Soon! | May the Zithers Sing Merrily

The zither was once one of the most widespread and popular folk instruments in the musical life of traditional Hungarian communities. Thanks to the resurgent folk music movements and the organised folk music education efforts since the 1990s, the zither music is flourishing again. It is a popular choice for music lessons already from pre-school age, because it is easy to learn to play, and the accompaniment strings provide a simple backdrop to the melody line. The Museum of Ethnography’s collection of nearly 130 zithers comes from various regions of the country.

The zither became popular in Hungarian peasant culture from the 19^th century. Due to its simple construction, even skilled villagers were able to make it. It often served the accompanying music for house parties and community work occasions.

The cultural policy in the 1950s paid special attention to the cultivation of folk culture, which is why folk music performers and instrument makers were given a prominent role at that time. Local cultural managers established vocal and instrumental groups and workshops where the zither proved to be one of the most suitable instruments to provide musical accompaniment. From the 1990s, with the establishment of primary, secondary and higher arts education, the goal was no longer only to preserve local traditions, but also to disseminate them to a wider audience and make the most complete use of the processed material of Hungarian folk music. Each of the three periods required and used different types of musical instruments, repertoire, and teaching methods.

In Hungary, research into the history of musical instruments began relatively late. Initially, there was uncertainty regarding which discipline was competent to study musical instruments. Ethnographer Károly Viski (1883–1945) defined the study of folk music played on these instruments as the task of folklorists, while he referred the research on the construction and making of musical instruments to the domain of material ethnography. At that time, ethnographers regarded collected musical instruments as mere accessories of rural life. The melody-centric approach in instrumental folk music research did not explore the history and regional spread of the instruments, nor was any comparative object morphology research of public collections conducted. Addressing these gaps remains a task for the present. When presenting musical instruments, we consider their organological features, i.e. their characteristics as musical instruments, their construction, their tuning, and we also try to present the occasions on which they were played.