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Franz Adolf Berwald (born in Stockholm on July 23,
1796 and died there on April 3, 1868) was a
composer.

From a family with four generations of musicians,
his father, a violinist in the Royal Opera
Orchestra, taught young Berwald the violin from an
early age, and was soon appearing in concerts. In
1811, Charles XIII of Sweden|Karl XIII (brother of
Gustav III of Sweden|Gustavus III) came to power
and restored the Royal Chapel; the following year
Berwald started working there, as well as playing
violin in the court orchestra and the opera,
receiving lessons from Edouard Dupuy. He also
started composing. The summers were off-season for
the orchestra, and Berwald travelled around
Scandinavia, Finland and Russia. Of his works from
that time, a Septet and a Serenade he still
considered worthwhile music in his later years.

In 1818 Berwald started publishing the Musikalsk
journal, later renamed Journal de musique, a
periodical with easy piano pieces and songs by
various composers as well as some of his own
originals. In 1821, his Violin Concerto in C#
minor was premiered by his brother August. It was
not well received. Some people in the audience
even burst out laughing during the slow movement.

His family got into dire economic circumstances
after the death of his father in 1825. Berwald
tried to get several scholarships, but only got
one from the King, which enabled him to study in
Berlin, where he worked hard on operas despite not
getting any chance to put them on the stage. To
make a living, Berwald started an orthopedic and
physiotherapy clinic in Berlin in 1835, which
turned out to be profitable. Some of the
orthopedic devices he invented were still in use
well into the next century.

But he stopped composing during his time in
Berlin, resuming in 1841 with a move to Vienna and
marriage to Mathilde Scherer. In 1842 a concert of
his tone poems at the Redoutensaal received rave
reviews, and over the course of the next three
years Berwald wrote four Symphonies.

The Symphony No. 1 in G minor, "Sérieuse", was
the only one of Berwald's premiered in his
lifetime, in 1843, with his cousin Johan Frederik
conducting the Royal Opera House Orchestra. At
that same concert, his operetta Jag går i kloster
was also performed, but its success is credited to
one of the roles having been sung by Jenny Lind.

Berwald's music didn't get much recognition in
Sweden during his lifetime, even drawing hostile
newspaper reviews, but fared a little better in
Germany and Austria. The Universität Mozarteum
Salzburg|Mozarteum Salzburg made him an honorary
member in 1847.

When Berwald got back to Sweden in 1849, he
managed a glass works at Sandö in Ångermanland
owned by Ludvig Petré, an amateur violinist.
During that time Berwald focused his attention on
chamber music.

One of his few operas to be staged in his
lifetime, Estrella de Soria, was greatly applauded
at its premiere at the Royal Theater in April
1862, and was given four more performances in the
same month. Following on this success, he wrote
Drottningen av Golconda, which would have been
premiered in 1864, but was not, due to a change of
directorship at the Royal Opera.

In 1866, Berwald received the Order of the North
Star, in recognition of his musical achievements.
In 1867, shortly before his death, the Stockholm
Conservatory finally appointed Berwald professor
of composition, having rejected his application
several times before. At around that time he was
also given many important commissions, but he
would not live to fulfill them all.

Berwald died in Stockholm in 1868 of pneumonia and
was interred there in the Norra
begravningsplatsen. The second movement of the
Symphony No. 1 in G minor was played at his
funeral.

Eduard Hanslick, writing in his 1869 book
Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien, opined of
Berwald, "a man stimulating, witty, prone to
bizarrerie, as a composer lacked creative power
and fantasy". On the other hand, Ludvig Norman and
the composers Tor Aulin and Wilhelm Stenhammar
worked hard to promote Berwald's music, and it
took a while before Berwald was recognized as
Sweden's "most original and modern composer"
(Wilhelm Peterson-Berger writing in Dagens
nyheter). In 1911, Carl Nielsen wrote of Berwald,
"Neither the media, money nor power can damage or
benefit good Art. It will always find some simple,
decent artists who forge ahead and produce and
stand up for their works. In Sweden, you have the
finest example of this: Berwald."

Ten years after Berwald's death, the Symphony No.
4 in E-flat major, "Naïve", was premiered in
1878, with the originally planned Paris 1848
premiere date postponed by the French Revolution.
But this was relatively quick compared to the
other two, Symphony No. 2 in D major, "Capriceuse"
and Symphony No. 3 in C major, "Singulière",
which were not premiered until the following
century.

== References ==

* Robert Layton, editor, A Guide To The Symphony,
Chapter 13, "The Symphony in Scandinavia", written
by Robert Layton.

==External Link==

http://www.berwald.gmxhome.de/bibliographie_diskog
raphie.htm Berwald Bibliography and Discography