Born in Solna on 11th October 1943, he was brought up in a musical vicarage. He entered the State Academy of Music in Stockholm in 1962, studying the organ with Olle Scherwin. He graduated as an organist in 1965, soloist diploma 1967, teacher's degree (music theory) 1969. He studied composition with Ingvar Lidholm 1968-1970, taught ear training at the State Academy of Music in 1969, and has been a lecturer since 1971. He is director of the Lidingö chamber choir.

Per-Gunnar Alldahl has a very down-to-earth attitude where musical creativity is concerned. He avoids making his music technically difficult to perform and he usually amuses himself by seeing how close he can come to pathos, sentimentality and cliché without actually crossing the borderline. He strikes a deliberate balance between accessibility and artistic integrity, and he sees no reason to abjure tradition, although this is not to say that he composes on traditional lines. Furthermore, he composes for the present and for personal pleasure, without any sidelong glances at eternity. Accordingly, he also enjoys composing music with educational undertones, such as Nulla ars... (No art can be learned without practice, 1966), a catalogue of performing practices old and new for strings. In Light Music (performed at Young Nordic Composers’ Festival in 1968) for five flutes and hammond organ, instruments of similar tonal colour are mingled in a canon technique which is typical of Alldahl. This also recurs in Play (1970), which is a game with orchestral structures.

From Biceps (1969) - an amalgam of composition and improvisation, of development and stagnation - interest in improvised music has grown steadily stronger. Perhaps writing music down is not necessarily the proper way of creating it. In a series of settings of Swedish spells (Stämma blod, Mot värk, Mot vårtor och liktornar...) his interest in folk tradition comes into the open, as in his Bruspolska (1972) for keyed fiddles, Jew’s harp and foot-stamp. Both the extensive choral composition Ljudens dikt (Asturias) and the subdued Det här är stunden (Olle Adolphson, 1982) with its plain structure of bare fifths and triads, reflect the composer’s profound veneration of our original environment and his respect for Nature as a precondition of our existence. Jag ville måla......(1984) is the collective title of four movements for mixed choir and organ to words by the Swedish poets and writers Tomas Tranströmer, Erik Lindorm, Karin Boye, Arne Forsberg and Harry Martinson.
Stig Jacobsson