Zither

Zither comes from German Zither, which descends through Latin cithara from Greek kithara (a stringed instrument played with a plectrum). The word's journey from kithara to zither is a study in how the same root can name completely different instruments. The Greek kithara was a lyre. The Latin cithara could mean any stringed instrument. The German Zither named a flat, box-shaped instrument with strings stretched across a wooden body, played horizontally on a table or the player's lap.

The modern Alpine zither was developed in the early 19th century in Bavaria and Austria. It has melody strings over a fretted fingerboard and accompaniment strings that are plucked open. The instrument is played flat, with the melody hand pressing frets while the other hand strums. It became the iconic instrument of Alpine folk music — Bavarian beer gardens, Austrian Heurigen, Tyrolean dance halls.

The zither achieved sudden international fame through the 1949 film The Third Man. Anton Karas performed the entire soundtrack on a solo zither, including 'The Harry Lime Theme,' which became a global hit. Carol Reed, the director, heard Karas playing in a Viennese wine garden and hired him. The theme sold millions of copies. For a brief period, the zither was the most recognizable instrumental sound in the world.

The word zither is also used generically in musicology for any instrument with strings stretched across a resonating body (without a neck), making the piano technically a zither. This broad usage comes from the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system (1914), which categorized instruments by how their sound is produced. Under this system, the piano, the hammered dulcimer, and the koto are all zithers. The word expanded from a specific Alpine instrument to a universal category.