Performance: Gavle Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Tobias Ringborg
About Bränningar:
“On a gloomy November day in 1919, the Swedish music scene converged on the Musikaliska concert hall at Nybrokajen 11, in the heart of Stockholm. As always, the Royal Swedish Academy of Music’s traditional formal gathering was a pres- tigious event, with speeches, prize-giving ceremonies and music. The composer and academy member Helena Munktell had passed away earlier that same year. She was not the first woman to be elected to the academy, which admitted its first female members back in the 18th century. What was unusual was that she was elected solely on her merits as a composer.
Now, in the packed auditorium of the country’s oldest concert hall, the audience waited to hear the Swedish premiere of Munktell’s orchestral work Breaking Waves. This is a symphonic image in which waves swell, break, are forced into the air and fall back, only to return with renewed vigour or, at other times, as a quiet ripple on the surface of the water. Her opus 19, performed in the year 1919.
The Breaking Waves composed by Grycksbo-born Helena Munktell in Monte Carlo in the 1890s came at a time when the waters of musical history were also in full swell. Tonality had reached a breaking point, and composers would soon have to start looking for something other than just major and minor keys in order to continue their work. This was also a breaking point for female composers. With her orchestral works such as Breaking Waves, Dala Suite and her opera In Florence, Munktell paved the way for women in her role as a composer. Munktell brought her music out from the salon and onto the public stage. Breaking Waves broke new ground!
She stretches the canvas of her symphonic image with a quivering B♭. From here, the movement spills over into the first, slightly abrupt sea motif, which immediately takes up residence in the orchestra, before moving around like a chameleon throughout the work. A Wagnerian aesthetic meets French instrumentation from the start, leading us straight into the more relaxed main theme. This main theme presents itself with the horn section, a punctured rhythm, not unlike that of Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. The theme is brief and varies constantly, but always retains the same rhythmic structure.
As the movement then flows along, we encounter a second theme that really only consists of a small chromatic, descending figure. As kaleidoscopic as its sister theme, this figure also insists on behaving differently all the time. The use of motifs is reminiscent of Beethoven, as he too used very small components to build up large, coherent works. Using these three building blocks, Munktell sketches the entire symphonic land- scape in Breaking Waves. She herself never heard the work performed at home in Sweden. However, the Swedish Wind Ensemble has now recorded it in Högstedt’s instrumentation – which is close to Munktell’s own symphonic style – in the same auditorium where it made its Swedish debut back in 1919: Musikaliska.”
About Helena Munktell:
“Helena Mathilda Munktell was born in Grycksbo, Dalarna. She was the youngest of nine children born to a wealthy industrial family which enjoyed significant cultural capital. Her mother Augusta would winter in Stockholm where she hosted a significant salon attended by the city’s most eminent musicians and artists. She was also patron of young musicians. Helena Munktell’s father was an accomplished amateur musician who also ran the musical society. Helena Munktell began her musical education at Ivar Hallström’s music institute in Stockholm; she then continued her musical training largely through private instruction in operatic singing, piano, composing, counterpoint, and instrumentation with prestigious musicians from within the family’s social circle such as Ludvig Norman and Joseph Dente.
In 1879 Helena Munktell and her mother set off on a long study tour of Europe. First they went to Vienna, Italy and Switzerland to take instruction in singing and the piano. In 1877 they went to Paris, at which point Helena Munktell’s focus increasingly moved from singing toward the piano. She subsequently performed both as a solo pianist and played her own accompaniment when singing. The piano pieces which she came to compose tend to be well-constructed and display her significant knowledge of the range of expressions possible by piano.
Helena Munktell remained in Paris over the winter until 1910, deepening her knowledge of musical composition. She studied with Benjamin Godard. She made her debut as a composer in 1885 in Stockholm, discovering her own special style, which merged Swedish and French stylistic ideals, and for which she gained significant public attention. The Stockholm press described her song Sof, sof as “a melodic pearl of the purest water”, noting the individual style of the compositions and the traces of French influence which could be discerned in them. The following year her romance called Trohet was considered to be a “charming piece composed in a dreamy popular style”. Several of her songs were performed in the ensuing years and she became a significant and interesting song composer who typified the contemporary tradition of female northern European composers.
However, Helena Munktell’s output would soon come to extend far beyond the limitations of song-writing. Her one-act opera called I Firenze was performed at the Kongl. Opera (royal opera) in Stockholm in 1889. It was also privately performed twice during the 1890s and was very favourably received by the French press. Helena Munktell’s former teacher of instrumentation, Joseph Dente, was responsible for the instrumentation of that work. This was a so-called one-act opera-comique whose strength lay in the solo numbers, particularly the romances Tror ni en kvinna så lätt kan glömma and O fagra barn. It was this opera which resulted in Helena Munktell being considered the first Swedish female composer of an opera.
Vincent d’Indy, the French composer, was of significant importance within Parisian musical life and was introduced to Helena Munktell’s work, leading him to lend her his support in developing her music. She studied with him from 1892 onwards, initially as a private student and then from 1894 at the Schola Cantorum. The 1890s became Helena Munktell’s most productive period and her work was often included in concert programmes. Her bold tones were very popular in Paris and during the 1890s she was admitted to the French society of composers.
Although Helena Munktell brought new elements to Swedish musical life through her bold, French-inspired tones and freestyle harmonising, she was also inspired by and reinvigorated Swedish traditional songs and folk dances in her national romantic pieces. This is perhaps most clearly evident in the orchestral works called Dalsvit and Valborgsmässoeld as well as in the violin sonata – all of which are inspired by the countryside both in tone and rhythm. Her completely individual style involved the merging of French ideals of tone and form with Nordic folk melodies.
Helena Munktell died in Stockholm in 1919 and is buried at the Norra cemetery in Solna.”
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