Rangström, Ture

Rangström, Ture – First Symphony in C-sharp Minor »August Strindberg in memoriam«

(* Stockholm, 30 November 1884 – † Stockholm, 11 May 1947)

(1914)

I March Spring. Allegro entusiastico (p. 3)
II Legend. Andante serioso (p. 64) – alla Marcia funebre (p. 72) – Tempo primo (p. 75)
III Troll Rune. Sostenuto (p. 80) – Presto turbolento (p. 82) – Furioso (p. 90) – Sostenuto (p. 93) – ravvivando al: Presto turbolento (p. 97) – Sostenuto (p. 104) – Presto furioso (p. 105)
IV Struggle. Allegro eroico (p. 109) – Presto agitato e impetuoso (p. 120) – Poco andante (p. 128) –
Tempo primo (p. 131)

Preface
Together with Wilhelm Stenhammar, Hugo Alfvén and Kurt Atterberg, Ture Rangström is the most important composer of the so-called national romantic era in Sweden. All four composers wrote substantial symphonies. Rangström is honoured as Sweden’s greatest composer of lieder. He had a lifelong love of literature as well as music, and was a prominent poet who contributed the allegorical text to the great musical legacy of his friend Stenhammar, the cantata ‘Sången’. As a youth, he was equally enthusiastic about both arts, but since he never received a proper education as a composer, he was repeatedly attested the stigma of being an ‘autodidact’. He had taken some private lessons with Hans Pfitzner in Berlin in 1905-06, but that was it. As a singer, on the other hand, blessed with a reportedly beautiful baritone voice and trained by Julius Hey (1832-1909), who had worked with Richard Wagner for 12 years, there was no doubt about his solid foundation. Rangström later also made a name for himself as a conductor. By today’s standards, it was a prejudiced claim to accuse him of a lack of professionalism as a composer, even though his academic training was very limited and, unlike Stenhammar, he could not distinguish himself as a brilliant contrapuntist and refined orchestrator, but was all the more dependent on his sparkling imagination and the flow of inspiration.

Rangström had been an enthusiastic supporter of August Strindberg (1849-1912) since his youth. He met Strindberg in 1909, and immediately afterwards, under the impression of the encounter, he wrote his first orchestral work ‘Dithyrambe’, about which Rangström later said: ‘My romantic nature was bored by the idylls and sentimentality of the Swedish tone, I was a fervent radical – with a red scarf and a Borsalino – I loved Strindberg and the storm, and among the composers I loved Sibelius, Sinding and Carl Nielsen… Strindberg, to whom I played the piece, found the music rough-hewn, but otherwise he was quite amused and felt flattered.’…

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