Allan Pettersson

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Template:Short description Template:For Template:Good article Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox person Gustaf Allan PetterssonTemplate:Needs IPA (19 September 1911 – 20 June 1980) was a Swedish composer and violist. He is considered one of the 20th century's most important Swedish composers and was described as one of the last great symphonists, often compared to Gustav Mahler.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn<ref name="Olsson-2018" />Template:Rp<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> His music can hardly be confused with other 20th-century works. In the final decade of his life, his symphonies (typically one-movement works) developed an international following, particularly in Germany and Sweden.Template:Sfn Of these, his best known work is Symphony No. 7. His music later found success in the United States.<ref name="Olsson-2014" />Template:Rp The conductors Antal Doráti and Sergiu Comissiona premiered and recorded several of his symphonies. Pettersson's song cycle Barefoot Songs influenced many of his compositions. Doráti arranged eight of the Barefoot Songs. Birgit Cullberg produced three ballets based on Pettersson's music.

Pettersson studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Music's conservatory. For more than a decade, he was a violist in the Stockholm Concert Society; after retiring he devoted himself exclusively to composition. Later in his life, he experienced rheumatoid arthritis. Pettersson was awarded the Swedish royal medal Litteris et Artibus.

Biography

Early life

Born on 19 September 1911,<ref name="Pfau Verlag-1986">Template:Cite book</ref> Gustaf Allan Pettersson was the youngest of four children.Template:Sfn His father, Karl Viktor Pettersson (1875–1952),Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn was a violent, alcoholic blacksmith,<ref name="Bose-2017" /> and his mother, Ida Paulina (née Svenson) (1876–1960), was a dressmaker.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Pettersson was born at Granhammar manor in Västra Ryd parish in the Uppland province of Sweden. He grew up poor<ref name="Zakariasen-1979">Template:Cite news</ref> in Stockholm's Södermalm district,Template:Sfn where he lived during his whole life.Template:Sfn He once said: <templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />

I wasn't born under a piano, I didn't spend my childhood with my father, the composer... no, I learnt how to work white-hot iron with the smith's hammer. My father was a smith who may have said no to God, but not to alcohol. My mother was a pious woman who sang and played with her four children.<ref>Template:Cite journal cited in Template:Cite AV media notes</ref>{{#if:|

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With his parents and siblings, Pettersson lived in a damp, one-room basement apartment with bars on the window.<ref name="Bose-2017" />Template:Sfn When he was 10, he bought a cheap violin with money he earned from selling Christmas cards<ref name="Zakariasen-1979" /> and taught himself to play it.<ref name="Bose-2017" /> Even the beatings he received from his father and the threat of reform school could not diminish his interest in music.<ref>Template:Cite AV media notes</ref> Through strict self-discipline and with the help of music, Pettersson freed himself from his social misery and difficult family circumstances.<ref name="Kube-2005" /> Aged 14, he finished elementary school and took up full-time practice on the violin.<ref name="Shanks-1911">Template:Cite web</ref>Template:Sfn He later made two unsuccessful attempts to enter the Royal Swedish Academy of Music's conservatory.Template:Sfn

In 1930, Pettersson began studying violin and later the viola, as well as counterpoint and harmony, at the Royal Swedish Academy of Music's conservatory (Royal College of Music, Stockholm).<ref name="Pfau Verlag-1986" /> At the beginning of World War II, he was in Paris, studying the viola with the French violist Maurice Vieux. Pettersson won the Jenny Lind scholarship prize in 1938, using it to study abroad.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Later life

File:Stockholm Åsögatan 127 (52324251044).jpg
Pettersson's home at Åsögatan 127, Stockholm

During the 1940s, Pettersson worked as a violist in the Stockholm Concert Society (later the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra).<ref name="Pfau Verlag-1986" /> He also studied composition with the composer and conductor Karl-Birger Blomdahl, orchestration with the conductor Tor Mann, and counterpoint with organist and composer Otto Olsson.Template:Sfn<ref name="Rapoport-2001" /> In 1943, he married a physiotherapist, Gudrun Tyra Charlotta Gustafsson (1921–2017).Template:Sfn<ref name="Familjesidan.se-1921">Template:Cite web</ref>

In September 1951, Pettersson went to Paris to study composition and was a student of composers René Leibowitz, Arthur Honegger, Olivier Messiaen, and Darius Milhaud.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn He returned to Sweden at the end of 1952. In the early 1950s, he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>Template:Efn He gave up playing the viola and began devoting his life to composition.<ref name="Zakariasen-1979" /> In 1954, he received an annual state composition grant for his first time.Template:Sfn

File:PetterssonS7TrbnTb.jpg
Motif Symphony No. 7

By the time of his Symphony No. 5, completed in 1962, his mobility and health were compromised considerably.Template:Sfn<ref>Template:Cite AV media notes</ref> In 1964, the government granted him a lifelong guaranteed income.Template:Sfn His greatest success came a few years later with his Template:Ill (1966),<ref name="Bose-2017">Template:Cite web</ref> which premiered on 13 October 1968 in Stockholm Concert Hall with Antal Doráti conducting the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra.Template:Sfn A recording of his seventh symphony, with the same conductor and orchestra, was released in 1969. It was a breakthrough, establishing his international reputation, and he received two Swedish Grammis in 1970.<ref name="Olsson-2018" />Template:Rp The symphony was listed in 2025 in the Swedish Culture Canon.<ref name="svd">Template:Cite web</ref> The conductors Antal Doráti and Sergiu Comissiona premiered and made first recordings of several of Pettersson's symphonies and contributed to his rise to fame during the 1970s.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Pettersson was hospitalized for nine months in 1970, soon after the composition of his Symphony No. 9, his longest symphony. He began writing the condensed Symphony No. 10 (1972) from his sickbed.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Pettersson was admitted to Karolinska Hospital, because of a life-threatening kidney ailment.<ref>Template:Cite AV media notes</ref> He recovered, but rheumatoid arthritis confined him most of the time to his fourth-floor apartment in a building with no elevator.Template:Efn<ref>Template:Cite journal cited in Kube 2013, p. 19.</ref>Template:Sfn<ref name="Bose-2017" /> In 1975, after a dispute about a change in a concert program for an American tour, the Stockholm Philharmonic was forbidden to perform works by Pettersson "for all time". The ban was lifted in 1976.Template:Sfn<ref name="Meyer-2019">Template:Cite AV media notes</ref> Pettersson was awarded the Litteris et Artibus, a Swedish royal medal established in 1853, in 1977.Template:Sfn In autumn 1978,Template:Efn he moved to a state living quarters.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn He began writing his seventeenth symphony, but died on 20 June 1980, at age 68,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> in Stockholm's Maria Magdalena parish before finishing it. He is buried in the Högalid Church columbarium.<ref name="Gravar.se-1911">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite AV media notes</ref><ref name="Pfau Verlag-1986"/>

Music

Pettersson's music can be compared to Mahler's symphonic output, especially in the magnificent design and the passion and dynamism.<ref>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> He also, like Mahler, often includes music from his songs in his symphonies, as well as the second violin concerto. The symphonic eccentric Pettersson is not an avant-gardist.Template:Sfn His kineticTemplate:Sfn and organic development of musical matterTemplate:Sfn uses traditional means of expression.Template:Sfn Basic motifs are constantly being changed and developed.Template:Sfn Pettersson's writing is very strenuous and often has many simultaneous polyphonic lines.<ref name="Matthes-2011">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Köhler-2021">Template:Cite web</ref> His symphonies end on common major or minor chords<ref name="Olsson-2018">Template:Cite AV media notes</ref>Template:Rp— but tonality, which depends on some sense, however attenuated, of tonal progression, is found mostly in slower sections. This can be shown at the openings and endings of his 6th and 7th symphonies, and the end of his 9th. Overwhelmingly serious in tone, often dissonant, his music rises to ferocious climaxes, relieved, especially in his later works, by lyrical oases ("Template:Lang").<ref name="Ho-2014">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Kube-2005">Template:Cite encyclopedia Template:Subscription required</ref>Template:Sfn

Pettersson's music has a very distinctive sound and can hardly be confused with that of any other 20th-century composer.Template:Sfn His symphonies, which range from 25 to 70 minutes long,Template:Sfn are typically one-movement works,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Olsson-2014">Template:Cite AV media notes</ref>Template:Rp with the exceptions of no 3 (in four movements) and no 8 (in two). Pettersson's music is often demanding both on performers and listeners.<ref name="Ho-2017">Template:Cite web</ref>

Pettersson quoted songs from his own 24 Barefoot Songs in several of his compositions.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Musicologist Ivanka Stoïanova designed a theory of musical space about Pettersson's music.Template:Sfn<ref name="Ivanka Stoïanova">Template:Cite web</ref>

Most of his music has now been recorded at least once and much of it is now available in published scores.Template:Efn

Works

Pettersson began composing songs and smaller chamber works in the 1930s.Template:Sfn

His production from the 1940s includes the song cycle twenty-four Barefoot Songs (1943–1945) based on his poems and a dissonantTemplate:Sfn concerto for violin and string quartet (1949), which is influenced by Béla Bartók and Paul Hindemith.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Pettersson soon found his own compositional style.Template:Sfn In 1951, he created the experimental Seven Sonatas for two Violins. At the same time, he composed the first of his seventeen symphonies, which he left unfinished. This work has been recorded in a performing version prepared by trombonist and conductor Christian Lindberg in 2011.<ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref>

Pettersson about the symphonic output of the 1950s: <templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />

No one in the 1950s noticed, that I am always breaking up the structures, that I was creating a whole new symphonic form.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn{{#if:|

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It took four years to write the conceptual and style-defining Symphony No. 6 (1963–1966).Template:Sfn His Symphony No. 7 and Symphony No. 8 (1968–1969) have been recorded more than his other works and are probably his best-known. In the 1970s, he composed two related works about social protest and compassion, the Symphony No. 12 for mixed chorus and orchestra (1973–1974) to poems by Literature Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda with contemporary relevanceTemplate:Efn and the cantata Vox Humana (1974) on texts by Latin American poets. During the prolific last decade of his life, he also wrote a concerto for violin and orchestra (1977–1978, Template:Abbreviation 1980) written for the violinist Ida Haendel,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> a Symphony No. 16 (1979) which features a bravura solo part for alto saxophone commissioned by American saxophonist Frederick L. Hemke,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and an incomplete, posthumously discovered concerto for viola and orchestra (1979–1980).Template:Sfn

Legacy

In 1968–1969, conductor and composer Antal Doráti arranged eight of Pettersson's Barefoot Songs as full-scale orchestral songs.Template:Sfn

Choreographer Birgit Cullberg produced three ballets based on Pettersson's music. Template:Lang (1976, Symphony No. 7), Template:Lang (1977, Concerto No. 1 for String Orchestra), Template:Lang (War Dance) (1979, Symphony No. 9).Template:Sfn

The four orchestral sketches "Template:Lang" (1991) by Peter Ruzicka are a tribute to Pettersson's life and work, quoting sketches of his unfinished Symphony No. 17.<ref>Template:Cite AV media notes</ref>

Roy Andersson used the finale of Symphony No. 7 in his short film World of Glory (Template:Lang).<ref name="Swedish Film Database">Template:Cite web</ref>

After Pettersson's death, the Template:Lang (International Allan Pettersson Society) issued six yearbooks, Classic Produktion Osnabrück CPO began recording his complete works, and a series of concerts (in 1994–1995) programmed almost all of them.<ref name="Rapoport-2001">Template:Cite Grove</ref>Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

In 2002, a Swedish Allan Pettersson Society (Template:Ill) has been founded.<ref name="Allan Pettersson Sällskapet / The Swedish Allan Pettersson Society 2018 n827">Template:Cite web</ref>

Awards

Discography

The selected discography includes the original format of the recording and releasing label. Some of the LP releases have been reissued on CD. A 12-CD pack of the Complete Symphonies of Allan Pettersson has been produced by CPO (Classic Produktion Osnabrück) based on recordings of 1984, 1988, 1991Template:Ndash1995, 2004. In 2023, a cycle of all Pettersson symphonies produced by BIS Records was completed.<ref name="NaxosDirect i527">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Symfoniorkester 2022 q763">Template:Cite web</ref>

Symphonies

Other works

Writings

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Notes

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References

Citations

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Documentary film

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Bibliography

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