Life

Even though Johan Fredrik Palm is the most frequently published composer after Olof Åhlström in the latter’s anthologies Musikalisk Tidsfördrif and Skaldestycken satte i musik, he is barely mentioned in contemporary documents and thus little is known about his life and circumstances. He must have earned a measure of precocious renown as a talented pianist, for in 1772, at the age of 19, he was made keyboard teacher at the newly established educational institution of the Kungliga Musikaliska akademien (Royal Swedish Academy of Music), where financial constraints precluded proper instrumental teaching until some way into the 1800s. Palm probably had countless private students but seems to have participated in concerts only rarely. However, he appeared as a soloist in a Mozart concerto during royal court musician C.I.B. Megelin’s concert at Riddarhuset (the House of the Nobility) on 23 September 1792 and in a Johann Christian Bach double concerto with Åhlström at singer Christoffer Karsten’s concert in Börssalen (the grand hall of the Stockholm Stock Exchange) on 15 March 1795. And Dagligt Allehanda reports that in January 1810 Palm also performed a variation work for piano, possibly his own.

Palm is mentioned as an ‘accompanist at the harpsichord’ at the Kungliga Operan (Royal Opera) in 1778−87, which presumably means that he was part of the orchestra for works that demanded particular recitative and/or basso continuo accompaniment. From 1787 to 1805 he was second singing master responsible for rehearsals and the soloists’ vocal condition; the first singing masters at this time were J.C.F. Hæffner (1787−96) and Ludovico Piccinni (1796−1803). Subsequently, the only time Palm’s name appears in official contexts is in 1818, when he was made teacher of elementary singing at the educational institution of the Kungliga Musikaliska akademien, a position that he retained until his death. Elementary singing was the term used for the teaching given to students who were not destined to become professional (the teacher of solo singing at the time was the Kungliga Operan’s then second singing master, Carl August Stieler). Palm was a member of the Par Bricole order, founded in 1779, where most of Stockholm’s professional and amateur musicians met.

Works

Palm’s close to 60 songs, the majority from the 1790s, encompass most of the blossoming drawing-room-ballad genres – from drinking songs and love songs to role songs and ballads –and thus contain elements inspired by both the French song tradition and the currently popular German lied. Although almost all the songs are strophic, Palm demonstrates a melodic breadth from the simplest ‘Till Sophie’ to lyrics by Swedish poet Anna Maria Lenngren (Skaldestycken satte i musik, 1793), to the sweeping art song ‘Förrn solens morgonblick’ and full aria scene ‘Julia’ (both in Musikalisk Tidsfördrif, 1797). What strikes the ear is a melodic suppleness that allows expressive major/minor modulations and relatively high vocal pitches (even though the songs are well suited to transposition).

While Palm’s settings of Lenngren’s poems are said to have been his most popular, he also composed a large number of sensitive songs to poems by Axel Gabriel Silverstolpe and Carl Johan Lindegren, and liked to adopt Gustaf Paykull’s Anacreon pastiches for his drinking songs. Of note is his interpretation of Kellgren’s ‘Epicurismen’ (‘Lägg af, min vän, den sorgedräkt’, 1789). He also composed Franzén’s popular ‘Supvisa’ (‘Goda gosse, glaset töm’) twice (both times in 1794), although both songs have since paled under the glow of Åhlström’s more famous version. Palm’s melody to Franzén’s ‘Den gamle knekten’ (‘Det var i Saimen’, 1792) is to be sustained over 34 (!) stanzas and in print bears the instruction ‘L’accomp. siegue esattamente la declamazione’ – food for thought for all those who adhere strictly to the printed notes in these songs – interpretive freedom here is a natural necessity. Palm provides three of the melodies in Johan Elers’s collection Glada Qväden (1792), one of which is used for three different sets of lyrics.

Some of Palm’s piano pieces were included in Musikalisk Tidsfördrif: in 1807 a Marche Funebre in C minor, which, surprisingly, contains a few measures in triple metre shortly before the end; and two F major Waltzes, the one in 1808 and the other in 1814, both containing decorative eight-bar phrases and the first with elements in a minor key. More typical of contemporary tastes are his variation works, including one in B-flat major that was published in the second volume of Öfnings-Musik för Begynnare i Clavér-spelning (1819) and two more substantial but unprinted pieces (one a variation on Bellman’s ‘Gubben Noak’) dated 1805. Palm also made a piano arrangement of Johan Zander’s overture to Kronfogdarne, which was published by Åhlström in 1789.

Lennart Hedwall © 2015
trans. Neil Betteridge