Researching music in G-flat major, I came across a nice little piece by Alice Tegnér and decided I just had to share it right away. This little song gave me a little mental break from the various awful things I’ve been pondering, like Republicans’ bad faith calls for bipartisanship, bad faith advocacy of “voting integrity,” bad faith pretty much everything.
You’ll find plenty of discussion of such things on the right hand side. For just a minute, put all that out of your mind, take a breath, and listen to “Sockerbagaren” by Alice Tegnér. I don’t know in what key it’s in, but I’m pretty sure it’s not G-flat major.
Why don’t we hear more music for girls’ choir? I don’t know. I sometimes find boys’ choirs kind of grating. That’s just my opinion, though, and it could just as easily be the composer’s fault (e.g., Joseph Haydn, Leonard Bernstein).
Tegnér’s “Kvällsång” (evening song) is for a chorus of men and women who can presumably manage G-flat major better than kids. Almost all of her music is vocal. It looks like she never wrote a string quartet or a symphony, which probably means she would’ve never come to my attention without this survey along the circle of fifths.
Eva Öhrström for Oxford Music Online, writes that Tegnér
trained as a teacher and at the same time studied music, especially composition. She was the originator of the Swedish repertory of children’s songs: her first songbook, Sjung med oss, Mamma!, was published in 1892 and eight further collections appeared during the next 32 years. Most of the songs ... are well known throughout Sweden, and Betlehems stjärna has become one of the most famous Swedish Christmas songs. ... Her own cantatas and piano music are no longer performed.
That last sentence comes across rather cold. Perhaps in 2001 there were no available recordings of her Violin Sonata in A minor. Now it’s available in an album that also includes music by other Swedish composers like Elfrida Andrée and Laura Netzel.
By the way, the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective has just released a new album of quintets by three American composers: Samuel Barber, Amy Beach and Florence Price (the first black composer whose music was played by an American orchestra). Read the review by Leighton Jones at the Classic Review.