Arto Wikla   Wed, 22 Dec 2004
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I am 51 years old..., huh! In my family there are Riitta, Elsa (10 years),
Emma (8 years), Mörri (a Finnish-Lappish dog, 4 months), eight tarantula
spiders, and a lot of aquarium fish...
 
I work at the Department of Computer Science at the University of
Helsinki, Finland, as an assistant professor (lecturer, senior lecturer,
... these names differ from country to country). I've been teaching
programming etc. several years, and actually I do like teaching at 
university, even when I am not especially interested in computers...
Working in a company wouldn't be my way?

Music is not a hobby to me; it is much more, actually it is much more
important to me than computer science. But mostly university gives me
my living. I do some lute gigs every now and then. And music generally
- not only lute music or early music - is in the center of my life.

I started classical guitar about 1973. And in 1982 (or 3?) was the
year I count my lute playing started - then I cut my guitar nails. 
The reason was same as many have had: the lute music is so much more 
interesting and - dare I say - better music.

My lute teacher was Leif Karlson, who had been a co-student of Konrad
Junghanel in the lute class of Michael Shaeffer in Cologne. Leif was a
very good and knowledgeable teacher!

From the 80's I've taken part to several early music courses in Europe:
Trondheim (2 times, Jakob Lindberg), Urbino (2 times, Yasunori Imamura,
Andrea Damiani), Innsbruck (Nigel North), Sardegna (Yasunori Imamura),
Bremen (2 times, Stephen Stubbs, Paul O'Dette), Nordmaling (Nordic
Baroque Music Festival, 5 times, Jakob Lindberg), ...

I started my lute playing with the 16th century music. Then continuo
became important - the start was really hard, but really worth of it.
As a matter of fact my "career" in the lute list started by writing
a small continuo school to the list (1994). That little school can 
still be found in my music pages (see below).

Nowadays nearest to my heart is accompanying a good singer singing
early Italian baroque monody. And Monteverdi is clearly my "Home God",
the "Best Composer". (I know, in reality there is no such thing... ;)

I like to play 16th century composers, Spinaccino, da Milano, ...,
there are so many of them, ..., the songs of Dowland are gems, ...

17th century: Kapsperger, Piccinini(s), Castaldi, de Visee, ...,
and then of course those great vocal composers: Monteverdi, Caccini,
d'India, ...

I have a 6 course lute, a 10 course lute, an archlute and a French
theorbo by Stephen Barber; a chitarrino by Eero Palviainen; a 7 course
soprano lute and a big theorbo (or chitarrone) by Timo Kontio; and
an anonymous 8 course lute rebuild by Eero Palviainen.

Old photographs of some of those instruments can be found in my music 
pages (see below).

I am not singing in public, but when numbering a bass line, you have
to sing to yourself - at least I have to! Anyhow, something, which I am 
very proud of, happened some years ago in Nordmaling, in Nordic Baroque
Festival:

I was accompanying a soprano singing a Verdelot madrigal setting by
Adrian Willaert. There was a strange pause in the soprano line.
We had also the Verdelot version, where we could find out, what was
happening there: the lower voices were answering to the top line:
"et i noi pastori", "and we shepherds". We decided that I'll sing
that text! Then we went to Emma Kirkby's lesson, and I sang my 4
words. After our performance Emma told me that I have a beautiful
voice! You can guess how jealous the proper singers became... ;-)
And how proud I was! :)

My early music pages are quite popular. You can find them in
  http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/wikla/music.html

Arto Wikla