Zither - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The zither is a musical string instrument

String instrument

A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...

, most commonly found in Slovenia

Slovenia

Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...

, Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, Hungary

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

citera, northwestern Croatia

Croatia

Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...

, the southern regions of Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, alpine Europe and East Asian cultures, including China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

. The term "citre" is also used more broadly, to describe the entire family of stringed instruments in which the strings do not extend beyond the sounding box, including the hammered dulcimer

Hammered dulcimer

The hammered dulcimer is a stringed musical instrument with the strings stretched over a trapezoidal sounding board. Typically, the hammered dulcimer is set on a stand, at an angle, before the musician, who holds small mallet hammers in each hand to strike the strings...

, psaltery

Psaltery

A psaltery is a stringed musical instrument of the harp or the zither family. The psaltery of Ancient Greece dates from at least 2800 BC, when it was a harp-like instrument...

, Appalachian dulcimer

Appalachian dulcimer

The Appalachian dulcimer is a fretted string instrument of the zither family, typically with three or four strings. It is native to the Appalachian region of the United States...

, guqin

Guqin

The guqin is the modern name for a plucked seven-string Chinese musical instrument of the zither family...

, guzheng

Guzheng

The guzheng or "gu zheng", also called zheng is a Chinese plucked zither. It has 18-23 or more strings and movable bridges....

(Chinese zither), koto

Koto (musical instrument)

The koto is a traditional Japanese stringed musical instrument, similar to the Chinese guzheng, the Mongolian yatga, the Korean gayageum and the Vietnamese đàn tranh. The koto is the national instrument of Japan. Koto are about length, and made from kiri wood...

, gusli, kantele

Kantele

A kantele or kannel is a traditional plucked string instrument of the zither family native to Finland, Estonia, and Karelia. It is related to the Russian gusli, the Latvian kokle and the Lithuanian kanklės. Together these instruments make up the family known as Baltic psalteries...

, gayageum

Gayageum

The gayageum or kayagum is a traditional Korean zither-like string instrument, with 12 strings, although more recently variants have been constructed with 21 or other numbers of strings. It is probably the best known traditional Korean musical instrument...

, đàn tranh, kanun

Kanun (Instrument)

The Qanun is a string instrument found in the 10th century in Farab in Turkestan...

, autoharp

Autoharp

The autoharp is a musical string instrument having a series of chord bars attached to dampers, which, when depressed, mute all of the strings other than those that form the desired chord. Despite its name, the autoharp is not a harp at all, but a chorded zither. -History:There is debate over the...

, santoor

Santoor

The santoor is an ancient stringed musical instrument, native to Kashmir and Iran. It is a trapezoid-shaped hammered dulcimer often made of walnut, with seventy two strings. The special-shaped mallets are lightweight and are held between the index and middle fingers...

, yangqin

Yangqin

The trapezoidal yangqin is a Chinese hammered dulcimer, originally from Middle East and Persia . It used to be written with the characters 洋琴 , but over time the first character changed to 揚 , which means "acclaimed". It is also spelled yang quin or yang ch'in...

, piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

, harpsichord

Harpsichord

A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...

, santur

Santur

The santur is a Persian hammered dulcimerIt is a trapezoid-shaped box often made of walnut or different exotic woods. The Persian classical santur has 72 strings. The name santur was first referenced in ancient Persian poetry...

, swarmandal, and others.
Modern electric zithers exist, as well as a wide variation of experimental zithers like the Kitaras of Harry Partch

Harry Partch

Harry Partch was an American composer and instrument creator. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonal scales, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation.-Early...

, the Shruti Stick and the Moodswinger

Moodswinger

The Moodswinger is a twelve string electric zither with an additional third bridge designed by Yuri Landman. The rod which functions as the third bridge divides the strings into two sections to cause an overtone multiphonic sound...

. It is played by strumming or plucking the strings like a guitar.

Etymology and instrument family

The word "citara" is derived from the Greek word kithara

Kithara

The kithara or cithara was an ancient Greek musical instrument in the lyre or lyra family. In modern Greek the word kithara has come to mean "guitar" ....

, an instrument from classical times used in Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

and later throughout the Roman Empire

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

and in the Arab world (Arabic قيثارة); the word "guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

" derives from "kithara" as well.

History and development

While the term zither is mentioned in Daniel

Daniel

Daniel is the protagonist in the Book of Daniel of the Hebrew Bible. In the narrative, when Daniel was a young man, he was taken into Babylonian captivity where he was educated in Chaldean thought. However, he never converted to Neo-Babylonian ways...

during the Jewish exile of 606 BC, the earliest known instrument of the zither family is a Chinese guqin

Guqin

The guqin is the modern name for a plucked seven-string Chinese musical instrument of the zither family...

[a fretless instrument], found in the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng

Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng

The Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng is an important archaeological site in Suizhou, Hubei, China, dated sometime after 433 BCE. The tomb contained the remains of Marquis Yi of Zeng...

dating from 433 BC

433 BC

Year 433 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Tribunate of Vibulanus, Fidenas and Flaccinator...

, featuring tuning pegs, a bridge and goose-like feet. In modern entertainment, the zither is perhaps most famous for its role in the soundtrack

Soundtrack

A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...

, especially in the opening scene of the classic noir

Film noir

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...

film The Third Man
The Third Man
The Third Man is a 1949 British film noir, directed by Carol Reed and starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, and Trevor Howard. Many critics rank it as a masterpiece, particularly remembered for its atmospheric cinematography, performances, and unique musical score...

. The music for the film was played by Anton Karas

Anton Karas

Anton Karas was a Viennese zither player, best known for his soundtrack to Carol Reed's The Third Man.-Early life:...

. It is also the preferred music of Mr. Bevis, a Twilight Zone character in 1960.

The instrument has a prominent solo in one of Johann Strauss II

Johann Strauss II

Johann Strauss II , also known as Johann Baptist Strauss or Johann Strauss, Jr., the Younger, or the Son , was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas...

's most famous waltzes, "Tales from the Vienna Woods" (sometimes played on a mandolin, when a zither is not available). It is also used by multi-instrumentalist Laraaji

Laraaji

Laraaji is an American musician. Born Edward Larry Gordon in Philadelphia, he studied violin, piano, trombone and voice in his early years in New Jersey. He attended Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, D.C. on a scholarship to study composition and piano...

on the third release of Brian Eno

Brian Eno

Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...

's ambient music

Ambient music

Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...

series, Ambient 3: Day of Radiance
Day of Radiance
Ambient 3: Day of Radiance is an album by the American ambient musician Laraaji which was produced by Brian Eno.-Overview:...

. In more popular music, Australian-born singer Shirley Abicair

Shirley Abicair

Shirley Abicair is an Australian-born singer, musician, TV personality, actress and author.-Early life:Shirley Abicair was born in Melbourne, Australia. Some sources show her year of birth as 1935, but a contemporary account shows she was 23 or 24 on arrival in England and, as she had completed...

popularised the zither when she used it widely as accompaniment in her popular TV shows, live performances and recordings in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. More recently, Jerusalem-based multi-instrumentalist Bradley Fish

Bradley Fish

Bradley Fish is an American born musician based in Israel. He relocated to Israel in 2004, first living in Tel Aviv, and finally settling in Jerusalem.He holds a B.A...

has used zithers in a multitude of styles on the soundtracks of various Sony Digital Pictures films. In Slovenia

Slovenia

, at the end of the 19th century they were used in small towns or villages and for concerts.

Like many other stringed instruments, acoustic and electric

Electric instrument

An electric musical instrument is one in which the use of electric devices determines or affects the sound produced by an instrument. It is also known as an amplified musical instrument due to the common utilization of an electronic instrument amplifier to project the intended sound as determined...

forms exist; in the acoustic version, the strings are stretched across the length of the soundbox, and neither version has a neck. They can be divided into two classes: fret
Fret
A fret is a raised portion on the neck of a stringed instrument, that extends generally across the full width of the neck. On most modern western instruments, frets are metal strips inserted into the fingerboard...

ted and fretless. A person who plays the zither is called a zitherist.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.