1864–1943 · Sweden · 20th century
Alice Tegnér (1864–1943) was a Swedish composer, teacher and organist regarded as the leading author of Swedish children's songs of her time. She began as a schoolteacher, but later music became her main occupation: besides songs she wrote romances, choral works and cantatas. For players, she is of interest as the author of pieces for voice and piano.
Alice Charlotta Sandström was born on 12 March 1864 in Karlshamn, into the family of ship's captain Eduard Sandström and his wife Sophie Laurentia Brobeck. She was the second of four children: her older sister was Nanna, and her younger brothers were Eduard and John. The sisters more than once sailed the Baltic Sea on their father's ship Falco.
Her father's ship had a piano in the captain's cabin, and it was there that young Alice worked out her first tunes: her musical ear turned out to be absolute. She was taught to play keyboard instruments by church organists in Karlshamn — first Carl Fredrik Ullman, and then his successor Theodor Wilhelm Söderberg.
The Sandström family could not afford a musical education for their daughter, so Alice trained as a teacher: in 1877 the family moved to Stockholm, and from 1880 to 1883 she studied at the Royal Seminary for women teachers.
Among her teachers was also Johan Lindegren.
After the seminary, Alice spent a year as a governess in Finland, with a landowning family in Savolax, where she also learned Finnish. She found her next position in Stockholm: in 1884 she began teaching the children of the publisher Frans Beijer in his home.
In the Beijer household she met Jakob Tegnér (1851–1926), son of the pastor Christopher Tegnér: he was in turn a grandson of Esaias Tegnér and a brother of Esaias Tegnér the younger. Jakob and Alice found they shared an interest — music; they played and sang together, and married in 1885.
Jakob Tegnér served as a district judge and later became secretary of the Supreme Court in Stockholm; besides that post, he acted as secretary to the publishers of Sweden and edited the trade newspaper Svenska Bokhandelstidningen. The couple had two sons: Gösta, born in 1887, and Torsten (1888–1977).
In 1891 the family moved to the villa "Tegnabo" in the residential community of Djursholm near Stockholm. There Alice quickly became a central figure in the local musical life: her songs were sung at home and picked up by her children's friends, and so they spread across all of Djursholm and then the capital.
In 1892 the publisher Fredrik Skoglund — her sister's husband — brought out the first collection of her songs, "Sjung med oss, Mamma!" (Sing with us, Mamma!). In total, nine such collections appeared between 1892 and 1934.
Alice Tegnér taught at the Djursholm co-educational school, and from 1898 served as cantor at the Djursholm chapel, where Natanael Beskow was the preacher. The family often spent the summer months at Södra Äng ("the southern meadow") in the village of Ormaryd in Småland, between Nässjö and Eksjö — there, at Alice's wish, the villa "Sola" was built in 1897.
In 1914 Alice Tegnér received the royal medal Litteris et Artibus, given in Sweden to people whose creative achievements matter for music, theatre and literature. In 1926 she became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, taking seat No. 584.
In 1929 she won first prize in a composers' competition organised by the magazine Idun. For Alice Tegnér's sixtieth birthday the press published articles about her creative work; by then the Tegnérs were living by Lake Tullingesjön to the southwest of Stockholm — the family had moved there, to the villa "Kikut", in 1912.
She was also a member of the creative circle "Tolfterna".
On the occasion of her 75th birthday, Alice Tegnér gave funds to the Swedish Primary School Teachers' Association, giving rise to a fund in her name. It supports singing lessons in the lower grades of Swedish schools; the fund partly financed the songbook "Nu ska vi sjunga" (Now we shall sing), published in 1943 with illustrations by Elsa Beskow.
Alice Tegnér died on 26 May 1943; she is buried at a cemetery in Djursholm. For the centenary of her birth, in 1964, the Karlshamn municipality established a scholarship in her name for cultural figures from Karlshamn, and in 1993, for the fiftieth anniversary of her death, the Alice Tegnér Music Prize was created — awarded every two years during the biennial Alice Tegnér festival in Karlshamn, for a contribution to children's music and music education.
In 2006 Alice Tegnér's descendants founded a society bearing her name in Malmö, which cares for the memory of her life and work, and streets and a lane in several Swedish towns — Stockholm, Södertälje, Botkyrka and Karlshamn — were named after her. Every two years Karlshamn holds a festival in her name. In 2014 Sweden issued a postage stamp with her portrait, in 2021 her life became the basis of a musical theatre production, and in 2024 she was inducted into the Swedish Music Hall of Fame.
Alice Tegnér is regarded as the leading author of Swedish children's songs of the first half of the twentieth century: she was among the first to show a child's own point of view in such songs, the way Astrid Lindgren later did in her books. Her best-known song, "Mors lilla Olle", appeared in 1895 in the third volume of "Sjung med oss, Mamma!". Her active years stretched back into the closing decades of the nineteenth century, not only through the twentieth.
But she did not want to limit herself to children's songs: she also wrote romances, choral works, cantatas, pieces for piano and cello, and violin sonatas. She drew inspiration both from Swedish folk music and from the work of Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann.
Among her most popular tunes is also the song "Bä, bä, vita lamm" ("Baa, baa, white lamb"). Alice Tegnér herself wrote verse as well: besides composer, teacher and organist, the roles of poet, writer and songwriter are also recorded against her name.
Among her best-known songs are also "Tre pepparkaksgubbar" ("Three gingerbread men") and "Sockerbagaren" ("The sugar baker").
Alice Tegnér owes her fame above all to her children's songs: the nine issues of "Sjung med oss, Mamma!" (1892–1934) became the foundation of the Swedish children's song repertoire. For them, Alice Tegnér drew on Swedish folk music.
For players, Alice Tegnér is of interest above all as a composer of vocal music with piano accompaniment. Among such pieces are, for instance, "Hemåt i regnväder" set to verse by Zacharias Topelius and "Skogsblommorna till barnen" set to verse by Elsa Beskow. She also wrote in larger genres: cantatas — such as "Kantat vid Börstils kyrkas invigning" for the consecration of the church in Börstil, as well as several cantatas for school anniversaries — choral and chamber music, romances. But what the site has gathered are specifically her pieces for voice and piano.
Among the editions available on the site is "Betlehems stjärna" ("Gläns över sjö och strand", "A star shines over lake and shore") set to verse by Viktor Rydberg: an arrangement for voice and piano at an intermediate level, convenient for a first acquaintance with her music. Next comes "Walzer" for voice and piano at an intermediate-plus level — its waltz accompaniment is more mobile and calls for surer command of the instrument.
It is worth starting with "Betlehems stjärna": its melodic line is clear and the accompaniment predictable, so it suits students with intermediate preparation well. Once the voice and piano parts feel comfortable, one can move on to "Walzer", where the accompaniment is more mobile and calls for freer sight-reading.
Both pieces are written for an ensemble — voice and piano — so a pianist working on them will need a singing partner: the piano part here is not a self-sufficient concert piece but an accompaniment meant to support the singer rather than draw attention to itself. Besides songs for voice and piano, Alice Tegnér also wrote purely instrumental music — pieces for piano and cello, violin sonatas — but these works are not yet represented on the site.