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.