Franz Berwald (1796-1868)
Tone Poems
The half-century between the premières of Beethoven’s
Ninth and Brahms’s First Symphonies saw the
emergence of numerous composers who, even if they
failed to achieve the ultimate greatness, left a body of
work which is distinctive and thought-provoking.
Among the most idiosyncratic of these is Franz
Berwald, whose life was a catalogue of passing
successes and lasting disappointments, made the more
striking, and ironic, by his successful embracing of
notably differing careers.
The orchestral works included here provide
considerable insights into a creativity which was to
extend over fifty years. Born in Stockholm on 23rd July
1796, Berwald was playing in public as a violinist from
his tenth year, and in October 1812 embarked on a
restless sixteen-year spell as member of the Royal
Opera orchestra in the capital. He was already
composing apace, and a benefit concert in January 1818
was a not inconsiderable success. A further such concert
in March 1821, however, was far less successful, the
criticism aimed at his Symphony in A (of which only a
torso of the first movement survives) drawing a
typically forthright response from Berwald. His music
for Kellgren’s Gustaf Vasa had a more positive
response in 1828, and it is hard to imagine the
Konzertstück for Bassoon and Orchestra, composed the
previous year, would not have enjoyed a similar
reception.
First performed by the bassoonist Franz Preumayr
on 18th November 1828, the Konzertstück is in three
sections. After a sprightly, Mozartian Allegro non
troppo with two contrasting themes, the Andante quotes
directly the aria ‘Home Sweet Home’ from Henry
Bishop’s then hugely popular opera Clari, or The Maid
of Milan. Its opening phrase without the second-half
refrain, is paraphrased at length, before a resumption of
the initial Allegro brings this modest but highly
attractive work to a spirited close.
The restrictions of being a professional musician,
coupled with general indifference to his music in
Stockholm, led Berwald to quit his home city for Berlin
in May 1829. Once again he was to meet with
disappointment in the frustration of his operatic plans,
none of which came to fruition in this period. The
running of an orthopaedic institute, which he founded in
1835, was soon absorbing most of his time, and it was
only on his move to Vienna in March 1841, to be
followed by his marriage a month later, that Berwald
resumed composition as a full-time activity. The
ensuing decade saw the composition of almost all of his
mature orchestral works, including the four tone-poems
included here. At least two of them were on the
programme of a Vienna concert on 6th March 1842,
when their individual approach to harmony and
orchestration afforded Berwald some of the most
favourable notices of his career.
Elfenspiel (Play of the Elves) begins quietly and
ruminatively, after which, a lively but muted music
redolent of Mendelssohn emerges as the main portion of
the work. A brief and rather dissonant climax on horns
and trumpets is reached, after which the main ideas are
recalled on the way to the peremptory coda. As the
Berliozian opening infers, Ernste und heitere Grillen
(Serious and Joyful Fancies) is a much more
demonstrative piece. Its scherzo-like main section is
almost relentlessly active, and with a rhythmic agility
seldom encountered in music of the period. In keeping
with this elusive nature, the sudden ending comes as a
not inappropriate surprise.
Erinnerung an die norwegischen Alpen
(Reminiscence of the Norwegian Mountains) opens
with a searching introduction which only gradually
assumes greater momentum. There follows a compact
sonata form, replete with purposeful development of its
main ideas and a ‘false ending’ which permits a recall of
the opening music to form a pensive close. Least known
of these tone-poems, Wettlauf (Foot-Race) could almost
be an alternative scherzo to one of the symphonies
Berwald was shortly to write. Although subtly defined,
its main themes follow one another almost as a throughcomposed
sequence, culminating in a breathless dash to
the finish.
Berwald’s industriousness throughout this period
was not to be complemented by either frequent airings
of his music or critical acclaim. The Sinfonie sérieuse,
the only one of four symphonies written during this
period to be performed in his lifetime, was all but
dismissed at its December 1843 première, and response
to two operettas was equally cool; the first performance
of Modehandlerskan (The Modiste) in March 1845 was
also its last. A sojourn in Vienna during 1846-9 was less
auspicious than its predecessor and, on returning to
Sweden, Berwald accepted directorship of first a
glassworks, then a sawmill in Sandö, restricting his
musical activity to private teaching and the composition
of chamber works.
Ironically, it was the successful assimilation of
these pieces into the Austro-German musical canon
over the following decade that led to a resurgence of
interest in Berwald’s music in his home country. In
April 1862 the Royal Opera in Stockholm staged
Estrella de Soria, twenty years after its completion, and
the response encouraged Berwald to embark on a
second grand opera. Finished in 1864, Drottningen av
Golconda (The Queen of Golconda) was already in
rehearsal when the production was summarily cancelled
by the Royal Opera’s new director and only heard in its
entirety in April 1968. Despite this final setback,
Berwald was officially recognised by the award of the
Order of the North Star on his seventieth birthday, and
was appointed a professor of composition at the
Stockholm Musical Academy the following year. There
were no more major works, however, before his
unexpected and untimely death from pneumonia in
Stockholm on 3rd April 1868.
Designated a ‘romantic opera’, The Queen of
Golconda is cast firmly in the mould derived from
Weber and Spohr, as the overture itself makes plain.
Poised between curtain-raiser and anticipation of the
drama to come, it alludes to several of the items
contained therein, fashioning them into a succinct
design which confirms that, in this last creative phase,
Berwald had lost none of his expertise in the domains of
form and orchestration. Alas that such prowess went, as
so often before, unrewarded.
Richard Whitehouse