root salad f22 Sahlström Institute


It’s nyckelharpa central at this important Swedish establishment. Andrew Cronshaw pays it a visit.


player of hardanger and ordinary fiddle Olav Luksengård Mjelva. After teaching for two days, on the Saturday evening they gave a concert, and followed it by playing for dancing.


Erik Rydvall (nyckelharpa) and Olav Luksengard Mjelva (hardanger fiddle) at ESI Tobo N


yckelharpas, Swedish keyed fiddles, look complicated and there are several types, but basically those used today (except


the simple archaic-style three-string moraharpa) have four bowed steel strings, of which two or three are melody strings stopped by key-operated tangents, leaving the remainder as drones. Other thinner sympathetic resonating steel strings pass under the key mechanism and bridge to give a reverb-like ring. Nowadays there are thousands of players worldwide, many of great skill and inventiveness making very highly-developed music, and quite a few are professional.


But it wasn’t always so; in the mid- 20th Century it was a rarity, with fewer than 20 players. One of those, though, was Eric Sahlström of the village of Tobo in nyckelharpa heartland, the county of Upp- land north of Stockholm. He built nyckel- harpas, was a fine player and a composer of strong tunes, and taught his skills to others, helped later in his life by a state artist’s salary, and he was the main motiva- tor of the upsurge that began to take hold in the 1970s. Sahlström played and further developed the chromatic nyckelharpa, originated by player August Bohlin around 1930, which has three rows of keys to stop three of the strings, allowing a full range of chromatic playing and chording.


After Eric’s death in 1986 a foundation was set up in his honour, and fellow maker and player Esbjörn Hogmark led an appli- cation to the government for funding for


an establishment in his name to be set up in Tobo. The result was the opening in 1998 of the Eric Sahlström Institute as a national centre for folk music, particularly nyckelharpa, in a fine 100-year-old hunt- ing lodge with a dance and performance salon, rehearsal and teaching rooms, offices, makers’ workshop, library and refectory, with beside it a new-built accommodation, sauna and laundry annexe for students.


I was invited there for a few days by director Maria Bojlund, a young fiddler from Skåne in the south of Sweden who plays in the Skåne trio Jidder. Tobo is just a half-hour train trip north from Uppsala, which itself is 20 minutes by train from Stockholm’s Arlanda airport, so on the way I dropped in on the instigator of my trip, Magnus Bäckström, Dalarna fiddler, former director of Falun Folk Festival and origina- tor of the first of the now worldwide Ethno young musicians’ camps. He showed me round the gleaming state-of-the-art cuboid of Uppsala Konsert & Kongress, Sweden’s newest and biggest concert hall complex, of which he’s now director. He’s also on the board of the Sahlström Institute, and forms a cross-cultural link between the two establishments, particularly in the hosting by K&K of Oktoberstämman, Swe- den’s oldest spelmansstämma gathering of traditional musicians and dancers.


My visit to the Sahlström Institute coincided with a weekend nyckelharpa and fiddle course led by two masters, the hot, fast–rising duo of Swedish nyckel- harpa player Erik Rydvall and Norwegian


T


Students coming in for this course were joined by the fifteen or so currently on the year-long residential course which is taught, in mixed groups of fiddlers and nyckelharpa players, by top players includ- ing Eric’s fiddler daughter Sonia Sahlström, Väsen’s Olov Johansson, Ditte Andersson, Niklas Roswall and Mia Marin, plus visiting guest teachers such as Erik and Olav. Stu- dents learn individual and ensemble play- ing, repertoire, singing, dancing, music theory and folk music history. Another seven full-year students are on the year- long dance course taught by Ami Peters- son Dregelid.


he same weekend, those on the distance-learning nyckelharpa- making course came together for hands-on workshop experience with Esbjörn Hogmark, who says there’s a great need to train makers because, with the instrument’s popularity, there’s a shortage of good ones, and today’s high standard of playing demands high quality instruments.


Indeed the skill of the top players and the music they’re making is now on a par with classical string players. Erik told me he showed his nyckelharpa to cellist Yo-Yo Ma who got to grips with it quickly and was very interested in getting one. It hasn’t really penetrated classical music conscious- ness yet, but with more exposure to that audience it could catch on there.


The student makers also got a lecture on the instrument from leading researcher Per-Ulf Allmo. Though the nyckelharpa is very much a Swedish, indeed an Uppland, instrument, Per-Ulf says that in its early form it seems to have come to Sweden from Germany in the 17th Century; while similar-looking instru- ments appear in earlier paintings and carvings in Uppsala & elsewhere in Scandi- navia, that's not a reliable indication that they were actually used, because artists could have come from elsewhere, or seen them real or depicted.


Students on year-long, short or dis- tance-learning courses are of a wide age- range and can come from anywhere, not just Sweden; the teaching’s in Swedish, but the teachers all speak English too, so non- Swedish speakers can manage, and will pick up some Swedish too. Course fees and accommodation are surprisingly inexpen- sive; see the English page (under ‘Utbild- ning’) on their web site.


www.esitobo.org F


Photo: Maria Bojlund


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