Gösta Nystroem

Nystroem, originally Nyström, was born in Silvberg, Sweden, a parish in the province of Dalarna, but spent most of his childhood in Österhaninge near Stockholm, at the time a small village but nowadays a suburban district.

In his younger days, Nystroem was both a composer and a painter (one of the first Swedish Cubists), but when he was about thirty years old, he eventually decided to focus on music.

After living in France, mostly in Paris, for several years, he moved to Gothenburg on the Swedish west coast in the 1930s, where he also worked as a music critic at Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning.

In the 1950s he settled in Särö, a rather wealthy village about twenty kilometres south of Gothenburg, where he had a house that originally belonged to the family of his first wife, Gladys Heyman, whom he married in 1921 in France.

It is influenced by the French music of the time of his studies, but still has a Nordic, romantic tone, and is most often melancholic or sorrowful.

In the second and third movements, groups of wind instruments and percussion are added, and only the finale is scored for full orchestra.