Ingvar Lidholm

Ingvar Lidholm, one of the greatest Swedish composers of the 20th century, died on October 17, 2017 at the age of 96. Following the deaths of Knut Nystedt (1915-2014) and Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016), Lidholm is another highly significant Scandinavian composer of the 20th century.

Lidholm was a central figure in Swedish musical life for over 70 years and wrote groundbreaking works for choir, chamber music and orchestra. His work contributed significantly to the so-called "Swedish choral miracle", the emergence and movement of choirs capable of performing very difficult pieces. These pieces include Laudiwhich Lidholm composed at the age of 26, inspired by a choir conducted by his friend Eric Ericson. "Almost impossible to perform", was allegedly the verdict of the choir members when they got their hands on the sheet music in 1947.

Lidholm wrote a cappella works, solo works for clarinet, oboe and violoncello, but also orchestral works such as Contacion (1978) and Ritornello (1955) and operas like The Dutchmanfor which he received the Salzburg Opera Prize in1968, or A dream game (Ett drömspel, 1990). Other compositions by Lidholm have since become classics in the choral world, such as Canto LXXXI (1961), Libera me (1995) and a riveder le stelle (1973).

(For a detailed biography and list of choral works, see below).

The Monday group

A number of Swedish composers, musicians and musicologists got together in 1944 and met regularly on Mondays until around 1950 to discuss composition. The informal leader of the group was Karl-Birger Blomdahl (1916-68). The meetings took place in his family's apartment on Drottninggatan in Stockholm, with coffee provided by his mother.

As international contacts had been broken off due to the Second World War, there was a great need to exchange experiences. Among other things, they discussed the theory of movement and form with composers such as Hindemith, Bartók, Stravinsky, Schönberg and Berg. The core of the group consisted of Blomdahl himself, Klas-Thure Allgén, Sven-Erik Bäck, Sven-Eric Johansson, Hans Leygraf, Claude Génetay, Eric Ericson and Ingmar Bengtsson, as well as Ingvar Lidholm.

In 1946, several members of the group (Sven-Eric Bäck, Eric Ericson and Lars Edlund) traveled to Basel to the "Teaching and Research Institute" for Early Music to study with Ina Lohr. As Paul Sacher's assistant, Ina Lohr played an important role in establishing the institution now known as the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. All her work was underpinned by a deep religiousness. She was involved in the Swiss singing movement and in the introduction of the rehearsal volume of the new church hymnal. At the same time, the early music movement was gradually seeking greater professionalization, wanting to free itself from the label of dilettantism that substantially defined house music, which contributed, among other things, to the fact that Ina Lohr's name is hardly known today.

When the Monday group started meeting again in 1947, several new participants joined, including Göte Carlid, Magnus Enhörning, Nils L. Wallin and Bo Wallner.

Paradigm shift in musical life

The orientation of the Montagsgruppe was, and became over time, more and more radically modernist music. The original aim was to improve their own compositions in parallel with the development of European art music. But they also wanted to work towards gaining more understanding for their own, often mocked music. In Sweden, they had to fight against the traditionalist music establishment, in which late romanticism and neoclassicism were the predominant stylistic ideals. The distancing from late Romanticism also included an interest in Baroque music and its performance practice among many members of the group.

The members of the Montagsgruppe took an active part in the debates on new music, gradually gaining more attention and more influence. And so gradually (after the group had already disbanded) some of its members, first and foremost Blomdahl, Bäck and Lidholm, occupied central positions within the Swedish music scene. The Monday Group is therefore of central importance in the Swedish music history of the 20th century and responsible for the clear aesthetic and stylistic paradigm shift in musical life during the 1950s and 1960s. Both Blomdahl and Lidholm became professors of composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. Choral music in particular made a decisive contribution to the general development of new music in Sweden after the Second World War.

The enormous development of contemporary Scandinavian choral music itself, which is also known as the "Swedish choral miracle", is primarily linked to the choral conducting legend Eric Ericson. He not only inspired composers to write such new works. Above all, he also trained choral conductors who were no longer "afraid" of new sounds and unusual scores. In this way, he set a cycle in motion for subsequent generations in which capable choirs, excellently trained conductors and composers were able to fertilize each other.

Today, this influence is seen as both positive and negative. Other composers who did not share the group's ideals or who composed in a more traditional way were largely ignored by institutions such as Swedish radio, led by members of the Monday Group or their friends and "allies". This was described by composer Erland von Koch, among others, in his book Music and songs [Music and Memories], Stockholm 1989.