Mark Shanks <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>James Zehm writes:
>
>>Interesting....especially as Pettersson claimed himself to have been an
>>autodidact.
>
>I can't claim to have read any sort of "official" biography of Pettersson,
>but such a claim would indicate that he was either a gross prevaricator or
>suffered from amnesia.  What else did he do during his *nine years* at the
>Conservatory or the years spent studying under Leibowitz, Blohmdahl, and
>Honeggar?

Easy going mister Shanks, easy going!!  Of course I don't say that
Pettersson claimed never had studied for Leibowitz - how could he deny
*that*??!  - But it is a fact that Pettersson claimed to himself had
learned the grounds of music theory.  Pettersson liked to paint pictures
of himself as having lived a poorer and harder life than he actually had.
I wonder; if the family had been so poor as Pettersson claims: who paid
for Petterssons education?

Pettersson swore over that he was damned to be a "kuli" (=robot, worker)
as he said, but he damned me lived up to that himself.  A telling story
is when he played the violin (he also played the viola though) in the
Philarmonics, he started as 4th violin.  Although he was - or developed due
his heavily training, to - the very best violin player the Philarmonics
had, nobody ever offered Pettersson to play the 1st violin.  He was so
badly treated due his labour descent, true.  However, about 20 years later,
when he had made a name of himself as that skilled composer he was, he was
offered to play the 1st violin.  "Thanks", Pettersson replied, "it came 20
years too late!", and he had to continue play the 4th violin.  Tempi
passati.

However there might be an interesting psychologic phenomon here, some
prominent Pettersson biographers see with their sharp eyes; that the denial
of him as performing musician propulsed his development as composer...but
that is another story.

James Zehm
[log in to unmask]