CONQUERING OTHER MUSICAL GENRES WITH THE NYCKELHARPA

 Many seem to think that if one plays the nyckelharpa, she or he of course plays Swedish folk music. The experiences and ideas of the Resonans quartet's members show that this automatic linking of instrument and genre absolutely is not necessary!

We founded the Dutch nyckelharpa quartet in 2020, just before the Covid-pandemic broke out. The background of the musicians and repertoire of the quartet show that the nyckelharpa may very well be used in non-Swedish genres, here varying from ancient music to Latin, jazz and rock&roll. In this blog I will show how the four musicians met the harpa and what their ideas and expectations were.

The Resonans quartet. From left to right: Elayne Lussenburg, Tonny Holsbergen, the author Jos Koning, Tim de Wijs

Tim de Wijs has been  a professional violinist and violin teacher for all his life. He even plays the clarinet, saxophone and recorder. He loves renaissance and baroque music as well as jazz, music from the Balkans and klezmer. And he is a tango specialist!

For Tim the nyckelharpa was totally unknown, until he heard Marco Ambrosini playing Vivaldi at the Alte Musik-festival in Stockstadt am Rhein, 2011. He was immediately taken by the instrument’s sound and appearance, and spoke to Marco. As a complete coincidence, a friend of his son turned out to own an “unemployed” nyckelharpa. Tim bought this harpa right away. As many continental beginners he visited the Nyckelharpa Days at Fürsteneck. He even participated in the Encore European Nyckelharpa orchestra in 2013. In all this, Marco Ambrosini was a central person.

Tim chose D-tuning. He was not even aware of the C-tuning tradition in Sweden. For him the harpa is an ancient music instrument, which he even uses in his ensemble Flutamuse. Nowadays he plays a Condi harpa with four rows of keys. In Resonans, he even plays  clarinet. Tim supplies the quartet with Balkan, klezmer and Latin music.

Tonny Holsbergen owes her nyckelharpa career partly to her father, who after his retirement startet with fine woodwork and wanted to build instruments for his musical daughter. Tonny, originally a singer and dancer with a Mediterranean and Balkan repertoire, took him to a festival of instrument builders in France. There, her father decided to build her a hurdy gurdy, an instrument on which she is versed. In total, he built her four hurdy gurdies and a kanklès. Tonny, knowing the nyckelharpa as a Swedish instrument from the Dutch folk music movement of the 1970s, then asked him to build a nyckelharpa. This beautifully carved harpa was her first; others followed. Presently, she plays a four row. After some experimenting she chose D-tuning. She visited the Fürsteneck days several times, as well as other workshops, working with teachers like Magnus Holmström and Olov Johansson.  In Resonans apart from the harpa she plays percussion instruments, hurdy guirdy and guitar.

Like Tim, Elayne Lussenburg was trained as a professional violinist, specialized in baroque music. She has played many years in an ensemble with a “medieval” (in practice mostly renaissance) repertoire. In this musical world, as in the folk music movement, there is a huge interest in lesser known musical instruments. Elayne tried everything that could be bowed. One day a colleague handed her a nyckelharpa, an instrument she didn’t know at all. Being a superior autodidact, she found out most things by herself, including D-tuning and various techniques. At first she played Susato and worked with Didier François’ CDs. Only later she visited Fürsteneck. And  Österbybruk – where the connoisseurs immediately recognised her harpa as a Hasse Gille…! Unfortunately, it was one of Gille’s first pieces of work, so succesively she tried other instruments, ending up with a four row Mayr (like Tonny and myself). Elayne even plays the octave and violin harpas. Unless Tim and me, Elayne gradually quit playing the violin, concentrating fully on the nyckelharpa. She loves to play Swedish music but her first choices are baroque and folk music from Holland, France and Belgium..

And myself (Jos Koning)? I started as a semi-professional folk fiddler. I already knew the nyckelharpa as a Swedish instrument in the 1970s. One day my colleague violinist Hans bought a hardingfele. A violin with resonance strings! To my surprise, Hans traded the hardingfele a year later, in Sweden - for a nyckelharpa! I was shocked. Hans and I played Swedish music, in our trio Twee Violen en een Bas. Just for fun - the trio was specialized in early Dutch music. But a nyckelharpa? At that time I found that really ten steps below a violin or hardingfele.

Between 1985 and 2005 I lived and worked part time in Dalarna. After those years I started playing the viola d'amore, for me a kind of super hardingfele: seven strings plus seven resonance strings. At first I only used it in baroque music, but later the amore increasingly took the place of my five-string viola. My Vansbro trio High Tide stopped after I had left Sweden,  Julia Boreland, another High Tide member, moved back to the USA. But in 2018 she told that she studied at Esitobo for a year, after buying a harpa in the States. I suddenly thought: I'm going to play nyckelharpa too! I still don't understand why. And way too late – I was almost 70 years old then.

My first harpa was an instrument from the building courses around 1980. I actually wanted to have a four-row but I couldn't find one at first. I immediately opted for D-tuning (I hardly knew that C-tuning existed).  For myself I almost only play Swedish music; I have supplied Resonans with arrangements of Swedish tunes plus some klezmer, classical and rock&roll. Through Resonans I also discovered the continental nyckelharpa world. In 2020 Johannes Mayr built me  a four-row harpa. With my background as a musicologist and sociologist, I soon fell for the temptation to study the relations and differences between the Swedish and the continental nyckelharpa worlds and their histories. At present I use the harpa in various ensembles, playing mostly Swedish and Celtic music.

Most musical instruments are hardly limited to one genre. The Resonans experience shows that the nyckelharpa absolutely does not have to be limited to Swedish folk music!

HUR SVENSK ÄR NYCKELHARPAN (How Swedish is the nyckelharpa)?

I myself got to know the nyckelharpa when I lived in Sweden, and I had always assumed that it was also originally a Swedish instrument, used to Swedish folk music....until I met fellow nyckelharpists in Holland, who later would become my colleagues in the Dutch nyckelharpa quartet Resonans. For some of them it was not a Swedish instrument at all; it belonged to early music (or Early Music?, I mean: music from before 1750 from all kinds of countries, say from Machaut to Bach). Why Swedish? Well-known forefighters of this, for me surprising, idea of the harpa are professionals such as Marco Ambrosini, Didier François, Annette Osann and Jule Bauer. They also regularly collaborate with early music departments of conservatories, and with well-known baroque ensembles. To support their ideas about the origin of the harpa, they often refer to old paintings. The angel in the church in Siena from the early 15th century is an example:

And there are more examples. But not many, at least: not outside Sweden and the area immediately surrounding it. What we see in this picture is a kind of fiddle with keys. And with a lid over the tangent system. In that respect, the instrument has elements of a later nyckelharpa. But would we call this a nyckelharpa? Do we call a Javanese rebab a violin - after all, the rebab also has strings, bow, sound box, etc. Do we call a Turkish zurna an oboe? A taragot a clarinet? Difficult - we call a lever harp, a concert harp, a triple harp all just harp....

Back to the facts. After 1600, these types of keyed string instruments are in fact no longer found in "continental Europe" (I'll use the Scandinavian name for Europe without Scandinavia), except very sporadically - as a beggar's instrument. In what we now call baroque music it was not used att all. At the same time, in Sweden and especially in Norra Uppland, we suddenly find numerous instruments after 1600 that are strongly reminiscent of the contemporary nyckelharpa in terms of shape.

Enkelharpa, model from the early 17th century

Swedish researchers like Jan Ling and Per-Ulf Allmo have puzzled over where this instrument came from so suddenly. Several theories have been suggested: via the Sorbian fiddle from eastern Germany. Via the blacksmiths recruited from Wallonia who went to work in Norra Uppland. There is little concrete evidence for these theories, so actually we don't know. However, the later development from this "enkelharpa" in Uppland is easy to follow. The oldest ones did not have sympathetic strings. These appeared first around 1670 (my theory: scientists had become acquainted with instruments from the Middle East and India around that time, and thus discovered the principle of sympathetic strings. The viola d'amore got its sympathetic strings also first around this same time). The musical possibilities slowly expanded: first the kontrabasharpa and after 1850 the silverbasharpa. By the way, the word kontrabasharpa has nothing to do with the double bass but everything with the place of the bourdon strings.

From 1930, first August Bohlin and later Eric Sahlström developed the well-known chromatic nyckelharpa with three playing strings. So we are dealing with a truly modern instrument! Bohlin and Sahlström based themselves entirely on the silverbasharpa: they kept the low bourdon string and in fact only put tangents and keys on the second lowest, the G. They also kept the tuning of the two highest playing strings at "silverbas height": C and A.

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August Bohlin on the left, Eric Sahlström on the right

I will write about this "C tuning" later. It is interesting to note that both these two harpa innovators were violinists. So though they were totally used to fifths tuning, they kept their new instruments in silverbas tuning, C G C' A'.

After Sahlström, development continued - but more and more outside Sweden. In Germany and France, builders began developing nyckelharpas with keys on all four strings. They also built harpas with lower or higher tuning. Esbjörn Hogmark writes in his book "Nyckelharpa" (which unfortunately only appeared in Swedish) that he is inclined to say with some disdain that "people in Sweden know why keys on the low C is not such a good idea", but Swedish builders have now also, hesitantly, started with four rows, oktavharpor and fiolharpor. And that tones on the low C string would not sound good on a chromatic harpa is completely belied by the non-Swedish instruments of e.g. Condi, Mayr and Osann. And actually, the first four row harpa was built by a Swede, Erik Olsson in Hedemora, during the 1950s! Yet he seems to have been out too early.

How Swedish is the nyckelharpa? Very Swedish, I would say, and even enigmatically Uppländsk. Which does not alter the fact that the sound is ideally suited for some genres other than (Swedish) folk music. In fact, I hope and expect that the automatical "tying" of nyckelharpa and Swedish music eventually will disappear. Also, the initiative in the world of harpa building is now largely found outside Sweden. And indeed, it is especially a pleasure to play old music on a harpa!