# The wonders of the German Concert Zither



## clavichorder

I have been in possession of one of these for a number of years but the bridge was warped, and now I am in the process of hopefully getting it fixed. I am informed that it is a student zither, so without the full range, but should be very high quality for learning on. I am going to begin with the Adam Darr method book, who was a composer and performer for zither and guitar from the 19th century. And also dink around on it when I have the facility with a few by ear arrangements.

I have discovered a small wealth of videos on youtube of zither players. Not as much as I would hope for, but still some very fine music out there amateur and professional quality. This excellent player even does some classical piano and guitar arrangements:

Chopin:




Scarlatti:




Spanish Romance(I love this one):





And he also does some repertoire that I think of as being traditional solo zither music. It is classical music essentially with the respective Chopins, Weisses, Scarlattis, Tarregas, Buxtehudes ect of the zither world(idiomatic writers for a given instrument), but I don't believe it is known outside certain circles in the teutonic world. The composers of these works hardly have their own wikipedia pages and if they do they are likely in german or they are noted for having done some other repertoire like guitar music. You could include Anton Karas in that number and his famous Harry Lime theme, but there is much more classic work than that dating from the mid 19th to early 20th century. Crossover with straight 19th century German, Austrian and Swiss folk. Landlers and such:
I'm not sure where this piece falls into that category, but this is beautiful

Romanze in A-Dur





Or the yet more traditional landler





And this fellow here has a totally different kind of zither which I have seen a few other people playing on youtube. It seems a more resonant modern design, but with the same range and tuning I think, maybe even more bass strings:
Abendstern(Wagner!)





And this charming young woman playing Schubert on a similar zither





Last, I found this beautiful anonymous old 18th century menuett:





P.S.

This music is very fun and makes me happy, traditional zither ensemble with schrammelguitar:





I have even heard transcriptions of Elizabethan virginal/lute and baroque lute music.


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