Matters of course

5 September 202314 May 2025 Cary KarpLeave a comment

This blog’s icon is a trademark of the Swedish musical instrument maker John Bertels (1861–1928), who placed it on the autoharps he began producing no later than 1891. His catalog included five models of the “Swedish Original Grand Zither” (Svenska Original Flygelcittra).

The Swedish Original Grand Zither should not be confused with German and American bar- or chord zithers, autoharps, “Preciosa”, “Erato”, “Lipsia”, and others, which are twice as expensive and by far not as easy to learn, practical, and well made.

The first three models closely resembled the named competition but the top two were Bertels’s own design. The exceptionally large Model 5 is the central element of the graphic device.

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Musical Instruments

Zithers gain leverage

27 June 202314 May 2025 Cary KarpLeave 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.

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Musical Instruments

Chord Zither Competition

12 June 202328 March 2026 Cary KarpLeave a comment

The term “chord zither” is a literal English translation of the German Akkordzither. Both are used in their respective languages as a general designation for zithers designed to permit the easy production of chords. Instruments doing this with a mechanical device or distinctive arrangement of the strings are often categorized thereby 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 but was initially simply an Akkordzither. Such ambiguity led to the coinage of the generic term griffbrettslose zithern — literally “zithers without fingerboards” — of which the autoharp is one of many types. In German, a griffbrett can either be fretted, as on a guitar, or fretless as on a violin. In English, the former is a “fretboard.” After extensive discussion (detailed here) the generic heading in English settled on “fretless zithers” in analytical contexts.

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Musical Instruments

Passing the bar exam

1 April 202214 May 2025 Cary Karp2 Comments

This post takes another look at the often blurry lines separating what are regarded as categorically distinct types of chord zithers. The focus this time is on variant forms of the autoharp that branched off before it had fully acquired its current identity. The baseline is an unmechanized fretless zither, tuned to a continuous scale that can be anything from single-key diatonic to fully chromatic.

It becomes an autoharp by the attachment of a battery of movable bars with damping pads — but there’s more to it. Adding that the pads on a given bar have to be arranged to mute the strings that don’t belong to a specified chord still doesn’t cover everything. The lock bars now commonplace on two- and three-key diatonic autoharps mute strings that don’t belong to a specified scale, rather than chord. Systems that produce chords by pressing two bars simultaneously entail further variation, so it is also necessary to distinguish between one type of bar and another.

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Musical Instruments

Zither accordions

23 February 20224 March 2026 Cary KarpLeave a comment

For decades, my day job gave regular need for bridging the gaps between the academically derived terminologies used for the labeling and classification of musical instruments in museum collections, the craft-oriented vocabularies of musical instrument makers, and the freer glossary used by musicians. I was deeply embroiled in what remains lively controversy about classification systems and am finding it increasingly difficult to steer clear of that topic on this blog.

At the moment, though, it seems to be something of a “Patent of the Month Club.” The nomenclature applied to the description of musical instruments in the reported documents varies widely and wildly, and is often severely at odds with that accepted in explicitly music-oriented contexts. Dealing with this is keeping the terminologist in me happily occupied. The present installment also provides a springboard into the discussion of tuning and tuning systems, which is another topic that I’ve been saying less about than I ultimately intend to.

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Musical Instruments

Patent misrepresentation of patents

19 January 202212 August 2026 Cary KarpLeave a comment

The history of fretless zithers is replete with inventions intended to ease the production of chords, first patented in one country and then claimed by someone else shortly thereafter, in a patent issued in another country. When the dates are close enough, it can be difficult to determine who should be credited with the actual innovation. Similarities do sometimes appear to be coincidental but plagiarism was common enough.

The assessment of such situations can be made more difficult by the widespread practice of marking an instrument with the date and number of the first patent issued for it, even if the model at hand incorporates details that do not figure in that patent. One frequently cited example is the way Charles F. Zimmermann applied the number and date of a well-known patent US257808 issued to him in the United States on 9 May 1882.

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Musical Instruments

Fretless zithers with frets

5 January 202228 February 2026 Cary KarpLeave a comment

The following image is the banner of a full-page advertisement placed in the 1 May 1891 issue of the German trade periodical Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau (Journal for Instrument Making) by the firm of zither makers Müller & Thierfeld.

Chord-Zither
with practical tuning device
Legally protected.

The tuning device is a small fretboard placed under one string enabling the others to be tuned to it.

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Musical Instruments

Guitar-zithers and barless autoharps

22 December 202119 November 2025 Cary Karp2 Comments

On 20 April 1893, Fredrick Menzenhauer, filed a US patent application for a “Guitar-Zither,” issued as US520651 on 29 May 1894. Its illustrations come very close to the form of fretless zither commonly termed a “chord zither.” The only differences are the tuning device in the middle of the soundboard underneath the first melody string, and the separation between the bass string and the other strings in each of the chords (which are also recessed into the lower bridge).

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