The Atterberg Case

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If one looks up the definition of "overachiever" there should be a picture of Kurt Atterberg next to the entry. He was a prolific composer, with nine Symphonies and five operas, in addition to vast amounts of other music; he was a professional cellist who played in several orchestras; he was a conductor, and at one point was Music Director of the Stockholm Dramatic Theatre; he was founder of the Swedish Performing Rights Society (basically, the Swedish ASCAP) and was President of the organization for many years; and for forty years he was the music critic for a Stockholm paper. He did all this while maintaining, for fifty seven years, a day job in the Swedish Patent Office, a position from which he had to be forcibly retired at the age of eighty-one. Did the man ever sleep?

As a composer, his greatest point of fame came in 1928 when he won the Columbia Graphophone Company's Schubert Centenary composition competition with his Symphony no.6, the piece we will do at 4PM at Scottsdale Center for the Arts on October 17. The story of the competition is pretty funny; the organizers seemed to be completely confused as to point of the competition, and it went through many incarnations. Read about it here. But the submissions were impressive, including wonderful pieces like the first three movements of Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony, Czeslaw Marek's Sinfonia, the Passacaglia of Ludvig Irgens-Jensen, Franz Schmidt's Third Symphony and Hans Gal's First Symphony. I would be proud to conduct any of these works. The Marek and Schmidt received "honorable mention" but the $10,000 prize and recording contract went to Atterberg-hence the rather derogatory nick-name given to his piece, the "Dollar Symphony".

Despite the stiff competition, the reasons for Atterberg's victory should have been obvious. The competition rules (in the last version they came up with)said that the work should evoke the "spirit of Schubert". Atterberg's deeply melodic score comes closest to that ideal, although it of course sounds nothing like Schubert. But he bases all the movements, and all the development, on these long, attractive, easily remembered tunes-something that Schubert did in all of his large compositions, and something none of the other works, wonderful as they are, do to nearly the same extent.

It was after his victory that things got messy. The piece was subject to critical derision, especially from the self-important British Wagner apologist and critic Ernest Newman, who said that Atterberg won because he sucked up to the jury by writing passages that reminded them of their own music. Atterberg struck back with an article of his own, saying that Newman was both wrong and a bit of an idiot. He pointed out that most of the references that Newman mentioned were written before Atterberg knew of the competition, and the composer further pointed out that anyone who knew any of his earlier pieces would know that the passages in question sounded much more like Atterberg than Resphigi, or Ravel, or any of the other distinguished jurors. He also said that, having claimed all sort of references that did not exist, Newman and all the other critics missed one reference that he did put in; he recalled the last movement of the Schubert String Quintet in the second theme of the Finale of the Symphony.

Unfortunately, Atterberg's article was published with the title "How I Fooled the Music World" and people who did not read what he said thought that he was essentially backing up what Newman suggested; that the piece was a big joke on the competition. I am amazed that even some contemporary writers on the subject miss Atterberg's essential point; the "Music World" he fooled were pompous critics like Newman, and he fooled them inadvertently.

He did say one thing that, taken out of context, could have made it seem that he did not take his own piece or the competition seriously; he said that the rules of the competition were "an invitation to reactionary music making". This angered the sponsors, the Columbia Graphophone Company, to the point that they asked for their money back. Atterberg refused, saying he had already spent it, buying a new car and some other luxuries.

However,Atterberg was simply pointing out the obvious; the rules really were an invitation to reactionary music making, and the fact that no truly modernist composers submitted pieces, and several fine works were eliminated from consideration because they were "too modern" only proves his point. They probably were also upset that he did not attend the award ceremony, but his reasons for not doing so were because he said "he did not want to have to applaud for someone else's winning piece."

In the end, Atterberg kept his money, his car, and got the recording contract, conducting the piece himself with the Berlin Philharmonic. Thomas Beecham, who was one the jurors, recorded it as well a few months later. In 1928 there were Beethoven Symphonies with only one recording, and here Atterberg was with two recordings of a piece he had finished only months earlier.

The piece was widely played for a while, and Toscanini made a wonderful recording of it in 1943. After the war the work disappeared, and it was not until 1993 that there was another recording of it. Performances have been few and far between. But it is a great piece, and as wonderful as the other works in the competition were, this is one piece that sets the applause-o-meters a-twittering. The first two movements are filled with great tunes and wonderful climaxes, and the last movement is truly funny; the first theme is memorable but trivial, and then he enters into a "pseudo-fugue" which is laugh out loud silly. Then he has the Schubert reference, which is quite lovely, and finally he puts it all together into a great ending with lots of percussion. It is one of those pieces that is certain to send the audience home smiling.