Wilhelm Harteveld

Swedish composer and ethnographer, born April 5, 1859 in Stockholm, died October 1, 1927 in Stockholm. His first documented education is a spring term in 1873 in the preparatory class at Kungl. The Conservatory of Music in Stockholm (on the subject of harmony). Between 1877 and 1918 Harteveld was active in Russia (Kharkiv, Kiev, Moscow) where in 1895 he had the opera The Triumphant Love Song (Love Triumph Song, Pesn 'torzhestvujusjej lubvi; after Ivan Turgenev's short story "A Dream" from 1877) performed in Kharkiv. In the summer of 1908 he undertook a long ethnographic journey to Siberia. The road went through a dozen prisons in Tobolsk, Nertjinsk, Akatujsk and other cities where Harteveld came to record over a hundred songs by prisoners, vagrants and the Siberian indigenous people. Initially, he presented his collection at various forums in Moscow and around the country in parallel with lectures on Siberian folklore. The songs were published in his arrangements, mainly for piano voices, and were then recorded on a gramophone. From the same material, albeit now with orchestra, he put together Rymlingen: the vagrants' songs as a musical role-play for performances at the open-air theater Hermitage in Moscow. In 1912, Wilhelm Harteveld carried out work in connection with the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Borodino, when the Russian army had withstood the Napoleonic army. He prepared the program "Year 1812 in Songs" containing arrangements of French and Russian songs from Napoleon's war against Russia for symphony and wind orchestra with soloists and choir. After the Russian Revolution, Harteveld returned to Sweden. Once home, he released the march "Marcia Carolus Rex" ("Charles XII's March"), which became very popular in Sweden in connection with the Gösta Ekman film Charles XII. Harteveld claimed to have found the notes in Poltava's city archives, but its real title is "The Muscovite Land Guard March" and it is probably Harteveld's arrangement of a hitherto unidentified march.