Allan Pettersson

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Gustaf Allan Pettersson (born September 19, 1911 in the Församling Västra Ryd, Upplands-Bro municipality , Sweden ; † June 20, 1980 in Stockholm ) was a Swedish composer and violist .

Life

Pettersson grew up under depressing social and family conditions in a poor district of Stockholm . From the income he earned as a teenager selling Christmas greeting cards, he bought a violin and taught himself to play.

After several unsuccessful applications, he was admitted to the Royal Conservatory of Music in Stockholm in 1930 . He completed his studies in violin, viola , harmony and counterpoint in 1938. His first attempts at composition fell during his studies. At the end of his studies, Pettersson was awarded a scholarship to study abroad, which he began the following year to study viola with Maurice Vieux in Paris .

In 1939 he had also successfully applied for the position of orchestral violist with the orchestra of the Stockholm Philharmonic Society (the later Royal Stockholm Philharmonic ), which gave him leave of absence for his stay in Paris. In the 1940s, in addition to his profession as an orchestral musician, Pettersson took private composition lessons with Karl-Birger Blomdahl . One of his works, the 1st Violin Concerto, was first performed in public in 1950.

In 1951/1952 he went to Paris a second time to study composition. There he took seminars and lessons with Arthur Honegger , Darius Milhaud and Olivier Messiaen , and finally he took private lessons with René Leibowitz , who is considered one of the most important teachers of twelve-tone music. Regardless of this training, his personal style led by the compositional avant-garde of the time.

At the end of 1952, Pettersson quit his orchestral position and from now on devoted himself entirely to composing.

In 1953 he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis , which gradually destroyed his ability to move around . Nevertheless, he continued to compose until the end of his life, and his music slowly gained more public attention. The breakthrough came with the world premiere of the 7th Symphony on October 13, 1968 by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic under Antal Doráti .

The important violinist Ida Haendel inspired him to write his 2nd violin concerto, which he dedicated to her and which she performed for the first time in Germany in 1989.

Pettersson's music

Although Pettersson only attempted ambitious compositions after the Second World War , his music is completely unaffected by the musical avant-garde movements that were emerging at the same time, and largely unaffected even by pre-war modernism. Early works such as the barefoot songs on your own texts are kept short and discreet in form. The first extensive work is the Concerto for Violin and String Quartet (1949), whose tonal language shows parallels to the music of Béla Bartók . During his stay in Paris a cycle of very experimentally written 7 sonatas for 2 violins was created . His first and last symphonies remained fragments. The fragment of the first symphony was translated into a playable version for the first time in 2012 and premiered by Christian Lindberg , whereas the 17th symphony was performed as a fragment by Peter Gülke as early as the 1990s . The existing fragments of the 17th symphony were processed by the German composer Peter Ruzicka in his orchestral work "... the blessed, the cursed".

Through his compositional empathy, Pettersson developed his very own musical language on the basis of tonality . He reapplied the tonality. Especially ostinato forms and großbögige melody determine the structure of his symphonies and not pronounced in the 19th century treatment of keys by cadence . He further developed the symphonic form through insertions - lyrical islands -, breaks and above all through interlocking motifs. “Nobody noticed in the 1950s that I was constantly breaking up the [old] musical forms, that I was creating an entirely new symphonic form [with it]” --- “No one in the 50's noticed, that I am always breaking up the structures, that I was creating a whole new symphonic form. ” Although Pettersson did not create any vocal works in his late work with the exception of the 12th symphony and the cantata“ Vox Humana ”, many of the symphonies refer to the biographical barefoot songs , some of which are literal are quoted and form thematic material of the symphonies. Pettersson's symphonies are mostly large-scale, one-movement works - the 9th symphony consists of a single, 80-minute stream of sound - which have a dark sound, often harsh over long stretches, but also illuminated by lyrical-hymnic passages.

For orchestral musicians this consistently highly emotional confessional music - because Pettersson never saw himself as an abstract technician, but also in his own utterances less as a composer than as a calling voice - a high level of tension in the performance, especially since many of the highlights of the symphonies run in several rolling waves that make full use of the extreme positions of all instruments and acoustic sharpening between the groups. An example is the climax of the 7th symphony , in which Pettersson composes an empty abyss between extremely high woodwinds and tuba / double basses.

His symphonies can be divided into several groups:

  • 1st to 4th symphony: early work, e.g. Sometimes in several sentences, small-framed
  • 5th to 9th symphony: main work, mostly one-movement, large-scale works
  • 10th and 11th symphonies: created under the impression of illness, shortage of form, radicalization of musical language
  • 12th to 17th symphony: with viola concerto and second violin concerto, a far-reaching late work with again lyrical passages - for example the canto in the 15th symphony

Works

  • 17 symphonies (1951–1980)
    • 1st Symphony (1951), unfinished
    • 2nd symphony (1952–1953)
    • 3rd Symphony (1954–1955)
    • 4th Symphony (1958-1959)
    • 5th symphony (1960–1962)
    • 6th Symphony (1963–1966)
    • 7th Symphony (1966–1967), 1968 brought final recognition as a composer
    • 8th Symphony (1968–1969)
    • 9th Symphony (1970)
    • 10th Symphony (1972)
    • 11th Symphony (1973)
    • 12th Symphony with Choir (1973/1974), text from the Canto General by Pablo Neruda
    • 13th Symphony (1976)
    • 14th Symphony (1978)
    • 15th Symphony (1978)
    • 16th symphony with solo alto saxophone (1979)
    • 17th Symphony (1980), unfinished
  • Symphonic movement (1973)
  • 3 solo concerts
    • Concerto for violin and string quartet (= 1st violin concerto (1949))
    • Concerto for violin and orchestra (= 2nd violin concerto) (1978, revised 1980)
    • Concerto for viola and orchestra (1979), posthumous work, unfinished
  • 3 concerts for string orchestra (1950, 1956, 1957)
  • Vox humana , cantata for solos (S / A / T / Bar), choir and string orchestra (1974), texts by various Latin American poets
  • Songs and chamber music for various line-ups, including
    • 7 sonatas for two violins (1951)
    • 6 songs (1935)
    • Barfotasånger (Barefoot Songs) for voice and piano, on own texts (1943–45)
    • Lamento for piano (1945)
    • Four improvisations for violin, viola and violoncello (1936)
    • Fugue in E major for oboe, clarinet and bassoon (1948)
    • Fantasy for viola solo (1936)
    • Two elegies for violin and piano (1934)
    • Andante espressivo for violin and piano (1938)
    • Romance for violin and piano (1942)

Discography

A complete edition of the symphonies is impossible, as the 1st and 17th symphonies are only available as fragments. In 2011, however, an orchestral version of the bundle of fragments from the 1st symphony was released on CD (conductor Christian Lindberg ). The record company cpo has released the symphonies 2–16, both violin concertos, the string concertos, some chamber music works and songs on CD, while the Swedish label BIS has released several symphonies and the sonatas for two violins.

First recordings of the symphonies were published a. a. at Deutsche Grammophon, Caprice and Phono Suecia, but only some of these recordings are now available on CD. A comprehensive discography can be found in the AP Yearbook 2002 and on the website of the International Allan-Pettersson Society.

literature

  • Allan-Pettersson-Jahrbuch 1986ff, available from Pfau-Verlag, Saarbrücken
  • Allan Pettersson (1911-1980); Texts - Materials - Analyzes, ed. on behalf of the International Allan Pettersson Society by Michael Kube ISBN 3-928770-30-6
  • Laila Barkefors: Gallret och Stjärnan, Göteborg 1995, ISBN 9-1859-7434-X (biography mainly up to the creation of the first symphonies, in Swedish)
  • Michael Kube: Allan Pettersson - Symphony No. 8, Wilhelmshaven 1996, ISBN 3-7959-0708-X
  • Michael Kube: Allan Pettersson, Stockholm 2014, ISBN 978-91-73535-41-0 (in Swedish).

swell

  1. ↑ Harald Eggebrecht: Fire and Precision. Ida Haendel, one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century, is dead: With deep seriousness and temperament, she immersed herself in masterpieces such as virtuoso pieces. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, No. 151, July 3, 2020, p. 10.
  2. ^ Paul Rapoport Allan Pettersson , Stockholm (1981) p. 21
  3. ^ Laudation for the new, infinite melody in: FAZ of October 8, 2011, page Z5

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Pettersson, Allan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pettersson, Gustaf Allan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish composer and violist
DATE OF BIRTH September 19, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Församling Västra Ryd , Upplands-Bro (municipality) , Sweden
DATE OF DEATH June 20, 1980
Place of death Stockholm , Sweden