Roman, Johan Helmich (EN)

Roman, Rohman, Johan Helmich, *26 October 1694 Stockholm, †20 November 1758 Haraldsmåla (near Kalmar), Swedish composer. Son of a royal court musician. In 1711, he was accepted into the royal orchestra, where he played the violin and oboe. Between 1715 and 1721, he stayed in England, where, thanks to a scholarship from the King of Sweden, he studied composition, probably with J.Ch. Pepusch, and was a violinist in the King’s Theatre orchestra, and between 1719 and 1721 at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He met G.F. Handel, G.B. Bononcini, F. Geminiani, and A. Ariosti. After returning to Sweden in 1721, he became deputy master of the chapel, and from 1727 to 1745 he was the kapellmeister of the royal orchestra. He was very active as an organizer of musical life; in 1731, he initiated public concerts in Stockholm. Between 1735 and 1737, he travelled to England, France, Italy, Austria, and Germany, bringing back many pieces for the royal orchestra’s repertoire. From 1745 until the end of his life, he held the title of Intendant of the Royal Court. In that year, he retired due to deafness and settled in the countryside near Kalmar (southeastern Sweden). In 1751–52, he stayed in Stockholm, where he prepared and directed the musical setting for the funeral ceremony of Frederick I and the coronation of Adolf Frederick, and in 1752 his Svenska Mässan (‘Swedish Mass’) was performed there. 

In 1740, Roman became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences as a promoter of the use of the Swedish language in church music, and in 1747 he joined the commission responsible for codifying Swedish orthography. In 1749, he donated his extensive collection of music to the Finnish Academy in Åbo (Turku); in 1827, the collection was destroyed in a fire at the library. In his later years, Roman devoted himself to translating theoretical and musical writings, among others those by F. Gasparini and G. Keller, into Swedish, as well as to adapting the texts of religious works. In 1767, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences honored his memory with a ceremonial session, and the speech delivered by A.M. Sahlstedt, based on Roman’s lost autobiography, is the main source of information about the composer’s life and work.

Roman is considered an important figure in Swedish musical culture of the first half of the 18th century and a leading representative of the “Age of Liberty” (Swedish: Frihetstid, ca. 1720–1770). He advanced the development of Swedish music both through his work as a composer and through his activities as a musical activist. As court kapellmeister, he led the royal orchestra to its heyday and expanded its repertoire with contemporary Italian and English works, especially those by Handel. As an advocate of the use of the national language in music, he created a collection of church music based on works by Carissimi, Fux, Handel, and Pepusch, with Swedish texts for the main holidays of the liturgical year. Roman’s musical legacy includes approximately 400 works (most of them in the collection of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in Stockholm), representing all musical genres of the time except opera and oratorio. Almost all of them have survived in manuscripts – the composer practically never published his works. Roman seldom signed or dated his compositions, which complicates the determination of their authenticity and chronology. Approximately 100 works have survived in autograph form, while the rest are anonymous copies produced between 1720 and 1810. Roman’s work belongs to the transitional period between Baroque and Classicism; it shows strong influences from composers whose work he became acquainted with during his stay in England and his travels to other European countries. Roman’s style, with its original rhythmic pulsation (a distinguishing feature of his music), supported by solid compositional technique, is most fully manifested in his instrumental works, which show references to the galant style. Roman’s most frequently performed works include the 24-part orchestral suite Drottningholms musique and Assaggi for solo violin. Among his sacred vocal-instrumental works, which clearly show the influence of Handel and English music (especially in sacred songs and works for 1–2 voices and basso continuo), the best known are Svenska Mässan, Jubilate, and Te Deum. Roman left behind many arrangements of works by outstanding European composers, often interfering with the melodic and harmonic structure of the original (e.g., Dixit Dominus by L. Leo), as well as pieces in which he imitated the style of another composer (these include works attributed to Roman with comments such as: “alla Corelli,” “alla Marcello”).

Literature: I. Bengtsson Mr Roman’s Spuriosity Shop. A Thematic Catalogue of 503 Works (…) from ca. 1680–1750 by More Than 60 Composers, Stockholm 1976, supplement 1980; A.M. Sahlstedt Äreminne öfver Hofintendenten, Kongl. Capellmästaren (…) Johan Helmich Roman, Stockholm 1767; F. Cronhamn Svenska musikens fader: några anteckningar om Johan Helmich Roman (1694–1758), in: Anmärkningar till Oscars Fredriks högtidstal i Kongl. musikaliska, Uppsala 1885; P. Vretblad J.H. Roman 1694–1758. Svenska musikens fader, 2 vols., Stockholm 1914 (contains a thematic catalog); I. Bengtsson J.H. Roman och hans instrumentalmusik. Käll- och stilkritiska studier, Uppsala 1955 (includes a summary in English); I. Bengtsson, R. Danielson Handstilar och notpikturer i Kungl. Musikaliska akademiens Roman-samling, Uppsala 1955 (includes a summary in English), «Acta Unversitatis Upsaliensis: Studia musicologica Upsaliensia» vols. 3–4, Uppsala 1955; I. Bengtsson “Signor Leos Dixit imiterat af Roman”: en inledande studie över J.H. Romans musikaliska bearbetningsteknik, “Svensk tidskrift för musikforskning” 40, 1958; G. Weiss 57 unbekannte Instrumentalstücke (15 Sonaten) von Attilio Ariosti in eine Abschrift von Johan Helmich Roman, “Die Musikforschung” 23, 1970; I. Bengtsson Roman-forskning en blick framåt, “Svensk tidskrift för musikforskning” 67, 1985; E. Helenius-Öberg Johan Helmich Roman: liv och verk genom samtida ögon, Stockholm 1994; B. van Boer Towards a Stylistic Chronology of J.H. Roman’s Symphonies, “Journal of Musicology” XV, 1997; E. Helenius-Öberg Handstil 128 i Romansamlingen och gåtan om den Berlinska musiken till 1751 års kröning, “Svensk tidskrift för musikforskning” 80, 1998; E. Helenius-Öberg Johan Helmich Roman och frihetstidens parodivisa, “Noterat” 11, 2003; M. Rathey Georg Philipp Telemann als Kommissionär für Johan Helmich Romans Flötensonaten von 1727, “Die Musikforschung” 57/2, 2004; G.M. Lindstrom Then Svenska Messan by Johan Helmich Roman: A study of text setting, thesis, Denton 2005; V. Heintz Johan Helmich Roman i litteraturen: En bibliografi, “Dokumenterat: Bulletin från Statens musikbibliotek” 40, Stockholm 2008; B.H. van Boer, Jr Johan Helmich Roman, in: The Eighteenth-century Symphony, «The Symphonic Repertoire» vol. 1, Bloomington 2012.