Anton Karas

Anton Karas (7 July 1906 – 10 January 1985) was a Viennese zither player and composer, best known for his internationally famous 1948 soundtrack to Carol Reed's The Third Man, which came about as a result of a chance meeting.

Born in Vienna, of Hungarian and Czech origin, one of five children of a factory worker, Anton Karas was already keen on music as a child. He desired to become a band leader, which due to the family's financial situation was impossible. However, he was allowed to learn to play an instrument, as were his two brothers and two sisters. He later reported that his first zither was one he found in his grandmother's attic, at the age of 12.

As ordered by his father, he started an apprenticeship as a tool and die maker at the age of 14, while also taking music evening courses at a private institution. He successfully finished his apprenticeship in 1924 and worked in a car factory until being unemployed in January 1925. Having already begun to study at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna in 1924, he subsequently earned his living as an entertainer in a Heuriger (a wine bar, typically with a garden, usually selling the year's new wine) and soon found himself earning more income than his father. He continued his studies until 1928.

In 1930, he was married, with the birth of his daughter following three months later. From 1939 to 1945 he was with German Wehrmacht anti-aircraft warfare, temporarily in Russia, where he also took a zither along. He lost more than one instrument due to war action, but always managed somehow to find another one.

In the summer of 1948, director Carol Reed was preparing to shoot The Third Man in Vienna and was staying in the Hotel Sacher along with many of the British element of the Allied Control Commission for Austria. Robert Baty, the young son of the Director of Education, C.W. Baty, was tasked with showing the director around the city. On the second day they stopped at a heuriger, a wine tavern where growers offer their own wines for sale directly, and heard Karas playing the zither in the background. This is described in Karas' L.A. Times/Reuters obituary which states that:

...
Wikipedia