On Oscar Ahnfelt and his “Spiritual Songs”
“On the very first Sunday of his arrival to America, C.A. Björk gathered the members of his family, read to them from Pietisten and sang to their great joy the warmly religious ‘Spiritual Songs’ of Ahnfelt.” (C.V. Bowman, “The Mission Covenant of America”)
Oscar Ahnfelt (1813-1882) was the son of a clergyman from Skåne, and he intended to become a clergyman himself. He studied theology at Lund but gave up his studies. Around 1840 he began to study music in the capitol, Stockholm.
Some time afterwards, Ahnfelt went through a spiritual crisis, but, on Easter Sunday 1841, he heard a sermon by Carl Olof Rosenius on the Resurrection that freed him from his bondage. He sought out Rosenius, and the two became close friends.
As time passed, the need for smaller conventicles grew, and new leaders for them had to be recruited. At first, Ahnfelt limited his services at the conventicles to playing and singing.
About this time, he also constructed his ten-string guitar and began composing and arranging music for revival lyrics appearing in Pietisten and other religious periodicals. In addition to utilizing Ahnfelt’s musical contributions, Rosenius was also anxious to use him as a lay preacher. After considerable urging, Ahnfelt began preaching and witnessing. His talents as a singer, musician, composer, and speaker brought him invitations from all parts of Sweden and from Denmark and Norway.
However, Ahnfelt’s most significant contribution to the revival was not his effective conventicle ministry, important as that was, but his work as a composer and arranger of revival music.
The need for songs with words that expressed the spirit of the revival movement was great; so it became Ahnfelt’s life work to set to music many of the poems from the religious periodicals and to make them generally available.
At first, Ahnfelt had no opportunity to publish these songs. He sang them at his own conventicles, and they were probably memorized and transmitted orally. But in 1850, thanks to a gift from the famous singer Jenny Lind, Ahnfelt was able to publish the first of his song pamphlets. It was called “Spiritual Songs with Accompaniment for Pianoforte and Guitar” and contained twelve numbers. Eleven more pamphlets were published at intervals until 1877, when a total of 200 songs had been issued. No lyric in this entire collection is by Ahnfelt, although he probably made small revisions in the texts.
The famous poetess Lina Sandell, who “poetized the revival movement,” has written 100 of the 200 poems. Many of the songs were composed by Swedish composers of the same period, others are folktunes and songs composed by Ahnfelt.
Ahnfelt’s “Spiritual Songs” became immediately very popular, and, as the quotation from C. V. Bowman shows, the songs were brought over the ocean by Swedish immigrants in the 19th century.
Although more than 100 years have passed since these songs were published, many of us feel that Ahnfelt’s “Spiritual Songs,” with words filled with trust in God and with beautiful melodies, still have the power to move us. Especially those of us who are directly or indirectly influenced by the revival movement of the 19th century that grew so strongly in both Sweden and America.