Wilhelm Peterson-Berger

Wilhelm Peterson-Berger (around 1900)

Wilhelm Peterson-Berger ^{? / i} (bornFebruary 27, 1867in Äskja gård,Ullånger; diedDecember 3, 1942inÖstersund) was aSwedish composerandmusic critic.

Vita

Peterson-Berger received his first musical impressions as a child from his mother, who played Beethoven and Chopin as a talented pianist . These impressed themselves so deeply on him that he later processed them in his piano pieces "Fyra Danspoem". At the age of 18, Peterson-Berger went to Stockholm in 1885 to attend the conservatory there. Here he studied composition with Joseph Dente , a student of Franz Berwald . The performance of Richard Wagner's “Meistersingern” in April 1887 in Stockholm left a deep impression . Peterson-Berger has been interested in Wagner since his school days. For him, Wagner was not just a musician, but a cultural phenomenon. Peterson-Berger later translated some of Wagner's writings into Swedish.

At the age of 21, Peterson-Berger passed his examination at the conservatory in 1888 and went to Dresden to study . Two years later he returned to Sweden and taught music in Umeå in Västerbotten (Norrland). A year earlier, during a summer stay, he had already got to know the Jämtland (Norrland) landscape , which was to determine his future life and work. The nature and landscape of Jämtland became sources of inspiration for his music (for example in the piano pieces “Frösöblomster” and in his opera “Arnljot”). For Peterson-Berger, outdoor life and hiking tours lasting several weeks through the northern Swedish landscapes became an important recreation, a retreat from civilization. Peterson-Berger wrote about his hikes in the Svenska Turistföreningen yearbooks . The cycle “En Fjällfärd” (A Mountain Hike) for male choir from 1893, which he composed himself, is directly linked to hiking experiences .

Peterson-Berger did not stay in Umeå for long: at the age of 25 (1892), Peterson-Berger was appointed to Dresden as a music teacher. But Dresden couldn't really captivate him. He returned to Sweden after only two years and settled in Stockholm a year later. Here, now 29 years old, he began one of his most momentous steps: He became a music critic for the important Swedish daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter . His reviews with the abbreviation P.-B. soon became some of the most feared in the country. P.-B. With his relentless demand for truth and simplicity, his rejection of everything artificial and contrived, he created lifelong enemies and became an increasingly isolated personality in Swedish musical life.

In addition to his reviews, Peterson-Berger has also published numerous writings that are still worth reading today, in particular his analysis of Richard Wagner's “cultural appearance”. The increasing isolation also found its expression in the external living conditions, when Peterson-Berger bought a piece of land at the age of 43 (1910) on Frösön , an island in Storsjön in Jämtland near Östersund , on which he lived four years later in the middle of the unspoilt Landscape built a house - with a view of Oviksfjället, one of his favorite mountains. He died here in 1942, at the age of 75.

Musical creation and style

Arnljot

Wilhelm Peterson-Berger saw himself primarily as a music dramatist . In Sweden, however, he is primarily known as a composer of valuable piano pieces and numerous songs. Following Richard Wagner, Peterson-Berger's goal was to create a Swedish musical drama. He achieved this with “Arnljot” in 1910. “Arnljot” can claim the rank of a Swedish national opera. Like his role model Wagner, Peterson-Berger wrote the texts for his works exclusively himself. Arnljot acts in the Jämtland of the Viking Age and has a historical background in the person of Arnljot von Gällnö , who lived in the time of the Norwegian King Olaf the Holy . In his poetry, Peterson-Berger describes the conflict of his hero between the pagan society of conventions and duties and a new Christian culture of freedom and self-awareness. A recurring motto is the phrase “Faith in Christ is faith in oneself.” Peterson-Berger's poetry has a cultural-philosophical message for the present and is not just a historical act.

Musically, Peterson-Berger works with leitmotifs. As in Wagner's case, the opera is no longer divided into numbers: the text is designed as spoken chant, interrupted by arioso parts (mostly these are passages in the text in which the characters reflect on themselves). The natural moods in the second act, where Peterson-Berger succeeded in musically creating the mystical magic of the forest loneliness of the Swedish Norrland, are outstanding . Arnljot has long been performed on the Stockholm stage as an integral part of the repertoire. Every year since Peterson-Berger's time there have been open-air plays on Frösö . Peterson-Berger directed the first games as well as the world premiere in Stockholm.

Piano pieces

Peterson-Berger's piano pieces are still very popular today, even if the composer intended them to be more of a by-product. For this very reason, Peterson-Berger is perhaps mostly himself and the most relaxed in these pieces. The three books "Frösöblomster" and the piano suites are at the center of the piano compositions. "Sommarsång" (summer song) from Frösöblomster I became a real hit and "Intåg i Sommarhagen" (moving into Sommarhagen, Peterson-Berger's house on Frösön) from Frösöblomster III became the epitome of Swedish summer music. In piano music, too, the pieces with natural moods are among the strongest. While the early works are still influenced by the late romantic tradition and by Edvard Grieg , Peterson-Berger developed an impressionistic style over the years , which is particularly evident in the third issue of the Frösöblomster "Sommarhagen" (Peterson-Berger's house on Frösön) and in the cycle " I Somras ”(last summer) breaks through.

Other works

Peterson-Berger's lied oeuvre is extensive: the composer was a diligent reader and he took great pleasure in discovering new writers. He was friends with the poet Erik Axel Karlfeldt , who was also secretary of the Swedish Academy and thus a member of the committee that awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature . Peterson-Berger himself influenced the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to the Swiss Carl Spitteler , of whose works he was enthusiastic. In addition to Karlfeldt, Peterson-Berger set poems by Oscar Levertin , Jens Peter Jacobsen , Friedrich Nietzsche , Ricarda Huch , August Strindberg , Verner von Heidenstam , Anders Österling , Bo Bergman , Gustav Fröding , Heinrich Heine and others to music . a.

Peterson-Berger also created orchestral works in an idiosyncratic, tonally interesting and almost exotic musical language. The breakthrough work was the symphony No. 2, "Sunnanfärd" (Southern Journey), which describes the composer's longing for classical Greece as a sailing trip into the Mediterranean. The third symphony "Same Ätnam" is inspired by Sami folk music. The violin concerto experiments with pentatonic scales.

Works

Orchestral works

• Symphony No. 1, “Baneret”, B flat major, 1889–1890
• Symphony No. 2, “Sunnanfärd”, E flat major, 1910
• Symphony No. 3, “Same-Ätnam”, F minor, 1913–1915
• Symphony No. 4, “Holmia”, A major, 1929
• Symphony No. 5, “Solitudo”, B minor, 1932–1933

Stage works

• "Ran"
• “Arnljot”, action in three acts for solos, choir and orchestra, 1907–1909
• "Domedagsprofeterna" (The Prophets of the Last Judgment)
• "Adils och Elisiv"

Vocal music

• Svensk Lyrik (Swedish Poetry), poems by Heidenstam, Levertin, Fröding, Rydberg
• Ur "Fridolins Lustgård" (From "Fridolins Lustgarten"), songs based on poems by Erik Axel Karlfeldt
• Frukttid, songs based on poems by Anders Österling

Piano music

• "Frösöblomster" (Flowers from Frösö), issue 1
• "Frösöblomster" (Flowers from Frösö), booklet 2
• "Frösöblomster" (Flowers from Frösö), Issue 3, "I Sommarhagen" (In Sommarhagen)
• “I Somras” (Last summer), suite
• “Anakreontika”, suite

Fonts

• Richard Wagner som Kulturföreteelse, 1913
• P.-B.-recensioner. Glimtar och skuggor ur Stockholms musikvärld, 1886–1932, 2 vols., 1932
• Melodin's mystery, 1937
• Om music. Ett urval av essayer och critic, 1942
• Minnen [memories], ed. by Telemak Fredbärj, 1943
• Från utsiktstornet, Essayer om musik och annat, edited by Telemak Fredbärj, 1951

literature

• Henrik Karlsson:  Peterson-Berger, Wilhelm. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, personal section, volume 13 (Paladilhe - Ribera). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 2005, ISBN 3-7618-1133-0 , Sp. 391–393
• Carlberg, Bertil, Peterson-Berger, en monografi, 1950.
• Hedwall, Lennart, Anteckningar kring Wilhelm Peterson-Bergers pianosviter, in: Svensk Tidskrift för Musikforskning, 1967.
• Hedwall, Lennart, Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, en bildbiografi, Uppsala 1983.
• Karlsson, Henrik, Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, tondiktare ochkritiker, 2013.
• Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, Festskrift [with contributions by 18 authors and a detailed catalog raisonné], 1937.

Web links

Wikisource: Wilhelm Peterson-Berger  - Sources and full texts

• Works by Wilhelm Peterson-Berger in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website of the Peterson-Berger Museum in Sommarhagen on Frösön