Rosenberg: The Complete String Quartets

Rosenberg’s first string quartet was premiered in early March 1923, with the Kjellström Quartet playing at an event at the Stockholm Chamber Music Society. In the following day’s newspapers were acrid reports in indignant terms, describing the music’s sound as a “chaotic vision of horror”, “like that of an insane person”, and petitions were made for censorship of these new, modern works.

In the beginning of the 1920’s, national romanticism was still highly relevant in Sweden, while influences from the new music created in Western and Central Europe – in Paris, Vienna, and Berlin e.g. – were almost non-existent. Rosenberg was a well-travelled man, however, and had studied abroad. Having been smitten by his powerful experiences of the new arts, he sought new means of expression by trial and error, and ventured into deep musical waters.

But Rosenberg also harboured an idea about unifying the different traditions, which is why the “sober romanticism” became a turn of phrase. The melodic element was always highly important in his work (as he himself put it, “everything else is glitter”), and Bach and Palestrina remained great sources of inspiration, together with names like Schönberg and Hindemith. In Rosenberg’s music the importance of melody is, of course, clearly evident, and it’s almost as if he was always thinking in terms of bowed instruments – which are usually described as emulating the human voice more than other instruments.

Or as Rosenberg himself said: “The technique is an important aspect. Humanity is the important aspect.”