Father David and his Bach

As late as the early 1920s, performances of Bachs sacred music took place only in the major cities in Sweden and with many year’s interval between performances. As a professor in Leipzig, Söderblom had formed the habit of attending the Bach concerts in St. Thomas Church, he therefore realised that Bach would need a church of his own if he was to spread his gospel in Sweden.

Archbishop Söderblom gave the task of performing the St Matthew Passion each Easter at Engelbrekt Chruch in Stockholm to David Åhlén (1885–1969), the cantor who had founded both a church choir and Musikaliska sällskapet, an oratrio choir. None of Åhlén’s contemporary church musicians was better suited to meet the spiritual, aesthetic and practical requirements of such a tradition.

This tradition  came to form the backbone of musical activities in the Engelbrekt church since 1923  onwards as well as it propagated the cultivation of Bach’s music in Sweden. After some 20 years other churches followed the example of  the Engelbrekt Church. The fact that the Passion music can be heard throughout the country is due to David Åhlén’s transformation of a damaging and inhibiting respect for the difficulties of the music into an inspirational and timely respect for Bach’s creative powers.

As a rule, selected parts of St-Matthew passion were broadcast direct from Engelbrekt Church, although in the 1950s taped recordings from the general rehearsal were used instead. Of David Åhléns last rehearsal in 1956, only the first part and end of the second were broadcast. Fortunately, his son, Åke Åhlén, worked at Swedish Radio and was able to prevent the tape from being demagnetised. Instead, it was filed away and forgotten.

Restoring the tape and transferring it onto two CDs was made possible by The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, to the delight of those who grew up with the Engelbrekt tradition as well as to the general reflection that everything cultivated starts off as a seed. It now forms the eight volume in the Collector’s Classics series and is part of a planned major sound documentation on Swedish choirs between 1898–1950.