Life

Richard Engländer was born in Leipzig on 17 February 1889 to parents who had recently converted from Judaism to the Evangelical Church. His father, Bernhard Engländer, sat on the High Court of Impeachment, his mother was from the Pringsheim family and thus related to Katia Mann (wife of writer Thomas Mann). Richard Engländer received excellent instrumental tuition at St Thomas School, where, amongst other instruments, he studied organ for Karl Straube. In 1908 he entered advanced music studies in Berlin and established life-long relationships with scholars like Johannes Wolf (music history) and Max Friedländer (art history). Hermann Kretzschmar also brought him into fruitful contact with the city conservatory. In 1916 he earned his PhD with a thesis on the operas of Johann Gottlieb Naumann. During the 1920s and 30s Engländer was active in Dresden as, among other things, a music teacher and repetiteur at the opera.

In 1939 Engländer arrived as an exile in Sweden and was received by Anna Söderblom, with whom his parents had been acquainted since her husband Nathan Söderblom’s time as a professor of theology in Leipzig between 1912 and 1914. Engländer’s harpsichord, which he had brought with him, was put to use in Uppsala Cathedral and was one of the first to be used regularly at concerts in Sweden. During the Baroque music revival in the 1940s Engländer was engaged as a continuo player throughout the country, often at Drottningholms slottsteater (Drottningholm Palace Theatre). He also spent this decade performing many works hitherto unknown in Sweden by such composers as Johann David Heinichen, Johann Kuhnau and Nicola Porpora.

When Engländer was consulted by Carl-Allan Moberg about whether Swedish musicology should establish formal ties with Uppsala University or the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm, he advocated the former. Moberg was made a professor in the subject at Uppsala University in 1947, and Engländer a docent the year after, becoming an honorary professor in 1965. Engländer was made a music critic for Upsala Nya Tidning in 1953 and sat on numerous government commissions in the field of music. He also appeared on Swedish radio, looking at the role of music in the cultural lives of different historical women.

Works

Most of Engländer’s compositions date to one of two periods of intense activity, the first during his adolescence in Germany in 1900−20, and the second in Sweden in 1939−1950. Many of his works he composed as gifts to friends and benefactors; one such is the cello sonata in D minor, his first composition in Sweden, which he wrote for Barbro Sigréus.

Engländer’s experiences with older instruments and genres left their mark on his own compositions, such as the Sonata da camera in D major for viola da gamba and harpsichord. While his chamber music production was intended for more intimate settings, his public performances he systematically reserved for historical music, with the exception of his printed vocal works in Swedish (including his songs for men’s choir from the 1940s), which enjoyed modest nationwide popularity.

Mattias Lundberg © 2016
trans. Neil Betteridge