This week in addition to a day each with two of our regular teachers, Ditte Andersson and Olov Johansson, we had three visitor days. Kjell-Erik Eriksson taught us fiddle tunes, Magnus Gustafsson came back and spent another day educating us about folk music and dance history, and Torbjörn Näsbom taught us nyckelharpa techniques and tunes. So it was a wonderful and very full week.
Kjell-Erik Eriksson
Torbjörn Näsbom talking with Lirica. Torbjörn taught us 5 new tunes and recorded 5 more for us. He also conducted an incredibly helpful master class and helped trouble shoot problems of instrument holding and tension for each of us to make our playing better and more efficient.
Magnus Gustafsson is a remarkable teacher/professor. This week he talked to both dance and music classes together about dance history, different kinds of dances and a chronology over time. As he has done before, he spoke the entire day without notes in Swedish with translations into English on request.
Some tidbits of information:
- Group couple dancing was established in Europe in the 1700’s and was named “contra dance” or country dance (contradans) by the French. The term contra dance does not come from opposing lines of men and women. It used (uses) 2/4 or 4/4 time. In 1760 the French dance masters inserted a turn in 3/8 rhythm so that couples could change position when the dance started over. The partners turned clockwise as a couple, stopping on every beat, and this move was called “vals”.
- For the 1800 New Year’s Eve Party, the Parisian dance masters created a new dance for the new century in 3/8 or 3/4 time and called it “vals” or waltz. It was revolutionary (!) because couples danced just as couples, not as a group, and turned clockwise as a couple while going around the periphery of the room counter-clockwise.
Magnus Gustafsson
Magnus Gustafsson