The aim of this essay is to investigate the mixed church choir and the Swedish Association of Church Choirs (Svenska Kyrkosångsförbundet, SKSF) in the social and musicological context of Sweden c. 1900–1950. Questions asked are why the mixed choir became the dominant form of choir singing in the Church of Sweden, what stance SKSF’s leaders took in response to women, and how they regarded mixed choirs compared to boys’ and men’s choirs. The main source used is the organisation’s periodical, Kyrkosångsförbundet.

A literature review reveals that the establishment of mixed church choirs was boosted by several factors around the turn of the 20th century. The evangelical revival movement, especially the Baptists, had long featured mixed choirs. Towards the end of the 19th century, a new interest for liturgy emerged within the Church of Sweden, and choral singing was officially sanctioned as part of the service. But above all, women as a collective were ready and able to participate. During the first decades of the 20th century, societal reforms and a simultaneous plunge in childbearing rates gave women more opportunities than ever before to play an active part as citizens.

Lutheran Germany exerted a strong influence on Swedish church music, and the tenets of die neue Sachlichkeit in music were embraced by many of SKSF’s leading men. Several of them wrote with enthusiasm of a restored Lutheran music, purged of sentimentality and brought back to the austere purity of the Reformation era. Some offered up the opinion that the voices of girls and women lacked the ”chaste” clarity needed for such a music, and that, in a perfect choir, they would all be replaced by boys. This dream was rudely shattered as scores of basses and tenors left to man the Swedish borders during WWII. The SKSF instead turned to the task of keeping choir singing in church going with the help of second altos, three-part settings and compositions for female and children’s choirs.

Although SKSF’s leadership and its periodical completely ignored the ‘woman question’ so prominent in early 20th-century secular discourse, the mixed church choir contributed to the democratisation of the Church of Sweden, and so of Swedish society as a whole. Women were heard as singers, choir leaders and members of choir boards, and the mixed choir provided a context where women and men could meet on an equal footing.