Bo Nilsson

Bo Nilsson (1 May 1937 – 25 June 2018) was a Swedish composer and lyricist. Career Bo Nilsson was born in Skellefteå, and first drew notice as a composer at the age of 18 when his Zwei Stücke (Two Pieces) for flute, bass clarinet, percussion, and piano were performed in a 1956 Westdeutscher Rundfunk “Musik der Zeit” concert in Cologne. He had taught himself composition by listening to the radio, having previously had only basic training from a local music teacher and some experience as a jazz pianist. Though his early style owes much to Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen, it also displays a number of personal features: the use of bright percussion sounds behind finely wrought vocal or flute (usually alto flute) lines, a “nervous” fluttering of tonal nuances, and a feeling for miniature, calculated forms. Because he has chosen to live in the small town of Malmberget, he received the journalistic epithet “the genius from Malmberget”. By 1957 Nilsson remained largely unknown in his own country, but had attracted considerable attention in Germany with a succession of small chamber-music compositions characterised by their unusual instrumentation. The best-known of these is Frequen