Swedish Music

I posted this on another music forum two years ago:

Now here is a strange situation.

In the chapter on "Modern Music in Scandinavia" written by Bo Wallner and included in "European Music in the Twentieth Century"(rev. edition 1961; edited by Howard Hartog) Moses Pergament is grouped with his contemporaries Hilding Rosenberg(born 1892) and Gosta Nystroem(born 1890) as one of the central figures of Swedish music.

Yet Pergament was always an outsider. Born in Finland(then part of the Russian Empire) and a Jew, Pergament was never fully accepted within his adopted country of Sweden. He came in for systematic attack both by Peterson-Berger and Kurt Atterberg who denied him entry to the Swedish Society of Composers for many years on the spurious grounds that Pergament wasn't Swedish (despite the protests of Hilding Rosenberg on Pergament's behalf). In fact Pergament had grown up in Finland speaking Swedish and the hostility towards him, at least from Peterson-Berger, was clearly anti-Semitic.

Yet today Pergament has completely disappeared. His music is never heard. None of his concertos is on cd nor his magnum opus- the 1944 Choral Symphony. I had seen his name over the last 40 + years and never really enquired before into his ouput.

Pergament's Choral Symphony is "The Jewish Song" and is scored for soprano, tenor, chorus and orchestra and is over an hour and a half long. It was recorded by Caprice to Lp but has never been transferred to cd. There are concertos for Violin(1948), Piano No.1(1951-52), Two Violins and Chamber Orchestra(1954), Cello(1954-55), Viola(1964-65) and Piano No.2(1974-75).

Allan Pettersson-who barely rates a mention in the reference books of thirty years ago or so-has all his orchestral music recorded once(by cpo) and now probably twice(by Bis) but Pergament disappears into oblivion.

How fickle is the hand of musical fate