Life

Childhood and youth

Åke Malmfors was born in Stockholm on 2 December 1918. His father, Sam Malmfors, was the manager of a power plant but had a great interest in music, which included both choral singing as well as piano and organ playing. His father had also studied harmony and was able to read musical scores. Åke’s mother, Xenia (née Ohlsson) had taken piano lessons as a youngster. During much of his childhood Malmfors lived in Stockholm where he had the prominent conductor and singer, Einar Ralf, as a teacher.

After the family moved to Falun, Malmfors took lessons with Anders Jobs, who alongside the teaching profession was active as an organist and composer. Jobs showed great commitment to music teaching, and it was within this context that Malmfors’s interest in music began in earnest. He sang in a choir, played the piano, organ and cello, and even had the opportunity to try out conducting the high school student association's choir and orchestra. Aside from music, Malmfors had difficulties in school and he barely managed to pass his junior secondary school examinations in 1935.

Music studies in Stockholm

Because his father was a friend of Sven Kjellström, then Director of the Musikkonservatoriet in Stockholm (the Royal Conservatory of Music, from 1941 Kungliga Musikhögskolan, the Royal College of Music), Malmfors made contact with Melcher Melchers, who taught counterpoint, composition and other subjects at the conservatory. Malmfors moved to Stockholm and studied harmony with Melchers beginning in 1935. In the spring of 1938, he was accepted as a student in the counterpoint class at the conservatory and was able to continue with the same teacher. During 1936−38 Malmfors also took cello lessons from Gunnar Norrby, and starting in 1936 Malmfors’s first compositions appeared, written for voice and piano.

After two years of study in the counterpoint class, Malmfors was admitted in 1940 to the composition class. His teacher, Melchers, was schooled in France where he had moved among composers such as Satie, Milhaud and Poulenc, and his teaching was markedly coloured by his French education. It is clear that the influence of French music was passed on to Malmfors. Malmfors recounted for his family that on one occasion at the Musikhögskolan, a teacher thought that a Frenchman had composed a piece of music written by him.

During his time at the Musikhögskolan Malmfors also studied choir and orchestra conducting – with David Åhlén respectively Tor Mann – and he graduated as a music teacher in 1943. In the spring of 1945, he completed his studies in composition. Malmfors composed vocal as well as instrumental music during his student years, and many of his most performed works, including his choral piece ‘Månsken’ from 1945, and his most comprehensive works, including the String Quartet from 1943, were created during this period.

Professional conductor

Malmfors began work as a conductor while still at the Musikhögskolan, first for the choir of the diocese of Stockholm’s church youth association beginning in 1942, and then for the Huddinge orkesterförening (Huddinge Symphony Orchestra) in 1943. His teacher in choral conducting, David Åhlén, described Malmfors as having ‘this indefinable ability, very rare among conductors, to inspire his orchestra and choir members to perform far beyond their ordinary standard’. In 1946 the job of music director in Huddinge was announced, which Malmfors applied for but did not get. One reason may have been that Malmfors had a handicap, a birth injury to his right arm. The arm had limited mobility and was partially atrophied. Some felt that the handicap was very problematic particularly within the profession of conducting and that Malmfors should not have chosen this career path. One of these was Olallo Morales, composer and conductor as well as an inspector for the country's state-subsidised orchestras when Malmfors worked in Huddinge.

In 1945 Malmfors had also applied for a job as a sound engineer at Radiotjänst (the Swedish Radio service), but he did not receive this either; because of his handicap he was too slow handling the controls. Instead Malmfors focused his energies on a career in Eskilstuna, where he became the director of the orchestra in the autumn of 1946. Malmfors was deeply engaged in this work and implemented changes to the orchestra’s programmes, establishing a more difficult repertoire; he also managed to increase the amount the orchestra received in grants.

Studies in Italy

In the spring of 1948 Malmfors took a leave of absence to travel to Italy where he studied choir and orchestra conducting with Bonaventura Somma respectively Tullio Serafin. But when Malmfors then returned to Eskilstuna in the summer, he found that he had been fired and he was forced to seek a new job. The orchestra’s board was of the opinion that Malmfors was only contracted for one season at a time, and had decided to choose a different conductor. Malmfors did not manage to find a permanent job but had to settle for shorter assignments, including with the Sveriges Radios Underhållningsorkestern (the Swedish Radio’s Entertainment orchestra) and the Radiokören (the Swedish Radio Choir).

Career as a composer

Fortunately his career as a composer had taken off, particularly after the Radiokören’s 1947 performance of ‘Gammal nederländare’ and ‘Månsken’ under the direction of Einar Ralf, Malmfors’s former teacher, who was moreover the director of the Kungliga Musikhögskolan. In a radio review from the same year the following opinion was given: ‘This music definitely does not live on dry desktop-counterpoint, but is born of a composer’s fantasy that, beyond the templates of harmonic theory, superbly masters the possibilities of choral sonorities and understands how to put them in the service of an artistic idea.’ Both of these pieces came out in print in 1945, the same year that they were composed, but their popularity now increased. ‘Månsken’ was recorded with Eric Ericson as the conductor, who also included both ‘Månsken’ and ‘Gammal nederländare’ in an instruction programme in the radio series ‘Sjunga i blandad kör’ (Singing in a mixed choir).

Malmfors’s String quartet from 1943 was played on the radio in 1948, but did not enjoy an overwhelming response. His success was instead that much greater with the new choral music he composed in 1947−48: the songs ‘Pilarna’, ‘I fjärran dis’ and ‘Mångård’, all of which were published in 1949.

Malmfors had further success with his choral music on 8 May 1950, when his just over six-minute-long ‘Kontrabasen’ for men’s choir and piano was premiered by the KFUM-kören (the YMCA choir) and Martin Lidstam, who had also commissioned the work for the choir's 25th anniversary. The concert was broadcast on the radio that same day. In the autumn of 1950 Malmfors succeeded Hildor Lundvik as conductor of the Bellmanskören (the Bellman Choir) in Stockholm. In early March 1951, however, Malmfors suddenly fell ill and died on 7 March, at only 32 years old.

Works

Malmfors’s creative output is small and consists mainly of vocal music, particularly art songs, and choral music. In much of his work the influence of French music is on clear display. This was already being discussed during Malmfors’s lifetime, as when a reviewer at the premiere of his Introduktion och Allegro for saxophone quartet saw similarities to the music of Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy. At the radio broadcast of the String quartet in 1948, the composer himself pointed out the French influence: ‘My quartet is fairly French influenced but perhaps there are also more personal inflections in it.’

The three choral works composed in 1943, ‘Hans und Grethe’, ‘Wiegenlied’ and ‘Scherzlied’, have more traditional harmonies and a light-hearted tone, and particularly the first and last-named pieces show similarities to the choral music of Wilhelm Peterson-Berger and August Söderman. In January 1945 Malmfors composed the two choral works with which he had his greatest success: ‘Månsken’ and ‘Gammal nederländare’, both with texts by Bo Bergman. In ‘Månsken’ the composer paints, with both dreamy sounds and a playful melody, a sheer and vibrant picture of silver light and elves during the midsummer night the text describes. A characteristic feature of this and also other music of Malmfors is the use of frequent shifts between sonorities. ‘Gammal nederländare’, in contrast, features a burlesque style, but like ‘Månsken’ it is largely built on the characteristic intervals of the Dorian and Lydian church modes. ‘Pilarna’ and ‘I fjärran dis’ (1947) move within a sonoric world that is close to ‘Månsken’, while ‘Mångård’ (1948) has something closer to an atonal musical language, especially in the sparse introduction.

Per-Henning Olsson © 2016
Trans. Jill Ann Johnson