Blåsen nu alla, "All blow now!", is one of the Swedish poet and performer

Carl Michael Bellman Carl Michael Bellman (; 4 February 1740 – 11 February 1795) was a Swedish songwriter, composer, musician, poet, and entertainer. He is a central figure in the Swedish song tradition and remains a powerful influence in Swedish music, as wel ...

's best-known and best-loved songs, from his 1790 collection, ''

Fredman's Epistles ''Fredmans epistlar'' (English: ''Fredman's Epistles'') is a collection of 82 poems set to music by Carl Michael Bellman, a major figure in Swedish 18th century song. Though first published in 1790, it was created over a period of twenty year ...

'', where it is No. 25. It is a

pastorale Pastorale refers to something of a pastoral nature in music, whether in form or in mood. In Baroque music, a pastorale is a movement of a melody in thirds over a drone bass, recalling the Christmas music of ''pifferari'', players of the traditi ...

, based on

François Boucher François Boucher ( , ; ; 29 September 1703 – 30 May 1770) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher, who worked in the Rococo style. Boucher is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories ...

rococo Rococo, less commonly Roccoco ( , ; or ), also known as Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and dramatic style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpte ...

1740 painting ''Triumph of Venus''. The epistle is subtitled "''Som är ett försök till en pastoral i bacchanalisk smak, skriven vid Ulla Winblads överfart till Djurgården''" (Which is an attempt at a pastorale in Bacchanalian taste, written on

Ulla Winblad Ulla Winblad is a semi-fictional character in many of Carl Michael Bellman's musical works. She is at once an idealised rococo goddess and a tavern prostitute, and a key figure in Bellman's songs of '' Fredman's Epistles''. The juxtaposition of e ...

's crossing to

Djurgården Djurgården ( or ) or, more officially, , is an island in central Stockholm, Sweden. Djurgården is home to historical buildings and monuments, museums, galleries, the amusement park Gröna Lund, the open-air museum Skansen, the small resident ...

)

Context

Song

Music and verse form

''Blåsen nu alla'' is a song in eight verses, each of 15 short lines. The

rhyming pattern A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme; lines designated with the same letter all rhyme with each other. An example of the ABAB rh ...

is AABAB-CCDCD-EEEFF. It is in time and is marked ''Menuetto'' (

Minuet A minuet (; also spelled menuet) is a social dance of French origin for two people, usually written in time. The English word was adapted from the Italian ''minuetto'' and the French ''menuet''. The term also describes the musical form tha ...

). The melody has the timbre "Waldthorns-stycke" but is origin beyond that is unknown; the song was most likely written in the first half of 1770.

Lyrics

The steps on Skeppsbro etching by Elias Martin detail

The song, which Bellman called "his Epistle", begins with a

theme, with the classical goddess

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is often called Earth's "twin" or "sister" planet for having almost the same size and mass, and the closest orbit to Earth's. While both are rocky planets, Venus has an atmosphere much thicker ...

crossing the water, as in

's ''Triumph of Venus'', but the waterway is Stockholm's harbour, and when the goddess disembarks, Bellman transforms her into a lustful Ulla Winblad. In his time, the painting hung in

Drottningholm Palace Drottningholm Palace (), or Drottningholm, one of Sweden's royal palaces, situated near Sweden's capital Stockholm, is the private residence of the Swedish royal family. Located on Lovön island in Stockholm County's Ekerö Municipalit ...

. The Epistle was planned as the grand finale to Bellman's planned initial collection of 25 Epistles, the grandiose assembly of figures from classical mythology contrasting with the reality of a boat crossing.

Reception

The scholar of literature

Lars Lönnroth Lars Lönnroth (born 4 June 1935) is a Swedish literary scholar. He was born in Gothenburg to Erik Lönnroth and Ebba Lagercrantz. His academic career includes professorships at the University of California Berkeley, University of Aalborg and ...

writes that Bellman transformed song genres including

elegy An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...

and

s into social reportage, and that he achieved this also in his two

Bacchanalian The Bacchanalia were unofficial, privately funded popular Roman festivals of Bacchus, based on various religious ecstasy, ecstatic elements of the Greek Dionysia. They were almost certainly associated with Rome's native cult of Liber, and proba ...

lake-journeys, epistles 25 and 48 (" Solen glimmar blank och trind"). The two are, he notes, extremely unlike in style, in narrative technique, and in Fredman's role in the description. Whereas epistle 25 portrays Ulla Winblad as the

goddess Venus Venus (; ) is a Roman goddess whose functions encompass love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory. In Roman mythology, she was the ancestor of the Roman people through her son, Aeneas, who survived the fall of Troy and fled ...

, and speaks of

Neptune Neptune is the eighth and farthest known planet from the Sun. It is the List of Solar System objects by size, fourth-largest planet in the Solar System by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. It is 17 t ...

's court with classical mythological appurtenances like zephyrs, water-nymphs, and "all the might of Paphos" ( the birthplace of Venus), epistle 48 is naturalistic. The song has been recorded by

Sven-Bertil Taube Sven-Bertil Gunnar Evert Taube (24 November 1934 – 11 November 2022) was a Swedish singer and actor. Internationally, he was perhaps better known for his acting career. Taube played Henrik Vanger in the film ''The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'' ...

and

Mikael Samuelsson Karl Mikael Samuelsson (born 23 December 1976) is a Swedish former professional ice hockey right winger and current player development coach for the Vancouver Canucks. Samuelsson began his career in Sweden, starting with small town team IFK ...

(''Sjunger Fredmans Epistlar'', Polydor, 1990) among others.

References

Sources

* * * (contains the most popular Epistles and Songs, in Swedish, with sheet music) * * (with facsimiles of sheet music from first editions in 1790, 1791) * * *

External links

Text of Epistle 25
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blasen nu alla 1790 compositions Swedish songs Fredmans epistlar