Kusinerna Wilhelm och Elsa Stenhammars betydelse för bildandet av Göteborgs orkesterskola och Göteborgs orkesterförenings skola för körsång

Abstract

When the Gothenburg Orchestra School and the Gothenburg Orchestra Association’s school for choir singing were formed at the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra during the 1916/17 season, Wilhelm Stenhammar had been the orchestra’s chief conductor for nine years. Despite his great importance for the orchestra, there is nothing to show that the formation of the two new schools was on his initiative. Regarding the orchestra school, there were several factors that contributed to its formation, among them the obligation to fulfil the conditions of a will that had been crucial to the creation of the orchestra, and also the need to ensure the recruitment of musicians to the orchestra and to counteract the preponderance of foreign musicians. In the first years of its existence, the symphony orchestra cooperated with some high bourgeoisie choirs dating back to the 19th century, despite their mediocre artistic quality. When the last of these choirs was discontinued in 1916, Elsa Stenhammar, a cousin of Wilhelm’s who had formed a number of high-quality choirs with members from the middle and working classes, offered to transfer her choirs to the orchestra’s organization, which could then start a choir school and, only a year later, its own choir, the Concert Hall Choir.