A popular composer

Ellen Sandels’ music was widely distributed around the turn of the 20^th century. In a composer’s portrait in Idun (a journal for women and the home) in 1899, writer Wilma Lindhé even renders the judgement ‘as popularity probably is the best measure of value, currently perhaps, in her genre, one can say [Sandels] is Sweden’s most successful composer’. Her dances and marches were played by orchestras and military music ensembles over the whole of the country as well as abroad, for example in Denmark and Germany. Her dance compositions could regularly be heard at balls given in the Vita havet ballroom at the Royal Palace in Stockholm, as well as at a gala soiree on 11 July 1905.

Sandels’ life-course

She was born on 22 July 1859 on Lövåsa estate in Kinne-Vedum parish in the region of Västergötland as the daughter of estate owner Carl Johan Karlström and Ida Carolina (née Björsell), also she the daughter of an estate owner. As a young girl, she received singing lessons from Fredrika Stenhammar. Lindhé describes Sandels as a talented singer who dreamed of a career on the stage, but that such a path was made impossible, partly because of her mother’s objections and partly because of an early marriage as a 19-year old to the officer Carl Axel Magnus Sandels. The couple moved several times, and lived in Stockholm, Düsseldorf, at Stora Lee in Dalsland and from around 1897 in Stora Böö in Gothenburg. It was in the last-named place that Ellen Sandels began working as a composer. She was 38 years old at the time and mother to four children and thus began composing relatively late in life.

Her first composition bears the name Petit cœur and is a pas de quatre − a kind of schottische. The piece was orchestrated immediately and performed in the winter of 1897 at the evening concerts led by Carl Oscar Fredrik Kuhlau at the Grand Hotel Haglund in Gothenburg. The newspaper Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning says that the composition ‘won wide acclaim and has perpetually been a sought-after encore’ (1/4 1897). Her music thus received immediate attention and for the following 19 years, new compositions by Sandels were published in a steady stream.

In December 1901, Sandels founded the journal Damernas musikblad (Women’s music journal), and after her husband’s death in 1902, she moved to Stockholm where the journal came to be an important undertaking for a total of twelve years. The music journal was suspended in the spring of 1913 and her last published work was made public in 1916. Sandels died in Stockholm on 22 November 1931.

Works

Sandels composed some 70 piano pieces and a few songs. Over half of her works are waltzes and Boston waltzes and the remainder consist mainly of marches and dances such as pas de quatre, polka and gavotte.

According to Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning (19/1 1899), ‘Mrs S. completely avoids the virtuosic and “salon”-related adornments, in that she primarily means to attract one to dance with her waltzes’, and in the same year, Lindhé perceives that the waltzes ‘though fully original, have something from Waldteufel and Strauss in them’ (Idun 23/12 1899). The descriptions are telling and well reflect the character of the six waltzes Tre prinsessor: Margareta, Maria och Ingeborg, Jeu de rose, Mälardrottningen and Margareta (the two pieces named Margareta are not identical), which are representative of Sandels’ sure sense of style. The melodies here have a tendency to sometimes circle around the fifth, the sixth and the seventh of the scale in a way that can be considered a trait of the genre. And like the Strauss family’s and Waldteufel’s waltzes, most of the titles of her compositions indicate a portrait of a person or some picturesque motif (Prins Karl − Prince Karl, Snöbollar − Snowballs, Glittrande böljor − Glittering waves).

All of Sandels’ piano pieces are written in a way that makes it possible for them to be played by most amateurs. The idea of presenting music that demands only modest technical skills was a stated goal of the journal Damernas musikblad, but it seems also to have guided her other creative output. A certain part of Sandels’ piano pieces became available to orchestras when conductors arranged them for their ensembles; among them were German-born composer Richard Henneberg and Swedish composer Knut Söderström.

Damernas musikblad

Sandels’ creation, Damernas musikblad, was published twice a month from December 1901 until the spring of 1913. The journal contained piano pieces and songs, texts about music and people in the music scene, reviews of concert life in Stockholm and Gothenburg and notifications about newly published music works, alongside advertisements such as that for the meat extract Bonit, Dr. Sanden’s electric Herculex battery and Trichosol hair loss preventative.

Sandels herself took responsibility for the editorial work and also wrote a number of the published compositions. In an interview in the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (19/12 1906), she explains that the goal of the journal from the start was to spread music ‘that was suitable for the home, that drew one to the piano and enlivened the interest in music’. Through a diverse repertoire there would be ‘a constant variation, something for each and everyone in every issue’. Around a third of the music was newly written original works, mainly by Swedish composers, and the remainder consisted of older classical compositions, modern salon music and dances. The texts for the written section would be at the same time entertaining and educational.

Damernas musikblad also contained debate articles such as Sandels’ contribution about the decline of the art of singing (no. 1 1909) and the piece ‘Kvinnan som tonsättare’ (The woman as composer) (no. 9 1903). The latter is unsigned, however it was likely written by editor Sandels. The author of the article reminds one that there are often complaints that female composers could not ‘free themselves from foreign influences’, but continues by pointing out that precisely the same relationship pertains to male composers and exclaims: ‘What a fortunate circumstance is this not!’ For the major composers have always learned to compose by studying their predecessors and ‘[t]heir hegemony consists in that they realised how to find lasting benefit from the foreign influence. [...] The reproach one usually makes toward female composers, is thus rather a praise.’ The text ends by briefly presenting 17 female composers from the previous 150 years, among them Ingeborg von Bronsart, Amanda Maier-Röntgen and Laura Netzel.

Martin Edin © 2015
Trans. Jill Ann Johnson