The history of Müller autoharps

No update on my autoharp this time, because things have been quite hectic lately. Therefore, I thought I'd write something on Müller autoharps, because I find the history of musical instruments just as fascinating as an autoharp pin (so.. that means very fascinating, FYI. I am easily entertained).

So, about Müller. I had never heard of it before I bought my autoharp. Well, maybe that's not completely fair because I only knew two autoharp manufacturers: Oscar Schmidt, because it's super well-known, and Hudson, which is the manufacturer of my first autoharp. So, it's not so surprisinig that I had never heard of Müller. However, to my surprise, when I googled it, I found out that not very many people had..

'Müller' is of course a very generic German name, but even when I added search words like 'autoharp' or 'chorded zither' or the German term 'akkordzither', only some pieces for auction came up, no information about the company or the history of it, whatsoever.

Advertisement for Müller chord zithers

Well, if there's something that makes my heart beat faster, it is a good ol' mystery! So I started to search in more detail, for any information about the factory I could find. Then I hit the jackpot. I found a blog, written by an American autoharp luthier who had restored exactly the same model: a Müller Erato autoharp. There was little information about how the project was going and whether or not he finished it, so I e-mailed him about it. He e-mailed me back with this gold mine of information: his repair log! Not only did he describe exactly which steps he undertook to get it working again, but he speaks about Müller in his introduction. The log was very useful for my plans, but also for my research on Müller. So what I will tell you next, I get directly from his log, but also from these German websites (1, 2) which were very helpful.

Another Müller model: the Erato-Harfe

The autoharp is a very genre-bound instrument: you will almost always find it in American country music. The inventor and first American manufacturer of autoharps was called Zimmerman (Philadelphia, 1880). He took the European zither and turned it into an autoharp. Oscar Schmidt took over when Zimmerman died and is still the most well-known autoharp manufacturer. Nowadays, there is a very small number of brands that also produce autoharps in Europe (like my first autoharp by Hudson, which is actually a brand for guitars). But autoharps are largely unknown in Europe, it is a niche where not many people are aware of. And these manufacturers all date from after the American country period, when the love for country music spread to Europe. So.. how can it be that I have a German autoharp from around 1900s in my hands? (I actually said that out loud when I realized it was German-built, don't judge me)

Well, turns out that Zimmerman did not invent the autoharp. WHAAAT, I can hear you say! I know right. (Hey, don't make fun of me, I was really shocked about that) He patented the autoharp, but he did not invent it. This German dude, Julius T. Müller, was there first.

Müller produced the first autoharps from 1870s onwards, although he called it an 'akkordzither' (which is actually a way better name). His factory was located in Dresden and he produced a few types of autoharp, all equally beautiful. They are all quite large for an autoharp, mainly because they were meant to be played atop a table, not held against one's upper body country-style.

A drawing from the user manual to the Orpheus-model.

They originally came with booklets with songs, and a few fingerpicks (which do not look comfortable at all). You can see pictures of those here. I cannot express in words how badly I want to own those booklets..

You can see an invoice for an Erato Accordzither from 1898 here. It appears, you could buy one for '27', but I do not know in which currency. The invoice is from Utrecht so it may be Dutch guilders (which would be 12,26 euros) or in German Mark (I cannot find out how much that would be today - let me know if you do!). It literally says 'piano-zither', which they were often called, probably because of the style of playing.

I cannot find out when the factory went bankrupt - but it must have been shortly after 1910. The only Müller autoharps I can find on the internet predate 1910. As Ron Cook puts it: "Because of the rarity of these models and the lack of information on the maker or the instruments, I assume Müller's production was slow. Perhaps he had a small company with few craftsmen." However, on the invoice, we see a drawing of the Müller factory which does not appear to have been that small. It's possible that it has been romanticized a bit, of course, but I don't believe it's completely made up. But either way, there are "very few Müller autoharps known to be in existence ... for every one Müller autoharp up for auction, there are hundreds of Zimmermanns."

The invoice: take a closer look here

Can it be that there are hundreds and hundreds of dusty Müller autoharps in European attics somewhere? That, just like my autoharp, the people owning them do not know what it is? That would be nice, right?
And... can it be that my autoharp was bought at the Dutch music shop that the invoice belongs to?

Hmm. Not that many answers, unfortunately. Well, a lot still remains a mystery, which is also kinda nice, right?

Strings 'n pins

Cleaned up!

After I had removed the chord bars, I removed the old, rusty and dusty strings. I started off by doing this very carefully, but then it took me 30 minutes to remove one bass string. The problem was that the string goes through a very small hole at the bottom of the autoharp, and on the other side of that hole in the bridge, the strings were wound and could not be pulled through the hole. And the bass strings were too big too be pulled through it in the other direction. So I literally had to cut them off, unfortunately. The higher strings are thinner, so they were less of a problem. Overall, it was a bigger task than I had imagined beforehand..

And the next task proved even more difficult: removing the tuning pins. It took me a few hours to remove all of them, because some were pretty stuck. Also, I have nowhere near enough strength in my arms to handle such a task without complaining all the way through.

My dad working on
the crack in the back

My mom cleaning the holes
for the tuning pins

But then, I could finally give it a good polish!
I went to my parents' house, because the cleaning of the tuning pins would require some equipment I do not have in my house. It was a beautiful day, so I sat with my mom and dad in their garden with flowers, butterflies, two really weird chickens and one really weird cat, and it was awesome. My dad was immediately fascinated (he hadn't seen the autoharp before) and ran to the garage to get all of his equipment. My mom and I cleaned the tuning pins, which were so rusty, it took quite some effort to get them clean. Well, clean-ish. My dad looked at the crack in the back of the sound box, because I do not have any experience with wood work of any kind. He glued it back together and clamped it in a workbench.

This meant I had to leave the autoharp with my parents, since it had to remain in the workbench until the glue had dried.

Cleaning the tuning pins

My beloved two 21st century instruments
just before a performance last week

So then I was home alone. My boyfriend and I had broken up the day before so he was gone, and the autoharp was gone.. so I decided to spend some quality time with my 21st century autoharp (you know, because she was jealous of the care and attention I have spent on the 19th century one the last weeks). It was nice to actually play the autoharp again. I ended up in a sort of philosophical state where I pondered how therapeutic music actually is. It may be a bit off topic for this blog, but I wanted to address it shortly. I have played music for my entire life, and I always enjoyed it, but since I play the autoharp, it has brought me so much more joy. The magnificent thing about an autoharp is that it's such a warm, vibrating sound that travels through your whole body when you play it. It is an excuse to cuddle with an instrument and just purely enjoy the sound that comes out of it. When I play the violin, I always have to be aware of what I am doing exactly, in order to not go off key. No such thing with the autoharp. At this particular moment, it is the thing that makes me most happy. And I would really like to develop myself in this area. And I think that repairing and restoring the old 'harp is actually helping.

My mom let me know that the glue is holding, so that means that the crack has been repaired! We will be reunited today. I have ordered new strings, and they have already come in the mail. At the moment, I am actually getting somewhere and I am already really proud of myself.

Removing the chord box

I have always had a slight phobia of musical instruments in danger of falling or breaking. When the finetuner on my violin broke off with a loud BANG while I was playing, I needed about five minutes to calm down. When a friend told me about how he saw an entire row of harps falling down like dominoes, my heart rate shot up (and I wasn't even there to witness it). My boyfriend once accidentally dropped my violin in its case, and I have never let him touch it since. Conclusion: dismantling this autoharp was going to be difficult for me!

The lid and chord bars came right off.

However, I told myself that removing the chord box was going to be in its best interest: the lid was almost coming off by itself so with a high-pitched scream, I did it: I lifted the lid of the chord box. A small personal victory.

This blog post will be about what I found beneath the lid. Dum dum DUUMMM.

As I said, it didn't recquire much effort to lift the lid off. The screws were rusty and were not stuck in wood, so it was literally a question of lifting it off. As could be expected: it was quite dusty underneath. Through the sound hole, I can see cobwebs, so I definitely need to clean that out in some way or other (preferably, without having to open up the entire sound box). If someone has a genius idea about how to do that, let me know!

OK, so, the felt. It is in a better state than I had expected! I'm still planning on replacing them though.

Something I find fascinating about the chord bars, is that every chord bar has a digit, so the bars are in the right order. But for some reason, someone found it useful to write them in roman numerals as well. I have no idea why someone would see the added value in that..? Maybe the arabic numerals were added later?

Numbers on the chord bars

In some places, these white thingies
came loose, so I glued them back on. 

On the lid itself, something is written in pencil. I have years of experience in reading medieval Irish manuscripts, but this, I cannot make sense of (which I take very personally). That last thing might be a digit, but I don't know for sure. I find it very exciting, though!

The chord bars were very easy to remove from the lid: the brass buttons could be unscrewed quite easily. I cleaned them, and reattached them to the chord bars for now (so I don't lose them. Because I am quite a small-object-losing-person). What I noticed during cleaning, is that there used to be gold paint on the buttons. I think this is another sign that this 'harp was definitely well loved at some point, since the paint would only wear off the places it did when it was played. This makes me very happy, because it had not been used for three generations.

This concludes this blog post for now. I am planning on removing the strings next, and giving the entire harp a nice clean-up, so it will shine like never before!

On the upper button, you can see
traces of golden paint.

The mysterious pencil writing

The Müller's Accordzither Erato and my ambitious plans with it

Hi there!

Welcome to my blog! This blog will describe the journey of a total beginner into the world of autoharp restoration.

So first of all, a bit about me and how I got here. When I was little, I wanted to be a piano tuner. When I found out that that was not a very good idea since I am not a very practical person, I decided that playing the piano was enough. And then I wanted to play the violin, so I got a violin. Then I wanted to play the autoharp, so I got an autoharp. This says two things about me, I think. First of all, I love learning new things. Second, the weirder and more complicated a musical instrument, the more I will want to be able to play it. You can imagine my utter delight when I found an antique autoharp which had been stored in an attic for three generations and when the owner actually let me take it home.

The 'harp in its case

She told me she inherited it from her parents, whom had inherited it from her grandparents. She had never heard any of them play it, and while I was gawking at the gorgeous (and very dusty) autoharp, she said 'I have never even seen anyone really look at it, I think.' At that moment, I decided this autoharp deserved the loving touch it had missed for so long (I know, so cheesy).

The crack in the back

So let me tell you a little bit about the autoharp and the state that it's in. Its full name is "Müller's Accordzither Erato": Müller being the manufacturer, Accordzither being a term for autoharp and Erato being the name of the model. It was manufactured around 1900. I am planning on writing an entire blog post about Müller and the history of this particular model, so I will get into that later on.

The 'harp came with a black wooden case, which it had been stored in the last three generations, so it is definitely old and it also needs some repairs. I would like to believe it is the original case from 1900, but there is no way I can prove that. At the moment, I am planning on restoring the case as well, so that I can actually carry the 'harp to places.

The chord box which almost comes apart

There are a lot of things that need repairing. The screws in the chord box are rusty and have gotten loose, it definitely needs new strings and new felt, the tuning pins are stuck and the most worrying thing is the crack at the back of the sound box. Furthermore, I have no idea what I will find when I open up the chord box, it's entirely possible that there are rusty or missing springs or broken chord bars.. I have literally no idea. Very exciting. And terrifying.

The rusty tuning pins

Since I have never done such a thing before, I started by researching autoharp restoration on the internet. Fortunately, I am not the only one who gets really excited from old and broken autoharps, so I found some experts in the field who described how they restored similar models on their blogs. I contacted a few and to my delight, I actually received excited and very informative responses from them. With all this information in mind, I have come up with a basic action plan. Because I do not know exactly what I will find and how it's going to go, I will update the plans as I go, but I wanted to break up the project into little projects in order to keep myself motivated:

 - Project 1: Removing the chord box, the strings and maybe the tuning pins. Cleaning the entire thing.
- Project 2: Repairing the crack in the back
- Project 3: Tuning pins: either replacing them or cleaning them up and reinstalling them
- Project 4: Replacing the strings
- Project 5: The chord box project (which is still a mystery, but this will at least include replacing the screws and identifying the chords where the helpful little charts are missing)
- Project 6: New felt
- Project 7: Installing the repaired chord box
- ...?

The case

- Project X (can be done at any moment, I expect it will happen when I get stuck or bored with restoring the 'harp itself): Repainting the case and adding a handle.

Since I have a job ánd play in a band ánd edit a magazine I would like to make a little disclaimer: I have no idea how long this entire project will take and I have no idea how much I will update this blog. You can subscribe below, so that you will receive an e-mail when I make a new post.

And the last thing I want to say before I finish this (way too long.. that will probably be happening a lot) blog post: if you have tips or questions or comments or if you have interesting information about the Müller factory or this particular model, please do not hesitate to contact me because I love talking with fellow enthusiasts!

Much love,
Lian