Born in Halmstad on 24th May 1903, died in Stockholm on 11th September 1984. He grew up in a musical family, and his father had been a tenor in Orphei Drängar. He entered the Stockholm Conservatory in 1924, Gustaf Hägg and Otto Olsson being among his teachers, and he graduated as an organist and music teacher. He continued his organ studies in Paris and studied composition with Hermann Grabner in Leipzig. In 1933, after a few unhappy years as organist in Strömstad and Jönköping, he became organist of Johanneberg parish, Gothenburg, remaining there until his retirement in 1968. He also taught the theory of music in the Orchestral School of Gothenburg Orchestral Association until 1951. As one of the most contentious and original personalities on the Gothenburg music scene, he meant a great deal to the concert association Living Music, (Levande Musik) in which he was active between 1957 and 1972, and to the Gothenburg Composers’ Association, whose chairman he was between 1957 and 1972. He settled in Stockholm at the New Year 1974. He became a Member of the Royal Academy of Music in 1952, and received Illis quorum and other distinctions.
An illness in early years forced a keen young sportsman to find other interests, and in 1916, while still a school boy, he wrote the first of almost 100 songs — Zigeunerlied (Goethe). “When I wanted to write a song, I looked high and low for a poem which would suit my purposes at that particular moment. I have to admit that poetry has never been a direct source of inspiration to me.“ Nevertheless, his songs are among the most intensive and relevant in the whole copious repertoire of Swedish art songs.
As a contemporary of Dag Wirén and Lars-Erik Larsson, he could be counted among the neoclassicists. And his early music displays the same Nordic coolness — with a slight Gallic touch later on in Divertimento (1936 1937). The war years brought artistic paralysis and it was not until the late 1940s that he returned as a composer, now the most radical of his generation. He began using a personal 12-tone technique, which obstructed his vocal composition but greatly enriched his instrumental output — first of all in his fourth symphony, Metamorfosi sinfoniche (1952-1955). In Rapsodia (1963) for soprano and chamber orchestra, however, the punctual texture rests on lyrical foundations. That work is devoted to Nelson Mandela, which in itself reveals the composer’s early and powerful involvement in world affairs. The orchestral work En grekisk saga (1967) was a protest against the seizure of power by the Junta, and the Violin Sonata (1965) evolved from news of the subjugation of Hungary. His organ music, including the fifteen movements of Musica Dolorosa, is among the foremost of its kind and he has made important contributions to the limited Swedish guitar repertoire in the form of about 50 pieces, among them his Partita Amabile. His orchestral output, symphonies apart, includes a number of concertante works, and as regards his chamber music, a string quartet played at the 1950 ISCM in Brussels deserves to be mentioned. As a composer he never rested on his laurels. He was active right up to the last, and towards the end of the 1960s he developed a free and fruitful style of his own. SJ