Lindberg, Oskar

Lindberg, Oskar – Från de stora skogarna (From the Great Forests) for orchestra

(b. Gagnef, February 23, 1887 – d. Stockholm, April 10, 1955)

(From the Great Forests)

Preface
Endless silence and vastness, green as far as the eye can reach and only a few houses – this is the view from Knippboberget above Insjön in the middle of the Swedish province of Dalarna. Anyone who found themselves in this lonely area in the 1920s and 1930s, wandering along enchanted paths, would soon hear strange sounds coming from one of the old mountain cabins up there. Oskar Lindberg, probably Sweden’s most important organist, had a small hut built there on his parents-in-law’s old farm, which housed a summer organ. Here some of the composer’s major works were written, including the famous Gammal Fäbodpsalm från Dalarna, which was Sweden’s most popular funeral music for many years. The original, wild nature and folk music of Dalarna were an important source of inspiration for the composer, who was born in 1887 in the provincial town of Gagnef, the son of an elementary school teacher and a musical housewife. Like the teaching profession, the family was also close to the church, and so most of the numerous Lindberg children became teachers or priests. It is therefore not surprising that their son Oskar could already be found playing the organ at Gagnef Church as a child. After learning the instrument with local music teachers, he moved to Stockholm at the age of 16, where he studied composition with Ernst Ellberg and organ with August Lagergren. …

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