Värm mer Öl och Bröd

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"Värm mer Öl och Bröd"
Art song
Sheet music
First page of sheet music
EnglishWarm more Beer and Bread
Written14 November 1771
Textpoem by Carl Michael Bellman
LanguageSwedish
DedicationUlla Winblad
Published1790 in Fredman's Epistles
Scoringvoice and cittern

Värm mer Öl och Bröd (Warm more Beer and Bread) is epistle No. 43 in the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's 1790 song collection, Fredman's Epistles. The epistle, dated 14 November 1771, is subtitled "Till Ulla Winblad, skrifven vid et ömt tilfälle" ("To Ulla Winblad, written at a sensitive occasion"). The source of the melody has not been traced.

The song details the preparations for Ulla Winblad's childbirth. It ends with the famous[1] and ambiguous line "Masken dold i blomman bådar blommans död" ("The worm hidden in the flower bodes the flower's death"). The epistle is unusual, too, in being quiet and delicate rather than full of noisy humour. It has been described as among the most radical and innovative of Bellman's songs.

Context[edit]

Carl Michael Bellman is a central figure in the Swedish ballad tradition and a powerful influence in Swedish music, known for his 1790 Fredman's Epistles and his 1791 Fredman's Songs.[2] A solo entertainer, he played the cittern, accompanying himself as he performed his songs at the royal court.[3][4][5]

Jean Fredman (1712 or 1713–1767) was a real watchmaker of Bellman's Stockholm. The fictional Fredman, alive after 1767, but without employment, is the supposed narrator in Bellman's epistles and songs.[6] The epistles, written and performed in different styles, from drinking songs and laments to pastorales, paint a complex picture of the life of the city during the 18th century. A frequent theme is the demimonde, with Fredman's cheerfully drunk Order of Bacchus,[7] a loose company of ragged men who favour strong drink and prostitutes. At the same time as depicting this realist side of life, Bellman creates a rococo picture, full of classical allusion, following the French post-Baroque poets. The women, including the beautiful Ulla Winblad, are "nymphs", while Neptune's festive troop of followers and sea-creatures sport in Stockholm's waters.[8] The juxtaposition of elegant and low life is humorous, sometimes burlesque, but always graceful and sympathetic.[3][9] The songs are "most ingeniously" set to their music, which is nearly always borrowed and skilfully adapted.[10]

Song[edit]

Music[edit]

Melody of Epistle 43
An untraced melody in 4/4 time
Problems playing this file? See media help.

The song is mainly in 4
4 time, with a section in 3
4 time. The musicologist James Massengale notes that bars 9 to 12 resemble epistle No. 1's ("Sant va dä, ingen dricker") bars 11 to 14 (the pattern recurring also in epistle No. 59, "Hurra Courage, Bagage! God dag Bröder!"). The source of the melody has not been traced.[11] It has 2 verses, each consisting of 15 lines.[12] The rhyming pattern is ABBBA-CDDDCC-EEEA. The song is dated 14 November 1771.[1]

Lyrics[edit]

The song, subtitled "Till Ulla Winblad, skrifven vid et ömt tilfälle" ("To Ulla Winblad, written at a sensitive occasion"), describes the preparations for childbirth.[2] The epistle was most likely inspired by the "real" Ulla Winblad, Maria Kristina Kiellström, who had a stillbirth in 1769.[1]

First stanza
Swedish Prose translation

Värm mer Öl och Bröd,
Län Madam Wingmarks kanna,
Lägg Kummin i, Susanna,
Värm vår stora Kopparpanna
     Illene röd.
Fort bädda en Säng,
Med Svandun, Silkes-täcken;
Gesvindt, precist på fläcken,
Vagga, Stol och Mässings-bäcken,
     Skaffa i fläng;
     Stäng dörren, stäng;
Fäll gardinerna helt sakta;
Astrild kom, din Nymph upvakta,
Kom och Hännes glans betrakta,
Hännes känslor vänta ömt ditt understöd.

Warm more Beer and Bread,
Borrow Madam Wingmark's jug,
Add Cumin, Susanna,
Heat our large copper pan
      Glowing red.
Quickly make a Bed,
With Swan-down, Silk quilts;
Rapidly, just here,
Cradle, Chair and Brass Basin,
      Bring in a hurry;
      Close the door, close it;
Lower the blinds really slowly;
Astrild come, watch over your Nymph,
Come and see her splendour,
Her feelings delicately await your support.

Reception and legacy[edit]

Childbirth at home in the 18th century. 1718 painting by José Ignacio Cobo y Guzmán [es]

The Bellman interpreter Thord Lindé writes that the preparations for childbirth form an unusual theme for a song, certainly unique in Bellman's work. In unhygienic 18th century Stockholm, childbirth was a risky event, both for mother and baby. In Lindé's view, the epistle "weaves together birth and death in a very beautiful, sensitive, and gripping way".[1] Carina Burman comments in her biography that pregnancy and childbirth appear in various places in Bellman's work, most poetically in epistle No. 43 with Ulla Winblad in the birthing-bed; in the most burlesque detail in his 1783 book-length poem Bacchi Tempel, "where Ulla after Movitz's death is to give birth to a new little Movitz".[13] She notes the grim reality of the semi-prostitution among tavern women; if they became pregnant, the best they could hope for was for the child to be given board and lodging by a midwife, and for the father to make a one-off payment in support.[13]

Jennie Nell, writing for the Bellman Society, describes epistles 35 ("Bröderna fara väl vilse ibland") and 43 as undoubtedly the most radical and innovative of Bellman's songs. They were, she states, often chosen by female singers in the 20th century, picking up on Fredman's "perplexed and troubled" voice.[14] Tim Berndtsson, writing on Populär poesi, comments that despite Bellman's reputation for humour, some of the best-known epistles like No. 35, No. 43, and No. 81 "Märk hur vår skugga" do not lend themselves to cheap humour. Instead, writes Berndtsson, they have an aesthetic beauty which has stood the test of time.[15]

Fertile beauty: Zephyrus with the nymph Chloris surrounded by flowers, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1875

Johan Stenström writes that most of the epistles are full of noise, whether it is the sound of busy taverns or all the noises of nature with bulls roaring, horses neighing, and dogs barking, while in No. 42, the only winter epistle, "wolves howl everywhere"; and the pagan gods join in, with Jove shaking the world with his thunder in epistle 80, "Liksom en Herdinna, högtids klädd". Epistle No. 43 is one of the quietest of the epistles, since like the erotic No. 72, "Glimmande Nymf!", its subject "demands silence and concentration".[16]

The epistle ends with the famous[1] line "Masken dold i blomman bådar blommans död" (The worm hidden in the flower bodes the flower's death").[1] The line has a double entendre; the scholar of literature Lennart Breitholtz [sv] stated that the worm here was a phallic symbol, and that the flower had the same metaphorical meaning as the "blomsterskål" (lit: "bowl of flowers") which Chloris may show Movitz in the next epistle, No. 44, if he "Drives in Bacchus's furrows / Up to Fröja's myrtle gate"[a] and wisely follows the advice to "Drink no more than you can hold".[17] Burman states that the epistle's bleak ending is a description of birth, "which simultaneously becomes a description both of orgasm – the little death – and real death", without the usual exhortations to love and drunkenness.[18] Bellman was here following in a tradition of ambiguous endings to poems, such as Israel Holmström [sv]'s erotically humorous epigrams.[19]

Epistle No. 43 has been recorded by Cornelis Vreeswijk on his 1971 album Spring mot Ulla, Spring!; by Fred Åkerström on his 1977 album Vila vid denna källa;[20] and by the actor Mikael Samuelson on his 1990 album Sjunger Fredmans Epistlar.[21]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Fröja is the Norse goddess of love, equivalent to the classical Venus/Aphrodite.

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f "N:o 43 (Kommentar tab)" (in Swedish). Bellman.net. Retrieved 7 February 2022.
  2. ^ a b Bellman 1790.
  3. ^ a b "Carl Michael Bellmans liv och verk. En minibiografi (The Life and Works of Carl Michael Bellman. A Short Biography)" (in Swedish). Bellman Society. Archived from the original on 10 August 2015. Retrieved 25 April 2015.
  4. ^ "Bellman in Mariefred". The Royal Palaces [of Sweden]. Archived from the original on 21 June 2022. Retrieved 19 September 2022.
  5. ^ Johnson, Anna (1989). "Stockholm in the Gustavian Era". In Zaslaw, Neal (ed.). The Classical Era: from the 1740s to the end of the 18th century. Macmillan. pp. 327–349. ISBN 978-0131369207.
  6. ^ Britten Austin 1967, pp. 60–61.
  7. ^ Britten Austin 1967, p. 39.
  8. ^ Britten Austin 1967, pp. 81–83, 108.
  9. ^ Britten Austin 1967, pp. 71–72 "In a tissue of dramatic antitheses—furious realism and graceful elegance, details of low-life and mythological embellishments, emotional immediacy and ironic detachment, humour and melancholy—the poet presents what might be called a fragmentary chronicle of the seedy fringe of Stockholm life in the 'sixties.".
  10. ^ Britten Austin 1967, p. 63.
  11. ^ Massengale 1979, p. 182.
  12. ^ Hassler & Dahl 1989, pp. 113–115.
  13. ^ a b Burman 2019, pp. 260–261.
  14. ^ Nell, Jennie. "Recension: Gutår Båd Natt och Dag" [Book Review: Cheers Both Night and Day] (in Swedish). Bellman Society. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 7 January 2022. earlier published in Hwad Behagas? No. 3–4, 2015
  15. ^ Bengtsson, Tim. "Att Lära Sig Skratta: Carl Michael Bellman och Förståelsen av Gångna Tiders Humor" [Learning to Laugh: Carl Michael Bellman and the Understanding of the Humour of Past Times]. Populär poesi (in Swedish). Retrieved 7 February 2022.
  16. ^ Stenström, Johan (2015). "Ljud och tystnad i Fredmans epistlar (Sound and Silence in Fredman's Epistles)". In Mossberg, F. (ed.). Ord om Ljud: Skriftställare om ljudmiljöer och ljud [Words on Sound: Writers on Acoustic Environments and Sound] (PDF) (in Swedish). Vol. 14. Ljudmiljöcentrum vid Lunds Universitet. pp. 17–34.
  17. ^ Breitholtz, Lennart (1957). "Bellman's, Movitz' och Bacchi Tempel" [Bellman's, Movitz's, and Bacchus's Temple] (PDF). Samlaren: Tidskrift för Svensk Litteraturhistorisk Forskning (in Swedish): 63.
  18. ^ Burman, Carina (2015). Dubbelt öl ger gott humör: Bellman, ölet och Bryggareföreningens biblioteksdonation i Uppsala [Strong Ale Creates Good Humour: Bellman, Ale, and the Brewer's Union's Library Donation in Uppsala] (PDF). Scripta Minora (in Swedish). Vol. 14. Uppsala University Library. p. 46. See also Carl Fehrman's Vinglas och timglas i Bellmans värld, p. 240.
  19. ^ Möller, Daniel (2014). "'Hic est, qvi Dominum per tela secutus & ignes'". In Rahm, H. (ed.). Årsbok 2014 (in Swedish). Vetenskapssocieteten i Lund. p. 141.
  20. ^ Hassler & Dahl 1989, pp. 276–285.
  21. ^ Samuelson, Mikael (1990). Sjunger Fredmans Epistlar (CD). Polydor. 847 400-2.

Sources[edit]

External links[edit]

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