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.
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!
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!
