The Midway Plaisance

14 April 202616 April 2026 stringbedLeave a comment

This post bridges the favorite topics here of Irish traditional music (ITM) and the autoharp. Two links will be considered, both geographical, but of vastly different extents. The more compact of the two spans a part of South Chicago and is mapped in the banner image. It was regularly traversed by Francis O’Neill, whose seminal collections of Irish dance tunes are well known in ITM circles.

His work is perhaps less immediately familiar to autoharp folks but any who play such music are likely to have material from O’Neill’s The Dance Music of Ireland, published in 1907, somewhere in their repertoires. There is no basis for suggesting that he had a reciprocal interest in the autoharp. However, he was involved with the Chicago World’s Fair held in 1893 and would all but certainly have noted the display of autoharps there (detailed in an earlier post).

The present text is not intended to inflate the significance of that encounter. From the autoharp perspective, the aim is to whet further interest in O’Neill’s work. Where his monumental role is already recognized, a bit of biographical and contextual detail is added to its discussion.

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Musical Instruments

Fingerpick nostalgia

24 March 202620 May 2026 stringbedLeave a comment

This year will see the fifth anniversary of fretless zithers becoming a major focus of this blog. The upbeat was in March 2021, when I most recently took my trusty 12-bar Oscar Schmidt autoharp back into service after a period of inactivity. This was far from this first time that happened since 1952, when my mother bought it brand new to share with her five-year-old kid.

The reason for the most recent dusting-off was a rekindled interest in Irish traditional music (ITM) that has grown in intensity ever since. One of the thoughts at its outset was to become proficient on the tenor banjo; a mainstay in the performance of dance tunes. My maternal grandfather gave me a four-string banjo mandolin (described in a separate post) not long after the autoharp joined the family. I immediately turned my attention to it, but didn’t acquire any particular skill beyond playing chords, before moving on to its five-stringed cousin when I was eleven.

A lesson learned early in the ITM project was that my hands had aged enough in the meanwhile to protest at more than the briefest outing on either the tenor or five-string banjo. (The even wider neck of a guitar excluded it entirely as an alternative, but a more recent reacquaintance with a mandolin has raised hope that it may prove tractable.) Fortunately, there was no corresponding issue with the autoharp. When embarking on what appeared likely to become a protracted involvement, I replaced the serviceable but worn fingerpicks long since acquired primarily for bluegrass banjo, with a fresh set for the new initiative.

I noted that the once dominant brand of metal fingerpick, National, was no longer in production. However, the extensive array of comparable picks made by Dunlop included a model that seemed satisfactorily close to the earlier Nationals. It was (and remains) available in both brass and nickel silver, in six gauges from .013″ to .025″, making it ideal for zeroing in on a set personally calibrated to an autoharp. (The broader exercise included plastic picks but I ended up sticking with metal and am keeping the present discussion mainly to it.)

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Musical Instruments

Grilled autoharps

24 February 202614 March 2026 stringbedLeave a comment

A lot of material about Charles F. Zimmermann has appeared on this blog. The present post revisits familiar documents but addresses details in them that have not received much attention here or elsewhere. In introductory review, Zimmermann coined the term “autoharp” in an application for a US patent headed “Harp,” filed on 10 December 1881, and issued as US257808 on 9 May 1882.

In it he claims to “have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Harps.” The ensuing description provides information not just about the instrument’s structural details, but also the intended playing technique. Zimmermann explains all aspects of his invention by reference to a (pedal) harp, except for its size and shape which are compared to a “common zither.”

The patent makes four specific claims, all relating to damping bars “arranged transversely across the strings thereof, and provided with depending teeth or fingers designed and adapted to come in contact with and silence or ‘cut out’ certain strings.” They serve two musical functions. In one, “the different trigger-bars render those strings silent which do not belong to the responsive chord.” The number of such bars can vary but the second function is served by a single bar, “placed transversely across the middle of the strings of the harp…so adjusted that when moved its triggers touch them lightly at such point, thereby producing the falsetto or flageolet tone.”

The patent drawings show how each bar moves axially against a single spring, and one of its claims is for bars “resting at one end against springs.” However, the description notes that:

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Musical Instruments

Zither tablature in 890 and 1890

17 March 20252 March 2026 stringbedLeave a comment

The use of parallel lines to indicate pitch in written music can be traced back to the late-9th century. It developed from an older approach to the description of musical intervals and scales by reference to the strings on two instruments — a single-stringed monochord and a multi-stringed cithara. The latter provided the model for what would become the definitive attribute of staff notation.

The step from plucked string to drawn line is documented in two treatises. One was written ca. 890 by the French monk, Hucbald (b. ca. 840 – d. 930), who in it derived a lined system from a six-stringed instrument. The other is of less certain 9th-century date and unknown authorship. It shows a lined system derived in the same manner and adds a set of symbols called “daseia” to represent notes. (Early manuscript illustrations of both are shown below, as are daseia taken from a font packaged with current music notation software.)

Hucbald was once believed also to have been the anonymous author of the second volume and therefore the deviser of so-called daseian notation. However, none of its symbols appear anywhere in his named work. Both his and daseian notation employ an otherwise identical system of lines. His description of how it was derived from the strings on a cithara is more detailed than the one in the anonymous work, suggesting that lines and daseia appeared successively in the two treatises.

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Musical Instruments

There and back again

30 December 202426 December 2025 stringbedLeave a comment

When coming across new information of substantive relevance to a post that is already online, I usually edit that material into it without separate announcement. If its topic is explored further in a later post, retrospective attention is called there to the revision, with summary details and a link to the modified text. The present post does a bit of both and then proceeds into new territory. I’m bundling these tasks here because they are particularly interrelated and to wrap up loose ends as the blogging year draws to a close.

The preparation of the preceding post entailed a general search for zither-related patents issued to the German musical instrument manufacturer Peter Renk. Those relevant to that post are detailed in it. An additional two patents necessitated significant changes to another post that had been available for a longer while. It is headed The Keyboard Autoharp and Gusli, and has been reworked to reflect the new documents.

The initial version traced a path between a US patent issued in 1888 for a variant form of the autoharp with a piano-type keyboard, and a further variant of that design which became a mainstay of the traditional Russian orchestra early in the 20th century. It is also widely encountered there in solo use and a variety of smaller ensembles. The cited post illustrates that breadth with several video demonstrations, adding another here.

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Musical Instruments

Proximity and circumstance

3 December 20244 April 2026 stringbed1 Comment

One of the documents considered in the preceding post is a US trademark for the word Autoharp that Carl F. Zimmermann applied for in December 1892. This was just as he was finalizing the sale of his business with that instrument to Alfred Dolge. I posited that he might have done so as part of their transition agreement, perhaps in last-minute response to an imagined question asked by Dolge: “Are you telling me that you never trademarked the instrument at the heart of the operation I’m about to buy!?”

There was some urgency in wrapping up such details since the World’s Columbian Exposition (aka Chicago World’s Fair) was set to open on 5 May 1893. This was less than four months after Dolge formally incorporated the “C. F. Zimmermann Company of Dolgeville, New York” (28 January 1893). It was also long past the allocation of space to the US musical instrument industry in the exposition’s Liberal Arts Building.

The Official Guide treats the displayed musical instruments in a cursory manner but in-depth coverage is provided by the independently produced Musical Instruments at the World’s Columbian Exposition, edited by Frank D. Abbott and published in 1895. It includes a lengthy narrative about Dolge’s presence there, and the numerous awards that were given both directly to him and to other exhibitors whose products included the piano felt and soundboards for which he was renowned. He operated two booths, with the one emblazoned “Alfred Dolge & Son” befittingly grandiose.

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Musical Instruments

Harmony and disharmony

4 November 202428 January 2026 stringbed1 Comment

A recent post on this blog discussed how the accordion and concertina maker, Carl Friedrich Zimmermann, made his way in 1864 from the German town of Carlsfeld to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He did so to take over the operation of a music store from his brother, Charles Moritz Zimmermann. The post that followed it examined Carl’s activity there during the ensuing decades. The present one wraps this series up by considering events surrounding his retirement.

The 1870 United States Census records a household two doors away from that store, headed by Carl Zimmermann with his wife Sophia and ten children. His occupation was “Imp[orter of] Musical Instruments.” The 16-year-old Charles and the one year younger Alexander, both “Work in a Music Store.”

The 1880 US Census records Carl Zimmermann as a “Dealer in Musical Ins[truments]” and Charles as a “Clerk in a Store.” The family now resided above their music store at 238 North Second Street, seen in the following photograph.

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Musical Instruments

Inspirational events

16 October 20246 February 2026 stringbedLeave a comment

The International Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures was held in Philadelphia in 1876, celebrating the centennial anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence. It was a massive undertaking and the Main Hall alone had more floor space than any other building then in the world. The accompanying documentation was prodigious, ranging from formal reports and directories, to independently prepared narratives.

The host city made an extensive, if not to say disproportionate, contribution to the US utilization of that space. A particularly detailed description of the event, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Historical Register of the Centennial Exposition, 1876, (online here) says this about it:

A peculiar feature of this important portion of the Exhibition is the noticeable frequency with which one meets exhibits from Philadelphia houses…fully two-thirds of the best American exhibits are the result of the well-known energy and enterprise of Philadelphians…and whatever may explain the circumstance, there is no doubt that much energy is displayed.

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Musical Instruments

The Manufactory at #238 North Second Street

1 October 202419 November 2025 stringbedLeave a comment

An earlier post discussed an undated autobiography that Carl Friedrich (Charles Frederick) Zimmermann wrote after his emigration from Germany to the USA. Details indicate that he authored it during the 1870s and pinpoint his relocation to 1864. This date is corroborated by official documents, with 238 North Second Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as his initial base of operations. Contemporary descriptions of his activity there shed further light on the shift of his focus from accordions and concertinas to the autoharp. The autobiography says the following about that location.

I now heeded my brother’s call to America with my wife and six children, leaving two behind with my parents-in-law. A service maid in my 48th year, I took over my brother’s music store — in a sorry state at the time — while he left me four months after my arrival and traveled to Germany.

That music store can be traced back to the 1851 edition of McElroy’s Philadelphia City Directory, where it is listed as the firm of “SCHMIDT & ZIMMERMAN, impor[ters of] musical inst[ruments]” located at 408 North Second Street. The partners were Richard T. Schmidt and Charles Moritz Zimmermann, later to become known as piano and drum manufacturers respectively. Their alliance was apparently short lived, with each appearing at a different location in the following year’s edition of the same directory; Schmidt as a music teacher and Zimmermann operating a music store.

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Musical Instruments

Herbert John Haddan

3 September 202414 May 2025 stringbedLeave a comment

The post before last made side-by-side comparisons of patents for “zither-like” musical instruments issued in Europe and the USA during the 1880s, attempting to clarify the priority of a few key innovations. The present text extends that discussion into the following decade from a slightly different perspective. It is centered on the role played by an unsung participant whose name provides the title above.

Herbert John Haddan (1838–1911) was a well reputed British patent agent who served inventors in many fields. His involvement with musical instruments began no later than 1877, when he obtained a British patent on behalf of an American violin designer, doing so again in 1879 for one located in Germany. He went on to represent instrument makers on both sides of a growing transatlantic competition in the development of chord bar devices of the type now primarily associated with the autoharp. There were signals, throughout, of his having understood the musical instrument industry beyond the legalities of obtaining patents.

Before delving into specifics, a few general observations about the patenting process may be helpful. They are issued by national authorities and acquiring one in a given country confers no protection in any other. An inventor wanting international coverage needs a separate patent in each country where protection is sought. Legislation and procedures vary from country to country and time to time, as does the scope of a patent.

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