Den åhlströmska sångrepertoaren

1789 -1810

Abstract

Songs published by Olof Ahlström 1789-1810
(1) The publication of songs (i.e. songs with music) increased enormously in England, France and Germany during the second half of the 18th century. 109 collections of songs are known in Germany from the decades 1750-69, and 336 from the two following decades. In comparison, Swedish song publishing started very slowly. Only four collections being known from 1750-1788. But in 1789 Olof Ahlström started publishing a periodical with mixed musical content , Musikaliskt Tidsfördrif (Musical Pastime), and in 1793 a periodical devoted exclusively to songs, Skaldestycken satte i musik (Scaldic poetry set to music). Up to 1810 Ahlström published 678 songs in the two periodicals and four separate collections, of which the two song books by Bellman have been reedited many times up to the present. The essay deals with this body of songs, with the exclusion of the 147 Bellman songs. As
Ahlström had a royal monopoly on printing music, this group of songs is rather representative of Swedish song production during those decades. (2) An explanation of the sudden start of song publishing in 1789 is not easy to find. Before that date most songs were timbre-songs, i.e. set to known dance or song tunes, and often with satirical or burlesque texts, like those of Bellman. A new kind of songs, contrasting with these songs in a French vein, came to be known when Kapellmeister Joseph Martin Kraus returned in 1786 from four years on the Continent. It seems that Kraus inspired Ahlström and others to make songs in a new, pre-romantic, German-influenced style. They began to compose new music to chosen texts, instead of following the old procedure of writing new texts to old melodies. (3) The songs can be grouped according to textual content. Some sing of Friendship (24 songs) but songs about Friendship and Bacchus in combination are more common (66 songs). Love is also often combined with Bacchus (46 songs), but still more often is the sole subject (78 songs). (4) A surprisingly large number of songs are about the misery of life and the necessity of death (51 songs). Another group is about morals and the path of virtue (37 songs). Still another relates the joys of youth and springtime, sometimes adding that old age and bitterness is inevitable (36 songs). Some songs can be called pastorals in the classic sense, depicting love among countryside shepherds and shepherdesses (26 songs). Some are about modesty (22 songs) and some paint the beauty of nature (18 songs). Among the smaller song groups is one about children or a mother and child (16 songs), and one about the Fatherland, the King or the soldier’s glory (15 songs). (5) All 271 songs in Skaldestycken are strophic songs. In Musikaliskt Tidsfördrif there are also through-composed lieder and arias, among them ,some interesting ”lyric monologues”, mixing recitative and aria. The accompaniment is usually rather simple; preludes are rare whereas postludes are
very common. The song line always dominates the structure. The essay concludes with a list of songs. It contains 535 songs, 175 of them by Ahlström himself, 53 by Johan Fredrik Palm, 13 by Kraus, 9 by Carl Erik Gleisman and 9 by Thomas Byström. Many texts
are by well-known Swedish authors like Anna Maria Lenngren, Johan Henrik Kellgren, Frans Mikael Franzén or Johan David Valerius.