Valborg Werbeck-Svärdström

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Valborg Werbeck-Svärdström (born September 22, 1879 in Gävle as Valborg Svärdström , † February 1, 1972 in Bad Boll-Eckwälden ) was a Swedish singer and singing teacher .

Biographical

Valborg Werbeck-Sverdström spent her childhood in the northernmost part of Sweden. “I was born high up in northern Sweden. As far as I can remember, my childhood was in intimate contact with nature. [...] I was always able to sing, as I said. Yes, in the end I was probably something of a child prodigy. ”When she was ten, her family moved to Stockholm . It was there that the music educator Alice Tegnér discovered her talent. She appeared in public at the age of 11. After school and studies at the conservatory, she made her debut at the age of 21 and was then accepted into the ensemble of the royal court opera . She was known as "the new Jenny Lind " - the Swedish nightingale. As a concert and opera singer, she celebrated great success in many European countries. In 1906 she married the Hamburg writer and musician Louis Michael Julius Werbeck and moved with him to Germany.

In 1908 she met Rudolf Steiner . From him she received suggestions for her work and encouragement not to give up her successful singing career but to continue against her intentions. Her studies with experienced teachers had enabled her to pursue a successful career in opera, but it also showed her that these traditional training methods endangered her natural vocal system. She began to research new methods of voice training, in which she remained in lively exchange with Steiner until his death. She also began to develop a work in singing therapy, which she would later develop further in collaboration with Eugen Kolisko , who was also her temporary student, and Ita Wegman . Her husband died in 1928. In 1938 her book The School of Vocal Unveiling was published in Breslau . Wilhelm Dörfler introduced the school of the same name, founded in Hamburg, to the Goetheanum in Dornach with his choir work from 1932 to 1939 . The beginning of National Socialism made her work in Germany more and more difficult. Eventually she had to close her school in Hamburg. Werbeck spent the war years withdrawn in Silesia. After the end of the war, she fully concentrated on her therapeutic work and teaching a group of young musicians.

Valborg Werbeck-Sverdström died in 1972 at the age of 93.

literature

  • Pietikäinen, Maija: The heart's world beat. Biography of Valborg Werbeck-Svärdström. Verlag am Goetheanum, Dornach 2012, ISBN 978-3-7235-1430-6 .
  • Schriefer, Jürgen: Valborg Svärdström-Werbeck. In: von Plato, Bodo (ed.): Anthroposophy in the 20th century. A cultural impulse in biographical portraits. Dornach 2003, ISBN 3-7235-1199-6 , pp. 819-821.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The School of Unveiling the Voice, p. 20
  2. ^ Werbeck biography
  3. ^ Werbeck biography
personal data
SURNAME Werbeck-Svärdström, Valborg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish singer and vocal teacher
DATE OF BIRTH September 22, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Gävle
DATE OF DEATH February 1, 1972
Place of death Bad Boll