Criticism

As a critic Rubenson involved himself not only with compositions and performances, but also with educating the public. In addition, he was critical of how music criticism was conducted in Sweden at the time, and advocated for a sharpening and raising of quality on all levels − for everyone’s benefit. He challenged composers to take on larger instrumental forms, and with a more professional touch, raise themselves above the level of the dilettante. Rubenson claimed that the widespread dilettantism in Sweden was characterised by a far too one-sided focus on melody. The melody was perceived by the dilettante as a sort of reinforcing declamation of the sung text. When this view is transferred to instrumental music, the dilettante would inevitably search out programmatic associations and notions, as if the music were a sort of wordless recitative, a declamatory void that must be filled.

What Rubenson felt was lacking − and which he propagated for − was what he called (using words that suggest an early familiarity with German-speaking music critic, Eduard Hanslick) the musically beautiful, in other words, the interplay between melody, rhythm and harmony in a architectonically perfect form: ‘the materials of a musical art work, content, form and purpose are merely tones, tonal formations, tonal beauty’. In order to achieve these ideals, the composers are required to separate themselves from following the classicists’ lead, and instead cultivate their own, individual uniqueness. This uniqueness can be ’universal’, as it is among the German masters, or it could be ’national’, like it is among the French and the Italians. However, Rubenson meant, that for a Swedish composer with a Swedish ’temperament’ it is the Swedish national character and sound of folk music that must be highlighted.

Music

The question is how Rubenson, in his own music was able to reconcile the need for an ‘artistic treatment of the architectural element in the music’, given folk music material that, at least in the vocal context, is more appropriate where ‘the setting for the sung event is Swedish’. In other words, material that tends to draw attention away from the pure tonal formations, and instead toward emotions, nature and an environment that is non-musical. Can Rubenson, with the Swedish folk song as a starting point, reach his goal and lay ‘the ground work for a national art music, the Swedish school, that we still lack’?

In his earlier work such as the second string quartet in A minor from 1850, there is no obvious folk music motif. If there is anything Swedish or Nordic, it is rather a sense of melancholy. In Rubenson’s hands it becomes an emotion in which the building of the contrasting moods of the individual movements together give the listener a particular insight into melancholy’s emotional process.

Rubenson’s way of formulating melodic phrases and motifs has been criticised for being abrupt and fragmented. But it can also be perceived as a sophisticated way of avoiding an emotional storm created just for show, which Rubenson called ‘a false pathos’. This applies not only to the A minor quartet, but to his first and only symphony in C major from 1851. It reinforces the fragmentation of Rubenson’s melodics with its wayward tone colour (with which he anticipates modernists such as Debussy and Schoenberg). This is a technique that requires a thoroughly considered approach in performance, especially if the instrumental shifts overlap the phrasings and natural rhythm of breathing. Although the emotional quality of the symphony in C major differs significantly from the earlier A minor quartet, it also characterises the symphony’s melodic lines which embody a mocking elusiveness. In the first movement, this pertains to both the principle and secondary themes, whose fleeting allusions invite one into the intricate play of the piece’s development.

The timbre of Rubenson’s melodics is even more pervasive in the Symphonic intermezzo no. 1 from 1860. There the motif is additionally embossed with a Nordic folk quality of the ascending introductory phrase for solo cello, reminiscent of ‘Ack Wärmeland du sköna’ (a song about the Swedish region of Värmland based on a folk tune). This same phrase colours the main theme of the first movement and returns as a final echo in both the first and last movements. In the concert overture Drapa, from 1866, the ‘national folk quality’ is pitted against the character of the ‘universal’ march in an equally simple and effective play between major and minor modes. In Rubenson’s hands, this creates a distinctive unit in the otherwise rhapsodic form. The results become simultaneously festive and solemn − humorous and emotional. Like most of Rubenson’s music it is a piece that should be given a permanent place in Swedish orchestral repertoire.

Importance          

Overall, it can be said that Rubenson avoids over-dramatisation as a tool to capture the audience’s attention. Instead he exhibits a personal strategy that unites the elements of folk music with a totally thought out form, without succumbing to the possibilities of its programmatic elements. Perhaps one could describe Rubenson’s ‘national’ style of art  music as dialectic mediation between the folk music material and its saturation with preconceived associations − and a purely strict form. Perhaps one can perceive Rubenson’s fragmented musical language as an expression of subtle romantic irony.