Life

Background, education and career

Per Fröding is one example of the many amateur composers who participated in the bourgeois music scene during the decades around 1900. Musical creativity was thus often limited to ‘compositions required for the household’ including minor piano pieces and songs; in Fröding’s oeuvre however, one can also find sonatas, string quartets and piano trios. A half-dozen works were published during his lifetime but his compositions mostly seem to have been directed toward the private music circles in which Fröding moved. That his creative output rarely reached public audiences may explain the scant amount of documentation about him during his lifetime, as well as why he never received a closer look in descriptions of music history.

Per Fröding was born on 26 March 1850 in Gothenburg. His parents were the merchant Anders Fröding and Johanna Augusta Bergendahl who both belonged to wealthy Gothenburg merchant families. They have no relation to the well-known Värmland Fröding family.

The family’s wealth and social standing ensured that Per and his siblings received a good education, which also included music. That artistic interests were cultivated within the family is visible not only in Per’s musical interests, but also in his brother Hugo Fröding’s (1842−1930) literary successes in his older years with works of literature and cultural history.

A career in the arts was, however, not an obvious choice in that contemporary affluent social stratum. While the brothers had careers in trade, diplomacy and the military, Per Fröding began by breaking into a more technical path. After studying in Uppsala and Stockholm – graduating in engineering in 1874 – he worked as a mechanical draftsman for different industries in Sweden, England, Belgium and the U.S.A. Afterward, beginning in 1886, he worked as an administrator in the family company, A. Fröding & Co.

In musical circles

By all accounts Per Fröding was a skilled pianist and likely also played a string instrument, as well as performing as a chorister. It is hard to completely identify all of his is activities within private music milieux, however he was a member of the Harmoniska sällskapet (the Harmonic Society) – in whose concert activities he took part – and the more private social fraternities, Göta Par Bricole and Sundbergska kvartettsällskapet (Sundberska’s quartet society). He was given an honorary membership in the latter. These activities gave him access to the inner circles of musical life in Gothenburg.

Through these musical societies Fröding was able to have his compositions performed: his suite for piano was performed (probably with the composer as soloist) at a public concert presented by the Harmoniska sällskapet in 1887, and at the Sundbergska kvartettsällskapet’s soirées his string quartets and a violin sonata were played on several occasions. The titles of some of Fröding’s compositions bear witness to the fact that they were created for private and special occasions, for example, ‘Marsch för kontoristföreningen’ (March for the clerks’ association) and ‘‘Gaffel-bitar’ för stråkinstrumenter’ (‘Fork-bits’ for string instruments). One of his violin sonatas (E-flat major) together with a few songs and piano pieces were published, however these compositions received no particular attention in the music press.

At the end of the 1890s Fröding took part in the collecting of folk songs that was initiated by the author and ethnologist of folk life August Bondeson, which resulted in the epoch-making book of folk songs, August Bondesons visbok: folkets visor sådana de lefva och sjungas ännu i vår tid (1901−03).

Per Fröding, who never married, died in Gothenburg on 10 January 1939. After his death an extensive collection of hand-written musical scores of his compositions and arrangements were donated to the library of the Kungliga Musikaliska akademien (the Royal Swedish Academy of Music).

Works

In terms of dating Per Fröding’s extant works, it seems that he composed primarily before 1900. The lion’s share of compositions is made up of piano music: two sonatas, one suite, a pair of variations and over fifty character pieces, mainly in smaller forms. In his creative output there are also ten or so chamber music works and songs.

Fröding’s many unpublished works have not been the object of closer analysis. His published works, however, show that his creations were those of an amateur, consistently easy-to-play compositions with a technically simple movement formulation. The music is however, not without acuity; the musical interpretation of Tennyson's ‘Ring Out, Wild Bells’ begins convincingly and the opening theme of the neo-baroque piano piece ‘Gavotte in G minor’ is spiritual.

Fröding’s ability to create longer lines of tension and to maintain an engaging expression throughout a composition tends to fail, partly because of a lack of advanced skill in developing motifs, themes and an organic harmony. When elaborating on a theme, he falls easily into a sort of stereotypical sequential formulation. His application of the concept of sonata and rondo forms is rudimentary. The clearest expressions of compositional weaknesses are found in major forms, such as the violin sonata in E-flat major.

Stylistically, Fröding’s published works give an eclectic impression of sounds from classicism as well as contemporary sensibilities. Turn of the century national romanticism, however, seems not to have left any deeper traces in his music.

Dan Olsson © 2016
Trans. Jill Ann Johnson