Allan Pettersson

Allan Pettersson emerged as a Swedish composer whose output centered on intense and demanding orchestral statements. Besides completing sixteen symphonies, he produced chamber scores, vocal pieces, additional orchestral works, and concertos. Born in 1911 in Västra Ryd, a modest settlement roughly three hundred kilometers southwest of Stockholm, he grew up as the youngest of four siblings. His father struggled with alcoholism and behaved violently, while his mother accompanied herself on guitar in renditions of folk melodies and sacred hymns. Persistent domestic strife and schoolyard clashes marked his early years. Around age ten he took up the violin under his older brother’s initial guidance, financing the instrument and a volume of Hans Sitt studies by selling Christmas cards. Thereafter he spent his free hours teaching himself the instrument, an activity that also shielded him from further mischief. Until he turned nineteen he appeared in pubs, dance halls, and local festivals; at that point he entered the Swedish Royal Conservatory of Music, where his focus shifted toward the viola and he began writing vocal and chamber music. In 1938 the Jenny Lind Scholarship enabled a year’s study in Paris with Maurice Vieux. Back in Sweden he pursued private instruction in harmony from Herbert Rosenberg and in composition from Karl-Birger Blomdahl while serving as a section violist in the Stockholm Concert Society Orchestra. During 1943 he launched the twenty-four-song cycle Barefoot Songs, setting his own texts that evoke the hardships of his youth and impoverished surroundings. Although respected for his polished viola playing, he also acquired a reputation for a prickly and confrontational manner. By 1950 he had resolved to concentrate exclusively on composition; between 1951 and 1953 he returned to Paris for lessons with Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, and René Leibowitz. Upon resettling in Sweden he resigned his orchestral post to devote himself fully to writing, at which time rheumatoid arthritis first appeared. Public recognition arrived only with the 1968 premiere of his Symphony No. 7 under Antal Doráti, an event that generated immediate acclaim and a steady flow of commissions. That performance proved to be the last he could attend, because mounting joint damage soon confined him to his apartment. In 1976 the Swedish government relocated him to a spacious ground-floor residence. Throughout the 1970s he maintained his creative pace and collected several national honors; Swedish media frequently profiled him, and he came to symbolize resilience for the economically disadvantaged. He died in 1980 while engaged on his Seventeenth Symphony.