Laura Constance Pistolekors was born on 1 March 1839 in Rantasalmi, Finland, the youngest of six children. Her mother Emilia died in childbirth shortly after Laura's birth, and her father, Collegiate Assessor Georg Fredrik Pistolekors, moved the family to Stockholm when Laura was one year old. She showed musical talent at a very early age. Her musical education began with Mauritz Gisiko, one of Stockholm's most sought-after piano teachers. She later studied singing with Julius Günther and piano with Anton Door, who visited Stockholm for the first time in 1857. In the same year, at the age of 18, she made her public debut as a pianist with Ignaz Moscheles' Piano Concerto in G minor with the Hovkapellet (the Royal Court Orchestra). She then took part in several chamber music evenings and concerts of the Harmonische Gesellschaft. However, it was not as a singer or pianist, but as a composer that Laura Netzel gradually made a name for herself. Her composition teachers included Charles-Marie Widor in Paris. When she made her successful debut at the age of 35 under the pseudonym ‘Lago’ (later also ‘N. Lago’) with several unaccompanied choral works for female voices at a concert of the Harmoniska sällskapet, many wondered who the composer could be. The following year, she presented the beautiful song ‘Fjäriln’, which made such an impression at a concert that it was repeated and attracted the attention of composers August Söderman and Ludvig Norman, among others.
Anonymity lifted, career accelerated
The compositions of Lago were very popular with the assistant musicians who performed between the main parts of the concerts. Her development did not come to a standstill after her debut as a composer, but her true identity only became known on 23 January 1891, when a women's magazine published a picture and biography introducing its readers to Laura Constance Netzel, née Pistolekors, who had been married to the renowned gynaecologist Professor Wilhelm Netzel since 1866. The Swedish weekly magazine Idun highlights Netzel as a pioneer among Swedish female composers, stating that her compositions revealed ‘masculine power of inspiration and craftsmanship’. One of Netzels' greatest works is the Stabat mater for choir, soloists, organ and instrumental ensembles, dedicated to Crown Prince Gustaf. It was premiered in 1890 at Östermalm Church during a benefit concert under the patronage of the Crown Prince. Even if, according to Idun, it ‘naturally’ left something to be desired in comparison to works by recognised male masters, it nevertheless showed that it was not impossible for a woman to ‘penetrate the deeper layers of creative musical art’. A year later, the composition was performed with orchestral accompaniment instead of organ accompaniment. In 1898, it was published in Paris and highly praised in Le monde musical, Le progress artistique and Journal musical, among others. It was reviewed and highly praised in the Gazette Liège and in Romania musicala (Bucharest), where it was considered a very remarkable piece, distinguished by ‘melodic inspiration coupled with genuine religious feeling’, while the vocal part was judged to be ‘executed with great competence and aesthetic taste’. The period between the revelation of her identity and a few years after the turn of the century proved to be Netzel's most productive phase as a composer. Swedish newspapers and the trade press regularly reported positive reviews from abroad, especially from Paris, but also from Germany, Spain, England and Romania, where her music was regarded as bold, original and characterised by a Nordic character. Netzel retained remarkable mental and physical resilience into old age. On 11 February 1925, the youthful old lady was still playing her own compositions from memory. She died on 10 February 1927, leaving behind three children. Her life was described as fulfilled, radiant and richly blessed in the service of art and human love.
In 1895, the exhibition ‘Women of Yesterday and Today’ in Copenhagen invited female composers from the three Scandinavian countries to submit their works for anonymous evaluation. The jury consisted exclusively of men. None of the five opening cantatas submitted, including Netzel's, were deemed worthy of receiving the full prize of 300 kroner. Laura Netzel and Elisabeth Meyer from Denmark received the prize of 300 kroner as encouragement, which they were to share between them. As a kind of concession, Laura Netzel's violin suite was performed at one of the soirées of the Women's Exhibition, but critic Robert Henriques described it as ‘terrible at best’. The Stockholm press sharply criticised the complexity of Netzel's music: ‘Lago seems to have a genuine aversion to simplicity and clarity’; her music was considered ‘too complicated’ or ‘somewhat long-winded and therefore not particularly clear’. Sometimes her works and their performances were attributed with ‘masculinity’, a ‘masculinity’ that probably clashed with the music critics' attitude towards women. It is not possible to know what these “masculine” characteristics consisted of or which of them ‘Lago’ and other women may have had to employ (or refrain from employing) in order to meet the requirements. When Lago decided to write in a less ‘feminine’ style or in ‘masculine’ genres, this was commented on in music magazines and daily newspapers both in Sweden and abroad. In a review of her Humoresques (1890), for example, she was advised to strive for a less artificial harmonic structure, as this impaired the understanding and performance of the composition. The reference to (lack of) masculinity or femininity served as an extremely satisfying strategy in evaluating Lago's compositions, which, according to the Idun article, were characterised by ‘a modulated artistry and harmonious design that is not often found in female composers’. Reviewers who dared to defy “conventional wisdom” by positively evaluating Lago herself in her bolder styles and grander formats pointed to her uniqueness among female composers. In The Musical Courier (New York) in 1905, French musicologist Eugène Borrel argued that Lago encountered difficulties in the cultural sphere because of her status as a female composer and that a man would have been received very differently. Some of the so-called qualitative criteria of the time seem to be linked to general ideas about what constituted legitimate culture and who was entitled to define it.
