This is the last in a series of my “AMIS Trip Report,” where I wrote about some of the people and events of the 2024 Meeting of the American Musical Instrument Society and some of the instruments at the Phoenix Musical Instrument Museum, which hosted AMIS. You can start the series here if you missed it.

In the last post, I highlighted the MIM’s “Acoustic America” exhibit, and included a few extra tidbits about David Grisman, the collector (as opposed to player)!

This final post will be something very different. While wandering the vast exhibit halls of the MIM, something that hit me (rather pointedly, and not for the first time) was the content of the instrument labels. It isn’t just me; many of us in AMIS continue to lament the lack of cataloging and minimal (and sometimes arbitrary) signage at the MIM. (The admittedly valid excuse is how stretched thin they all are with other mandates.  And, honestly, who am I do judge, as my own Museum page isn’t any better and is still a quick “first draft.” Nevertheless, this article will definitely appear to fall under the category of “tough love”!)

My observations focused on my fields of expertise, one of which – harp guitars – I found especially interesting as I perused the MIM labels. Indeed, enough so that I thought it might be a beneficial exercise to examine each example – not just for the benefit of MIM staff, or my blog readers and visiting scholars, but for myself. I consider myself an expert, and yet much of this did not come easy, even for me! So, while I fear I may unavoidably embarrass some of the MIM curatorial staff in what follows, I challenge those who think they could do better.

The meaning of my curious title for this piece will be revealed the further we go as we consider: Are curators, scholars and writers (and this isn’t just about the MIM) “going too far” in embracing my “harp guitar” mantra? Have I sent the wrong message?!

So, let’s have some fun, perhaps help MIM along the way, and – on a more serious note – take a look at an increasingly-out-of-control “monster” of my own making!

First, a quick note regarding the wonderful FZ collection (above), instigated by the donation of my late friend Garry Harrison’s instruments. This was one of the earliest exhibit walls created at the MIM. Being a large “themed” area, it has a couple of larger signs…

… and this one is still there!  Do any of my fans recognize it? Yes, it’s the illustration from my A Christmas Collection booklet to accompany the song that utilizes my then six fretless zithers. Hey, it was kind of the staff to think of me (they knew I was the one who coined “Fretless Zithers,” after all, but this photo? Surely the public can only be confused by a fretted dulcimer and Gibson guitar in this image of “a selection of (fretless) zithers…”?  I think it’s high time to lose this one… (p.s.: you spelled my name wrong).

Now I’ll move on to the subject of this blog’s title: “Harp Guitars,” something I also know a bit about (along with some of their “relatives”). Here, once again, most of the applicable curators from past to present know me and my work on Harpguitars.net. But given their allotted task time, this can – and has – led to shortcuts that (like the FZ homage above) are more frustrating than complimentary. And some are just old errors.

This distinctive instrument is a harp-guitar…but not “our” harp guitar. It’s an Edward Light invention he named the “Harp-Guitar” (one of many synonyms I describe in my web thesis). It is not a “Lute guitar,” clearly a mistake when someone was looking these things up (and I think I know who…). Light and others did create other similar instruments with “lute” in the name, but not this one. This sign (that I noticed on my first MIM visit many years ago) has been moved intact. So, this first one should be changed to:

Harp-guitar

Oh, and another pet peeve I have is the repetitive (and dare I say useless) Sachs-Hornbostel System labeling. That’s the category in parentheses on the first line, so that we know that this instrument is a form of “plucked lute” in the grand chordophone scheme of things. After a few thousand “(plucked lute)s,” I think the strolling lay visitor gets it…if indeed they ever got it. (I’m sure it was explained somewhere on another sign, and once would have been enough.) For my money, I’d rather see the additional word count giving me some extra info about the unique object I’m looking at; I’m pretty sure I won’t be quizzed on which instruments on my class trip were “plucked lutes.” But that’s just me; not my call.

Enough of that (for now). I’m really here to help with our “at least one additional unstopped non-fretted string that is typically plucked” form of harp guitar. And how they should be labeled. And why. It’s gonna get intense, so fair warning: non-nerds, small children and the elderly – best leave the room.

Let’s start with the MIM’s small, dedicated harp guitar display in the USA/Canada Gallery. It’s an odd and random little space, but hey, great PR for Harpguitars.net.  It even includes many of my friends!

­That’s Muriel Anderson on screen with her Mike Doolin harp guitar (other friends or notables are featured in the video and main sign. Below the screen is a Gibson harp guitar…and labeled as such. (Hey, no “(plucked lute)”?!)  No muss, no fuss, almost impossible to screw up this placard.

BUT – here’s as good as time as any to bring up a key point in HG Organology:

Surprisingly few makers, inventors or players ever actually used the term “harp guitar.” The Gibson Company did. Ergo, in creating the label for this one particular instrument one cannot go wrong.

Similarly, the Dyer (technically, W. J. Dyer & Bro.) harp guitar I showed in my previous blog is a no-brainer. That’s exactly what the Dyer firm called their harp guitars (the name coming from original hollow-arm inventor Chris Knutsen).

So, the museum is perhaps fortunate in having those specific two American harp guitars, because not every American manufacturer used the term for their own marketed instruments. I haven’t come across an example of that at MIM yet but suspect I will someday. Meanwhile, there’s this:

MIM bought Peter Szego’s Scherr harp-guitar some time ago, and what better place to put it than in their brand-new Harp Guitar mini gallery! Except…where are the extra strings? Easy to explain on Harpguitars.net in the Organology/Nomenclature study and its appearance in my “Harp Guitars in Name Only” Gallery, but not so easy on a placard…

Actually, it would be easy to explain, especially in their new larger “Highlight” sign. So, not sure why they didn’t. I see that they did so in one of their book publications (“…not because it had extended strings, but because…”). In a second publication, they mention it having the only surviving original “coffin” case (note to staff: I have the same exact one; it’s now up in my barn attic). I’d say either a little more clarification or perhaps a better place for the Scherr might have been in a parlor vignette with an early American piano?

Moving to the re-vamped Guitar Rotunda that first greets visitors on the ground floor, we find a new harp guitar specimen from Poland.

Not sure where this choice came from, with the French spelling of guitar. And “Archi-guitare” would translate to “arch-guitar” (which the museum uses elsewhere, but really doesn’t apply here). Using “(harp guitar)” in place of the normal “(plucked lute)” business is an unusual, if interesting choice. I wouldn’t argue against it, but let’s consider this again, after examining this next one:

This Reisenger appears in the Austrian gallery within Europe. The reason they didn’t include it in a larger dedicated harp guitar display is because the instruments are all grouped by country, not by form, function, pedagogy or other history.

Here, rather than saving it for the parenthetical, MIM staff specifically labels it “Harp guitar” (and, yes, back to that “plucked lute”).

And now, in order to brainstorm alternative or potentially better names for this instrument, we have no choice but to get into vernacular and semantics, and a whole troublesome world of historical and modern nomenclature, along with language and translation. I’m not saying labeling this instrument, in this gallery, is necessarily wrong, I’m just suggesting that those responsible just make sure they’re fully informed…before some of my British and European colleagues come to visit!

Firstly: For those of you who might not know this, you will rarely find the term “harp guitar” appearing in any serious study of guitars in all of Europe or the British Isles. Indeed, my colleagues over there will go to almost comical lengths to avoid using the term, they are so afraid of it. The only possible reason they might is if they were including a reference to an American instrument such as the Dyer or Gibson which they were 100% certain was originally called a “harp guitar.” (These scholars used to make their own generalizations and vernacular, but more and more are playing it safe and just using “guitar with extra bass strings”… which is a mouthful and will not keep them out of trouble forever.)

So, concentrating now on the European Reisinger harp guitar above. Where and when was it made, and what did the builder call it? What did the players call it? Did it have a specific name? Did it have a vernacular name (or common term)?

I haven’t found provenance of what Ludwig Reisinger himself called his own “guitars with extra bass strings.” He likely followed the common practices of the time and place (late 19th century). One common practice (going back nearly to the beginnings of the 1800s) was to simply refer to them as guitars with the total number of strings referenced, as seen in the following early 1900s advertisement in Der Guitarre-Freund:

This firm made Gitarren that were “6, 10, 12 or 15 stringed (saitig).” The 6-string would be a standard single neck guitar; the others would add 4, 6 or 9 open bass strings.

Thus, the MIM’s instrument could simply be:

13-string guitar

However, by 1900 (and likely before), luthiers and musicians began calling them “bass-guitarren” (with differing counts of bass strings), as shown in these ads:

Müller’s “Bass-Guitarren” includes “6- bis 15saitig,” or 6-to15-stringed. (Except that the 6-string really couldn’t be a harp guitar, it would be the Terz or Prim model.)

Raab’s “Bassguitarren” feature 13 to 15 strings. (meaning, having 7 to 9 basses). The instrument on the right might represent one of his “10 saitige Terz-Sologuitarren.”

Of course, the German term Bassguitarre (one word or with a hyphen) translates directly to English as “bass guitar.” Should the MIM label this instrument a “Bass guitar”? Before you answer that, let me continue, as things get worse. Much worse.

By 1904, the German term “kontrabassguitarre” came into use (again, one can insert the hyphens or not in these run-on German words), with the first builder using it in a January 1905 Guitarre-Freund ad:

P.S.: Here’s a brand-new detail I’m excited to reveal about Michael Wach’s ad: Per the text, his “Kontra-Bassguitarre” utility design D.R.G.M. Nr, 203594 is for a harp guitar with a hollow arm! (“With this contrabass guitar, the rigid neck for the basses is formed as an acoustical chamber which is connected to the body through an opening; thereby effecting a significant amplification of the sound.“) While I have images of three Wach specimens in my files, I have yet to locate an image of this instrument. Though not a new idea, at this particular time it may have been another local re-introduction of the concept – one that prevented his fellow luthiers from creating their own hollow-arm instruments for at least three years, thanks to him snagging this design. (My Karl Müller – which is based almost exactly on Schenk’s 1840s instrument, which Wach might have copied as well – is dated 1908.)

Addendum: Researcher and organologist extraordinaire, Cary Karp, looked this up for us. Alas, no image, as he predicted. From Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau (Leipzig), 1 August 1903, vol. 23, no. 31, p. 863:

Utility Models: “Nr. 203594. Contrabass guitar, of which the rigid element between the peghead and main body is structured as an acoustic body with a soundboard that is continuous with the main body. Michael Wach, Munich, Bauerstr. 4, 22. 5. 03., W. 14622.”

But before I apply this wordy term to MIM’s Reisinger label (seriously, it translates into something akin to “below-low-guitar”), I have the unhappy news to report that we have still a third similar term: “kontraguitarre.” The earliest provenance of this term I’ve found is a 1921 Der Guitarre-Freund ad of Adolf Paulus. Sometime later, it eventually became standard vernacular and remains the preferred term today among many German speakers and guitarists.

And still we are not yet done.

The three terms above may have been used in serious guitar circles, but out in the real world (i.e.: that of folk and popular music and the general public) what were players calling this instrument?

That would be Schrammelguitarre. Meaning, a form of harp guitar commonly used in popular Schrammelmusik, created by a quartet in 1878 that included two brothers with the name of Schrammel. How popular? The music is still being played today, and (over there, for the 13-string Viennese harp guitar) the term remains in widespread use.

Above, the original Schrammel quartet in 1884, including guitarist Anton Strohmayer with his 13-string instrument nearly identical to the MIM Reisinger.

OK, folks! Given all that I have provided, how would we now recommend the MIM hypothetically label their Reisinger “harp guitar” in their Vienna gallery?

Firstly, should we, or should we not, use:

German terms? Specifically, before “guitarre,” these vernacular terms?

  • Bass-
  • Kontra-
  • Kontrabass-
  • Schrammel-

This would be up to MIM, and I have seen them use many instrument names in original languages. Thus, these options might appear as:

Bassguitarre (harp guitar)

Kontraguitarre (harp guitar)

Kontrabassguitarre (harp guitar)

Schrammelguitarre (harp guitar)

Or how about English translations of those terms?

This would also have to be up to MIM, and for different reasons. You should all know what I think of the first three German terms by this point, whether in German or English (especially in English!). If you’ve haven’t yet made the slog through my Organology web thesis, I’ll try to sum this up as simply and as straightforward as I can.

Like all harp guitars, German and Viennese examples are not pitch-transposed guitars, they are extended range guitars. Ergo, the first three historical (but arguably vernacular) German terms above are grammatical and musical errors. Even if they are historical terms that remain common today, they are misleading and wholly inaccurate. (Yes, though hard to believe, the entire guitar-making and playing community in all of the Austro-Germanic countries for a full two centuries simply screwed up.) Continuing (this comes from my 2012 AMIS paper):

Since the Fender bass guitar was introduced in 1951, that lap-held, transposed bass version of a standard guitar has become such a standard instrument that it (and an endless variety of similar designs and descendants) has necessarily commandeered the name, now and for all time. Whereas for the German harp guitars, it has always been an inaccurate and illogical term. The Grove Dictionary gives: “Contra: a prefix of which the musical meaning is ‘an octave below’.”  So, whereas the names contrabassoon and bass clarinet correctly signify an instrument with a lowered pitch range of the same general spread, contra- or bass-guitar does not.  The bass strings are in addition to the standard guitar range, not in place of.  To further complicate matters, the Havant Area Guitar Orchestra in the U.K. (as one example) is now utilizing a true “contra guitar” – a 6-string classical guitar tuned down a full octave. Even the late great Anthony Baines finally began moving away from the term in his 1992 Oxford Companion to Musical Instruments by listing the harp guitar form of “bass guitar” with the caveat heading “Older meaning” (while also finally adding a small entry for “Harp-guitar”). (Interestingly, I’ve found Baines’ semantics and organology – which he has seen the need to update over time – to mesh extremely closely with my own; encouraging, that!)

I long ago arrived at the above conclusions, and most scholars seem to accept the logic. Still, the MIM (again, I’m just using them as an example as I discuss their museum labeling) could certainly choose to use those foreign terms in my examples above. However, if they agree with my reasoning, and without a more logical term available (and with “harp guitar” still off the table for virtually all European scholars), the MIM remains in a tough spot!

Indeed, if they hoped to avoid ruffling any feathers, they’d have to label their Reisinger with my earlier suggested “13-string guitar” – either that, or:

“Guitar with Extra Bass Strings (harp guitar)”

The first term is logical, accurate, and a “cop out” by necessity; no other term that is both historical, musically logical and understandable to an educated layperson exists. The second term acknowledges modern organology (my own, and now commonly accepted in the States and much of the world) and is understood by an increasing number of laypeople.

And you’re all thinking… Ouch, all that just for a single instrument! And the MIM has a few more. Remember my blog title? That thought came abruptly to me as I located the two instruments I sold the MIM in 2020 from my own collection. Naturally, they were located in the country galleries matching where they were built, like the one below.

And how were they labeled?

“Harp guitar” (plucked lute)”

I couldn’t help but wonder – were they just labeled this way because these two instruments happened to “come from Gregg Miner, and he’s the harp guitar guy” and thus naturally had to be harp guitars? I couldn’t say, and it wasn’t the place or time to bring it up with the MIM staff. It would be a logical assumption, wouldn’t it? Possibly, which is why I came up with my particular blog title. Are people going too far?

So, now it’s time for the next important lesson to be learned from my Harpguitars.net Organology page – one that perhaps I haven’t found a way to fully convey to readers:

You know all those “guitars with extra bass strings” (nod to my British and Euro pals) and other “guitars with unfretted plucked strings in unlikely and unusual places” (sarcasm, but about the same as theirs) that I show throughout Harpguitars.net?  Are they harp guitars?  Yes, they are absolutely forms of harp guitars. But what so many seem to forget is that – at the same time – they are also forms of many other “types” of guitars. And by “types,” I mean “groups,” and by “groups” I mean subjects. As in the subject of an individual study. And the subject of Harpguitars.net is…harp guitars. Many of the applicable instruments on the site are technically “harp guitars” only within the context of my website. On another website (i.e.: in a different study), certain instruments might (and should) be called by other terms, including their original inventors’ or marketers’ name (if known), or called or classified under the guitar subject at hand, i.e.: Multistring, Heptachorde, Ten-string, Early Romantic, Spanish, what-have-you.

Bearing this now in mind, let’s look again at the “harp guitars” I sold the MIM.

This lovely instrument (why did I sell that?!) appears in the “Uruguay” display, which is where it was built in the late 1890s. Though “South American,” don’t think of it as a “folk guitar,” as it was actually part of the serious “classical” guitar music scene of Montevideo and (in nearby Argentina across the water) Buenos Aires during that period. Many virtuoso Spanish guitarists migrated there, along with their instruments. And at that time, a typical, if less common, form of Spanish guitar utilized by these virtuosos was the 11-string guitar. None other than Antonio de Torres built several, and these inspired many other builders and players. These players composed music incorporating the additional open bass strings exactly as their Viennese predecessors had on their Early Romantic “guitars with extra bass strings.” The Viennese guitarists simply called their instruments “8-string guitars” or 10-string guitars” or (you get the idea). So did the Spanish players. I’ve never come across any provenance of any of these “theorboed guitars” (hey, that’s actually another label option, but let’s not go there just yet!) being called anything other than “__-string guitars.”

So, like MIM’s 13-stringed Reisinger, I think that’s how I would label this one:

11-string guitar

I wouldn’t even add “(harp guitar)” after it. No more than putting “(multi-string guitar)” or “(extended range guitar)” or something else after it. Indeed, “harp guitar” may be among the least important “subject fields” this instrument falls under. Any reference to the floating basses could be done in additional text. As MIM typically doesn’t do that, then here’s a perfect opportunity where Gallery docents might point out to visitors (or teachers to their students) “Hey, did you notice that that Estevan is actually a form of harp guitar?”

Is any of this making sense to anybody? I know we’re in the weeds here, and this is the kind of nerdy stuff that just gets to be a pain for historians, scholars, curators and the like. Hey, someone’s got to do it!

What about this one?

Surely, this hollow arm instrument had to have been called a harp guitar, right?

Wrong. This particular instrument was influenced by the Candi brothers’ harp guitars, and also Genoa’s general “Taraffo craze” of the 1920s and ‘30s. Taraffo played a hollow arm Gazzo, and all of the Genovese builders – dozens of them – built both hollow armed and theorboed harp guitars by the hundreds.

So, what did Taraffo himself – or his fans or reviewers – call his fantastic hollow-arm instrument sitting on its pedestal?

Pasquale Taraffo, in 1936

Only a “special guitar” or “14-string(ed) guitar.” Some Italians who “invented” their own fancier harp guitars might have chosen “chitarpa,” which, while it could and should apply here, actually doesn’t.

So, once again, we seem to be stuck with:

14-string guitar” (harp guitar)

But we do have an out. Per my own footnotes: “Finally, in 1923, an Italian book author captions the hollow-arm Monzino as a Chitarra-Arpa (harp-guitar).” Cool! So, besides the occasional portmanteau term of “chitarpa,” we have – over in neighboring Milan by 1923 – the precise Italian version of “harp guitar.” I would love to know how and why that author made that decision! (Interestingly, just as in a couple of German texts, it only applies to the hollow arm form, not a theorboed or double-neck form.) Though I’ve found no provenance showing the term appearing in Genoa or elsewhere, it well may have been used there, as it showed up in Milan.

So, for this particular MIM instrument, I’d vote that we take a tiny liberty and consider:

Chitarra-Arpa (harp guitar)

With the parenthetical in this case having a double meaning; being a direct translation of the foreign term, and also that this instrument is a form of harp guitar. All clear? Man, I am so glad I don’t work for a museum but can just hang stuff willy-nilly on my wall!

(For completeness, I should mention some extremely rare precedents of using “harfenguitarre” for German instruments a hundred years ago, but again, only for single hollow arm forms; so, this would not apply historically to the MIM Reisinger for example.)

I showed this instrument in Part 3 (The Raymond Zeliker Collection), which brings us back to the term “arch.”

Here’s the label. This is indeed what we would today classify as a double-neck harp guitar, though it was never called that, nor even “arch-guitar.” I’ve seen a couple museums or books use “double arch-guitar”; in fact, in at least one, if not more, collections, it’s called a “double arch-cittern.” I put the guitar vs. cittern debate to rest way back; it is the instrument’s specific body shape – similar to some of the more unusual Renault’s arch-citterns (archicistre) – that confuses curators. Similarly, it is undoubtedly that same confusion (or at least, influence) that led to its “arch-guitar” terminology. In truth, the only name a similar single-neck French instrument of the period might have gone by is “guitare theorbée” (theorbed guitar). And yet, the inventor of this instrument named it none of these, calling it simply a “Guitarre a deux Manches” (two-necked guitar). Not for the first or last time, the added floating basses (twice!) are not important or unusual enough to even enter into the name.

However, I do think that here we should again take some liberties. I wouldn’t just use “Double-neck guitar,” I might try:

Gitare theorbée a deux Manches (double [or double-neck] harp guitar)

or possibly:

Double-neck theorboed guitar (double harp guitar)

Alrighty, then! For those brave souls still with me, I have to torture you one last time, and it’s another headspinner.

What is this instrument?

Well, as the sign says, it’s a:

The sign is partially correct. This one is tricky, and I see that every current Wikipedia entry is still wrong (gee, surprised?). There are actually two very different “Swedish lutes,” which at a glance appear almost identical. The one “developed in 18th-c. Stockholm” – the original – was similar to the French (Renault) archicistre mentioned above. Derived from the tuning of the guittar (the “English guitar,” tuned in open C), it was similarly tuned on the neck in open A, with descending basses. Note its configuration with eight fretted strings:

The second iteration, which I classified as the “False Swedish Lute.” was “invented” by one Sven Scholander circa 1880, when he salvaged an original instrument and converted it to what amounts to a Swedish-lute-shaped harp guitar with six strings on the neck and six basses, tuned and played like a standard guitar on the neck. That’s why they look almost exactly the same!

While Scholander popularized it (in fact, it became known as the “Scholander Lute”), few seem to have been made in Sweden. Instead, it was the dozens of German factories that churned them out as Nordische Lauten (Nordic lutes). That’s what the MIM has here, a typical Zimmermann model.

So, yes, it is a 1912 “Svenska lutan” (to this day, I’ve yet to find a catalog or advertisement with that term), or “Swedish lute,” but the text about the 18th century refers to the earlier instrument. Since theirs is the common German version, perhaps they might be better off leaving out the original invention’s date entirely and labeling this one:

Nordische Laute (Swedish lute)

But again, like the Reisenger above, any number of terms and labels are possible, each just more confusing than the last! (The German term basslaute refers to what is essentially exactly the same instrument but with a “teardrop” lute-shaped body, also seen on my “Hybrids” page.)

And I think that just about sums up this insanely complicated little semantic exercise. Maybe the MIM curators are right. Maybe we should just switch over to calling everything a harp guitar and be done with it!