Chapter
4.1: The Kantele Traditions of
by
Carl Rahkonen © 1989 All Rights Reserved. Back to Table
of Contents
Any
use of this material should contain a proper reference to this site.
IV.
KANTELE PLAYING TRADITIONS
There are as many different styles
of kantele playing in
CARVED
KANTELE PLAYING
Very little is known about the
oldest playing styles of the carved kantele.
Even though the carved kantele was a normal part of everyday life for
Karelian rune singers, for some reason the early collectors of folk runes did
not write about kantele playing in detail.
Most of what we know about old styles of carved kantele playing has come
from research done in the early decades of this century by A. O. Väisänen. Detailed descriptions of his work may be
found in Asplund 1976, 1981, 1983b:63‑66; and Laitinen 1980a.
A. O. Väisänen was interested in
both music and folk traditions from an early age. He is reported to have made his earliest
collections around his home town of
In studying the existing music transcriptions,
Väisänen noticed that surprisingly few kantele tunes had been collected, only
thirty‑nine tunes out of 13,000 in the SKS collections and even fewer
jouhikko tunes. In the summer of 1916,
with the aid of a stipend from the SKS, he set out to the Karelian towns of
Impilahti, Suistamo, Korpiselkä and Kitee with the express purpose of
collecting tunes in these genres. He had
fairly good results, collecting a total of 250 tunes, of which eighty‑four
were kantele tunes from fourteen informants. The next summer (1917) he returned again to
the towns of Suistamo and Korpiselkä, this time on a Kalevala Society stipend
and again had good results.
Väisänen took extensive field notes
and made transcriptions in the field. He
also made cylinder recordings of most of the pieces, but the volume of the
kanteles was generally too weak to make good recordings on wax cylinders. Also, in their natural playing positions, it
was difficult to get the instruments close enough to the horn. Still, he was able to hear enough from the
recordings to complete and check the transcriptions which, at the time he did
his work, were considered the primary source of information. The original cylinders are in the SKS sound
archives.
Väisänen also credited his success
in collecting kantele tunes at such a late date to the fact that he brought
along a carved kantele and extra strings.
He knew that most of the old players had long since stopped playing and
had sold their instruments to various museums around
Väisänen's field trips, together
with other information he collected from kantele performers at song festivals
and from his thorough archival research, culminated in the publication of Kantele‑
ja jouhikkosävelmiä [Kantele and Jouhikko Melodies] (1928a), which is the
definitive work on the older styles of kantele playing. It contains all of the transcriptions of
kantele pieces from other sources known to Väisänen at the time, as well as his
own transcriptions. There were only some
fifty pieces previously collected from fourteen informants. Väisänen collected 182 pieces from thirty‑three
informants. He describes the playing
style and contextual information for each of his own informants and any
information available on the previous informants. The book concentrates on older styles of
playing, but includes some examples of newer styles. Several informants were able to perform in
both older and the newer styles.
According to Väisänen's
descriptions, carved kanteles were always played from a sitting position. Usually the kantele was placed on top of a
table, but if that was inconvenient it was played in the lap. It was generally in a horizontal position,
meaning that the sound board of the instrument was horizontal to the
ground. This was different than most
other Baltic psalteries, which were played more vertically with the long side
of the instrument in the lap and the short side against the stomach or
chest. Väisänen's book and some of his
other articles include pictures showing the kantele being played in the
horizontal position, but some of the pictures show the players holding the
kantele in the vertical position.
Väisänen explains that in the photograph of Miinan Domi (1928a:XXVII) he
held the kantele in the vertical position because it was unusually large and
therefore cumbersome to play in the horizontal position (ibid:XXXII). Tsertin Miikkula played the kantele in a
horizontal position on a table while indoors, but when outdoors for the
photograph (ibid:XXX), he placed the kantele in the vertical position
(ibid:XLVI) perhaps so it could be seen better.
In all cases, whether or not the
kantele was held vertically or horizontally, the shortest side of the
instrument, in other words the shortest string, was always held closest to the
player. Virtually all Finnish carved
kanteles were right‑handed instruments, which means that when the
shortest string was held closest to the player, the end of the instrument with
the ponsi was on the player's right.
The
way the hands and fingers were placed on the instrument varied almost with each
player. Generally the right wrist or
palm would be placed across the ponsi, while the left wrist or palm was
placed across the side of the instrument with the tuning pegs, with the left
palm or fingers curved over the tops of the tuning pegs.
A general principle in carved
kantele playing was that a given string was always played by the same finger. On five string kanteles each string had its
own finger, which would pluck only that string.
Another general principle was that the finger arrangement was crossed,
alternating at some point from one hand to the other. The player alternated back and forth from the
fingers of one hand to the fingers of the other while playing. This basic finger arrangement has been called
the together position by Väisänen and subsequent Finnish scholars (Väisänen 1928a:X; Laitinen 1980a:49; Leisiö
1978:365; Asplund 1983b:17‑8).
The general principles of carved
kantele playing were preserved even when the number of strings increased. The additional strings were taken care of by
fingers in the vicinity. For example,
the right thumb would pluck additional upper strings, while additional bottom
strings were plucked by the right middle or ring fingers. The finger patterns used in playing carved
kanteles with more than five strings were a logical extension of the patterns
used in five‑string playing. Each
finger would play a given string or set of strings as required. The central range of the instrument, where
most of the playing activity took place, still preserved the general together
position principle, where the playing alternated back and forth between the
hands.
Väisänen (1928a:X,LXV) shows four
different finger arrangements. The first
three have in common in that the right thumb plucks the shortest string and
left forefinger the next shortest; the fourth shows that the left thumb was
used for the shortest string and the right thumb for the next one. The basic finger arrangements shown by
Väisänen have been reproduced in subsequent carved kantele playing method
books. Ala‑Könni and Pokela (1971)
mention just the first arrangement, while Laitinen and Saha (1982) mention the
first three (Illus. 36).
The general principles and finger
arrangements were not hard and fast rules.
They give a general description of how carved kanteles were played, but
not all of the players of Väisänen's time adhered strictly to the rules. For example, Antti Rantonen used his right
forefinger to play both the highest and the lowest pitched string. This violates the one finger to a string
principle, but still keeps the together position principle generally
intact. Väisänen tells that Lukkani
Huotari in Vienna Karelia played the top, middle and bottom strings with his
right forefinger, while still alternating to his left fore and middle fingers
for the other two strings. Ontreini
Jyrki from the same area played in a mirror image to Huotari's playing, with
the left forefinger playing top, middle and bottom strings. Pekka Komulainen from
Soittaja
= "player" ; 1 = thumb ; 2 = forefinger ;
3 = middle finger ; 4 = ring finger.
Illus.
36. Top: Four finger positions for
playing the carved kantele shown by Väisänen 1928:X. Bottom: Three finger positions reproduced in
Laitinen-Saha (1982, 1988):4.
Väisänen believed that the playing
of larger carved kanteles developed from five‑string kantele
playing. One clue here is the fact that
even though most of Väisänen's informants played larger kanteles, they
frequently did not use all the strings in their playing. For example, Fedja Happo played a twelve
string kantele, but only used five strings at a time and the same finger
position as on a five-string kantele.
This finger position, however, could be used on any five adjacent
strings and thus could be moved around the instrument. Although the intervals would vary, Happo
would still insist that it was the same piece.
Another clue is provided by the way
the players would tune their instruments.
The younger players would tune the strings in sequence, to a major or
minor scale, but the older players would tune using perfect intervals: the
fourth, fifth and octave. On a five
string kantele, the outer strings (#1 and #5) were tuned first to a fifth, then
each of the next inner strings (#2 and #4) were tuned to their opposite outer
strings in fourths. The result sounded
basically like the first five notes of a diatonic scale. The middle string (#3), which held the third
scale degree and determined major or minor in western music, was quite
variable. It could be tuned either major
or minor, or sometimes it was even tuned somewhere between, being a
"neutral" third. The same
basic tuning method was used on larger carved kanteles, except that the octave
was also used, and the fourth, sixth and seventh scale degrees were variable. Heikki Laitinen, a scholar and current carved
kantele player who completed a detailed study of Väisänen's transcriptions has
said:
[Although
we can easily understand in our own minds the old kantele players' scales by
comparing them with major and minor, it is important to remember that major and
minor were never in these players' consciousness and it had not yet come even
up to the beginning of this century. For
this reason, as far as we know, the tuning of the scale degrees which produce
major and minor (3rd, 6th and 7th degrees) was something which did not matter
to the old players. Even though the
pitches of these scale degrees moved, which happened quite often, in the
players minds' the character of the music did not change] (Laitinen 1980a:46).
Väisänen transposed the actual pitch
levels of his transcriptions to make them comparable and so that they would fit
well on the G staff, so the majority of the pieces are written with g' as the
pitch center. He mentions that the
actual pitch center was usually closest to d' (1928:LX).
Improvisation was another
significant aspect of the carved kantele playing. It was not enough simply to pluck out a
melody on the instrument. A good player
had to "blend in" additional sounds well. It could almost be said that at no time was a
single string played alone, there had to always be some other string played
along with it. Rather than a simple
melodic style, carved kantele playing featured a complex interweaving of
sounds. According to Heikki Laitinen,
the old carved kantele players probably did not think in terms of melody and accompaniment. Playing in the together position
automatically produced a type of music where "melody" and
"accompaniment" blended into such a whole that their separation would
be almost impossible (1986). The
challenge in the past, and still today, was to get the most out of a limited
instrument. Each time a piece was
performed, it was a little different.
This variability added variety and interest to the playing. Carved kantele playing was an act of creating
something new each time out of something familiar.
Two additional playing styles were
mentioned by Väisänen. The first employs
the so‑called covering technique and was seen in Antti Rantonen's
playing. Sometimes Rantonen would play
accompaniment on a five string kantele by covering two or more strings with the
fingers of his left hand, while strumming the instrument with his right
forefinger or occasionally a plectrum.
The strings left uncovered would ring together in a chord. Between the strums, Rantonen could also pluck
strings with the fingers of his left hand.
The second style of playing Väisänen
saw as a new style, encroaching on the older style. The new style of playing used the apart
position, where the right hand plays melodies and the left hand plays bass
and accompani-ment. The hands were kept
apart because each hand had a separate role, in a different range of the
instrument. This style of playing is
almost impossible to use on a five string kantele, but is quite possible if the
number of strings is increased to the point of having a sufficient range for
descant and bass. Some carved kanteles
had a great enough range, but the apart position did not become a significant
aspect of kantele playing until the advent of the box kantele. At the time of Väisänen's research, the box
kantele was already well established in Ostrobothnia. Undoubtedly the box kantele with its apart
position playing style influenced to some degree those players still playing
carved kanteles. Some of Väisänen's informants
could play in either the together position or the apart position.
The apart position arose as a result
of western folk music influence. The new
style of music, which had a separate melody and accompaniment, came to
Väisänen arranged his collection of
kantele melodies into improvisations, rune melodies, songs, and dances. He further
broke down these categories by the meter in which the pieces were performed and
whether they are in the together or apart positions. The improvised pieces were of two varieties:
those pieces used to tune the instrument, or to check the tuning, and those
which were imitations of church bells.
The rune melodies are not those to which Kalevala rune singing was
performed; they are merely those which Väisänen felt were related to Kalevala
rune melodies. The song and dance sections contain a large number of Russian
pieces. This is understandable
considering the area in which Väisänen was collecting and considering the
Russian surnames of many of Väisänen's informants. Particularly common among the dances is the ripatska
(also called ribatska, rissakka, tripatska and brisahka), a fast dance
in double time, and the maanitus a dance closely related to the ripatska. Väisänen's collection also contains more
typically Western European dances, such as polkas, waltzes, mazurkas and
polskas (a Polish dance in three beats, quite common around the Baltic). The largest portion of the collection are
dances, so it may be assumed that at the time Väisänen did his fieldwork, the
carved kantele was primarily a dance instrument.
In the early decades of this
century, carved kantele playing came very near extinction in
In recent years, however, the carved
kantele has had a very strong revival in
Martti
Pokela's Five-String Kantele Playing [1]
Martti Pokela was born January 23,
1924, not far from Haapavesi, where kantele building and playing was a thriving
tradition. He was born into a musical
family, which was active in the musical life of the community. Martti's father built a twenty‑nine
string, left‑handed kantele, which became Martti's first kantele. He learned to play it at quite a young age,
remembering his first playing experience at perhaps the age of six or
seven. He learned from his father and
later from Anni Kääriäinen, his father's cousin. Martti had an uncle who played fiddle, so he
also learned to play violin and read music.
Martti graduated from compulsory
school at the height of the Second World War and served in the Finnish
army. After the War he decided to study
agronomy at Helsinki University, moving to Helsinki in 1945, and becoming very
involved in the musical life of the university fraternities. At the time, Martti was living with his
cousin, Jorma Tolonen, a guitar player who accompanied singers. Martti also began playing the guitar and,
with his cousin and a third guitar player, Aapeli Vuoristo, formed a singing
group called Hilpeat trubaduurit [The Merry Troubadours]. They performed almost exclusively at
fraternity activities.
During the university years, Martti
also met his wife‑to‑be, Marjatta Nikula. She sang songs similar to those of Martti and
had even composed some songs. They were
married in 1948, soon after she had graduated from the Athenium Art
College. In 1949 the Hilpeat
trubaduurit got a chance to audition for Finnish radio, but for some reason
had to cancel. In their place went
Martti and Marjatta Pokela, each playing guitars and singing. That first radio performance was in October
or November of 1949. After that, they
were invited back to do a Christmas program and soon they became a regular
feature on Finnish radio called "Folksongs and Folk Ballads performed by
Marjatta and Martti Pokela, playing Guitars." They became quite successful and well‑known
performers in Finland, in 1952 receiving the radio's most popular performers'
award. They began touring widely giving
evening concerts, in which they wore black formal wear. In spite of their popular success, they were
criticized because they accompanied Finnish folk songs with guitars.
In the early 1950s, Martti Pokela
became acquainted with the five‑string kanteles made by Armas J. Koivisto
for Fazer Music Store in Heksinki. This
type of kantele fascinated Martti, particularly because as a boy in Haapavesi
he had seen the same type of kantele played by Antti Rantonen. Martti wanted to see what kind of
possibilities the instrument had, so he began to experiment and teach himself
to play. He used those things he could
remember from Rantonen's playing and then tried to develop the style
further. In a relatively short period of
time, he became a master five‑string kantele player. He developed a virtuoso playing technique by
adopting a free fingering which would allow the playing of very rapid and
complex passages. He also developed the
use of harmonics, by pressing the node of the string with the inside of his
thumb, plucking with his forefinger and quickly lifting the thumb. He made his first radio programs with the
five‑string kantele late in 1952 or early in 1953.
The five‑string kantele also
proved to be a fine instrument for accompaniment. There began to be a gradual change in the
Marjatta‑Martti duo from guitars to kanteles, and from formal wear to
folk costumes. A significant turning
point came in 1954, when Marjatta and Martti went to Belgium to play in a
Finnish Festival. At that time the five‑string
kantele became an important part of their performances. As Martti said to me:
[In
1954 we took a trip to Belgium ... and we took the five‑string kantele
along. We arranged a program where
Marjatta accompanied and I played solos and we sang to the accompaniment of a
five-string kantele. I took along the
kantele because a critic chided me since I sang Finnish folk songs with guitar
accompaniment. It was a pretty radical
fuss at that time. So I took along the
most traditional of Finnish instruments.
I also took along the large kantele, which is a real tradition for me
since I have played it from the time my father made one for me ... We also had
violin, accordion, guitars and other instruments along. Of course, the kantele was probably the most
unusual and interesting of these instru-ments.
Those songs we could not do with kantele accompani-ment, we did with
guitar accompaniment] (Pokela 1983b).
Martti believes that people were not
used to hearing this type of music from the concert stage. It was truly a unique thing at the time and
perhaps people were a little curious.
The Pokelas continued to be popular, but now as kantele players clad in
folk costumes. In the early sixties, the
Pokelas added their daughter Eeva‑Leena to the family group. They continued to tour Finland and the rest
of Europe and also performed on radio and television up to the early seventies
when, according to Martti, they tired of the performing life. The group recorded several records during the
sixties.[2] Eeva‑Leena became a
very accomplished kantele player and musician.
Today she is a lecturer in music theory and composition at the Sibelius
Academy.
Although it came at a late stage in
his development as a performer, Martti Pokela's five‑string kantele
playing still had its roots in Haapavesi, going back to Antti Rantonen. As Martti explained in an interview with me:
[...I
had heard [Antti Rantonen] play five‑string kantele from the time I was
very young. ... his five‑string playing interested me the most since I
heard so much of the large kantele at home and with relatives. This five‑string kantele [playing]
stayed with me as a mental picture. It
was a kind of learning; symbolic, but without the instrument. I always thought about playing it and the
first time I played it was when I got my own [five‑string] kantele. I never played Uncle Antti's kantele. But when Antti was already very ill, half a
year before he died, he was in Oulainen and I went to visit him. I had already started playing in Helsinki, so
I asked if he would still play for me ... and he took his old kantele and
played ... He went through his repertoire. I listened very carefully and memorized
certain things, but I didn't play his kantele and also my own wasn't
along. But one time he did hear my
playing and was surprised because I played harmonics and so on. I went through his traditional playing in my
mind and developed it somewhat from there.
I had a very good relationship with Antti and he was happy that I
continued playing [the five‑string kantele]] (Pokela 1983b).
It can be said then that Martti was a
passive tradition bearer of the Haapavesi five‑string kantele playing
style, who did not become an active player until it was expedient. He was not content playing in the old style;
he had to develop it further to suit his own needs and gain the maximum
potential from the instrument.
[...I
experimented and played Uncle Antti's pieces in the traditional style at first.
`Brush, Sock in the Shoe,' `the Bear Feast Polka' and those, I went completely
through them in the traditional style.
Anyway, I thought that certainly I have to get more shadings [gradations
or subtleties]. Then those harmonics and
[other] techniques just came, where I use more of the right hand] ...
[It
could perhaps seem that these harmonics and so‑ forth are taken a little
bit too far, but I say that certainly you have to get as much as possible out
of the instrument....and I have gone through all these traditional styles. For example, with Teppo Repo I went through
all these [styles] played in the lap, accompaniments and those kinds of things]
(Saha 1982:27-28).
Illus.
37. Martti Pokela playing carved
kanteles for a recording session at Radio Finland, 1983.
Martti Pokela ensured that five‑string
kantele playing was widely heard again in Finland, not as a living part of
everyday life, but on radio, television and sound recordings. Still the five‑string kantele was not a
popular instrument, since it was not widely played. Martti was very well aware of this fact, so
shortly after ending his full‑time performing career he began another
great task: that of promoting kantele
playing. He joined forces with Finland's
Professor of Folk Music, Erkki Ala‑Könni, who was interested in promoting
all Finnish folk music. They both felt
that the best way to begin promoting Finnish folk music was to promote the
carved kantele, the "most Finnish of all musical instruments" and
resurrected an idea which had been proposed by Elias Lönnrot more than a
century earlier: That the kantele should
be used as a school instrument in Finland.
At the time, the schools in Finland
were using recorders, bells and other rhythmic instruments to teach the basics
of music. In some other European
countries, small psalteries were also used.
For example, in Germany they used Tischharfe [Table harps] which
were very close to the kantele in structure.
Ala‑Könni argued that perhaps the kantele was known and favored
more in foreign countries than in Finland and began an active campaign to have
the kantele recognized in the Finnish school curriculum.
Pokela and Ala‑Könni
commissioned Oiva Heikkilä to develop the instruments, then they published a
method book for these instruments called Pienoiskanteleen opas [Small
Kantele Guide] (1971); the first book since Väisänen's (1928a) dealing with
carved kantele playing. It contained a
total of forty‑four pieces; eighteen for five‑string kantele and
twenty‑six for nine‑string kantele.
They differed from Väisänen's book in that they are prescriptive, not
descriptive, and were meant to be used as material for learning and
performance. The book began with a short
history of the kantele and its playing styles, followed by a description of the
style developed by Pokela.
For the five‑string kantele,
basic directions are given, such as placing the instrument horizontally on a
table or in the lap, with the shortest string closest to the player. The basic finger position is the same as the
first one given by Väisänen, but there is no mention that the same finger
should always play the same string. In
fact, some of the pieces would be impossible to perform if this rule were
strictly followed.[3] The kantele is
tuned in perfect fourths and fifths, with a major or minor third in the
middle. The lowest string can be
anywhere from d' to g'.
Pokela shows that there are ten
possible pitches and three possible timbres which can be obtained on a
five-string kantele. The first five
pitches are the basic open strings. Then
for each of the strings there is a harmonic called huiluääni [literally
"flute sound"] which is produced by touching the middle of the string
lightly with the left forefinger, then plucking the string with the right
forefinger. The third type of sound
possible with each of the strings is another type of harmonic produced by
touching the middle of the string with the inside edge of the right thumb,
plucking the string with the right forefinger and quickly lifting the
thumb. Pokela calls this the kaksois
[double] sound. The flute sound is
notated with a single diamond and the double sound with a double diamond over
the pitch which is sounding. Both of
these sound one octave above the open string pitch.
Little is mentioned about
improvisation or adding additional sounds to the melodies, although these are
evident from recordings of Pokela's own performances of the pieces. For some of the pieces there are notated
accom-paniments and some feature accompaniment by a second five‑string
kantele. The covering technique is also
mentioned, where two strings are covered by fore and middle fingers of the left
hand while the right forefinger strums the strings, making tonic or dominant
chords for accompaniment. A backstroke
strumming is also mentioned, where the nail of the right forefinger strums the
strings backwards, away from the player, producing a brighter timbre.
The playing position of the nine‑string
school kantele has the longest string closest to the player. This change from the traditional playing
position was done with the idea that students may eventually wish to study art
music playing which would require the new position. The finger arrangement again follows
Väisänen's descriptions and is basically in the together position. It is mentioned that perhaps the tuning should
be done to a piano, harmonium, accordion or other tempered keyboard instrument,
because it will not necessarily play well with these instruments in perfect
tuning. The special harmonic sounds are
not mentioned for this instrument and the techniques are not notated in any of
the selections for this instrument.
The
Carved Kantele as a School Instrument
The publication of Pienoiskanteleen
opas marked the beginning of a renaissance in carved kantele playing, but
the movement was slow to gain momentum.
Although the Finnish Government provided a cultural grant to aid the
publication of the playing guide, the kantele was still not recognized as a
school instrument. Perhaps the
resistance to the kantele then, as now, has come from school teachers, students
and administrators who feel unsure about its use.
In discussions with recent secondary
school graduates, I found surprising resistance to the carved kantele. They mentioned that the kantele is difficult
to tune properly and, if there are many students in a class, getting all of the
instruments in tune could take the major portion of the period. This is not a problem with the recorder or
bells. Many had the perception that the
kantele was severely limited in what it could play and that if one wanted to
play really well, like Martti Pokela, it was too difficult. Also, the kantele was seen as being a
relatively expensive instrument compared to the recorder. Finally, the kantele's symbolic value as the
national instrument of Finland seemed to be a detriment in some cases. It was seen as being "old" and
"Väinämöinen's instrument," which had little to do with life in our
day and age. One student even told me,
"Other countries do not use their 'national' instruments in schools. Why should we?" Similar prejudices had to be overcome among
teachers and administrators.
In spite of these prejudices, the
carved kantele playing movement gained real momentum in the late 1970s when,
for the first time, students could study folk music at the Sibelius
Academy. All music education students
take courses in Finnish folk music, so that when they go anywhere in the
country to teach, they will be familiar with these Finnish styles of
music. At the very foundation of the
program is learning to play and to teach carved kantele playing. The influence of the Sibelius Academy program
is beginning to be felt around the country as young music teachers begin using
the carved kantele in their teaching.
Illus.
38. Anu Rummukainen teaching a
five-string kantele class at the 1983 Lahti Kantele Camp.
The carved kantele movement has also
been helped by the Folk Music Institute and annual Folk Music Festival at
Kaustinen. The Festival had the kantele
as its theme in 1975 and the Folk Music Institute's journal, Kansan-musiikki,
published a special kantele issue. In
1982, they published a special issue on the five‑string kantele with the
express purpose of providing information, telling about past progress and
setting goals for the future. In the
main article, Heikki Laitinen makes these goals clear:
[The
five‑string kantele into every school!
Why? Because every Finn already
in early childhood should be able to see, hear and touch a Finnish instrument,
that the knowledge and identification of this instrument would become a part of
every Finn's general education, an instrument which for hundreds of years was
his ancestors' only instrument. ...
The
five‑string kantele as a school instrument! Why? Because it is an instrument which is
fun, versatile, easy to play, inspires creativity, gets the immagination going,
forces you to invent melodies, develops your harmonic sense, frees rhythms, can
be tuned in many ways, can be played in dozens of ways, which everyone should
learn ... [to] enrich music learning in [our] schools ... [as] an instrument
among other instruments] (Laitinen
1982:9).
An instructional guide called
"Viisikielinen kantele soitto‑opas" [A Guide to Five‑String
Kantele Playing] by Heikki Laitinen and Hannu Saha (1982) was originally
published as a part of the five‑string kantele issue of Kansanmusiikki.[4] This guide has since become the standard
starting point for teaching the five‑string kantele in schools throughout
Finland. It tries, as much as possible,
to teach the old Karelian five‑string playing style as described by
Väisänen in his book of 1928. At the
same time it does not prescribe what the ideal of the style should be; it
teaches that each student should use improvisation and experimentation to
develop their own unique styles of playing.
The guide reproduces the basic rules, tunings,
and finger positions mentioned by Väisänen.
The kantele is played in a horizontal position with the shortest string
closest to the player and each string has its own finger. The students decide which finger positions
and playing positions suit them best.
They begin by playing scales and simple children's songs. The guide goes on to teach the very important
additional concepts of polyphony and improvisation.
[In
five string kantele playing it is characteristic that there be polyphony
[multiple sounds] which come by plucking other strings at the same
time. It can therefore be said that in
pieces there are melodic pitches as well as accompanying pitches. In addition, this polyphony appears
[because], during the playing time generally the strings are not dampened.]
(Laitinen‑Saha 1982:13).
The students practice this polyphony
by plucking the highest pitched string together with each note of the scales
and melodies they have learned thus far.
All the exercises begin with a very slow tempo and gradually work up to
fast tempos, so that the playing becomes automatic. The students are encouraged to try plucking
some of the other strings together with the familiar melodies and to do this by
experimentation and improvisation. They
are also encouraged to make rhythmic changes and to add other notes to the
basic melodies. The guide teaches
improvisation as a fundamental aspect of five‑string kantele playing.
[Also typical of five‑string
playing is a creative playing manner, [where] the same piece is not played exactly
the same way twice, rather it receives small (or even large) rhythmic or
melodic changes ...
Improvisational playing, or the creative
playing manner, is difficult and it
requires practice for a musical style. A
large portion of ancient Finnish kantele music is founded upon creation and
variation. The five‑string kantele
is an outstanding medium to practice the creative playing manner, because the
usable pitches and harmonic foundation are sufficiently limited] (ibid:13‑14).
The students participate in a kind
of improvisational round, where the entire group plays a melody in unison, then
in between the playing of the melody, each person in turn tries two measures of
solo free improvisation.
The guide also teaches accompaniment with the
five‑string kantele, using the covering technique to get the dominant and
tonic chords. The tonic is a full, three
part chord produced by covering the second and fourth strings with the fore and
middle fingers of the left hand, then strumming with the forefinger of the
right hand. A backward strum using the
fingernail will give a brighter tone.
The dominant (minus the third) is obtained by moving the fore and middle
fingers to the first and third strings.
Once the students learn to produce chords, they learn to improvise over
a harmonic foundation of I I V I. The
subdominant is produced by covering the second, third and fifth string and
allowing the first and fourth to ring.
The guide contains transcriptions of
eight practice pieces, four in major and four in minor, in addition to the
familiar children's melodies and scales.
It also presents the well-known "Kalevala melody," and two
short pieces for tuning and testing the tuning of the kantele.
The guide ends by describing many
other possibilities, such as different tunings, harmonics, rapid playing using
the fore fingers (as developed by Martti Pokela), using a plectrum, bow, or
slide (like a pill bottle), and attaching a bridge to the center of the instrument
just under string level. By pressing
down on the string, half of it will sound an octave higher. It adds this statement at the end: "Assignment: Invent new playing methods
and techniques! Creating the new is just
as important as preserving the old!"
Notes:
[1]
The information on Martti Pokela comes from my interviews with him in March and
November of 1983 and the published interviews he had with Hannu Saha (Pokela
1982b) and Ismo Sopanen (Pokela 1984a).
[2]
These records include Kantele (Sävel SÄLP 623, 1969); Kantele of
Finland (Scandia SLP 531, 1969); Keskiyön auringon lauluja (Finnlevy
SFLP 8500, 1969); and Karjalan Kunnailla ‑‑ lauluja Karjalasta
(Sävel SÄLP 703, 1972).
[3]
When Martti Pokela adapted free fingering and other technical advances to
five-string kantele playing, the old support system of the hands holding the
instrument securely in the lap or on a table began to break down. Pokela tried various means of securing the
kantele to the table on which it was played.
The best of these methods proved to be a type of adhesive clay, sinitarra,
which was applied to the four corners on the bottom of the kantele. When a kantele was attached to a table in
this way, the table acted as a resonator and the sound was amplified. Many players still use this method of
securing the carved kantele.
[4] The Folk Music Institute has also
published a playing guide for ten-string carved kanteles (Saha 1986).
Please read the official
disclaimer.
URL=http://www.people.iup.edu/rahkonen/kantele/diss/Sml.htm
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created and maintained by Carl Rahkonen. ©
1989 Last modified 10/24/05
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