Allan Pettersson
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Gustav Allan Pettersson (September 19, 1911 – June 20, 1980) was a Swedish composer.
Pettersson, one of four children of a violent alcoholic blacksmith, was born at the manor of Granhammar in Västra Ryd parish in the province of Uppland, but grew up in poor circumstances in Stockholm, where he resided during his whole life. There, in 1930, he began study of violin and viola, as well as counterpoint and harmony, at the Royal Conservatory of Music. He became a distinguished viola player but also started composing songs and smaller chamber works in the 1930s. At the beginning of the second world war he was studying the viola in Paris. During the 1940s he worked as a violist in the Stockholm Concert Society Orchestra, but also studied composition privately with Karl-Birger Blomdahl and Otto Olsson. His production from this decade include the twenty-four Barefoot Songs (1943-45) and a concerto for violin and string quartet (1949).
In 1951 Pettersson composed the first of his seventeen symphonies; the others were to follow in rapid succession. The first and last symphonies of the series are unfinished. He contracted polyarthritis in his forties, and by the time of his fifth symphony, completed in 1962, his mobility and health were considerably compromised. His greatest success came a few years later with his seventh symphony (1966-67), which has also received more recordings than his other works.
He was hospitalized for nine months in 1970, soon after the composition of his ninth and longest symphony, beginning to write the tenth (1972) from his sickbed. He recovered, but ill health confined him permanently to his apartment. The release of a recording of his seventh symphony (with Antal Dorati conducting the Stockholm Philharmonic) was a breakthrough, establishing his international reputation. During the last decade of his life he also wrote the cantata Vox Humana (1974), concertos for violin and orchestra (1977-78) and for viola and orchestra (1979), a twelfth symphony for mixed chorus and orchestra (1973) to poems by Pablo Neruda and a sixteenth symphony (1979) which features a bravura solo part for alto saxophone.
Pettersson's writing is tonal, but very strenuous and often has many polyphonic lines going on at once. Most of his symphonies are written in a single movement, making them all the more demanding. Generally serious in tone, often dissonant, his music rises to ferocious climaxes relieved, especially in his later works, by lyrical oases. Most of his music has now been recorded at least once and much of it is now available in published score.
