Sound of music from the past

Press, 30 April 1981, Page 17

Sound of music from the past

By

TIM MABY,

8.8. C. Cardiff,

London Press Service

Few people own an Appalachian dulcimer, or even a hurdy-gurdy; but, with the developing interest in early and rare forms of music, an increasing number of enthusiasts are appreciating the charms of these and other less familiar instruments.

The movement is chiefly an amateur one and its adherents are especially evident on the European mainland, in the United States and in Britain. One Welsh amateur musician has been skilled enough to turn his hobby of making early instruments into a flourishing business.

Bernard Ellis is a product of the early music movement. Some 20 years ago, in Cardiff, South Wales, he helped to found a folk club. He started playing American folk music — the songs of the hill-billies and railroad hoboes — using a banjo. But when he heard of the Appalachian dulcimer, he wanted to play that too. As it proved difficult to find one, he decided to make one himself.

First he experimented, making a longer arm for his banjo. Then he found a book containing photographs and a diagram of the dulcimer — and he succeeded in constructing one that worked. He went on to fashion a guitar and a mandolin. Then he made another discovery, the hammer dulcimer, which came to Wales from Northern Ireland. He sold the instruments to his friends — even though, he says now, the instruments were not up to much musically. But they were cheap. The number of enthusiasts who wanted to buy his pieces quickly grew — and Bernard,

who admits he was not too bright at school, suddenly realised he had found his vocation. The former lorrydriver / steelworker / taxidriver revelled in the more sensitive work of instrument making. His wife, Meg took a job to help out financially and said she would give him five years to turn his hobby into a going concern. Bernard Ellis came to early music through folk music, like many other members of the movement. By that time he was living in a rural part of Herefordshire, not far from the Welsh border, an area he had discovered while lorry-driving. There, a new friend, who played the recorder excellently and enthusiastically, introduced Bernard to the

growing new network of early music amateurs. One of them, Richard Woods, a young businessman from Bradford in northern England, inherited a big, old music store in which he set up his own “stall,” concentrating on early music. Richard Woods, now of the Early Music Shop, persuaded Bernard Ellis to make some reproductions of other early instruments including rebecs and fiedels, 15th and 16th century stringed ancestors of the violin and viola da gamba. To make these instruments, Bernard, with the help of his wife, worked from written descriptions of tuning and stringing, and from old paintings and sculptures.

Their fiedel, for instance, is based on a painting in an Antwerp museum. A citole, an even earlier stringed instrument, they found depicted in a 13th century sculpture in Italy. The beautifullynamed symphonie they discovered sculptured in Vienna. But it was Bernard’s painstaking craftsmanship together with his own musical ability that made his enterprise successful. Nothing leaves his workshop until he plays it himself. He and his wife now make nine different

stringed instruments ranging in price from £l5O to £lOOO. Bernard does the woodworking and stringing, while Meg completes the job, varnishing and packing. Perhaps the most important part of what they have learnt over the last 10 years is how to work the fine woods they use. Their copy of an eighteenth century hurdy-gurdy, which works by a wheel being rubbed against the strings, includes spruce or mahogany for the sounding board; boxwood, rosewood and beechwood for the fittings; and other woods for the inlays and veneers, which are different on every instrument. For some years the couple searched for lacewood, which, they had read in an old book, was particularly suitable for their craft. It turned out to be a plane tree wood cut in a special way, called “quarter-sawn.” This produces pieces of wood like wedges of cheese containing a unique lacelike wood-grain pattern. Bernard uses the lacewood in his copies of an eighteenth century Welsh instrument called a crwth, which he carves from a solid piece of plane. Bernard now exports his instruments all over the world. Over the last two years his work has been shown at festivals and gatherings in Belgium, West Germany and > France, as well as being supplied to specialist shops. In America, enthusiasts will be able to see and play his instruments at an exhibition in Boston, Massachusetts, this summer.