Composer, born in Stockholm, Sweden. His reputation rests largely on the four symphonies he composed during the 1840s, the Sérieuse and Capricieuse (1842) and the Singulière and Eb in 1845. Other works include the opera Estrella de Soria (1841), and many operetta and chamber music pieces. He was the outstanding Swedish composer of the 19th-c.
Franz Adolf Berwald (born in Stockholm on July 23, 1796 and died there on April 3, 1868) was a Swedish Romantic composer who was generally ignored during his lifetime and had to make his living as an orthopedic surgeon and, later, as the manager of a saw mill and glass factory.
Life and works
Berwald came from a family with four generations of musicians; his father, a violinist in the Royal Opera Orchestra, taught young Berwald the violin from an early age. the following year Berwald started working there, as well as playing the violin in the court orchestra and the opera, receiving lessons from Edouard Dupuy.
In 1818 Berwald started publishing the Musikalsk journal, later renamed Journal de musique, a periodical with easy piano pieces and songs by various composers as well as some of his own original work. Berwald tried to get several scholarships, but only got one from the King, which enabled him to study in Berlin, where he worked hard on operas despite not having any chance to put them on the stage. To make a living, Berwald started an orthopedic and physiotherapy clinic in Berlin in 1835, which turned out to be profitable. In 1842 a concert of his tone poems at the Redoutensaal at the Hofburg Imperial Palace received rave reviews, and over the course of the next three years Berwald wrote four Symphonies. 1 in G minor, "Sérieuse", was the only one of Berwald's four symphonies that was performed in his lifetime.
Berwald's music didn't get much recognition in Sweden during his lifetime, even drawing hostile newspaper reviews, but fared a little better in Germany and Austria.
When Berwald got back to Sweden in 1849, he managed a glass works at Sandö in Ångermanland owned by Ludvig Petré, an amateur violinist. During that time Berwald focused his attention on producing chamber music.
One of his few operas to be staged in his lifetime, Estrella de Soria, was heartily applauded at its premiere at the Royal Theater in April 1862, and was given four more performances in the same month.
In 1866, Berwald received the Order of the Polar Star, in recognition of his musical achievements. The following year, the Stockholm Conservatoire finally appointed Berwald professor of composition, having rejected his applications for this post several times before.
Berwald died in Stockholm in 1868 of pneumonia and was interred there in the Norra begravningsplatsen.
Ten years after Berwald's death, his Symphony No.
Critical assessment
Eduard Hanslick, writing in his 1869 book Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien, opined of Berwald, "a man stimulating, witty, prone to bizarrerie, [that] as a composer lacked creative power and fantasy". On the other hand, composers Ludvig Norman, Tor Aulin and Wilhelm Stenhammar worked hard to promote Berwald's music, although despite these musicians' efforts it took a while before Berwald was recognized as Sweden's "most original and modern composer" (to quote the words of composer-critic Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, writing in Dagens nyheter).
In 1911, Carl Nielsen wrote of Berwald, "Neither the media, money nor power can damage or benefit good Art. More recently, British musicologist Robert Layton wrote (1959) what remains the sole English-language biography of Berwald, as well as discussing Berwald's music in considerable detail elsewhere.
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