Munktell, Helena: Bränningar, op. 19

On a gloomy November day in 1919, the Swedish music scene converged on the Musikaliska concert hall at Nybrokajen 11, in the heart of Stockholm. As always, the Royal Swedish Academy of Music’s traditional formal gathering was a pres- tigious event, with speeches, prize-giving ceremonies and music. The composer and academy member Helena Munktell had passed away earlier that same year. She was not the first woman to be elected to the academy, which admitted its first female members back in the 18th century. What was unusual was that she was elected solely on her merits as a composer.

Now, in the packed auditorium of the country’s oldest concert hall, the audience waited to hear the Swedish premiere of Munktell’s orchestral work Breaking Waves. This is a symphonic image in which waves swell, break, are forced into the air and fall back, only to return with renewed vigour or, at other times, as a quiet ripple on the surface of the water. Her opus 19, performed in the year 1919.

The Breaking Waves composed by Grycksbo-born Helena Munktell in Monte Carlo in the 1890s came at a time when the waters of musical history were also in full swell. Tonality had reached a breaking point, and composers would soon haveto start looking for something other than just major and minor keys in order to continue their work. This was also a breaking point for female composers. With her orchestral works such as Breaking Waves, Dala Suite and her opera In Florence, Munktell paved the way for women in her role as a composer. Munktell brought her music out from the salon and onto the public stage. Breaking Waves broke new ground!

She stretches the canvas of her symphonic image with a quivering B♭. From here, the movement spills over into the first, slightly abrupt sea motif, which immedi- ately takes up residence in the orchestra, before moving around like a chameleon throughout the work. A Wagnerian aesthetic meets French instrumentation from the start, leading us straight into the more relaxed main theme. This main theme presents itself with the horn section, a punctured rhythm, not unlike that of Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. The theme is brief and varies constantly, but always retains the same rhythmic structure.

As the movement then flows along, we encounter a second theme that really only consists of a small chromatic, descending figure. As kaleidoscopic as its sister theme, this figure also insists on behaving differently all the time. The use of motifs is reminiscent of Beethoven, as he too used very small components to build up large, coherent works. Using these three building blocks, Munktell sketches the entire symphonic land- scape in Breaking Waves. She herself never heard the work performed at home in Sweden. However, the Swedish Wind Ensemble has now recorded it in Högstedt’s instrumentation – which is close to Munktell’s own symphonic style – in the same auditorium where it made its Swedish debut back in 1919: Musikaliska.