(Stockholm 1866 - Saltsjöbaden,1914)
Swedish musician, great violin virtuoso, Tor Aulin is remembered mainly as the founder, in 1887, of one of the most famous string quartets in Europe and as an orchestra conductor, attentive interpreter of the works of his great friend Wilhelm Stenhammar .
Aulin studied music at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm (1877-1883), then at the Berlin Conservatory (1884-1886) with the French violinist Émile Sauret and Philipp Scharwenka (not to be confused with the pianists Emil von Sauer and Xaver Scharwenka). Between 1889 and 1892, Aulin was concertmaster at the Royal Opera in Stockholm. During his career, he conducted the main symphony orchestras in Stockholm and Gothenburg. In 1887 he formed Quatuor Aulin, which gained fame until its disbandment in 1912.
Between 1900 and 1911 Aulin founded and directed the Orchestra of Swedish Musicians, the Stockholm Concert ensemble, the Drama Theater Orchestra, the Southern Swedish Philharmonic Orchestra; from 1909 to 1911 he was the director of the Göteborgs Symfoniker, today's Swedish National Orchestra.
Tor Aulin is the author of compositions for the violin, chamber music and symphony orchestra; he also left some incidental music for the drama Mäster Olof by August Strindberg. His work is not easy to catalog due to the imprecise dating of most of his works; in some way the possible opus number and the date of publication or first performance are helpful.
Tor Aulin was an important conductor and violinist in Sweden's thriving concert hall culture at the fin de siècle. His wife, Anna Aulin, recounts that his compositional successes were, however, somewhat limited by his humility and his commitment to promoting the music of other Swedish composers during his annual tours as leader of the Aulin String Quartet (1877- 1912) and as director of the Stockholm and Gothenburg Orchestras. Yet he was an active composer between 1887 and 1913 and wrote a variety of stage music, songs and piano pieces stylistically influenced by the German romanticism of Max Bruch, Robert Schumann and by the Nordic style of his long-term confidante, Edvard Grieg. As a concert violinist, Aulin composed most for his instrument: character pieces, string quartets, pedagogical pieces, and cadenzas, along with his most famous works, the Violin Concerto No. 2 in A minor, op. 11 (1892) and Violin Concerto no. 3 in C minor op. 14 (1896).
The Swedish folk violin-inspired melodies and original instrumentation of the Svenska danser (Vier schwedische Tänze für Orchester) [Four Swedish Dances], Op. 32 (1912-3), places the work firmly at the center of this corpus of violin music. The four-movement suite was written for violin and piano in 1912, dedicated to Professor Georg Hüttner and the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra. The following year, it was arranged for orchestra and first performed by the Göteborgs Orkesterförening [Gothenburg Orchestra Association] on 6 April 1913, conducted by Wilhelm Stenhammar. The concert also featured the premiere of another of Aulin's popular suites, his Gotländska danser (Drie gottländische Tanze), Op. 28 (1910). Like the Svenska dancer, these dances were originally written for violin and piano (Op. 23) and only later arranged for orchestra.
Written during a period of ill health, the Svenska Dancer was among Aulin's last works composed before his death from heart disease in March 1914. At the age of 47, Aulin had suffered from depression and kidney problems and was partially paralyzed after a stroke in early 1913. In a commemorative retrospective, his friend, Emil Hansen, gives a harrowing account of the rehearsals for the orchestral suite. After being taken to rehearsals, Aulin was so overcome with emotion that he was taken back with a final farewell to his orchestra. …
His sister, Laura Valborg Aulin (1860-1928), was a pianist and composer whose output included two string quartets, in F major and E minor, among other works.
