Svendsen, Johan

Albumblad

(Til GABH fra S; Albumblad f. Piano)

Album Leaf

JSV 85

The source material for an unpublished Svendsen biography by Victor Gandrup includes a note about the passionate love affair between pianist Golla Andrea Bodenhoff-Hammerich and Johan Svendsen in the ‘latter part of the eighties’. Album Leaf, a piano piece of 27 bars in G major, was Johan Svendsen’s musical paean to their amorous liaison, while Golla conveyed her feelings by way of a song and a play.  The thematic basis for Svendsen’s piano piece consists of Golla’s four initials GABH (translating into the pitches G A Bb Bn in English), repeated many times. Above the score in one of the two manuscripts Svendsen has written: Til GABH fra S – that is, ‘to Golla Andrea Bodenhoff-Hammerich from Svendsen’.

Golla Hammerich made her first public appearances as a chamber musician, accompanist and piano soloist in the 1890s, after the age of thirty-five, but quickly came to be regarded one of Denmark’s foremost pianists. In 1895 she was one of the key organizers behind Kvindernes Udstilling, a women’s exhibition with the purpose of conveying the work of Scandinavian women in handicrafts and art. In connection with the exhibition she held a number of concerts with music written by women and also edited a volume of songs composed by Scandinavian women, published by Wilhelm Hansen the same year (1895). On several occasions Hammerich performed early music on historical instruments. She was also a sought-after teacher and an important member of the Danish Music Teachers’ Association. She died suddenly of heart failure on 2 May 1903.

Composition: Between 1885 and 1890.

Copenhagen

Lento

Key: G major

Extent: ca. 1:20  min.