When the movie The Third Man came out in 1949, I was only eight years old, too young to see it. But I remember the haunting sound of Anton Karas's theme song playing on the radio. It was the first time I'd heard a zither and I've loved the sound ever since.

The only time I heard one live was in the Officers' Club at Moffitt Air Base where I had gone for dinner with my mother-in-law. Being widow of a pilot, she had base privileges. I enjoyed the zither playing in the dining room, but I enjoyed the 25¢ drinks more, and in the end I didn't remember hearing much of anything, even my mother-in-law.

Walking near the Barcelona Cathedral, I heard some Bach being played on one. I turned the corner and saw these two women.

The acoustics in these narrow medieval streets are wonderful, making the music ring, sustaining the notes. After the Bach, the women played The Windmills of Your Mind and more, one crowd-pleaser after another.

They were playing hammer-zithers, also called cimbaloms. These instruments are associated with folk music but produce beautiful renderings of any music with a sort of sad melody.

Zither-players seem to be singularly focused on their instruments. The women didn't react to applause, didn't interact with their audience. They rarely looked up and they never smiled. No dramatic movements like your concert pianists or lead guitarists. Zitherists are quiet, inward-looking people.

Less than a half-hour later, we ran across this man. Zither-O-Rama!

This guy was out today simply to enjoy performing. No CDs on display, no basket for coins, just him in his suit and tie, sitting on a fold-up stool, his instrument perched on a milk carton. A quiet, cautious man, perhaps a bookkeeper, the corners of his zither case carefully reinforced with steel angle brackets, his tuning wrench close at hand, a virtuoso of old Hungarian tunes.