Opera on the Move in the Nordic Countries during the Long 19th ...

36 Juvas Marianne Liljas
Illustration 5. The Björling family around 1915. David, Olle Ester, Jussi and Gösta.
was practising, which is significant from a didactic perspective – instead of
being pushed away from they were invited into the professional business.
The boys describe their father as enthusiastic and themselves as amused
by their own singing (Björling 1945, p. 20). Gösta also recalls how much he
wanted them to perform, but the first documented performance, as mentioned
earlier, was a spontaneous appearance to fill a gap in a programme
featuring David Björling’s permanent students. However, the boys seemed
to be well prepared (Liljas 2007, p. 300).
David Björling admitted that he started teaching the boys before they
could speak properly, practising scales with them. This is significant information:
incomplete mastery of speech was not an obstacle as far as singing
was concerned, and his work to ensure perception of the note intervals
from the start reveals an ambition that goes far beyond the reproduction
of shorter melodies. With the scale as a starting point he sharpened the
children’s awareness of the intervals and built up their intonation skills (cf.
Sundin 1995, pp. 99-101; Gardner 1994, p. 103; Liljas 2007, p. 309). This
very early singing training thereby paved the way for the systematised
training of audio-sensitivity and voice.
The fact that David Björling opened a private singing school in his own
home in 1914 meant that the children could also hear their father teaching