Ex. 13-6: Slumra, slumra bölja blå

No. 1 of Laura Netzel's Fyra sånger vid piano (Four Songs with Piano), Op. 36, published in 1888. The poem, by a Swedish writer who signed himself "Fjalar," is a lullaby to the "blue wave" — telling it to sleep through the winter and come back to the shore in spring.

Netzel (1839–1927) was a Finnish-born Swedish composer and pianist. She was born in Finland and moved to Stockholm as a small child. For much of her career she published under the name "N. Lago," so her music would be judged on its own and not as a woman's work. When a Swedish magazine revealed who she was in 1891, it praised her music for its "masculine strength." At the time this counted as high praise — and it shows the very attitudes she had used the pen name to avoid.

She had studied composition in Paris with the French organist and composer Charles-Marie Widor. King Oscar II of Sweden admired her music and sent her a personal letter of thanks for her Stabat Mater. In another song, she set a poem the king himself had written. Her friend Elfrida Andrée, Sweden's first woman professional organist, helped her start out as a composer. In 1893, the two were among four women chosen to represent Sweden at the World's Fair in Chicago.

Netzel was also a busy organizer of charity. Married to a Stockholm doctor, she ran cheap Saturday concerts to bring good music to working-class listeners, and raised money for poor women and children.

From the album Netzel: Songs and Chamber Music by Christin Högnabba and Stefan Lindgren (2021)
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