Academic literature on the topic 'Kungliga Baletten (Stockholm, Sweden)'

‘Kungliga samfundet för utgivande av handskrifter rörande Skandinaviens historia’ [Royal society for the publication of manuscripts on Scandinavian history], a society dedicated to the editing and printing of historical source documents, was founded in Stockholm in 1815. Earlier research has focused upon the editorial praxis of the society’s publication, Handlingar rörande Skandinaviens historia. Here I focus more upon the monumental and museological aspects of the society’s work. Viewed as types of national monument, source editions from the romantic era can tell us something about how history was produced and popularised during this period. The source documents printed in Handlingar served as educational tools intended to help the reader better understand history, specifically in this case the history of Sweden. But such editions also functioned – like a museum or a monument – as triggers for emotions, memory, and historicity, and like those other institutions, romantic-period source editions played a significant role in the construction and negotiation of national memory and heritage.

Background. The performance practice of recent decades demonstrates an obvious tendency to expand and update the repertoire due to the use of the works of those composers whose pieces had “lost” over time against to the pieces of their more famous contemporaries. At the same time, in sociology, psychology, culturology, gender issues are largely relevant. Musicology does not stand aside, applying the achievements of gender psychology in the study of composer creativity and musical performing (Tsurkanenko, I., 2011; Gigolaeva-Yurchenko, V., 2012, 2015; Fan, Liu, 2017). In general, the issue of gender equality is quite acute in contemporary public discourse. The indicated tendencies determine the interest of many musicians and listeners in the work of women-composers (for example, recently, the creativity by Clara Schumann attracts the attention of performers all over the world, in particular, in Ukraine the International Music Festival “Kharkiv Assemblies” – 2018 was dedicated to her works). The theme of the proposed work is also a response to the noted trends in performing practice and musicology discourse. For the first time in domestic musicology an attempt is made to give a brief overview of the life and career of another talented woman, whose name is little known in the post-Soviet space. This is a Swedish violinist, composer and pianist Amanda Röntgen-Maier (1853–1894), a graduate of the Stockholm Royal College of Music and the Leipzig Conservatory, a contemporary of Clara Schumann, J. Brahms, E. Grieg, with whom she and her husband – composer, pianist, conductor Julius Röntgen – were associated for enough long time by creative and friendly relationships. In the post-Soviet space, not a single work has been published that would be dedicated to the works of A. Maier. In European and American musicology, the composer’s personality and creative heritage is also not widely studied. Her name is only occasionally mentioned in works examining the musical culture and, in particular, the performing arts of Sweden at that time (Jönsson, Å., 1995, 151–156; Karlsson, Å., 1994, 38–43; Lundholm, L., 1992, 14–15; Löndahl, T., 1994; Öhrström, E., 1987, 1995). The aim of the proposed study is to characterize Amanda Meier’s creative heritage in the context of European romanticism. Research results. Based on the available sources, we summarized the basic information about the life and career of A. Maier. Carolina Amanda Erica Maier (married Röntgen-Maier ) was born on February 20, 1853 in Landskrona. She received the first music lessons from his father, Karl Edward Mayer, a native of Germany (from Württemberg), who worked as a confectioner in Landskrona, but also studied music, in particular, in 1852 he received a diploma of “music director” in Stockholm and had regular contracts. In 1869, Amanda entered to the Kungliga Musikaliska akademien (Royal College of Music) in Stockholm. There she learns to play several instruments at once: the violin, cello, piano, organ, and also studies history, music theory and musical aesthetics. A. Maier graduated from Royal College successfully and became the first woman who received the title of “Musik Direktor”. The final concert, which took place in April 1873, included the performance of the program on the violin and on the organ and also A. Maier’s own work – the Romance for Violin. In the spring of 1874, Amanda received the grant from the Royal College for further studies at the Leipzig Conservatory. Here, Engelbert Röntgen, the accompanist of the glorious orchestra Gewandhaus, becomes her teacher on the violin, and she studies harmony and composition under the guidance of Karl Heinrich Karsten Reinecke and Ernst Friedrich Richter. Education in Leipzig lasts from 1874 to 1876. In the summer and autumn of 1875, A. Maier returns to Landskron, where she writes the first major work – the Concerto for violin and orchestra in one-movement, D minor, which was performed twice: in December 1875 in Halle and in February 1876 with the Gewandhaus Orchestra under the direction of K. Reinecke. The further career of A. Maier, both performing and composing, developed very successfully. She made several major concert trips between 1876 and 1880: to Sweden and Norway, to Finland and St. Petersburg; she also played to the Swedish king Oscar II (1876); concerts were held with constant success. While studying in Leipzig, A. Maier met her future husband (the son of her violin teacher) Julius Röntgen, composer and conductor. They married 1880 in Landskrona. Their personal relationships included active creative communication, both playing music together, and exchanging musical ideas, getting to know each other’s works. Part of his chamber opuses, for example, the cycle of Swedish folk dances, A. Maier created in collaboration with her husband. An analogy with life of Robert and Clara Schumann may take place here, although the Röntgen spouses did not have to endure such dramatic collisions that fell to the lot of the first. After the wedding, Röntgen family moved to Amsterdam, where Julius Röntgen soon occupies senior positions in several music organizations. On the contrary, the concert and composing activities of A. Maier go to the decline. This was due both, to the birth of two sons, and to a significant deterioration in her health. Nevertheless, she maintains her violin skills at the proper level and actively participates in performances in music salons, which the family arranges at home. The guests of these meetings were, in particular, J. Brahms, K. Schumann, E. Grieg with his wife and A. Rubinstein. The last years of A. Maier’s life were connected with Nice, Davos and Norway. In the fall of 1888 she was in Nice with the goal of treating the lungs, communicating there with her friends Heinrich and Elizabeth Herzogenberg. With the latter, they played Brahms violin sonatas, and the next (1889) year A. Maier played the same pieces with Clara Schumann. Amanda Maier spent the autumn of 1889 under the supervision of doctors in Davos, and the winter – in Nice. In 1890, she returned to Amsterdam. His last major work dates back to 1891 – the Piano Quartet in D minor. During the last three years of her life, she visited Denmark, Sweden and Norway, where she performed, among other, her husband’s works, for example, the suite “From Jotunheim”. In the summer of 1889, A. Maier took part in concerts at the Nirgaard Castle in Denmark. In 1894, she returned to Amsterdam again. Her health seems stable, a few hours before her death she was conducting classes with her sons. A. Maier died July 15, 1894. The works of A. Maier, published during the life of the composer, include the following: Sonata in H minor (1878); 6 Pieces for violin and piano (1879); “Dialogues” – 10 small pieces for piano, some of which were created by Julius Röntgen (1883); Swedish songs and dances for violin and piano; Quartet for piano, violin, viola and cello E minor (1891). Still unprinted are the following works: Romance for violin and piano; Trio for violin, cello and piano (1874); Concert for violin and orchestra (1875); Quartet for piano, violin, viola and clarinet E minor; “Nordiska Tonbilder” for violin and piano (1876); Intermezzo for piano; Two string quartets; March for piano, violin, viola and cello; Romances on the texts of David Wiersen; Trio for piano and two violins; 25 Preludes for piano. The composer style of A. Mayer incorporates the characteristic features of the Romantic era, in particular, the Leipzig school. Lyric elements prevail in her works, although the composer is not alien to dramatic, heroic, epic images (the Piano Quartet E minor, some pieces from the Six Songs for Violin and Piano series). In the embodiment of such a circle of images, parallels with the musical style of the works of J. Brahms are quite clearly traced. In constructing thematic structures, A. Maier relies on the melody of the Schubert-Mendelssohn type. The compositional solutions are defined mainly by the classical principles of forming, which resembles the works of F. Mendelssohn, the late chamber compositions of R. Schumann, where the lyrical expression gets a clear, complete form. The harmonic language of the works of A. Maier gravitates toward classical functionality rather than the uncertainty, instability and colorfulness inherent in the harmony of F. Liszt, R. Wagner and their followers. The main instrument, for which most of the opuses by A. Maier was created, the violin, is interpreted in various ways: it appears both, in the lyrical and the virtuoso roles. The piano texture of chamber compositions by A. Maier is quite developed and rich; the composer clearly gravitates towards the equality of all parties in an ensemble. At the same time, piano techniques are reminiscent of texture formulas by F. Mendelssohn and J. Brahms. Finally, in A. Mayer’s works manifest themself such characteristic of European romanticism, as attraction to folklore, a reliance on folk song sources. Conclusions. Periods in the history of music seemed already well studied, hide many more composer names and works, which are worthy of the attention of performers, musicologists and listeners. A. Mayer’s creativity, despite the lack of pronounced innovation, has an independent artistic value and, at the same time, is one of such musical phenomena that help to compile a more complete picture of the development of musical art in the XIX century and gain a deeper understanding of the musical culture of this period. The prospect of further development of the topic of this essay should be a more detailed study of the creative heritage of A. Maier in the context of European musical Romanticism.

Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden) and the Research Institute for Learner Autonomy Education at Kanda University of International Studies (Chiba, Japan) held a joint online symposium on October 15, 2020. It was an open event for those interested in the design and use of technology and self-directed, autonomous language learning in online settings. Examining 15 of the event’s internationally focused presentations, this article aims to provide an overview of the symposium by summarizing the main themes in research and practice relating to technology and self-directed learning. The article will conclude with a commentary on the takeaways and issues for further reflection.

In this article, I discuss the development of a standardized Swedish orthography in the Royal Academy of Turku (Swedish: Åbo). The Academy was located in the main city of the eastern part of Sweden, i.e. in Turku in Finland, before it was moved to Helsinki in 1828 during the Russian era. The Swedish orthography was standardized in the 18th century, with the final codification in 1801, and Stockholm acted as the center of the process. The focus of this study is the relation between the orthographic development at the Royal Academy of Turku and the orthographic development in Swedish in general, as this relation is seen as an indicator of the density of the contacts between the intellectual elites in Stockholm and Turku. The perspective of this article forms a contribution to the debates concerning the period in which the Finland-Swedish linguistic features emerged, as their existence has previously been explained by researchers such as Nordenstreng (1902) with reference to Finland being a culturally isolated area during the Swedish era. The material consists of excerpts of 500 words from 44 dissertations, promotional poems and religious texts printed by the university printing house from 1723 to 1828. From these texts, 22 orthographic variables that cover all major orthographic processes during the period are analyzed. The main results are that the texts from the 19th century are written with the standardized orthography of its day, and that the standardization process during the 18th century followed the same pattern in Turku as in Swedish in general. This indicates that the contacts between the intellectual elites in Stockholm and Turku were close in the 18th and early 19th century. However, it does not rule out the possibility that local Finland-Swedish linguistic features emerged at the same time.

Monografier Dissensus. Drömmar och mardrömmar i demokratins idéhistoria Disputation, dissertation, avhandling Läroverken och progressivismen. Perspektiv på historieundervisningens praktik och policy 1920–1950 Svarta S:t Barthélemy. Människoöden i en svensk koloni 1785–1848 Avhandlingar Scandinavism: Overlapping and Competing Identities in the Nordic World, 1770–1919 Democracy and the Economy in Finland and Sweden since 1960: A Nordic Perspective on Neoliberalism Stadens gränsplatser. Kungliga Poliskammaren och vardagens omstridda rum i Stockholm, 1776–1835 Antologier Med tvål, vatten och flit. Hälsofrämjande renlighet som ideal och praktik ca 1870–1930 Konsten att kontextualisera. Om historisk förståelse och meningsskapande. Allmän rösträtt? Rösträttens begränsningar i Sverige efter 1921 Liv i rörelse. Göteborgs befolkning och arbetsmarknad, 1900–1950 Mindre uppmärksammade historiska jubileer.Tecknad av Fredrik Tersmeden

NB: Artiklen er på dansk, kun resuméet er på engelsk.In 1996, the newly-founded national conservative Dansk Folkeparti [Danish People’s Party] proposed in Parliament, for the first time, that the Danish state and government should demand that Sweden returns the spoils of war taken during the Dano-Swedish Wars in the 1600s. The demand has since been repeated six times in the Danish Parliament and at the Nordic Council in the last nearly 15 years. The demand included return of the Jyske Lov manuscript from 1241. The background was the notion that Sweden possessed what was called the “original edition”. This was the origin of the myth that the Swedes were in fact unaware that it was in their possession, and this was reinforced, in its moral expression of the demand for return, by the view that the manuscript constituted spoils of war from 1658-1659. The author of this thesis is of the opinion that the Dansk Folkeparti apparently had become aware of one of the most important recent discoveries in the history of the Danish Middle Ages, that is, historian Thomas Riis’ re-dating in 1977 (in his dissertation, Les institutions politiques centrales du Danemark 1100-1332. Odense, 1977.), of the oldest parts of the Codex holmiensis 37 (C 37) manuscript in the Kungliga Biblioteket, Sweden’s national library in Stockholm. This manuscript contains a transcript of Jyske Lov and had previously been thought to date from approximately 1350 but can now with certainty be dated to around 1276. It was also clear that the Dansk Folkeparti had misunderstood various aspects of the research results, leading it to put together its own particular version of the myth and, in doing so, politicised the results of historical research into the Danish Middle Ages to a degree never seen in recent times. At one point, the author of this thesis began to suspect that C 37 could not be spoils of war and therefore began a scholarly study of the issue that, in 2004, showed that, in fact, C 37 could not be spoils of war. The objective with this thesis has therefore been to trace the provenance of this myth and its political exploitation and to show the consequences of falsification of the spoils-of-war thesis, given the fact that research having shown that C 37 was not spoils of war but either purchased or bequeathed to the Kungliga Biblioteket in the 1720s, which made it possible, at the express political wish of the Danish government in 2009, for the author, as National Librarian and Head of the Royal Library, to undertake negotiations with Sweden on a voluntary, reciprocal, non-prejudicial exchange of C 37 with a corresponding Swedish law manuscript containing Swedish provincial law, Södermannalagen, New Royal Collection 2237, n. 4, that presumably arrived in Denmark in the second half of the 1700s. The thesis deals with the demonstration by recent research that Jyske Lov, proclaimed by King Valdemar the Conqueror in Vordingborg in March 1241, was considered as the first Danish national law (that it became “limited” to regional law for Jutland-Funen is a development from the end of the 14th or the beginning of the 15th century), with its survival and the re-dating of C 37 in 1977 (which thereby became the oldest extant manuscript containing a surviving version of the law, the contents of which are at least 25 and perhaps up to 50 years older than the later surviving version, which had previously been considered as the oldest). The thesis then traces the spoils-of-war notion in professional circles (it dates back to at least to 1976 in the non-professional context), considered to have appeared in 1991, its introduction to politics in 1996 and six subsequent questions raised in the Danish Parliament and at the Nordic Council up to 2009. Finally, the case is carried through to June 2010, when a draft exchange agreement was drawn up between the two Royal Libraries.

My master’s thesis is a study of acquisition of photographies during 1958-2008. The questions I proceed from is what patterns lies behind the Royal library's acquisition of photography and how the process of acquisition looks like. The theoretical base which I lean on consists partly of a problematization of the process of cultural heritage and partly of organizational theory. The problematization of the process of cultural heritage is my foundation of this essay. My starting point is that the Royal library make a choice when they collect material to be a cultural heritage and the memories gathered for future generations. I used organizational theory to find answer to how the collection been gathered through studies of the organizations interaction with the members of the organization, the process in the organizations, like goals and policy, and the organizations interaction with other organizations. I used case-study as my method. I interviewed most of the chiefs who were in charge of the unit during the period 1958-2008 and worked through journals of acquisition, annual reports, letters of regulation, exchange of letters and other in-house material. My results are that the acquisition of photography follows the Royal library's acquisition of picture at large. The culture heritage that the library collect for future generations is based on the content rather than the form of the material. This aspect was founded early in the creation of the library and has kept its status as a guiding line ever since. The main categories of collection are based on the motif of the photography and are the following; portrait, topography and events. Events is a new category but a sequel of an old category, historical wall chart. The material that the photographies are made of has varied but the majority have been photographies on paper. Gifts and purchases have been the most common ways for the library to collect photographies. Gifts have been treated differently through the years, from the beginning all gifts were received and the library asked actively for special gifts, later the library decided whether or not they should accept a gift. The policy from both the library and from the government have been vague, but lately they have been working on a new and more detailed policy from 2008.

This thesis studies the structural transformation of public musical life in Stockholm during the period 1840–1890, with focus primarily on the classical musical sphere. The study is based on qualitative and quantitative analysis of a number of different sources such as newspapers, music magazines, offprints, and other archival material. Using Jürgen Habermas’s theory of structural transformation of the public sphere as a starting point, the thesis aims to elucidate the processes within the structural transformation of Stockholm’s public musical life. In particular, this study examines processes of institutionalisation and professionalisation within four main areas of public musical life: the music press market, concert life, performers, and audiences. The actions of individuals and institutions are also studied in order to highlight the priorities and proclivities underlying the identified changes to public musical life. The period in question saw the transition of concert life from representational culture to the bourgeois public sphere, as well as the gradual division between ‘classical’ and ‘popular’ musical spheres. The study shows that public musical life emerged and expanded within the bourgeois public sphere. Therefore, the ideas and demands of the bourgeoisie were crucial to structural transformation of Stockholm’s public musical life. The old Royal institutions still constituted the core of the public musical life but were adapted to the new bourgeois society. The process of institutionalisation within the musical life was characterized by organisational functions, but also by social institutionalisation of practices within the four main areas mentioned above. The bourgeois ideas of musical Bildung played a significant role in the processes of institutionalisation and professionalization, as it illuminates the priorities and proclivities underlying this process. Several aspects of this development are related to influences from early nineteenth-century musical idealism. The structural transformation of public musical life in Stockholm during the period 1840–1890 laid the foundation for the further developments in the 20th century, and its impact is in some respects evident still today.