Gordon Tracie, Alan Lomax, and Victor Grauer discuss Scandinavian folk music and dance (part 2)

Note: Sample of "Blinde Hans," (a modal-sounding melody named for an early nineteenth-century fiddler associated with the tune), played by eight fiddlers from Gotland. Tracie calls it a "tremendous melody.” Victor Grauer notes its resemblance to classical music. He asks if much composition still goes on. How other fiddlers learn new tunes: improvisation by other fiddles on new tunes composed in accordance with a shared tradition is spontaneous. Experienced fiddlers are adept, but the art of improvisation is dying out. More modern fiddlers do use some positions other than the first. They like keys that permit double stopping, such as A, D, and G. D is the preferred key for most tunes. Example of a quadrille (originated on the continent). These are dance similar to those that Mozart used as the basis for his music. Quadrille from Skåne in Southern Sweden. Two fiddlers are preferred for dance music, however, the oldest tunes came from places where distance made it hard for two fiddlers to get together, so dancing to a solo fiddler was common for dances. Another dance sample. Gordon Tracie demonstrates the rhythm, beating it out. Dancers' feet would have supplied this sound. Other instruments: Fragmentary examples of wooden-shoe fiddle tunes from Skåne. Left shoes, usually well worn, were used to make these instruments. "Olle Lans,” a plaintive waltz by a nineteenth-century itinerant fiddler of that name, played on the shoe fiddle. Words (not heard here) ask for a bit of bread, salt, or best of all, the equivalent of "a wee dram." Nyckelharpa or key fiddle: a bowed hurdy gurdy found only in Sweden. A polska learned by ear from grandfather, resembling baroque music. A tune that resembles "The Road to Boston" (associated with Dave Pace of New Hampshire) which came to Sweden via a fiddle contest in 1980. Sample demonstrating counter-rhythms of ornamentation in two players playing same tune. Victor Grauer asks about kinds of ornament. Regional differences in ornamentation and use of pizzicato ("knep") with left hand Victor Grauer notes that the left-hand pizzicato technique was supposed to have been one of the inventions of Paganini. Gordon Tracie: Some musicologists thing that the techniques wandered down from the North to the South. Relation of folk bowing technique to dance steps. Examples of arrangements of traditional Scandinavian fiddling with modern orchestra. Norwegian hardanger fiddle is totally different. Named for Hardang but is most commonly found in Telemark. Music for it is always in major. It has understrings that vibrate sympathetically and which are tuned higher than the bowed strings. Composer Grieg used a distinctive understring tuning pattern for his "Hunter's Theme." The bowed strings are tuned conventionally. Norway also had acrobatic dances, solo dances with leaps and handsprings. There were fiddle and dancing contests. Winners had great prestige. Swedish music has a clearer melodic pattern. Norwegian phraseology is unmelodic in conventional sense, resembles Indian ragas. It can take hours for an ensemble to tune up. In Finland, the fiddle has largely been replaced by the cantele. Discussion of willow flute, birch bark horns, and animal horn. The willow flute, found everywhere in Scandinavia, is one of the oldest of all instruments. Overblowing produces natural harmonics. The birch bark horn is laminated like a boat and must be kept wet. These were played by women to scare away beasts of prey from the flocks and also used to call or lure animals. Women, often a girl apprentice and her grandmother, lived together in a log cabin and pastured the herds while the men worked in the woods or fished. American log cabins were first built in Delaware in the seventeenth century by Swedes and are still being built to the same pattern. Goats, sheep, and cows responded to different calls and could be called separately. There were songs to sing the cattle to sleep. In 1951, Gordon Tracie recorded some of the last vocal music - yodeling or kurning - used functionally to call animals and to communicate over long distances. In spring, animals were driven to pasture communally, to the accompaniment of fiddling. It was a great occasion. There was a return drive in autumn. These vocal traditions preceded the instruments, which imitated songs sung to the animals and the animals (including birds) themselves. The introduction of fiddles brought Scandinavian folk music to its highest development because no instrument can do what the fiddle can do. There has been a complete deterioration to the extent that the accordion has replaced the fiddle, but for better or worse, the accordion is now established as a folk instrument throughout Scandinavia.