Cosmopolitan instrument enters national heritage: A historical perspective on the origins of Finnish accordion music

A century and a bit ago, it would have been difficult to find anything connecting the accordion and Finnish culture.  While small diatonic accordions were quite common, particularly among less affluent people, folk music scholars did not record the music of accordion players and were very careful about not equating them with kantele players and fiddlers, who had been elevated to national folklore demigods. When the modern chromatic five-row accordion arrived on the scene, it was an outlier, an ambassador of urban jazz culture. No national significance was seen here either.

Nevertheless, by the middle of the 20th century at the latest, the accordion had morphed into an indisputably Finnish national instrument. The aforementioned small accordions had become old enough and the music played on them archaic enough to be acceptable as actual valuable folklore. However, the crucial turn in domesticating the accordion came in the 1930s. This was when the accordion was adopted as one of the core instruments in Finnish dance music and schlagers.

This latterly national adoption almost completely obscures the early history of the accordion from the Finnish perspective. In the context of the 19th century, small diatonic accordions were conspicuously cosmopolitan instruments. Industrial production had made them so affordable that huge numbers were sold each year around Europe and indeed around the world. The popularity of the accordion neither knew nor recognised national boundaries.

The accordion as an invention

In the 19th century, new musical instruments were invented and developed like never before. Metal-framed pianos, valved brass instruments, saxophones, steel-stringed mandolins and balalaikas became popular and expanded the sound universe of music-making literally on a global scale. Small button accordions were one such innovation; these became fashionable among the urban bourgeoisie as early as in the 1840s. 

This fashion was short-lived, though, as the accordion was unable to displace that undisputed status symbol of the middle-class salon, the piano. Lower social classes, however, embraced the instrument, as it was portable and durable and capable of being played at fairs, dances and other social occasions. Inevitably, the accordion became a folk instrument. 

The popularity of and demand for the accordion fostered a thriving instrument-making industry, particularly in Germany, as harmonica manufacturers extended their product range to include accordions. Expanding production was technically easy, as both instruments were free-reed aerophones: Sound is generated by air flowing past a vibrating reed in a frame. Air pressure is produced by blowing in the case of a harmonica or with bellows in the case of an accordion. German accordions had two sets of buttons: a melody keyboard for the right hand and a bass and chord keyboard for the left hand. The volume of the sound could be varied by the bellows pressure, while the notes played were selected by pressing buttons.

Small harmonicas and accordions found a lively market in Finland too at an early stage, and the diatonic accordion gradually became a popular instrument for music-making at home and at dances among lower classes. Accordions were sold at both music shops and bookshops, and they were available to order by mail. These affordable, industrially mass-produced novelties spread far and wide but remained underrated in one important sense: they were exotic trinkets seen more as mechanical toys than as actual musical instruments.

Martin Paul and importing know-how

Playing techniques and performance practices – the know-how of making music on the instrument – could not be built on instrument sales alone. What was needed were foreign professionals who could provide a model. These cultural ambassadors demonstrated in their performances how the accordion could be played and what kind of music could be performed on it. Self-help manuals and music lessons were also effective in educating enthusiasts about the accordion.

One of the earliest mediators of this know-how in Finland was Martin Paul (1843–1893). Markku Lepistöwrites in his study that Paul was a very cosmopolitan professional musician. Born as Moses Nathan into a Jewish family of glove manufacturers in Rendsburg along the Kiel Canal, he opted for a musical career despite his family owning several glove factories in Germany and Denmark. He emigrated to Sweden, became a performing accordionist, started a family, converted to Christianity, obtained Swedish citizenship and adopted the stage name Martin Paul.

Religious conversion was a necessity for an itinerant musician, because in Sweden at the time – as indeed in Finland – Jews were highly restricted in where they were allowed to reside and which trades they were allowed to undertake. Martin Paul relocated to Helsinki in 1879 and began to give public concerts and to offer accordion lessons. He moved house several times according to how work was available; in addition to Helsinki, he and his family spent extensive periods in Tampere and Viipuri.

Music shops touted the accordion as being not only affordable but also easy to learn. Customers who bought these instruments were largely from among the common people, and the concept of investing a long period of time in mastering an instrument was alien to them. Martin Paul also capitalised on the ease of learning: he promised that, thanks to his new “Japanese” teaching method, anyone could learn to play the harmonica “in seven and a half hours”.

Alongside teaching, Paul did a lot of touring. Over a period of 14 years, he performed in dozens of places, from major cities to towns and villages. The number of performances that can be documented through newspaper ads is close to 500. Paul performed in the greatest variety of venues imaginable, from the Great Hall of the University of Helsinki to hotels and spas in cities and community houses and coaching inns in the countryside.

Martin Paul’s concert programmes come across as surprisingly high-brow and international. In addition to performing European dance hits of the day, he played music by opera composers such as Verdi, Bellini,Donizetti, Auber, Offenbach, Boieldieu and Flotow. In the concert culture of the day, repertoire drawn from the stage was highly popular and often featured. Music written for the stage was published in a wide range of arrangements suitable for all purposes, from orchestra concerts to music in the home. Hit numbers from operas and operettas were a staple in the repertoire of every single brass band, spa orchestra and salon pianist in Finland. For Martin Paul to perform the ‘Cavatina’ from Bellini’s Norma or a medley of tunes from Flotow’s Martha was only natural.

Virtuoso performances and variety shows for country folk

As early as in the 1820s, a virtuoso cult began to emerge, with performers like Paganini, Liszt and several others building their repertoire on technically dazzling variations and fantasies based on familiar opera tunes. The operatic virtuosity of these grand celebrities was an inspiration to all touring recitalists, lending a vicarious aura of great artistry to wannabe masters who were only just making a career for themselves. It was essential for Martin Paul to adopt this virtuoso template in order to raise the profile of his diminutive instrument in concert music.

Martin Paul succeeded in establishing the two-row accordion as a serious concert instrument. Newspaper reviews of his concerts were typically bemused and delighted in equal measure. It was a particular source of wonderment how skilfully this foreign master was able to conjure artistic music out of his tiny mechanical box. His concerts also helped increase awareness of the accordion in what was emerging as a newspaper-driven publicity culture. Paul’s sophisticated concert programmes made the news every year. By contrast, folk music played on small accordions was almost completely unknown to the newspaper reading public.

There was one further feature that linked Martin Paul’s tours to broader European trends of the day. Paul was arranging concerts and entertainments at a time when the ‘variety show’ genre that had evolved in the great metropolises of Europe was making its first appearances at restaurants and pleasure gardens in Finland’s major cities. Entertainers from abroad became a growing attraction on the Finnish cultural scene. 

Paul had no difficulty in combining the duties of performer and manager, thanks to his business background. He brought a wide range of foreign professional entertainers to Finland, including players of unusual instruments, child prodigies, strongmen, magicians and circus artists. He often performed with them as well, effectively converting his concerts into miniature variety shows. The fact that Paul was able to do this not only in cities but in rural areas as well must be a unique achievement, and as such it adds to our knowledge of how international entertainment made landfall in Finland in the late 19th century.

Advent of the chromatic accordion

According to Markku Lepistö, Paul performed the majority of his concerts on a two-row diatonic accordion. He was undoubtedly obliged to rearrange much of his repertoire, simplifying their harmonies and melodies. Towards the end of his career, he acquired a three-row chromatic accordion, which made it easier to perform a more diverse repertoire.

This change of instrument was an augur of the future. By the beginning of the 20th century, itinerant accordion players imported a completely new culture of accordion playing. Virtuoso pieces remained a feature of local accordion performances, while the Italian performers Domenico Ruffo, Giovanni Parma and the four Busi brothers who toured Finland presented a more international repertoire. The greatest difference, however, was that the two-row accordion was now permanently replaced by larger chromatic instruments in the realm of public concerts and entertainments.

The first generation of Finnish accordion masters, from Alarik Kuusisto to Johan Homan, demonstrated their skills on medleys from operas by Verdi and Flotow along with dance music of the day. Later, performers focused on virtuoso pieces of their own devising, which made better use of the technical properties of the modern accordion. These gradually ousted the operatic medleys of the 19th century, and it was this trend that led to the ultimate domestication and nationalisation of the accordion in Finland.

The writer is a professor emeritus of music history at the Sibelius Academy. He was the co-editor of the book Suomalaisen harmonikan historia (A History of the Accordion in Finland) with Marko Tikka in 2014.

Featured photo: By unknown (source: Finna) Translation: Jaakko Mäntyjärvi