Reine Dahlqvist composer

The Swedish musicologist Reine Dahlqvist, who was born in Gothenburg on September 2, 1945, died there on October 17, 2014. His research was mainly concerned with the trumpet and its history. As a trumpeter, he was self-taught and played only the piccolo trumpet. He could produce high notes on it, but as far as I know was never a member of any orchestra or ensemble. I have known him ever since my first trip to Sweden in the early 1970s.



Reine’s dissertation – Bidrag till trumpeten och trumpetspelets historia från 1500-talet till mitten av 1800-talet med särskild hänsyn till perioden 1740-1830, two vols. (Gothenborg University 1988) – was a gold mine of information. It fortunately contained a long summary in English so that non-Swedish speakers could also profit from it.



Among his articles, there was an important one on Anton Weidinger: The Keyed Trumpet and Its Greatest Virtuoso, Anton Weidinger (Nashville: The Brass Press 1975) (Brass Research Series No. 1, ISBN 0 914282 13 1). His greatest concern, however, was a re-working of his dissertation. He wanted to publish a new edition in English that would present information new to him since 1988. For decades he was constantly doing research for this project. Since the undersigned was the one who helped put every sentence of his into presentable English, we were constantly in contact. About two years ago, his transmissions of texts ceased, although we were only about one-fifth into the final text.