Articles

Past issues

Fiddler Magazine has over 12 years of great reading. You can see parts of past issues here. Feature articles and tunes are listed for the issues spanning from our premier issue in Spring '94 to Winter '98/'99. Spring '96 marked the birth of this web site and the inclusion of article excerpts. Many back issues are available for sale in the Store.

Current issue - Spring 2008

Features

• Daniel and Amy Carwile: Duet, by Mary Larsen
• Jeremy Kittel: A Scottish Fiddle Champion Jazzes it up, by Peter Anick
• “Carried Away” –– Trance in the Performance of Norwegian Fiddle Music, by Julane Lund
• King for a Year: The Tennessee Valley Old Time Fiddlers Convention, by John England
• Violin Maker Lukas Wronski: Soaking up the Spirit of Oklahoma, by Bob Buckingham
• Emmett Lundy’s “Duck’s on the Millpond,” by Stacy Phillips

Columns

• Fiddle Tune History: A Night at the Opera, by Andrew Kuntz
• The Practicing Fiddler: Improve Your Timing in Ten Simple Steps, by Jim Wood
• Bluegrass Fiddling: Start with the Melody, by Paul Shelasky
• On Improvisation: Study with the Four Best Private Teachers in the World, by Paul Anastasio
• Cross-Tuning Workshop: GDGD – “Cluck” Old Hen,” –– Six  Ways, by Jody Stecher
• Cross-Canada Fiddle Tour: Nova Scotia’s Bill Guest, by Gordon Stobbe
• Irish Fiddling: Creating Your Own Setting, Part II, by Brendan Taaffe
• Accompanying Traditional Fiddle Music: Knowing “The Chords” to a Fiddle Tune and Why We Can’t, by Mark Simos
• Reviews
• Fiddle-toon (cartoon)
  

Tunes in this Issue

• Amy’s Waltz, by Daniel Carwile
• The Trinity Jig, by Daniel Carwile
• The Mull of Kintyre, by Daniel Carwile
• The Golden Plover, by Jeremy Kittel
• Dead March in Saul (Fiddle Tune History)
• Mr. Cosgill’s Delight (Fiddle Tune History)
• March from Solomon (Fiddle Tune History)
• Doctor Haydn (Fiddle Tune History)
• Duck’s on the Millpond, transcribed by Stacy Phillips as played by Emmett Lundy
• Turkey in the Straw (exercises), transcribed by Jim Wood
• Cluck Old Hen, transcribed by Jody Stecher as played by Cowan Powers
• Cluck Old Hen, transcribed by Jody Stecher as played by Charlie Bowman
• Cluck Old Hen, transcribed by Jody Stecher as played by Harvey Sampson
• Cluck Old Hen, transcribed by Jody Stecher as played by Joe Birchfield
• Cluck Old Hen, transcribed by Jody Stecher as played by G.B. Grayson
• Cluck Old Hen, transcribed by Jody Stecher as played by Ed Weaver
• The Pigeon on the Gate, transcribed by Brendan Taaffe as played by Paddy Canny
• The Pigeon on the Gate, transcribed by Brendan Taaffe as played by Liz Carroll
• The Bay of Fundy, by Bill Guest

Article Excerpts

Daniel and Amy Carwile, Duet

By Mary Larsen

Whether teaching, mentoring, competing, judging, performing, or simply playing for the fun of it, these multi-talented multi-instrumentalists have made music a central part of their lives. As instructors at their own Carwile String Studio in Lexington, Kentucky, as well as at workshops around the country, Daniel and Amy Carwile aim to pass the joy of music onto others –– and according to their many students, they do just that. With their highly-regarded 2007 CD Col Arco, they continue to touch people with their music.

Longtime contest fiddlers who had both become music teachers and performers, their lives seemed to run parallel for many years until they finally met (through a student) at the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest in Weiser, Idaho, in 2001. In the pages that follow, Amy and Daniel share some more of their story, their thoughts on competing and teaching, and a few tunes.

Amy, I read that you started learning the violin at age eight. Did you start off with fiddle, or classical?

Amy: I started out playing the fiddle. I am from a family of four children, and it was my middle sister that actually sparked the fiddle fever. One evening while watching the family favorite, “Hee Haw,” and Roy Clark sawin’ away on the fiddle, my sister announced she would like to learn to play. We were very fortunate to have a fiddle teacher in our community by the name of Mabel Vogt. My middle sister started lessons with Mabel and created a domino effect in our family. My oldest sister also started lessons, and a few years later, my brother and I began playing.  

How long did it take before you were performing in front of people?

Amy: I started performing in front of people right away –– as soon as I learned my first tunes. Mabel also organized a youth fiddling group, “The Junior Jammers.” We performed throughout the region at community events, county fairs, and nursing homes. It was a great, positive environment that kept me motivated to practice and learn more tunes. Being around other musicians my age was a huge plus and kept me plugged as a teenager. 

How long was it before you were competing?

Amy: I entered my first contest six months after I began playing; it just happened to be at the 1985 National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest in Weiser, Idaho. I knew only a handful of tunes but was anxious to get on stage and try them out! That same summer I competed in several contests throughout the northwestern United States and western Canada. From that point on, competitions filled almost every weekend from March to October for the next twenty years.

When did your other instruments come in?

Amy: From the moment I could talk, singing was a daily activity.  My oldest sister and I would sit at the piano, and we would work out vocal harmonies for hours on end. I started classical piano lessons at the age of five. It laid a great foundation for learning other instruments. I played trumpet in the band program at school from fifth grade through twelfth and participated in the school choir.  As an adult I picked up mandolin, bouzouki, and guitar. 

Daniel, how did you start out?

Daniel: I had the good fortune of growing up around music. My dad played mandolin in a bluegrass band, and they practiced at the house once a week. As early as three, I would listen intently to the rehearsals. I think the seed was planted there. At age seven, I found a three-quarter size fiddle under the bed one day (my dad was planning to give it to me at a later date) and in no time at all, I began listening to fiddle recordings my dad had on the shelf and started trying to figure out tunes by ear. The more “fishing for the notes” I did, the better I got. By the third year, I knew over 150 tunes.

How did you get started in contests?

Daniel: After four months of playing, I went to my first contest in Anderson, Alabama (about twenty-five miles from my hometown) and placed second in the Beginner Division. After winning that trophy and the money, I was hooked! Over the next twenty-five years, I competed in hundreds of contests all across the country. 

How did you become known as a session musician?

Daniel: It takes time. One session basically leads to another. I have played on numerous projects over the years ranging from old time, bluegrass, newgrass, gospel, Celtic, folk, contest-style, and swing, to country and rock. Through these sessions I have worked with some great artists, producers, and engineers from Fame Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to Music Row in Nashville, Tennessee. My first recording was at age ten, so I guess I got accustomed to the studio at a young age. Since then, I have recorded five personal projects as well as five projects with the Celtic band Full Moon Ensemble, with which I played fiddle and mandolin for eight years.

What led to your interest in Celtic music?

Daniel: Very simply, after learning hundreds of tunes in the old time and bluegrass traditions, I began to tease the possibility of a connection between those tunes and tunes from Ireland and Scotland. In many cases, I discovered tunes from the Celtic tradition in American old time and bluegrass music (some with different names but almost identical melodies). In addition, from a theory point of view, I found the use of certain scales such as the Mixolydian scale and its chordal implications to be a common thread in these styles. Of course, by the late ’80s and early ’90s, I started listening to great Celtic fiddlers such as Aly Bain, Kevin Burke, Alasdair Fraser, Martin Hayes, and others and started to imitate what I was hearing.

You’ve competed in almost every major fiddle contest in the country, have been a U.S. Grand Master and World Series of Fiddling Champion, and you’re a seven-time winner of the “Fiddle King” title at the Tennessee Valley Old Time Fiddlers Convention. Do you have a favorite contest?

Daniel: That is a hard question to answer. Every contest has a different vibe. Some are formal and others, informal. I remember one contest I competed at in Athens, Texas, where the judges stood on stage directly behind me and “discussed” my playing while at the same time, the M.C. was chiming in asking the crowd to “make me feel good” by giving me a hand of applause! Formal contests are my preference. By formal, I mean contests with 1) closed judging –– where the judges cannot see the contestants; 2) at least five judges, preferably from different parts of the country (stylistic variance); 3) judging using the Olympic system –– dropping the highest and lowest score; 4) multiple rounds; 5) three tunes each round –– breakdown, waltz, and tune of choice (something other than a breakdown or a waltz); and 6) cumulative scoring.  Though this type of contest is not perfect, it is the best attempt at objectivity I have encountered over the years.

Amy, do you have a favorite contest?

Amy: I would have to say the national contest in Weiser, not necessarily for the competition itself, but for a week set aside for nothing but fiddling. As a child, it was the week I looked forward to all year long. It was often a ten-day event for my family. We would camp on the football field at Weiser High School and listen to jams literally all day and night. I would often go home with fiddle tunes ringing incessantly in my ears for days. After twenty-two years of attending and meeting people, it is more like a family reunion now. 

You’re both multi-instrumentalists… Is fiddle your favorite instrument?

Amy: Absolutely. The fiddle is such a wonderful, versatile, and portable instrument. You can create so many different colors, textures, and grooves crossing all stylistic boundaries. Fiddling has provided Daniel and me with many opportunities we would not have had otherwise. We have met some super people and have traveled to amazing places with our fiddles on our back.

What have been a couple of the highlights of your careers?

Daniel: Getting to play on the Grand Ole Opry several times, playing for the Olympics in 1996, performing with Alabama on the Country Music Awards Show, and playing on the Moody Bluegrass CD and show at the Ryman Auditorium with The Moody Blues. Winning the Grand Master Fiddle Contest along with the World Series of Fiddling was pretty cool, too.

Was competing an entirely positive experience for both of you? Do you think everyone should aspire to it, or at least give it a try?  

Daniel: Overall, I would say it was a positive experience. I did not always win but won more times than not. I guess that kept me motivated. Being compared to my peer group several times throughout the year was extremely motivational and helpful. You knew you had to improve in order to win. We all knew that. Consequently, everyone got better. I know some folks are against competition, and I understand their reasoning to a degree. However, like it or not, competition is a fact of life. With that said, I do not encourage students to compete more than four or five times each year. Competing more tends to encourage stylistic singularity. Too much time is spent perfecting twelve to eighteen tunes –– four to six rounds (that is optimistic) at the expense of increasing repertoire, building harmonic knowledge, and exploring the many different styles of fiddling on planet earth. 

Your parents were willing to take you around to competitions. What would you recommend to students who don’t have the opportunity to travel to contests?

Daniel: I would certainly encourage them to go to as many jam sessions as they can in their area. Actually, jamming with other musicians is really more important than competing. The point of it all is to communicate with others! Along the way, you might meet someone who is into competitions and would be more than happy to give you a ride. I got a ride to Texas one time that way! 
…

www.CarwileStringStudio.com; www.DanielandAmyCarwile.com

[For the rest of this interview, and transcriptions of Daniel’s tunes “Amy’s Waltz,” “The Trinity Jig,” and “The Mull of Kintyre,” subscribe to Fiddler Magazine!]

Jeremy Kittel: A Scottish Fiddle Champion Jazzes it up

By Peter Anick

U.S. National Scottish Fiddle Champion, two-time Junior National Scottish Fiddle Champion, twice ASTA Alternative Styles Competition winner, recipient of the Mark O’Connor Award of Merit and the Daniel Pearl Memorial Violin, winner of Detroit Music Awards for Outstanding Folk Artist, Outstanding Jazz Recording and Outstanding Jazz Composer, veteran of three CDs and a thousand concert appearances including the Kennedy Center and “A Prairie Home Companion” –– Jeremy Kittel could be resting on his laurels at age twenty-three. But when I ran into him last year at the American String Teachers Association conference in Detroit, resting was the last thing on his mind. He was studying jazz at the Manhattan School of Music, touring with a brand new band, and still finding time to give workshops at the ASTA conference.  The night before, he had played a concert at Ann Arbor’s famous music venue, the Ark, treating his home town audience to a high energy and highly original fusion of Celtic and jazz fiddling. As he traded licks with special guest Darol Anger, it was easy to see Jeremy as one of the leaders of the next generation of the virtual “republic of strings.”

In this interview, Jeremy talks about his twin interests in Celtic and jazz fiddling, how he made it to the top ranks of the Celtic competitions and how that prepared him to tackle jazz. Like many a fiddler before him, Jeremy credits his parents for instilling his early love of music.

Jeremy: My family was very musical. Especially my mom was very involved in folk music. When she was in her twenties, she used to build instruments –– hammered dulcimer, banjos. Having us three kids, an older brother and a younger sister, she decided that we should be exposed to music and have the opportunity to learn it. We didn’t have a piano in the house, so she bought a cheap fiddle and started my brother off on lessons when he was five. In turn, each of us would do that.

Did they start you in Suzuki lessons or were you actually studying fiddle?

It was Suzuki at first. You know, I saw my older brother doing it and thought, “That’s cool!” I wanted to try so I was more than ready to have my chance at it at five years old. I took Suzuki for about a year and I remember thinking despairingly, I was crying that I would never play “Twinkle, Twinkle,” I was having so many problems. And then I switched to private classical violin lessons.  I wasn’t really involved in fiddle music until a few years later.  When I was about eleven, we went to the Scottish Games in Alma, Michigan. They have a Scottish fiddle competition there and I saw these players jamming in addition to competing. It looked like a really fun thing to do with the instrument. So we talked to a couple of players there about some lessons and after that I went to different Scottish fiddle competitions and festivals. I was going to Irish sessions in Ann Arbor…I was just learning it all by ear.  Nobody told me that I should slow it down or learn a tune bit by bit, so it was really good for my ear at that point. I would just sit down for a few hours every Wednesday night and try to learn tunes. I never had a regular teacher for fiddling of any kind. I had a lesson here from Liz Carroll, there from Mick Gavin, who was a great fiddler from Galway who lived in Detroit. I learned a lot from players like Mick and some of the older Irish fiddlers in the Detroit, Ann Arbor area. 

When you say you “learned a lot” from them, how did you go about doing that?

I would get a couple lessons. Then we’d play at a session together. They’d have me at a gig, eventually. Most of it was really done in the sessions. Then, since I was involved in the competitions, I started to hone the style, the intricacies of both Irish and Scottish fiddle. I would also go to workshops and fiddle camps. I would go to camps such as Valley of the Moon (Scottish Fiddle School), Ohio Scottish Arts School with Ed Pearlman. I attended a week-long music program called Scoil Eigse in Ireland each year for three years, which takes place just before the big festival, the Fleadh.

So you didn’t have a regular teacher but you had a lot to work on from workshops and camps.

I had a lot at home. This is important –– I had peers and friends who were my age and getting into this music, too. We grew up playing this music and were really excited about it. We’d form bands and play gigs when we were thirteen and fourteen year olds. Pipes and fiddle, harps and flute. 

What was the appeal for you in Celtic music?

Something that’s always appealed to me is the community aspect of it, that everybody can come and participate in something that is beautiful and positive. It’s often very uplifting music. That sense of optimism and bringing people together is something I try to carry on also when I play jazz and other styles of music. Irish and Scottish music had this lift and drive to it that was really infectious. I was really attracted to it.

When you first started competing in Irish music, were you competing in Ireland or Scotland as well?

The Scottish fiddling competitions I did were through “Scottish Fiddling Revival” –– SFIRE –– which was based in the U.S. So those had regionals and then a national competition which at the time was in New Hampshire. The Irish competitions had regional competitions both in Ireland and in the States. So after doing well at the Midwest Fleadh, I would go on to compete at the all-Ireland, with mixed results. We had a second place Grupa Cheoil win, which was a creative young music group category. I also won an award for a duet I did at the all-Ireland. At any of the competitions, the Scottish or the Irish, it was ultimately good because everybody got together and just played. 

...

Going back in time, as a teen-ager, you were playing in bands with others your age. At what point did you think you might make a career out of it? 

Well, I was also performing with this school program. BobPhillips was a really great music educator. He was my high school teacher, so I was also pursuing it with him. We had this fiddle club at an ungodly hour, practically in the middle of the night –– six in the morning, which to me at this point with my musician’s schedule now seems insane. But we’d get up Tuesday at six in the morning with Bob and he would teach us some jazz improvisation techniques. We’d do some call and response and just get a chance to improvise. That avenue also developed into a performing fiddle group, the “Fiddlers Philharmonic.” So I was performing with that school group, these Irish groups, and on my own. With a guitarist sometimes, playing my own tunes. It was something I just fell into and I always really liked it. And I continue to like it more and more as time has passed. The idea of having a career in music was present in my mind, as an option at least, since I was fourteen years old. 

At what point did you start getting serious about jazz?

Well, in addition to the Celtic stuff, I was playing a little bluegrass and there’s more soloing in that. I was also participating in these jazz school classes. I really got into jazz, though, when I went to college. I was young when I graduated from high school. On my sixteenth birthday. I wanted to go to college to study music. I was sure about that. And maybe pre-med. That never happened, but that was the backup plan. I didn’t necessarily want to study classical music the whole time. I was interested in many different styles of music and my classical playing at that time wasn’t necessarily good enough to get into a lot of the good schools for it. The path that I found was to study jazz in college. At that point, I really didn’t know that much about jazz. I auditioned at the University of Michigan for their jazz program, and they basically had me do some ear testing and general improvising. After my audition, my mom went out and bought me a Coltrane record and a Miles Davis record and I thought, “Wow, this is cool stuff. Maybe I’ll try this out.” And I kept on listening more and more and by the time college came around I was ready to go at it. I didn’t know what I was getting into, but it’s been a really major part of my musical development since then. 

How did it fit with the Celtic music? Did you think of them initially as separate or did you relate them right from the start? Coltrane is quite a ways from Scottish fiddle playing!

In some ways, yeah. In other ways, they share the idea of groove and spontaneity between musicians. More so in jazz, of course, but it’s something that I’ve thought about a lot. Some would argue that they don’t fit together. Everybody has their personal opinion.  For me, over time, it’s just naturally come together in a way I feel comfortable playing. It means that I improvise more on the tunes. 

That isn’t done much in traditional Celtic music, is it?

In Irish music, it’s more about the variations. Variations on a tune are really important in competitions just to make it interesting. Because you’re playing a tune three or four times a round, if you’re playing it the same way every time, it’s kinda likebeating someone over the head with it. Variations serve to develop it. Some people work their variations out exactly beforehand and some people do it on the spot. For me, when I play a Scottish or Irish or original tune, I’m going to use some variations I’ve used before and do something new as well. 

When you were preparing to play a tune for a competition, did you pretty much work out exactly how you would play it?

I would work out some variations. I always had to keep in mind that it wasn’t really up to me what the final musical result was when you’re trying to follow these relatively strict guidelines of what people expect and keeping with tradition. That’s fine ––you’ve got to know where you’re starting from. You can’t go off playing Coltrane “Giant Steps” changes in the middle of “Saddle the Pony.” So I think it’s great to have that foundation. I hope I have enough of it, and I’m always looking for more. 
;;;
www.jeremykittel.com

[For the full text of this interview, as well as Jeremy’s tune “The Golden Plover,” subscribe to Fiddler Magazine!]

[Peter Anick, co-author of Mel Bay’s “Old Time Fiddling Across America,” plays fiddle with the Massachusetts bluegrass band Wide Open Spaces (www.wideospaces.com).]

“Carried Away” ––Trance in the Performanceof Norwegian Fiddle Music

By Julane Lund

Fiddles have often been associated with supernatural entities in various world areas. The devil, in particular, is often connected with the instrument. In fact, in America the instrument has been nicknamed the “devil’s box.” Why the fiddle is connected with the supernatural probably varies from country to country. Perhaps in some instances the reason could be that the instrument has a voice-like quality. However, in most cases there are probably a multitude of reasons that have to do with history, tradition, and the context in which the instrument has been played. In Norway these beliefs attributing unearthly occurrences to the fiddle have much to do with how people in the past tried to explain the exceptional performances of fiddlers, and the state of mind that fiddlers have had at the time of phenomenal displays of virtuosity. 

In Norway the fiddle has been associated with different types of supernatural occurrences at various periods in time. The beliefs that people have had in conjunction with the fiddle existed long before the violin itself came to Norway. These ideas prevailed before Norway even existed as an independent country. Even in the Viking age early Scandinavians held beliefs that musicians and music had special powers that altered everyday life. 

There is more than one account from the Viking period that mentions supernatural events occurring while music was played. Vikings had no violins, but they did use harps and lyres as solo instruments. It is in the legends of the Vikings that we can learn about the mindset that Scandinavian people of that time had towards music. Traditionally, Vikings passed their sagas down only by memory. However, shortly after the Viking period Icelandic descendents of the Vikings wrote down some of the sagas. Since many of the Vikings that went to Iceland originally came from Norway, the accounts surely describe viewpoints about music of the Vikings in Norway. 

In the Icelandic Bosa Saga of the 1300s there is an account of a harp player named Sigurd who performed at a wedding celebration. From the tale about Sigurd we will see the role of the musician during Viking age wedding festivities, and the belief in his powers at that time. This role would continue long after the Viking age, once fiddles became used in Norway. As recently as the early 1900s people who were married often had at least four days of wedding festivities, full of rituals. Even in these recent times fiddlers had an important position in leading the activities. However, let us transgress back to the Viking age and take a look at what was written about Sigurd, the harpist. The following excerpt from the saga is based on an account in the book A History of Norwegian Music, by Nils Grinde (an English translation of the book is published by University of Nebraska Press).   

The story goes that Sigurd played the harp for a groom and his bride, along with King Gudmund, who was a guest of honor.Sigurd performed in such a way that people said that Sigurd was virtually without equal. The king told Sigurd to not hold back in his playing. A bowl dedicated to the god Thor was brought in, and Sigurd struck up a new tune. When this happened, everything that was loose, including knives and dishes, began to move about.  Many people arose from where they were sitting and they began to dance. Next came a bowl that was dedicated to all of the gods.  Sigurd changed to another tune, and he performed so loudly that the music echoed throughout the hall. Then everyone stood up other than the king and the bride. The entire hall was filled with loudness and revelry. Later on, when the bowl to the god Frey was brought in Sigurd told the king to prepare for “Rameslaget.” Interestingly, this tune title and its significance is still held by some fiddlers in Norway, as we shall see later in this article. But to continue the account, the king was so taken up by Rameslaget that he sprang to his feet, as did the bride and the groom. They danced most beautifully, almost uncontrollably, for a very long time. This is a story that is very similar to tales about fiddlers and dancers from later eras. 

Although the harp continued to be played in Norway until the 1800s, other stringed instruments gained in popularity soon after the Viking period. Bowed stringed instruments became fashionable as early as the 1100s. Old manuscripts tell of fiddles, giges, and rebecs, all of which were predecessors to the violin. After a few hundred years of Norwegian musicians playing a variety of types of bowed instruments, the modern violin appeared in the country. It soon became a favorite instrument certainly because it could be fairly loud compared to other stringed instruments, and therefore it could be heard well in crowded rooms or above the steps of dancers. It was also small, and easy to carry from place to place. Whatever all of the reasons were, Norwegians embraced theviolin. 

By at least the 1600s another instrument, similar to the violin, came to be known in a southwestern valley of Norway calledHardanger. Today the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle is often said to be the national instrument of Norway. It is similar to a violin, but it has two to five extra strings that run underneath the fingerboard.  These strings sound in sympathy as the upper strings are played with the bow. The result is a drone effect. Besides the sympathetic strings, the instrument has other structural differences from the violin, including (but not limited to) a shorter neck, a flatter fingerboard and tailpiece, and a highly arched top. The instrument is also typically decorated ornately with mother-of-pearl and bone inlay, as well as a dragon-like carving of a crowned lion on the scroll. 

In the 1600s and for some time afterwards the Hardanger fiddles were much smaller than a violin or a contemporary Hardanger fiddle, and they were more rectangular in shape. They had extremely high arching. The decoration on these early fiddles tended to be of geometric designs as opposed to the floral motifs seen on Hardanger fiddles today. 

Although the Hardanger fiddle originated in the region of Hardanger it gradually grew in popularity and through time it was played in other southern valleys of Norway as well. In some cases the Hardanger fiddle was played alongside the regular violin and in other cases the Hardanger fiddle was favored. There came to be regions where only the Hardanger fiddle was used, and other territories where only the conventional fiddle was played. 

No matter which type of instrument was preferred in these valleys, both instruments were said to have connections with the supernatural. However, these associations seemed dependant on the type of music that was played on the instrument. The violin could be used for fiddle music, in which case it was connected with the superhuman world. But if the violin was used for playing Western art music or Christian church music, there was no such association made. Since the Hardanger fiddle was typically used only for fiddle music, it generally was thought to be an instrument that had strong ties to the supernatural. 

The old beliefs of Norwegians related to fiddle music wererecorded in the tales that folklorists collected in the 1800s. At this time most fiddlers tended to be men. It was thought that if a fiddler wanted to become very adept at playing he could go to a waterfall and ask the spirit of the waterfall to help him. This spirit, known as Fossegrimmen, usually expected a sacrifice of some sort. One tale tells that if a fiddler would throw a leg of a lamb into the waterfall he would learn to tune and play his instrument masterfully.  However, if the fiddler only gave a scrawny bit of lamb to the spirit the fiddler would only learn to tune the instrument. 

Another tale about Fossegrimmen can be found in the Norwegian book Og Fela ho Let, by Arne Bjørndal and Brynjulf Alver (published in 1985 by Universitetsforlaget AS). This story relates that a fiddler named Kristjan Felar came to a waterfall with his request to be a better fiddler and the water spirit arose out of the waters and squeezed Kristjan’s hands so tightly that blood spurted from his fingertips. Fossegrimmen took the blood and wiped it along the strings of Kristjan’s fiddle. Kristjan was then able to play music with the greatest of skill. 

It wasn’t always the waterfall spirit who was believed to impart special powers to fiddlers. There are many tales of fiddlers who learned tunes from the underground people. These beings were thought to inhabit an underground world, which was truly a place of illusion. If a fiddler was in the countryside he might hear music being sung or played by one of the underground people. Many fiddlers claimed to have learned tunes in this way. Other fiddlers have told stories of falling asleep on a rock outdoors and dreaming of music. The music was thought to have come from theunderground people, through the rock. 

Once fiddlers were influenced by these beings, it was thought to be possible for the fiddler himself to have magical powers. Fiddlers believed that other fiddlers could cause strings to seemingly spontaneously break on their enemies’ instruments. To prevent a rival fiddler from ruining his performance, a man might insert a piece of grain into the back of the neck of his own fiddle. The grain inserted in such a way acted as a charm.  

People in Norway have often told stories about occasions when fiddlers came under a spell. They performed so furiously that they couldn’t stop playing. A fiddler in this state was said to have gone into “ecstasy.” Anyone within earshot would also be under the spell. There are tales of people who, because they couldn’t stop moving, danced themselves to death. It is of little wonder that religious fanatics, known as pietists, who heard these stories during the 1800s, attributed these seeming powers not to Fossegrimmen or to the underground people, but to the devil himself. 

As the pietists took hold in Norway they tried to change or to completely halt old traditions. They didn’t want young people to dance together, and unfortunately the fiddle was the most popular instrument used for dances. The pietists also wanted to abolish the use of alcohol, which was quite prevalent at dance parties of the time. The pietists made the Hardanger fiddle a symbol of evil.  Tales came about of fiddlers who were possessed by the devil.Pietists created tremendous bonfires and encouraged people to come forward to burn any instruments that they had on hand. 

Although many Hardanger fiddles were destroyed during this time, and some of the best fiddlers were convinced to stop playing, there were others who continued to play the old tunes in secret. Since the ordinary violin was considered acceptable to many pietists due to its use with Western art music and church music, it continued to be openly played in most parts of Norway. Popular dance tunes from other parts of Europe like the waltz and polka were gaining favor throughout Norway, and they were typically played on the violin. Since these types of music were new toNorwegians they usually were not associated with the supernatural. 

Some fiddlers who continued to play the Hardanger fiddle began to play the newer popular tunes on their instruments. They also came up with a new type of music that they referred to as “listening tunes” which tended to be complicated melodies played on the Hardanger fiddle for concerts. At this point Norway was becoming independent from Sweden. These listening tunes became glorified by those who wanted symbols of Norwegian national identity.  The Hardanger fiddlers suddenly came to be seen as heroes by the intellectual elite in Norway. The listening tunes became viewed as a new sort of art music, and therefore the Hardanger fiddle once more became acceptable to the general public. Hardanger fiddlers were soon featured in concerts alongside internationally famous violinists. 

In the time since the Hardanger fiddle became a symbol of Norwegian nationality women have begun to join men as fiddlers, and most Norwegians have grown away from both the old beliefs in the supernatural as well as Christian pietistic ideology. Today there continues to be talk about fiddlers who are said to be “carried away.” In our time it is considered by most fiddlers to be too boastful to claim to have gone into a state of ecstasy. However, to say that one is carried away is a bit less pompous. In these days people don’t typically conclude that any spirit is controlling a fiddler, but they do notice when the fiddler is in a different state of mind, and when the music continuously spills forth from him or her in an intensely creative, powerful, and influential way. In America we would probably call this “being in the zone.” Although Norwegian fiddlers have termed this state ecstasy in the past, it is probably more accurate to call it a sort of trance.

A French ethnomusicologist named Gilbert Rouget has written much about trance in music after studying musical traditions of many different world areas. According to him, ecstasy and trance are on two sides of a continuum. While ecstasy is characterized by immobility, silence, solitude, a lack of crisis, sensory deprivation, hallucinations, and a recollection of the event, trance is practically the opposite. In the case of trance, subjects experience movement, they are typically with other people when the event happens, there is sensory overstimulation, amnesia, and no hallucinations. Fiddlers who claim to have been carried away, or say that they have come close to it, tend to be with other people when it happens, they feel very stimulated by what is happening, and they often lose memory of what occurred. 

I interviewed several award-winning Hardanger fiddlers about this subject in 2002 when I wrote an article for a journal called Folkemusikkinnsamling which is published by the Norwegian division of the International Council of Traditional Music. In one conversation I spoke with fiddlers Knut Hamre, Åse Teigland, and Frank Rolland. All three fiddlers are from Hardanger, and Åse and Frank have been students of Knut, who is considered a master fiddler. Åse recalled a time in 2001 when Frank had performed at a competition and he had become carried away with the music. I asked her how she knew that Frank was carried away. She said that she could feel a difference in his playing and she was captivated, herself, as a listener. When I asked Frank about it he said that oddly, his memory was completely blacked out regarding that occasion. He only remembered tuning his instrument in between the two pieces that he had played. This loss of memory seemed to be a unique experience for him. 
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[Julane Lund (formerly Beetham) has a master of traditional arts/music degree from Telemark University College inNorway. She was the Traditional Arts Indiana state fiddling champion in 2006 and has since judged that contest. She performs internationally and currently teaches music appreciation at Indian State University. Lund plays both Hardanger fiddle and the conventional fiddle on her recent CD, “Looking Back,” To read moreabout theHardanger fiddle or to purchase a CD, visit her website at www.julanefiddle.com]