1818

Franz Adolf Berwald (July 23, 1796 - April 3, 1868) was a Swedish Romantic composer who was generally ignored during his lifetime. Due to this, he was forced to make his living as an orthopedic surgeon and later as the manager of a saw mill and glass factory. String Quartet in G minor (1818) 4. Allegretto Lysellkvartetten Eduard Hanslick, writing in his 1869 book Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien, opined of Berwald, "a man stimulating, witty, prone to bizarrerie, [that] as a composer lacked creative power and fantasy". On the other hand, composers Ludvig Norman, Tor Aulin, and Wilhelm Stenhammar worked hard to promote Berwald's music, but, despite these musicians' efforts, it took a while before Berwald was recognized as Sweden's "most original and modern composer" (to quote composer-critic Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, writing in the Stockholm newspaper Dagens Nyheter). In 1911, Carl Nielsen wrote of Berwald, "Neither the media, money nor power can damage or benefit good Art. It will always find some simple, decent artists who forge ahead and produce and stand up for their works. In Sweden, you have the finest example of this: Berwald." More recently, British musicologist Robert Layton wrote in 1959 what remains the sole English-language biography of Berwald, as well as discussing Berwald's music in considerable detail elsewhere. One of the examples given by Harold Truscott (in his analysis of Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony) of composers prior to Brian writing "sonata <b>...</b>