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.

Continue reading →

Musical Instruments

The autoharp takes wing

16 April 202419 November 2025 stringbed1 Comment

The preceding post traced the development of the colorfully named pig’s head psaltery from the 13th century through its mechanization near the end of the 19th century by the addition of damper bars. I promised to retell the same tale in a follow-up post — this one — focused entirely on its wing-shaped cousin. Beginning with a quick reminding look at a pig’s head psaltery, here is a typical representation in a sculpture on the 15th-century portal of the Saint Pierre Cathedral in Saintes, France.

This design appears to have been split down the middle in a comparable statuette on a late-14th-century gravesite monument in La Chaise-Dieu, France. The photo was taken at an angle from below and does not show the proportionality of the instrument’s sides as a frontal view would.

Continue reading →

Musical Instruments

A pig-headed approach to the autoharp

1 April 20246 March 2026 stringbedLeave a comment

The following image comes from a mid-15th-century panel painting attributed to the workshop of Jan van Eyck. I’m aware of the pitfalls of assessing pictorial representations of musical instruments and might question a few details of the lute seen here. The psaltery and harp appear to be quite credible.

Image: Copyright © Museo Nacional del Prado

The bass strings of the psaltery are placed closest to the body of the player, who holds a quill in each hand. The right one is positioned to move across the entire stringbed, while the left one is centered on the bass strings. This asymmetrical design is termed a “wing shape.”

Continue reading →

Musical Instruments

Zithers with chord bars and keyboards

20 February 20242 January 2026 stringbedLeave a comment

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.

Continue reading →

Musical Instruments

The keyboard autoharp and gusli

18 July 202319 February 2026 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 →

Musical Instruments

Zithers gain leverage

27 June 202314 May 2025 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 →