Helena Munktellaus expressionism + impressionism + romantic

Helena Munktell (* 24 November 1852 in Grycksbo; † 10 September 1919 in Stockholm) was a Swedish composer.

Life

Helena Munktell was born at Grycksbo Manor, the youngest of nine children of Johan Henrik Munktell, patron of the mill at Grycksbro Mill, and Augusta Munktell. Her father was an accomplished pianist, which contributed to her receiving a proper education. The parents lived in a discordant marriage, and the mother Augusta therefore lived largely in Stockholm. When her father died, the whole family moved to Stockholm, where her mother ran the business. She was the sister of Amalia Hjelm and Emma Sparre.

Munktell studied singing, piano, counterpoint and instrumentation with Conrad Nordqvist, Johan Lindegren and Joseph Dente at the Stockholm Conservatory of Music. She was taught composition by Ludvig Norman. Much music was performed in the Stockholm home and soirees were given according to the custom of the time. The mother ran the business from Stockholm, but moved with the family to Grycksbo during the summers, where music life continued as in her father’s days.

In 1870 Munktell went with his mother first to Vienna to study singing and piano with the elite teachers, and then to Italy and Switzerland. In Paris in 1877 she decided to stay and performed as a singer and pianist. For the next two years she studied with Benjamin Godard and Vincent d’Indy. The two were to become her greatest admirers.

Composing took over, and Munktell’s skill was widely recognized. Her works received increasing attention, although they were received with some coldness in Germany and Sweden, where she gave her debut concert in 1885. The songs were referred to in Stockholm as innovative “gems”. It was in France that the great stocks were harvested. There, Munktell’s former teacher d’Indy became involved in spreading her work. The violinist George Enescu premiered the violin sonata opus 21 in Paris and later played it in Berlin. Her opera I Firenze was performed in Stockholm in 1889 and received praise when it was performed in France in the studio of her sister Emma Sparre. This made Munktell the first Swedish woman composer to write an opera, several years before Elfrida Andrée.

Munktell’s style was inspired by French neo-Romanticism and is quite harmonious and advanced, and was considered bold by her contemporaries. The orchestral piece Burns is typical of this style. She illustrates the whimsicality of the waves with the whole palette of the orchestra, making constant shifts in the way she uses the instruments and puts together unusual combinations with them. A constant flow undulates, but can sometimes stop suddenly and unexpectedly, as if to underline the capriciousness of the natural elements.

Later in life, around the turn of the 20th century, she became interested in Swedish folk music.

Helena Munktell was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Music in 1915 and was one of the founders of the Swedish Composers’ Association in 1918.

Source Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_Munktell