The keyboard autoharp and gusli
Musical Instruments

The keyboard autoharp and gusli

stringbedLeave a comment

Two recent posts discuss a manual technique for blocking chords on a zither with the fingers of one hand while plucking and strumming the strings with the other. This predates the use of mechanical chording devices on such instruments and can plausibly have inspired their development. I didn’t initially realize how vital that technique still is, or its geographic range, and have reworked both posts.

Rather than suggesting the reader look at them now, since the same technique figures in the present text, I’ll segue into its discussion with a demonstration on a gusli. This term designates a group of Slavic zithers of differing designs, commonly labeled by their shape.

Continue reading “The keyboard autoharp and gusli” →
Zithers gain leverage
Musical Instruments

Zithers gain leverage

stringbedLeave a comment

Toward the end of the 19th century mechanical devices began to proliferate on zithers. Most of them were short lived, if marketed at all, but a few came into persistent use. One of their purposes was to enable a sequence of strings tuned diatonically in a given key to be shifted into others. Although this can obviously be effected simply by retuning the strings, for example, altering a G major scale to D major by raising all C strings to C♯, rapid changes require a more nimble auxiliary device.

Corresponding mechanisms were applied to chordal string arrangements, altering a block of strings from one type of chord to another. This was illustrated in the preceding post with a Swedish harp zither patented in 1886 by Adolf Larsson, equipped with a mechanism for shifting each supported major chord to the parallel minor or a seventh. This post’s banner image comes from a German patent (no. 266371) for an improvement on that device, issued to Larsson in 1913. A more recent two-position design is demonstrated here.

Continue reading “Zithers gain leverage” →
Chord Zither Competition
Musical Instruments

Chord Zither Competition

stringbedLeave a comment

The English term “chord zither” is a general designation for a zither with a string arrangement that permits the easy production of chords. Instruments doing this with a mechanical device are often categorized by the type of device and named individually, typically as labeled in a patent. The “autoharp” is a well-known example. It is also referred to as such in German-language discourse. However, in Germany itself the instrument was initially called an Akkordzither — chord zither.

That name came to be applied more specifically to the “Guitar Zither” for which Frederick Menzenhauer was issued US Patent no. 520651 on 29 May 1894, from an application filed on 20 April 1893. This was nearly a decade after the emergence of the autoharp. In addition to his headquarters in the US, he maintained a business presence in Germany, marketing the new instrument there from the outset as an “amerikanische Guitarenzither.”

Continue reading “Chord Zither Competition” →
Scottish crochet in 1567
Looped Fabric

Scottish crochet in 1567

stringbed9 Comments

The word “crochet” designates both a tool with a hooked tip and a family of looped structures made with that tool. It additionally names the craft of producing fabric consisting of those structures, the fabric itself, and the objects into which it is worked. Each sense of the term has its own history and its appearance in an older text does not in itself indicate either a technique or a craft, even if the topic clearly relates to fabric production. Care is therefore needed to avoid conflating usage at one time and place with that of another.

The modern form of the craft can be traced back to the early 1800s and is commonly referred to simply as crochet. It didn’t initially span the full range of structural detail and techniques that were to develop (with a few also dropped along the way) but the aggregate has borne the name in English-language publication since the late 1830s. Nonetheless, its most basic structures — chains and the slip stitch — are verifiably older. Their position on the timeline of hook-based loopcraft has been indicated in various ways.

Continue reading “Scottish crochet in 1567” →
The Baltic psaltery and the autoharp
Musical Instruments

The Baltic psaltery and the autoharp

stringbed2 Comments

A previous post announced the publication of my article in the The Galpin Society Journal (vol. 76, 2023), titled “Northern European Contributions to the Development of the Autoharp” (offprint available here). I’ve since begun taking a close look at Eastern European participation in the same process. Distinct forms of autoharps found there are described in a subsequent post (linked to at the end of this text) and the present one sets the stage for it.

The starting point for the journal article is the wave of activity that began in German-speaking Europe in the 1870s with the intention of rendering the concert zither more amenable to use by players with little or no musical experience. It does not discuss earlier types of zithers or playing techniques that might have inspired those innovations. However, the principle of producing a chord on a zither by using the fingers of one hand to damp strings that do not belong to that chord, while strumming the open strings with the other, predates any effort toward its mechanization by far.

Continue reading “The Baltic psaltery and the autoharp” →
New article on the history of the slip stitch
Looped Fabric

New article on the history of the slip stitch

stringbed3 Comments

I am pleased to announce the publication of the article “Three objects catalogued as vantsöm in the collections of the Museum der Kulturen in Basel, Switzerland,” in the Archaeological Textiles Review No. 64 (2022).

It was coauthored with my friend Anne Marie Decker after a joint visit to the museum to examine the described material. Anne has made a corresponding announcement of the publication on her own blog, Nalbound. The complete ATR volume in which the article appears is freely available for downloading here, and this blog’s document repository includes an offprint. Here is the abstract:

The looped structure termed a slip stitch in the craft glossary of crochet can be produced both with a hook and an eyed needle. These implements are not equally amenable to working that structure into complex constructs such as the toe and heel of a sock. This article describes the examination of three objects that have been misidentified as nalbinding. Two of them are certain to have been crocheted and the third is highly likely also to represent that technique. The provenance of the objects is recorded as “Coptic Egyptian” on anecdotal evidence and without ascription of specific dates. If scientific dating were to establish that any of them approaches even the youngest age this might imply, the accepted date for the advent of crochet would require major revision.

Fifes and pastoral pipes in 1862
Musical Instruments

Fifes and pastoral pipes in 1862

stringbedLeave a comment

An earlier post examined evidence of the fife and flageolet interchangeably occupying the same niche in the accompaniment of dance in late-16th-century France. The fife was otherwise more clearly associated with military music, leading to a question about whether it had a more prominent role in civilian contexts than is generally recognized. Evidence of that being the case toward the end of the 18th century is provided by published compilations of Irish and Scottish dance tunes that explicitly list the fife as one of the instruments to which they are suited.

An etching from the mid-19th century presented below illustrates a fife in a manner that bolsters the notion of it having filled the musical role now commonly played by the tin whistle. (The flute is named as a separate instrument in the referenced compilations.) Of perhaps greater interest, it also depicts bagpipes of a type that is widely believed to have fallen out of use before the artist was even born.

Continue reading “Fifes and pastoral pipes in 1862” →
The Autoharp in Irish Traditional Music
Musical Instruments

The Autoharp in Irish Traditional Music

stringbed2 Comments

My interests in the autoharp and Irish traditional music (ITM) should be apparent from the topics of the most recent dozen or so posts on this blog. I’ve approached them separately as a musicologist specializing in the history of musical instruments. This post marks a shift toward their intersection in performance from the perspective of a musician whose journey started on the autoharp in 1952 and found its way into Celtic music a decade later via the Highland bagpipes. I’ve since become comfortably conversant with the Irish idiom on the tin whistle and would like to be able to say the same about the autoharp.

Irish dance tunes and airs figure prominently in its repertoire, not least in the US (where a fair number of those tunes originated) but the autoharp does not have an established position among the instruments normally associated with ITM in its home country. The list of those that are has, however, been less static than might be imagined. Some current fixtures became so relatively recently and others have relinquished their positions.

Continue reading “The Autoharp in Irish Traditional Music” →
De Good Autoharp
Musical Instruments

De Good Autoharp

stringbedLeave a comment

I’ve taken the summer off from blogging, tending instead to academic commitments and catching up on overdue reading and research. One of the areas I’ve been drawn into is the use of numeric, mnemonic, and letter-based alternatives to staff notation in the teaching of music. This has been a contentious topic in writing on the theory of Western music ever since the emergence of staff notation many centuries ago. The initial primary concern was how best to help unskilled singers gauge the size of intervals in vocal performance. In the late-18th century interest was additionally turned toward the desirability of music being printable using systems that “bring all its characters within the compass of a common fount of printing-types.”

The design of musical instruments expressly intended to bolster the pedagogical process became a focus of innovative activity that can be traced back at least to 1830. This was targeted both to use in schools and supporting members of church congregations in psalmody. Charles Zimmermann developed his autoharp with tutorial intent, incorporating a system for numbering the strings and the corresponding steps of a scale that could be indicated in simplified printed music. He also devised lesser known schemes for the similar notation of music for the button accordion and labeling the piano keyboard.

Continue reading “De Good Autoharp” →
New article on the history of the autoharp
Musical Instruments

New article on the history of the autoharp

stringbedLeave a comment

NOTE: The initial version of this post appeared before a publication date had been set. It has been revised to reflect the actual release.

I am pleased to announce that my article “Northern European Contributions to the Development of the Autoharp” has been published in the The Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 76 (2023). As noted in an earlier post, that is where my first research article appeared fully fifty years ago and I contributed to the journal regularly for a long while thereafter. Readers of this blog who are interested in the history of musical instruments but are unfamiliar with that publication will find it worthwhile to visit the website of The Galpin Society.

Here is the abstract of the article:

Continue reading “New article on the history of the autoharp” →