On December 10, 1919, one of the greatest multitaskers Swedish musical life has ever seen was born. Sven-Eric Johanson was a musical prankster, organist, modernist, producer and beloved composer, above all for choirs. He grew up in a musical and free-church family and graduated both as a music teacher and cantor at the Academy of Music in Stockholm.
Sven-Eric Johanson was often seen in musical happenings in, above all, Gothenburg's cultural life. "He lived very much in the moment and did not shy away from making choral variations on Helan går, writing concertos for balalaika or key harp, or cantatas for jubilee kitchen training with pot lids and pans among the instruments. He displayed many burlesque sides, liked to parody and experiment - this as a break from his serious work," it reads in Swedish MIC's text about him.
His "serious deed" nicely balanced the burlesque features. In 1944, during his time at the Academy of Music, together with Sven-Erik Bäck and Eric Ericson, among others, he formed the so-called Monday Group, where they discussed morphology and syntax, and explored the development of contemporary European art music. He was already fascinated by twelve-tone music as a teenager and in the 1950s studied composition with both Fartein Valen and Luigi Dallapiccola. Despite his interest, he never composed strictly using the twelve-tone system, but found his own tone early on. In 1952 he settled in Gothenburg, where he worked as an organist in Älvsborg's church until 1977, at the same time as he became strongly involved in the city's musical life.
Sven-Eric Johanson was an extremely productive composer, with roughly 500 registered works. With his strong feeling for the voice as a means of expression
he became one of Sweden's most loved and performed vocal composers. He wrote songs, operas and children's music, but perhaps above all over 250 choral works: from little drinking songs and simple church music to his Symphony No. 2 (Rilkes Duino Elegy No. 7) for choir a cappella. His 1953 setting of Karlfeldt's poem Snabbt jagar stormen våra år belongs to the most sung choral pieces in the Swedish repertoire, as well Fancies(1974), Shakespeare texts for four-part chorus to piano accompaniment. In the simpler choral settings, the pedagogue Johanson comes to the fore as the singers get to try both improvisation, twelve-tone and speech choir.
Even as an instrumental composer, Sven-Eric Johanson achieved great success, perhaps above all with his Tenth Symphony, Symphonie Chez nous, written in 1990. The symphony contains a passage that was published separately with the titleThe melody of my heart. PG Bergfor's portrait book about Johanson from 1994 also had the same title. Sven-Eric Johanson died in 1997.
Photo: Ingmar Jernberg
