumn 2023 issue of the Galpin Society Newsletter.
It has 36 strings and 36 bars with three rows of oblong buttons configured to resemble a three-octave piano keyboard with split white keys. This all but certainly indicates individually damped strings that are freed to vibrate by the action of the corresponding bars. Placing the black buttons away from the player has the instrument seated at its long side, in alignment with the drawings of keyboard autoharps that began to appear in 1888, as well as the keyboard gusli.
There doesn’t appear to be enough space for the mechanism to include a plucking or striking device nor is there reason to expect one. The strings are hitched to an intricate support attached to the outside of the case. This maximizes the portion of the stringbed that can be plucked by the player’s right hand.
Mclean has provided me with a few clarifying details. Each of the buttons is “the thickness and height of a standard piano sharp but a third of the length” and the casework would be “pretty impressive for an amateur” instrument maker. Its format and integral legs also resemble the keyboard gusli. It can therefore plausibly be approached as a bridge between the Western and Eastern European designs, at least in structural terms.
Pursuing that line of investigation from the geographical perspective brings us once more back to 1888, when the first of the “academic” Russian folk orchestras was founded. The keyboard gusli was developed for inclusion in it, where it appeared no later than 1905, affording a rather narrow window for the presumed cultural exchange.
As with all earlier small autoharps, the strings on the 36-bar instrument are plucked between its short side and the bar housing, with the bass strings extending to the player’s left. This changes on the keyboard gusli, where the mechanism is flush against the instrument’s left side and the bass strings extend to the player’s right. The notion of its migration is bolstered by a further resemblance in both basic appearance and finer detail, to the Baltic zithers that were also modernized and mechanized in the early-20th century.
Of them, the Finnish kantele appears to lie closest to this speculative trajectory. The directionality of its stringbed was also reversed when the instrument was mechanized; not by mirroring the structure of its body but by inverting its playing position. The emergence of the mature concert kantele from the centuries-older Baltic psalteries (discussed here) is demonstrated in the next video.
Its first segment, labeled “ancient times,” shows the instrument held with the short strings toward the player. The following one, “1700’s,” demonstrates chords played with a technique that I suspect may have inspired autoharp bars (explained here), using the left hand to damp strings that don’t belong to a chord, while strumming the open ones with the right hand. The mechanized concert instrument appears in the “1920’s” and it is here that the playing position rotates 180°.
The player appears equally comfortable with both orientations and the generally preferred position of the contemporary kantele is not invariable.
A piano-type keyboard more clearly dictates the playing position of any zither to which it is affixed, requiring the handedness of the player to be accommodated in the structure of the instrument, if at all. Notwithstanding the greater flexibility in their orientation, chord-bar autoharps are available in both right- and left-handed formats.
That instrument took a number of twists and turns as it went from being played atop a zither table, via the lap, into the arms of a standing player. I’ll take a closer look at this in a separate post. (There’s also more about the classification of unfamiliar types autoharps in another earlier post.) The present one will wrap up with a demonstration of how handedness and playing position map into the concerns of present-day autoharpers.