Valborg Aulin

Valborg Aulin was born in Gävle where her father, Lars Axel, worked as a schoolmaster and met his bride-to-be, Edla (née Holmberg). Like so many other composers, Valborg Aulin began her music studies at home, and later took private lessons. The choice of private teachers from professional musicians and composers such as Jakob Adolf Hägg and Albert Rubenson clearly indicates that her parents intended for her to continue with an advanced music education and a career path as a composer. From 1877 to 1882 she studied at the Kungliga Musikaliska akademien (Royal Swedish Academy of Music), where she studied with piano with Hilda Thegerström, composition with Hermann Berens and August Lagergren, and orchestration with Albert Rubenson and Ludvig Norman. Norman became an important supporter until his death in 1885.

Thanks to a Jenny Lind grant from the Musikaliska akademien, Valborg Aulin was able to study outside Sweden from 1885−1887: in Copenhagen with composer Niels Gade, followed by a shorter visit to Berlin and three years in Paris, where she took composition lessons from Benjamin Godard and studied under female pianist, E. Bourgain, and to a lesser extent, worked under Jules Massenet and Ernest Guiraud. Trips abroad during that time meant attending concerts in order to hear works and the musicians who interpreted them, which one was not able to take advantage of at home. During her foreign travels, Valborg Aulin therefore, acquainted herself with what was for her, new music. In Paris she created two larger works, probably under some kind of guidance by one or more of her occasional teachers: Tableaux Parisiens for orchestra and Procul este for solo voice, choir and string orchestra. She stopped composing in these forms after her Paris visit and continued writing mostly chamber music, as did many of her female and male colleagues of the time. The possibilities of having an orchestral work performed were small as there was only one professional orchestra, namely the Hovkapellet (the Royal Court Orchestra) for which concertising was only a smaller part of their work. Most composers therefore avoided creating larger works.

Once back at home, she taught piano and harmonic theory, but performed also as a pianist in Stockholm and on tours around the country − occasionally with her brother, Tor and his string quartet. Her compositions were comparatively well distributed, especially several published works. One string quartet, no. 1 in F major, which she dedicated to her teacher Rubenson, was printed in 1888 by the Musikaliska konstföreningen (the Swedish Art Music Society) and reprinted in 2001. Her second quartet was printed by the same publisher as late as 2005. Valborg Aulin definitely belonged to the inner circle of established composers of her time.

At age 43 she left the city she grew up in. Even though private teaching was her main activity during her 25 years in Örebro, she also performed as a pianist. In addition, she arranged concerts. It is not known why she left Stockholm, but the difficulties of being female and accepted as a composer have been suggested as one reason. She may also have wanted to leave the competitive music life of Stockholm behind, and at the same time desired to move away from her mother, with whom she was still living. The fact that Valborg Aulin, in her mid-40s, left the capital city and ceased to compose, in effect meant that her works more or less disappeared from the concert programmes.

Biography by Gunnar Ternhag, translated by Jill Ann Johnson.