Harp-Zither/MacArthur Harp

Merle Landman of Rawsonville, Vermont, gave me a broken little instrument in 1961. My husband John replaced the missing wooden pieces and strings. Howard Martindale of Hudson Falls, NY, heard me play it and asked permission to make copies. He called these reproductions the MacArthur Harp. Years later Martindale found another such instrument, complete with an interior label identifying it as a Harp-Zither made at the Harp-O-Chord Company in Columbus, Ohio. In 1994 Kelly Williams of Mt. Joy, Pennsylvania, sent me a copy of Carl E. Brown's 1900 patent of the instrument.

This twenty inch high instrument has 23 wire strings tuned in the key of C. There are eleven melody strings plus four strings in each of the three accompaniment chords.

Harp Hero, an article by Stacey Young in January, 2002 Smithsonian Magazine is about Margaret and this harp-zither

Here I am shown playing the reproduction harp-zither made by Martindale in a photo by Steve Muskie. The two antique instruments were photographed by Roger Katz.

My study of this little instrument resulted in an instruction book and cassette titled How to Play the MacArthur Harp and all numerical harp-zithers, published in 1986 by Front Hall Enterprises of Voorheesville NY. The manual includes standard musical notation in addition to numerical tablature similar to that given in early nineteen hundreds harp-zither instruction pages.

It was a magic moment....the soft picked rippling strings were a beguilement....everyone was touched by the beauty and ancient feelingof it.
Gerry Taylor, Telegraph Journal, St. John, New Brunswick