Life

Wilhelm Theodor Gnosspelius grew up in a Stockholm home where string quartets were performed and children were taught to play instruments. Starting at the age of thirteen he frequently appeared as a violinist with the Harmoniska sällskapet (the Harmonic Society). His father, who was a wholesale merchant, did not permit him to become a professional musician.

Beer and music

In 1832 Gnosspelius traveled to Germany to study the art of brewing and to listen to music in Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden. Mendelssohn’s first piano concerto made a big impression on him. Back in Stockholm, he established himself as a brewer by profession. Gnosspelius’ beer is said to have been excellent and well liked, but its popularity was not enough to carry the business financially. At its closure in 1837, he had debts which persisted until old age.

After his father died, Gnosspelius was able to start studying music. In 1841 he graduated with a degree in conducting.

A musician in Linköping

Two years after graduation Gnosspelius moved with his family to Linköping to work as a vocal teacher at the city’s secondary school. In 1854 he became a cathedral organist and director musices at the grammar school.

Gnosspelius’ move to Linköping contributed to the development of the golden age of music in Östergötland County. As the leader of Norrköping’s and Linköping’s combined music societies he organised performances of great works such as Haydn’s Creation and The Seasons, Handel’s Messiah and Mendelssohn’s Psalm 42. He was also considered to be one of the country’s foremost string quartet musicians.

A musician in Lund

In 1858, competing against his friend Ludvig Norman, Gnosspelius won the dual post as both cathedral organist and director musices at the University of Lund. There he was responsible for promoting the orchestral, choral and chamber music in the city. In 1859 he founded the Musiksällskapet (the Music Society) which performed Haydn’s Creation and other major choral and orchestral works.

Under Gnosspelius’ leadership the Akademiska kapellet (the university orchestra) underwent a transformation from chamber music ensemble to an amateur orchestra capable of performing symphonies by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Gade. He also studied counterpoint and drafted a book on harmony, and in old age he participated as a conservative debater in the heated discussions regarding the revision of the prevailing common hymnal from 1820.

Work

After Gnosspelius died, his friend, linguist Fredrik Wulff, noted that the deceased had evaluated his own compositions as being ‘of slight value’. The reasons behind Gnosspelius’ modesty were probably both that he had a very deep respect for the classical masters and that the majority of his own few compositions were only occasional works.

Much of the orchestration, melodies and emotional expressions in a work such as Sorge Cantate i anledning af Prins Gustafs död (1852) could have originated from the times of Haydn and Mozart. Gnosspelius’ later cantatas exhibit 19^th century emotional inflections, yet he never abandons his classical foundations. According to the periodical Lunds Weckoblad, his cantata composed on the death of Queen Lovisa in 1871 was ‘a well thought-out and perfectly elaborated work, worthy and melodic, and reasonably suited to the abilities available to the composer in terms of execution’.

Gnosspelius’ most ambitious work is his musical setting of Davids 98 Psalm for soloists, choir and orchestra (1862). The work is in the style of a classical oratorio characterised by a great variety of affect, encompassing elaborate contrapuntal choral sections, a dramatic bass aria, and a tranquil movement for soprano soloist and male quartet. Another sacred piece is his one-movement Requiem for mixed choir and organ (1870) where soft, contrapuntal sections embrace a flaming homophonic invocation.

Gnosspelius’ greatest chamber work, his two-movement Duo for piano and violin in F minor (1850), shows his capacity of creating themes consisting of short, charged motifs suited for further development. Its dire seriousness and (somewhat) bold gestures induces the entireness of the duo to evoke suggestions of late eighteenth-century Sturm und Drang.

Tobias Lund © 2015
Trans. Thalia Thunander