Under the microscope: Nils Bakke’s springar

A springar from the legendary fiddler Nils Bakke (1887–1969).

By Ånon Egeland
Translated by Lucy Moffatt

Being able to adapt tunes from other instruments has probably always been an important part of playing the Jew’s harp. The old recordings of Norwegian tradition bearers performing on the instrument bear this out: Little in the material suggests that there has ever been a separate Jew’s harp repertoire. On the contrary, it looks as if Jew’s harp players have always borrowed from the music around them, primarily dance music on the regular and Hardanger fiddle. The fact that Jew’s harp versions of the tunes can often be different from the fiddle-based originals is another story – and an exciting one at that – revolving around factors like the way we perceive the instrument and it idiosyncracies.

Nowadays, when so little of the music around us lends itself to melodic Jew’s harp playing, this ability to transfer the tunes may well be more crucial than ever before: Although the unique old recordings of Norwegian Jew’s harp players undoubtedly still serve as inspiration, sooner or later, any ambitious performer will probably start to feel that this repertoire is too limited and will feel the urge to innovate. Hopefully this column can help by taking a deeper dive into the process of adapting tunes.

Our latest example is a springar from the legendary fiddler Nils Bakke (1887–1969), who came from traveller stock but spent most of his adult life in Kristiansund. I’ve chosen a performer with strong links to Møre og Romsdal as a way of saying thank you for the wonderful Jew’s harp festival in Molde. In many ways, the situation in the county that hosted this year’s festival is typical of the rest of Norway too: There is no unbroken Jew’s harp tradition, but there is a wealth of fiddle music in the form of both archive recordings and sheet music. The trouble is that little of this material can be directly transferred to the Jew’s harp without making major changes. Our challenge as Jew’s harp players is therefore to identify good potential Jew’s harp tunes among the mass of music that can never be successfully transferred to the instrument.

There are multiple versions of this springar. Slåtter for vanlig fele: Møre og Romsdal, 5 (93a–g) contains no fewer than seven variants, most with roots in Nordmøre.

My Jew’s harp version is based on a transcription I made of Nils Bakke for Møre and Romsdal Folk Music Archive’s publication, Nils Bakke, which contains 27 transcriptions of this fascinating fiddler’s playing. The springar in question is No. 15.

The first part of the springar consists of a four-measure motif (bars 1–4) which is then repeated (bars 5-8) and followed by a two-measure motif (bars 9 and 10). The second part follows the same pattern: two four-measure periods with different endings, but this time without the short two-measure ‘coda’. And this is where the first little problem arises: Nils Bakke plays the last two measures of the first part an octave above the Jew’s harp version – and that’s beyond the range of the Jew’s harp. I therefore opted to take the coda down an octave. Later, I discovered that this is precisely what two solid fiddlers also did: Erik Almhjell (1881–1963) of Sunndal and Hilmar Aleksandersen (1903–1993) of Steinkjer – indisputably Norway’s best-known fiddler with a traveller background in modern times. Both play the first part an octave above Nils Bakke’s version, but play the coda in the same octave, ending up with a melody that is, in principle, very much like my Jew’s harp version. Interestingly, Hilmar Aleksandersen cited Nils Bakke as his source.

Like most good fiddlers, Nils Bakke spices up his playing with subtle variations in the melody and phrasing. Not all of them are workable on the Jew’s harp, so I’ve left those ones out of the transcription, opting to use only variations that lend themselves to the Jew’s harp. One example of this is the first beat in the second measure where Bakke usually plays a triplet, which appears as a variation in my Jew’s harp transcription. He also introduces a variation by playing one note (here transcribed as F5), which he ornaments with a trill. This offers a golden opportunity to use overtone 14 on the Jew’s harp – the lower of the two variants of the seventh scale degree that are available on the instrument. Unlike the higher variant, overtone 15, which is a closed note, overtone 14 is open. I haven’t heard this note used on any of the recordings of older Jew’s harp tradition bearers, but it works perfectly in this context. You’ll find another instance where this note blends seamlessly into a traditional melody in the article Building repertoire on the Jew’s harp.

For my transcription method, please see Jew’s harp and sheet music.

The sound on the video clip could be better – the editors of Munnharpa are working to improve this – but hopefully it and my transcription should be helpful for anyone trying to learn Nils Bakke’s springar. Good luck!