Born in Stockholm on 15th July 1932. He undertook versatile studies of painting, marionette theatre and other subjects. He won a television competition with a marionette film. He studied music in various places in Europe, without being formally enrolled as a student, e.g. organ with Ph Möller at Pfarrkirche in Fulda 1951-1956, and counterpoint with Hermann Heiss, a pupil of Hauer. He met Stockhausen in Cologne and, although objecting to his pretentious intellectualism, still feels an attachment to both the man and his work. Studies at the Popular School of Music, Ingesund, followed in 1956-1958. As a composer he is self-taught. Following a period as music teacher and lumberjack in Dalarna, he has worked in the music department at the Rudolf Steiner Seminar, Järna, since the 1960s. Between 1963 and 1966 he worked at the Mora Park Therapeutic Education Institute in the same locality as a music therapist for mentally retarded children. Finally, since 1966 he has also been a music teacher and stimulator at the Solvik Waldorf School in Järna.

Pär Ahlbom’s music has derived essential impulses from early Netherlands composers like Dufay and Okeghem, and from the German Minnesänger. A composer like Anton Webern has also meant a great deal to him in his efforts to bring the primitive elements of music to life in the present. His idiom is highly personal, his pieces are written for ordinary instruments and they do not shun triads, though this is not to say that they are ever nostalgic or ironic. His art emanates from an affirmation of Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy: “Music is a part of something whole which embraces the Word and Movement, Colour, Architecture and much more besides. Not a Gesamtkunst mixture but completely different activities necessary to one another and to man.“

He is a mystic who lives very much in the present. He is sceptical of electro-acoustic music and loudspeakers, and yet he was one of the first Swedes to visit Stockhausen's studio at West German Radio in the mid 1950s. A decade later he made a name for himself, partly through works like Colludus I (choir, 2 flutes and 2 horns), Colludus II (2 flutes, 2 cellos and 2 harps) and his winning entry for the automatic carillon in the tower of Västerås City Hall. In the orchestral work Sine Nomine (1966), extremely limited tonal material was given an overwhelming development, in which the phrases follow on from each other like an endless improvisation. At one time he took a close interest in musical performance emerging from his work with children, mostly for a large number of participants in processions and choruses – e.g. Fiskaren och hans gumma (1970), Tor och Trym (1972) and Gilgamesj. In recent years he has found improvisation such a valuable form that his interest in pre-composed music has diminished. In addition, he collaborates closely with instrument builders, of whom Manfred Bleffert of Heiligenberg deserves special mention. From his workshop come the gongs, tom toms, bars, triangles, cymbals, bells and metallophones of bronze, iron and copper which play such a vital part in Ahlbom’s music. He himself has taken a special interest in the immediate acoustic potentialities of wood and has developed appropriate methods of playing. The human voice has always occupied a prominent position in his music, and he wholeheartedly endorses the training method developed by the Swedish vocalist and researcher Valborg Werbeck-Svärdström.
Stig Jacobsson