Previous posts for February 4th are here: Erich Leinsdorf (2020), James Dunn (2021), Johann Ludwig Bach (2022), Alice Cooper (2023), and Johann Ludwig Bach (2024)
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Carl Michael Bellman (4 February 1740 – 11 February 1795)] was a Swedish songwriter, composer, musician, poet, and entertainer. He is a central figure in the Swedish song tradition and remains a powerful influence in Swedish music, as well as in Scandinavian literature, to this day.
Skål!
He has been compared to Shakespeare, Beethoven, Mozart, and Hogart, but his gift, using elegantly rococo classical references in comic contrast to sordid drinking and prostitution—at once regretted and celebrated in song—is unique. – Wikipedia
Bellman entertained the stolid Swedes
With songs and poems about the squalid needs
Of folks whose lives were given to carousing.
And songs like these made entertaining browsing
For Swedes relaxing in the dark of winter,
Who grabbed their copies fresh-inked from the printer;
Which puts the lie to those who think that hedonism
Was never an intrinsic part of Swedenism!
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I've never seen Swedenism rhymed. And what is Swedenism, pray tell, but a bunch of Norski's bragging on their country?
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