Gråt Fader Berg och spela
Videos
Gråt Fader Berg och spela is No. 12 in the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's 1790 song collection, Fredman's Epistles. The epistle is subtitled "Elegi över Slagsmålet på Gröna Lund". I
First page of sheet music, 1810 reprint
Comic contrast: the epistle about a pub brawl played out against Handel's pastoral aria of love from classical mythology. Painting Acis and Galatea hiding from Polyphemus by Édouard Zier, 1877
James Massengale
Videos
James Rhea Massengale is an American musicologist and former professor at UCLA, who has specialised in the Swedish poets Carl Michael Bellman and Olof von Dalin. He is a member of the Royal Swedish Ac
Gråt Fader Berg och spela
…someone else's girl. The song derives its effect from the contrast between the clear melody with its elegiac touch, and harsh reality. The musicologist James Massengale writes that although the melody was borrowed, the amount of work that Bellman had to put into the music for this epistle, as for no. 24 ("Kära Syster…
The Swedish Gustavian age poet and performer, Carl Michael Bellman, Massengale's specialty