Jan Ling

HUGO ALFVÉN BETWEEN TWO SYMPHONIES.

ABOUT AESTHETIC IDEALS OF MUSIC IN

TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY SWEDEN

Programm-Musik - eigentliche Musik!

Absolute Musik: - ihre Verfestigung mit Hilfe einer gewissen Routine und

Handwerkstechnik jedem nur einigermassen

musikalischen Menschen möglich. Erstere: - wahre Kunst!

Zweite: Kunstfertigkeit!

Richard Strauss1

Swedish composers working with or advocating a programme-music approach or adapting their music

to a particular social function or musical taste came under suspicion in the 20th century, sometimes as

outright traitors to their art. Composers making common cause with folk music came perilously near

the same abyss. One composer who, at various points in his lifetime, was heavily criticised for

betraying artistic ideals is Hugo Alfvén.2 All his life, however, he had a faithful audience and devoted

following among a large community of music lovers. They moved with him from one stylistic ideal to

another. But many leading music personalities felt that Alfvén had attained the peak of his

achievement as a composer at the age of 27, with his Second Symphony (Op. 11). After that it was

downhill all the way! Alfvén’s very next symphony, the Third, in a totally different style from the

Second, was given a cooler reception by reviewers, while a number of critics highly esteemed in

Swedish music regarded his Fourth as a disaster in terms of musical morality. Julius Rabe had the

following to say in the newspaper GHT in 1920:

One can disregard the unpleasant surprise of now, after so many years of revolutionary

production in all the arts, suddenly encountering a work so intent on detailed portrayal as to

smack of the heyday of naturalism twenty or thirty years ago – all the more so as this is a work

of music, an art whose grandest privilege is its capacity for being free and unfettered by all

extraneous precedent, and whose progenitor is a man whose activity is based on the city of

youth [the university town of Uppsala]. The gravest objection to Alfvén’s new symphony

concerns, not its old-fashionedness in spirit and deed, but the whole mentality of this “hymn to

love in springtime”. There is not an ounce of strong youthfulness or triumphant grace in this

musical imitation of the outward aspect of love. Instead it is banal, devoid of intent or ambition

and basically, like all imitative art, sentimental and impotent.

To Alfvén’s contemporaries, his compositions were so closely bound up with his personal life that

keeping the two apart was not easy. This was due, not least, to Alfvén himself already having stressed,

concerning the Second Symphony, that his music is always based on a programme in which the tonal

language has been governed by nature, humanity or possibly ideas: it is meant to portray the sea, an

outstandingly popular motif among Sweden’s musical “marine artists” and also the visual and audible

background to the Fourth Symphony.

1 Richard Strauss, “Poetische Idé”, März 1890 an Johann L. Bella (Richard Strauss-dokumente, 1980, Reclam p.

60). 2 Alfvén’s life and work have been described by Sven E. Svensson (1946) and Lennart Hedwall (1973) in two

monographs. In the following pages I will be drawing extensively on these two accounts and on Alfvén’s own

memoirs.

2

The programmatic interpretation which Alfvén later puts on the Second Symphony and several later

orchestral compositions undoubtedly furthered their accessibility and popularity, but the question is

whether the programmes are post facto constructions or whether Alfvén really made them his

compositional starting point.

The diary which Alfvén began keeping in 1930 contains excerpts from an earlier diary which he

claims to have kept ever since he was a young man but which, for reasons unknown, he burned, with

the exception of certain pages. These shards from his earlier musical career include, for example, the

following (quarto diary, Uppsala University Library):

When I was 25 I wrote down the following thoughts in my diary: “The greatest mission of

musical art at present, to my mind, is to create a contrapuntal art which, aside from its true

purpose of forming the structure, the composition, of the work, will at the same time give

absolutely free play to the innumerable shades of colour which the conquest of the entire

harmonic system has unleashed.” How astonished I was the other day on reading the identical

train of thought, couched in almost exactly the same words, in David Monrad Johansen’s

biography of Grieg.

The image of the mission of musical art which Alfvén was later to stand for underscores instead its

relation to a programme to be realised in music. This is true, for example, of Rhapsody No. 1,

Midsommarvaka Op. 19, 1904, No. 3 Dalarapsodi Op. 48, 1932, the symphonic poem En

skärgårdssägen Op. 20, 1905, none of which provoked the same repugnance as the programme for the

Fourth Symphony. Here Alfvén had profaned the noblest and grandest of musical forms, the

symphony, and breached the code of originality by using an outmoded texture of sound.

Alfvén and Anders Zorn

Alfvén’s orchestral music came into being at a time when Anders Zorn held a dominant position, both

internationally and in Swedish cultural life. Much light can be shed on things by comparing Alfvén

and Zorn, not least as regards their relation to folklore and their public. Both are captivated at the turn

of the century by folklore, which in Zorn’s case is manifested through an impressive campaign for the

preservation of Swedish folk music and by his interest in depicting traditional country scenes, not least

in Dalarna. There the two of them meet and Alfvén becomes a judge in Zorn’s fiddler competitions. In

addition, Alfvén noted down a good many tunes and ballads and socialised with the Dalarna fiddlers,

whom he regarded as the last great exponents of folk music.

Folk music proved a watershed in Alfvén’s career. With it he put the classical vocabulary well and

truly behind him in favour of a more refined romantic idiom. His Midsommarvaka rhapsody,

according to Sven E. Svensson, “was written in anger at being looked on as a dry contrapuntalist with

symphonies and sacred music on his programme – [he] wanted to give a display of musikantisch

exuberance and humour.”3 In the Third Symphony, the popular touch is more one of festivity than of

traditional Swedish music and folksong, counterbalanced by a traditional symphonic structure and

presentation. But even here there are fragments of melody harking back, not least, to Alfvén’s free

church background.

3 Svensson 1946, p. 50. Cf. a letter from Alfvén to Oscar Quensel, dated 14th December 1903: “Well, well, so I

am accused of being a musical brooder who needs to learn simplification! Well, I’ll be … excuse me, Professor

… all I mean to say is that for my part I believe it is just conceivable that this pronouncement draws a mistaken

conclusion.

“True, I revel in composite forms and rich polyphony, because my brain is irrevocably made that way. This is,

quite simply, my natural mode of expression, and it is not lacking in clarity.” Svensson 1946, p. 55 f.

3

Alfvén’s highly romantic, colourful style is a paint box which he always has with him so as to give

the drawn melodic outline a colourful sound. Form defers to the surge of poetic feeling and to brightly

coloured constellations of instruments and sound. Svensson argues:

In its choice of sounding material and its treatment of dissonances, it is colouristic, at times

indeed impressionist. And here the treatment and combination of the instruments of the

orchestra has been concentrated more and more on achieving subtle effects of tone colour.4

In particular, the constant shifts of colouring evoke many associations with Zorn’s paintings. There is

another parallel between Alfvén and Zorn which is perhaps a little more farfetched. Zorn paid

grandiose tribute to the great and the good of his time by painting their portraits. This more or less

“official” portraiture can be seen as a parallel to Alfvén’s increasing delight in composing cantatas for

grand occasions. This gave him social standing and averted the destitution threatening a composer

with his kind of lifestyle.

Alfvén and folk music

Unlike Béla Bartók, Alfvén never got beyond the stage of “using” folk music in the form of robust,

sentimental or catchy tunes with romantic or burlesque associations.

Folk music does not in his case bring about any organic growth from one stylistic ideal to another.

Instead the styles coexist side by side, like segmented soil strata, representing a certain period in his

output. So what role did folk music play for Alfvén? His interest in it was profound and sincere, as

witness, not least, his going to the trouble of noting down tunes and arranging a large number of

folksongs. Even if this did not bring about any organic stylistic development in his writing, folk music

may have been the very thing that piloted him between his markedly different stylistic periods.

Svensson divides Alfvén’s output into the following:

- a romantic-classical period up to and including Herrens bön (1902)

- a high-romantic period from En skärgårdssägen (1900) to Bergakungen (1923) inclusive,

- and a classical, folkoristicperiod characterised by diatonic melody and predominantly

homophonic texture, beginning roughly with Universitetsjubileumskantaten (1927).

For present purposes we will confine our attention to stylistic periods (1) and (2), in which we find his

Second, Third and Fourth Symphonies, Midsommarvakan and En skärgårdssägen. Just as Zorn’s

buxom wenches and his depictions of the magical Midsummer dancing in Dalarna won acclaim in the

art salon, so Alfvén’s interpretations of fiddler tunes and folksongs in rhapsody form came to be

savoured in the “concert salon”.5 Both artists stand forth as communicators of rural culture in its final

phase, still segregated from urban culture, to a middle-class urban culture which enjoyed the music in

the concert hall and the paintings at gallery openings. But not only this: reproduction of the works of

art made them a part of mass culture. This in turn has given Alfvén and Zorn a wide popular

following. In Alfvén’s case, his many folksong arrangements made a further contribution to his

4 Svensson 1946, p. 51f, has mapped the known melodies in Midsommarvaka: “In Midsommarvaka Alfvén has

used a string of familiar fiddler tunes. The opening theme, Knäpplåten, together with another well-known dance

tune, makes up the thematic base of the first part of the rhapsody (Allegro moderato). [….] The intermediate

Andante section is based on a tune in Vindarna sucka i skogen by Ivar Hallström.” 5 The third part of the Rhapsody, Allegro 2/4, later Allegro con brio in ¾ time, is based on a well-known fiddler

tune plus Jössehäradspolskan and, as a subsidiary theme thereto, Trindskallevisan. Hedwall (1973, p. 196f)

gives examples of Alfvén processing tunes noted down after Erhard Lännman for his knäppolska and pekdans,

and also recounts the debate occurring in both the USA and Germany about the tunes being of German origin.

Alfvén, at all events, found the “universal, traditional” in accordance with the very same ideals pursued by J. A.

P. Schulz in his songs 150 years previously!

4

popularity: Swedish choral singing, rooted in the 19th century, was a dynamic popular movement with

nationalistic inflections during the 20th. Alfvén’s world of sound was exactly on target: colourful

without being provocative. The texture of his writing, similarly, was ingeniously simple without being

banal, and with just the right dab of humour to gladden the heart of every choral singer.

Alfvén and musical style

When, in 1920, Julius Rabe accuses Alfvén for harking back to an outmoded programme music, he

may possibly, in the neo-classical spirit of the age, have completely misjudged his man: Alfvén saw

what he was doing as a step forward, a bid for long-overdue emancipation from a musically

autonomous stylistic ideal which he had inherited and sweated over under the lash of his teacher Johan

Lindegren. He was also discomfited by his Second Symphony always being held forth as such a

masterpiece, to the detriment of his later output. Consequently, the praise accorded his Third

Symphony came as a deliverance.6

But there is also another trait, the one which Rabe, for example, found musically unethical, namely

that of not fighting one’s way forward to an autonomous idiom of one’s own. There were also patrons

(Quensel) who financially assisted Alfvén, hoping that he would deepen his artistic profile in that

direction. But Alfvén does not seem to have had the requisite peace of mind for “retreating into

himself”: Bacchanalian frenzy in the company of friends and lovely ladies was too much of a

temptation. This demanded popularity. Alfvén never riled his audience with a new and, to them,

unfamiliar tonal language, but he riled the experts by flouting established aesthetic ideals of his art!

This denied him the reputation of a top-flight composer among contemporary musical cognoscenti and

still earns him sidelong glances among listeners putting a premium on the shape and structure of

composition. Alfvén was a virtuoso composer, but he did not apply his skill to the creation of a new

and complicated style of music.

The autonomous view of music, rooted in 19th century German idealism, also played a crucial role in

20th century aesthetics of music. Paradoxically enough, there is an affinity here between Adorno’s

criticism of Stravinsky7 and attacks on Alfvén by leading Swedish reviewers in the 1920s.

But whatever one’s standpoint concerning the aesthetics of art, Alfvén’s contribution to Swedish

music and culture is of such dignity, past and present, as to make him an embodiment of Swedish

music at the turn of the century and in the early 1900s, both as composer and as choral conductor.

Furthermore, there is an interesting, intuitively created alternative to the tenets of the German

philosophy of music which makes him all the more interesting as a Nordic cultural phenomenon.

Alfvén and the musical scene in turn-of-the-century Sweden

In the first part of his memoirs, Alfvén writes that he made a systematic study of scores, e.g. from the

repertoire at that time current in Stockholm.8 In his dissertation on the Stockholm music scene

between 1890 and 1910, Martin Tegen has depicted “the broadening of the concert repertoire”:

6 Letter from Klampenborg, 14th March 1906, concerning the première performance of the Third Symphony: “On 10th and 11th March I conducted in Göteborg [Gothenburg], on the Saturday a full evening concert of my

own works and on the Sunday the Rhapsody as encore at the popular concert. The week before, Stenhammar and

Aulin had had an orchestral concert (Stenhammar’s piano concerto etc.) and had made a loss, with only half the

seats taken. So I was uneasy about my concert, but the outcome was most unexpected, not only did I have a full

house but several hundred people had to go home without tickets, and everyone I spoke to after the concerts

assured me as of one voice that such ovations had never before been known in Göteborg, whether for foreign or

Swedish artists.” 7 In his Philosophie der neuen Musik, Adorno accuses Stravinsky of a kind of artistic betrayal in devoting time to

works “pandering to the public”, e.g. Pulcinella. 8 “That winter I learned two new things about the improvement of orchestral instruments. I think it was in

Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben that I discovered them. The double bass had gained five notes at the bottom –

5

The growth and differentiation of the middle class, with the gradual transition in music from

Viennese classicism to late-Romantic monumental compositions like those of Berlioz, Bruckner,

Brahms and Wagner, with the development of the musician from a salon artist to a tone poet and

interpreter, with the whole of this development of the aesthetic ideal from axiomatic

intelligibility to, on the one hand, problem-laden expressive art and, on the other, blithe

vulgarity, with all this there also appears within the music-making part of society a broadening

or a fission of music into two increasingly distinct groups: serious music and light music. (Tegen

1955, p. 29)

It is now, during this transitional phase, that Alfvén comes on the scene and looks round for a musical

profile of his own. In the work which has now been mentioned, Tegen gives examples of the ideology

which permeates the world of music and which Alfvén was to make his own with the passing years:

music rested on the foundations of sensibility and imagination,

the listener did not need to “understand” music,

music could reach everyone so long as it became commonly known.

This is quite a far cry from Eduard Hanslick’s listener ideal in Hugo Alfvén’s reply to the question:

“But what do you mean, then, by ‘understanding’ a work of music?”

If, on hearing certain tonal works, your fantasy is so vigorously moved, your emotions undergo

such a powerful upsurge and the tonal pictures rushing forth act so strongly on your imagination

that you perceive the instantaneous moods they convey as feelings and fragments of your own

life, now flowing towards you in the transfigured light of the music, then you have indeed

understood; for then you have made the spirit of the music your own spirit and its blood your

own blood. (DM 1908:19/20, cit. Tegen 1955, p. 20)

Hedwall discusses the musical situation in the realm of symphonic writing on the eve of Alfvén’s first

two symphonies:

Insofar as the native symphonic tradition – if such a pretentious designation be permitted – made

any difference to Alfvén’s first two symphonies, it was if anything probably of a detrimental

kind. Even though he could respect, for example, the works of Norman, these were doubtless too

dependent on the Mendelssohn-Gade style to really interest a composer who had a considerably

stronger dramatic temperament and whose intentions aspired to the high-Romantic symphony of

the kind represented by Beethoven and Berlioz. Among the symphonies performed in

Stockholm during Alfvén’s student years and up to his own symphonic début, we find, side by

side with the older classics, compositions for example by Berlioz, Brahms, Goldmark, Liszt,

Raff, Rubinstein, Saint-Saëns, Schumann and Tchaikovsky (the latter, however, represented

only by his first symphony, “Winter Dreams”), and all of these may in fact have played a certain

role in Alfvén’s own symphonic plans, not least the classical stance of Schumann and Brahms,

which could be experienced as an extrapolation of Beethoven, and the freer treatment of form by

Berlioz and Liszt, with its fantasy-tinged elements of a programmatic nature.

In terms of orchestration technique as such, composers like Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner

probably made a crucial difference to Alfvén, and to them are added the many operatic

that is, had a range down to C2 – an octave deeper than the lowest note on the cello – and the timpani could be

instantly retuned from one note to another within their tonal range” (Alfvén 1946, p. 89).

6

composers he got to know from his place among the violins of the Royal Opera orchestra.

Romantic French operatic composers not least, such as Meyerbeer, Gounod and Massenet, were

exemplary orchestrators, and in the case of George Bizet the young Swede’s interest was

doubtless captured, not only by his operas but also, for example, by the Arlésienne music (first

performed in Stockholm in 1883) or the Roma suite (premiered in Stockholm in 1886). In a

1952 newspaper interview (GHT 10/4), Alfvén points to the scores of Wagner’s

Götterdämmerung and Bizet’s Carmen as his supreme music experiences during his years with

the Royal Opera […]. (Hedwall 1973, p. 137)

Hedwall also makes reference to the Norwegian composer Johan Svendsen. In Alfvén’s Uppsala

concerts of the 1910s we find these composers and others belonging to the same stylistic circle.

Composers heard by reviewers in Alfvén’s music include Bach, Beethoven, Berlioz, Berwald,

Brahms, Lindegren, Mendelssohn, Nielsen, Puccini, Schumann, Strauss, Wagner and Italian opera.

Nielsen, Wagner and Strauss belong to a later period.

Franz Berwald’s great importance for turn-of-the-century music-making deserves emphasis, but of

course, the paramountcy of Beethoven is above dispute. His symphonies and chamber music were

presented in series of concerts, not only in Stockholm but, for example, by the Aulin Quartet and

Wilhelm Stenhammar on nationwide concert tours.9

A letter from Wilhelm Stenhammar to Alfvén, containing various suggestions as to how Sweden

should be represented in Alfvén’s impending appearance as guest conductor, shows Stenhammar’s

ideal, an ideal which would eventually diverge from Alfvén’s.10

Where is Alfvén’s music to be plotted in this musical climate and how come the Second Symphony

is now on its way in as a repertoire piece the world over, characterised by conductors like Yevgeny

Svetlanov as a symphony on a level with those of Brahms? Let us return to our opening question and

consider a number of issues relating to his Second and Fourth Symphonies.

9 See Wallner 1991, part I, chap. 14, “Tor Aulin och kvartetten”. 10 “Sjögren’s orchestral things are all transcriptions and, in my opinion, none too successful ones, for the obvious reason that the composer never intended them for orchestra.

“I do not think they should be taken out of Sweden. At most they are suitable for popular concerts in Göteborg

or comparable musical performances elsewhere in the country. Concerning Rangström and N. Berg I entirely

agree with you, insofar as I know their things. Bror Beckman’s Om Lyckan, which I personally esteem very

highly, needs no bush from me, as you are already familiar with it.

“And then we have friend Andreas. ‘Toteninsel was bloody awful.’ Dear Hugo, that piece of Hallén’s one hears

is always distressingly bad, and so one cajoles oneself into hoping that the others may be better. But they ain’t!

“Then we come to Atterberg and Lindberg. Of these two, Atterberg strikes me as the more original. His

symphonies are without question the most cheerful we have experienced lately. But if you get to Finland you

must of course perform a symphony of your own, you owe it to yourself, and two symphonies would be too

much of a good thing. Lindberg, I think, is also good, or rather, will be one day – what I have so far heard of his is far too green. We should wait a little longer before letting him out to represent us.

“Aulin’s Swedish Dances are good enough, but far too modest in this connection […]. And those are all the

living ones I can think of. Ah, Peterson-Berger. And then we have Berwald, Norman and Söderman. From

Berwald, apart from the symphonies, we have

(1) The Overture to Estrella, wonderful,

(2) ‘Memories from the Mountains of Norway’, pasty-faced,

(3) ‘Ernste und heitere Grillen’, a witty and supremely original piece, perhaps a bit too original for an

audience not previously acquainted with its author. Another couple of minor pieces are of no

significance.

“By Norman, apart from the symphonies, first and last and foremost and alone the Overture to Anthony and

Cleopatra. But that is a marvellous piece. I know nothing of Söderman’s except The Maid of Orleans […].”

7

The Second Symphony. A Swedish sound?

Alfvén’s Second Symphony was premiered on 21st November 1899 by the Royal Opera Orchestra,

conducted by Wilhelm Stenhammar. In his memoirs, Alfvén writes that a phalanx in Stockholm,

headed by Albert Rubenson, Director of the Conservatory of the Royal Academy of Music, found this

symphony so remarkable that Alfvén could hardly have written it singlehanded, unassisted by his

teacher Lindegren.11

Perhaps this was retaliation for Alfvén not having submitted to the

Conservatory’s harmony tuition, or perhaps it was a manifestation of the special kind of jantelag

(“Don’t go getting ideas about yourself”) which characterised the arts community in Sweden and still

does today. There is the third possibility of Alfvén actually having received a helping hand, though he

himself goes to great lengths refuting this.

How does Alfvén envisage the drafting of his symphony? How does he go about creating this

breakthrough composition in contemporary Swedish symphonic writing? Let us turn to the first part of

his memoirs.

Sun. Blue sky with scattered cirrus clouds. A faint breeze. A sturdy mast with billowing sails. A

somnifacient wash of waves breaking against the prow of the Koster boat […]. Idly outstretched

on the foredeck and dreaming with eyes half-closed, I relish the gentle swaying of the boat and

listen to the wash of the waves. It turns into a melody, assumes increasingly firm shape […].

The wind has not risen, but the sea has grown choppier, the boat begins labouring slightly. Its

movements have grown more staccato. My attention is caught by a new tone which has entered

the sound of the waves, a new rhythm, more syncopated. This conjures forth a melody strongly

contrasting with the previous one. Out comes the sketchbook again, and soon that song too has

been noted down, but this time I also hint at the syncopated rhythm of the harmonised underlay.

Six years later the first of these sketches was turned into the first theme and the second into the

song theme of the first movement of my Second Symphony.

On this deck, in the fullness of time, the initial ideas for the second and third movements of the

same symphony also came to me – but without my instantly writing down the theme, because it

was during voyages at dead of night, becalmed or storm-tossed, and on those occasions one has

other things to do than write down music (p. 174).12

In the sketches we can see how Alfvén’s rough version of the first theme – a fairly banal snatch of

melody – becomes far more stringent in its ultimate form. Concerning the finale movement, Hedwall

has reproduced a latter in which Alfvén writes that as work proceeded he grew increasingly angry,

“with the result that, one sleepless night, I suddenly heard the chorale “Where’er I walk, to death I go”

thundering in my ear like trumps of doom. This was precisely what I had subconsciously been longing

for. I had felt a heightened need to give expression to a more perturbing state of mind than can be

achieved with an ordinary double fugue, and here I had it.”13

Alfvén’s anger refers to the Academy’s unwillingness to renew his bursary!

11 Reviewing the performance for Tidning för musik och teater in 1899, Karl Valentin writes: “The symphony

reveals both the diligent studies Mr Alfvén has pursued in music theory, especially under church musician

Lindegren, and also his study of the works of the great masters.” 12 Cf. Nyblom, op. cit., p. 6: “In his D major Symphony Alfvén has been intent on poetically depicting Swedish

nature and formulating his impressions in music. Concurrently with an amazingly confident command of

symphonic form – modelled on Beethoven – he infused a new conceptual element into the same, taken directly

from sailing in our beautiful Stockholm archipelago. This artistic stratagem proved even more successful than

the young composer had ever dreamed of, and had the delight of being something new. The symphony’s first

movement depicts an outward trip with the water glittering in the sunlight and fresh, life-giving winds blowing,

and ends with a successful landing with the sun declining in the west, etc.” 13 Hedwall, op. cit., p. 151.

8

Is it true, Alfvén thus translating what he hears and experiences into a tonal language with direct

connotations between life and composition, or are we looking at conjectural post facto constructions to

make the compositions more attractive? Alfvén was a great one for supplying different explanations of

his works on different occasions. Probably he himself was behind Sven E. Svensson’s depiction of the

symphony as a species of autobiography.

Hedwall stresses that “Alfvén writes his best works when he is at his most self-centred or when he

nurses the germ of an idea which he himself, with no holds barred, can transform into a personal

affair. In the Second Symphony he stands forth as nothing short of a model Romantic artist, portraying

his own situation in life.” At the same time, however, Hedwall takes a sceptical view of Svensson’s

programme interpretation:

But a conclusive interpretation of Alfvén’s Second symphony must, I think, be as hazardous as, for

example, with Beethoven’s “Destiny Symphony”, and, apart from the introduction of the chorale in

the final fugue, one cannot get beyond guesswork. There would seem to be no doubt, though, about

this symphony containing a passionate settling of accounts by the composer with himself, and equally

clearly, the symphony has derived its ultimate form from this personal content – the self-experienced

has given not only the fugue but the entire composition its special physiognomy.14

Did Alfvén fabricate his programme after the event to make it more interesting to a wider audience?

The “turmoil fugue” especially seems rather too spectacular.

Hermann Kretzschmar praises the symphony in his Führer durch den Konzertsaal (1913, p. 525):

Die Sinfonie erweist sich in ihrem Ernst und mit der vollendeten Tüchtigkeit der Arbeit als

einen der bedeutendsten Leistungen unserer Zeit und macht trotz allem Verzicht auf nationale

Besonderheiten dem musikalischen Genius die grösste Ehre.

Where is the symphony to be placed, where is it situated as a part of tradition and how is the present-

day rise in its popularity to be accounted for? Its tonal language is amenable to both ideological and

artistic meaning.

Alfvén opens the first movement with a signal in the cellos and double basses which later became a

very familiar cliché in Swedish folk music arrangements: one and the same note is repeated in a

quaver followed by two crochets before settling as a bourdon (cf. arrangements, for example, of

Gärdebylåten). The core of the first theme, with its rollicking ambience and introductory dotting to a

simple triad melody, provides, as Svensson very rightly observes, a “pastoral“ mood. With a sustained

D bourdon underneath, the core of the theme is presented in a variety of keys and guises. Thus there is

a kind of ethnic, Nordic tone about the introduction. But further on, e.g. in the final phase of the

introduction, increasingly classical inflexions are discernible which are reminiscent, for example, of

the sound world of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. The main theme from the clarinet, and later the

violin, could almost have been taken from Wagner’s Flying Dutchman, but with a more Nordic

character which veers through modulations towards freedom from form and structure. Alfvén often

surprises us by “mixing“ exciting harmonic and melodic progressions with trivial ones.

14 Hedwall, op. cit., p. 159.

9

Alfvén’s “operatic-dramatic”

style is inspired by both

German and Italian opera in

“Swedish bottles”. The

possibility cannot be

discounted of the music-

making in his childhood home

sometimes asserting itself:

certain harmonic progressions

are reminiscent of free church

songs. His musical style was

judged suitable for use in the

harmonisation of the new

Mission Covenant Church

hymnbook in 1912, though

Alfvén declined the

invitation.15

Musical impulses – like the

introduction to the coda, for

example – can shatter the form

completely. Form is of minor

importance compared to

melodies and timbres. In the

development section of the

first movement, we have the

full orchestra. The whole of

this movement resounds with

reminiscences of Tchaikovsky,

Bizet, Verdi, Puccini and Wagner, melted down and recast by Alfvén’s musical temperament. This

“post-modern” style, as we have already seen, was to leave Alfvén branded as an epigone and eclectic,

and in the reviews we have seen many reviewers rejoice in “prototype-spotting”. The festive mood

with its blaring fortissimo heralds festive tutti to follow.

The second

movement starts

off as a figured

version of the

core subject in

Bach’s Musical

Offering. Further

on, repeating the

introduction, Alfvén lays on the grand orchestral sound in his usual way; this is one of his constantly

recurring dramatic clichés.

15

See Hans Bemskiöld, Sjung av hjärtat sjung, Församlingssång och musikliv i Svenska missionsförbundet fram

till 1950-talet. Skrifter från musikvetenskapliga institutionen, Göteborg nr II. diss 1986 angående 1920/21 års

sångbok. When asked, Alfvén replied that he regarded work on the song book as “a national undertaking” and

showed a certain interest in taking part (see Bemskiöld p. 135).

10

Allusions to Schubert, Berlioz and Chopin mingle with “Swedish, Sjögrenian”, Swedish folksong

idiom or free church songs “Con brutalità”, in two-part counterpoint, is an unmistakeable “homage” to

Johann Sebastian Bach.

Alfvén opens the third

movement with dramatic,

short figures in dotted

semiquavers and in a “tragic”

C minor. Berlioz, as has so

often been remarked before, is

one of the sources of

inspiration, but the horror

clichés of Italian opera are

also present, lurking in the

background. The melody of

the trio section conveys a

typically “Nordic im-

pression”. This has if

anything a Mixolydian tinge,

and the tonal ambivalence is

accentuated by Alfvén’s

harmonies and cadenzas.

In Preludio & Fuga, Alfvén

once more displays the

contrapuntal skills he learned

from Johan Lindegren, but

there are also distinctly

“Alfvénian” touches to the

formal structure, the interval

constellation and, above all,

the harmony. True, this is

“pastiche”, but Alfvén’s

melodic exposition benefits

from the austerity of form.

Here he has had nothing like

the same chance of launching

out into banalities! But still

there are some effects which

seem shockingly out of context. Sometimes one gets the feeling that Alfvén is “sending up”

symphonic form, with a totally incongruous “oompa” bass. A harmonic build-up ends with a tutti

crescendo, after which the chorale Jag går mot döden vart jag går (“Wher’er I walk, to death I go”) is

presented by the brass. This evolves into a fugue subject based on the first notes of the chorale similar

to Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Overture to The Huguenots and Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphony.

There is no doubt that Alfvén had “classical ambitions” in his Second Symphony, and, on the whole,

he accomplished a symphony which won the approval of experts at home and abroad. But

Kretzschmar’s little aside, “trotz allem Verzicht auf nationale Besonderheiten,” shows that people

noticed the idiosyncrasies that were eventually to blossom forth in his rhapsodies and furnish

inspiration for the depictive music which characterises the Fourth Symphony.

11

Alfvén’s Fourth

In the Fourth Symphony, the introductory, swelling sounds of the harp symbolise “water”, and perhaps

too the chromatic semiquaver triplets in the woodwinds and the sound of the horns are meant to trigger

the same associa-

tions. The theme

introduced by

cellos and bass

clarinets is the

more palpable

entity in this

hovering sound-

bath. Many

“tension motifs”

are introduced,

one after another,

some evanescent,

others an ingre-

dient of the

interplay between

melodies and tone

colours. The

descending sem-i-

quaver triplets

return and are

established as a

more or less per-

manently repeated

sounds of nature.

Reminiscences

and recastings of

the theme recur in

different voices,

with the dimi-

nished third be-

coming an im-

portant “signal”. The descending diminished third, B flat – A – G sharp, turns out to be one of the

fixed musical symbols. Eventually the sounds of nature return, with the theme in the trombones, and

soon after this it is time for the tenor’s “con dolore” vocalise, this time with a halo of tremolo strings.

Alfvén makes the piano and horn present the “Nordic” sound in the kind of fifth constellations

commonly used by Sjögren, Stenhammar and Sibelius. The “walking” motif, which became a cliché

later on, e.g. with Wirén, is one of many instances of Alfvén leaving his mark on the “Swedish tone”

of 1930s music. The tenor returns in an andante and joins with the soprano in a duet which becomes

more and more chromatically charged until simple triads and a sustained bourdon create a mood of

tranquillity. This, however, grows more dramatic, while the orchestra remains relatively quiescent or

follows the singers, whose voices now merge in a unison diminuendo. Every now and then the full

Wagnerian orchestra crashes into this ongoing palette of sound, which has no division into movements

and in which the symphonic structure is concealed among musical metamorphoses.

12

This symphony has many traits, which put one in mind of Wagner’s autobiographical Tristan:

leitmotiv technique, motif transformation, sound formation by doubling the melody, melody and

timbre with no clear boundaries between them, interval thinking instead of chords, and transformation

of the mass of sound through rapid shifts of colour.

Alfvén describes the content in his volume of memoirs entitled I dur och moll (“In major and

minor”):

As I have already made clear, the events are played out among the cobs and skerries, where the

sea roars about the rocks on grim stormy nights, in the moonlight and glittering sunshine – the

moods of nature are nothing other than symbols of the human heart. In the long movement, four

separate sections are distinguishable. The first depicts, in nocturnal obscurity, a youth’s ardent

desire, the second the young woman’s wistful longing – this section is also a nocturnal episode,

but softer, interwoven with lunar sounds and the trickling swell. In the third, day dawns and the

sun rises to the first and last day of amatory bliss, now that two lovers have found each other and

are all a-tremble with the joy of Heaven. The fourth section, rocked by storms and breakers,

depicts the tragic dissolution – the annihilation of happiness (Alfvén 1949, p. 142).

What makes Alfvén defy his critics with a programme for the Fourth Symphony, and why does he

supply such detailed particulars of the genesis of the Second that this too can be said to have been

furnished with a programme? We have already hinted that this could be a way of making the music

“understood” by its hearers. But a likelier explanation is that Alfvén’s musical fantasy was so

inseparably bound up with images that he “saw sounds” which he then put down on paper, so much so

on occasion that the actual notation – as at the beginning of the Fourth Symphony – took the form of a

landscape drawing complete with wind and waves! Ever since the days of the Abbé Vogler, this

programme-music approach has been, respectively, liked and abhorred by Liebhaber and Kenner in

the Swedish music community.

Let us now return to the introduction and plot Alfvén’s position in the aesthetic perspective

suggested.

In contrast to Nielsen’s symphonic structure, which is dramatic and conflict-based, Alfvén’s is more

narratory. Here too there are dramatic flare-ups, but they are not constructed on the same lines as, for

example, Nielsen’s conflict-ridden symphonic structure, based on a logic which permeates entire

compositions.

In the symphonies of Alfvén we find, not only chorale, march, folksong etc., but the orchestral

palette with which he was familiar from playing in the Royal Opera Orchestra. His compositional

temperament resembles Mahler’s,16

but he lacks Mahler’s capacity for creating in large forms and

turning the trivial into the sublime, into a holistic organism. Alfvén is not original like Wagner, not

“classical” or deeply versed in the works of foregone masters like Brahms. Measured by the yardstick

of the 19th century masters, he becomes a second-rate figure. But other aesthetic ideals can be posited

which make him a “master”: he can paint like none other, with daring constellations of sound, his

melodies are supremely pregnant, he has an imposing command of counterpoint and a knack of

dynamic build-ups in short episodes. The rhapsodic can also be regarded as a positive aesthetic

category if, unlike so many of Alfvén’s critics, we refrain from calibrating our listening to various

classical patterns of form. Alfvén’s symphonic conception is in many ways vocal, an orchestral song

with or without the human voice, with “tunes one remembers” and can hum to oneself after the

concert, which no doubt contributed to his success with the general public.

16 Alfvén, unlike Wilhelm Stenhammar, was no admirer of Mahler’s music. (See further Alfvén 1948, p. 91.)

Stenhammar introduced Mahler in Sweden at an early stage of things.

13

After his Fourth Symphony, Alfvén devoted himself to cantatas, rhapsodies and choral compositions,

and his fifth, unfinished symphony only comes towards the end of his life. He often lamented the

financial situation which fettered him to the production of “potboilers”. But the cessation of his

symphonic output probably had a number of other causes too, in both his private and his artistic life.

Alfvén saw – as did, probably, Sibelius – a new age dawning, with stylistic ideals quite alien to him.17

Alfvén’s symphonies, as we have already remarked, are now in the process of being “upgraded”, at

the same time as Zorn’s paintings are fetching sky-high prices and reproductions of them are being

sold in countless numbers. This is symptomatic of a neo-Romantic era, with a new bourgeois, middle-

class generation seeking its identity in art.

Translation Roger Tanner (2012).

The article was originally published in Swedish in Romantiken över gränser. Lund 1993, pp. 135-154.

Reprinted in Alfvéniana 2/99, pp. 3-14, and in Hugo Alfvén – en vägvisare. Gunnar Ternhag & Jan

Olof Rudén (eds.). Hedemora, 2003. Gidlunds, pp. 36-49.

The datings of the compositions in the article refer to the first performance.

17 When Lille Bror Söderlundh presented him with a dedicated copy of his violin concerto in 1954, Alfvén

opened it and, his attention riveted by the original signal from the double basses at the beginning of it, burst out:

“But for d*’s sake, you haven’t started writing modern, have you?” Seth Karlsson, an expert on both Söderlundh

and Alfvén, told me this story.